Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Auditory-Somatosensory Integration in Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus Mediates Normal and Phantom Sound Perception.

The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) is the first auditory brainstem nucleus that processes and relays sensory information from multiple sensory modalities to higher auditory brain structures. Converging somatosensory and auditory inputs are integrated by bimodal DCN fusiform neurons, which use somatosensory context for improved auditory coding. Furthermore, phantom sound perception, or tinnitus, can be modulated or induced by somatosensory stimuli including facial pressure and has been linked to somatosensory-auditory processing in DCN. I present three in vivo neurophysiology studies in guinea pigs investigating the role of multisensory mechanisms in normal and tinnitus models. 1) DCN fusiform cells respond to sound with characteristic spike-timing patterns that are controlled by rapidly inactivating potassium conductances. I demonstrated here that somatosensory stimulation alters sound-evoked firing rates and temporal representations of sound for tens of milliseconds through synaptic modulation of intrinsic excitability. 2) Bimodal plasticity consists of alterations of sound-evoked responses for up to two hours after paired somatosensory-auditory stimulation. By varying the interval and order between sound and somatosensory stimuli, I demonstrated stimulus-timing dependent bimodal plasticity that implicates spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP) as the underlying mechanism. The timing rules and time course of stimulus-timing dependent plasticity closely mimic those of STDP at synapses conveying somatosensory information to the DCN. These results suggest the DCN performs STDP-dependent adaptive processing such as suppression of body-generated sounds. 3) Finally, I assessed stimulus-timing dependence of bimodal plasticity in a tinnitus model. Guinea pigs were exposed to a narrowband noise that produced temporary shifts in auditory brainstem response thresholds and is known to produce tinnitus. Sixty percent of guinea pigs developed tinnitus according to behavioral testing by gap-induced prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle response. Bimodal plasticity timing rules in animals with verified tinnitus were broader and more likely to be anti-Hebbian than those in sham animals or noise-exposed animals that did not develop tinnitus. Furthermore, exposed animals with tinnitus had weaker suppressive responses than either sham animals or exposed animals without tinnitus. These results suggest tinnitus development is linked to STDP, presenting a potential target for pharmacological or neuromodulatory tinnitus therapies.
Suicide and Primary Affective Disorders

Primary affective disorders, depressive or manic episodes in patients who have been psychiatrically well previously, or who have had episodes of mania or depression without other psychiatric illnesses (Robins and Guze, 1969), are associated with high suicide rates. The following data indicate that the suicide risk among these patients is over thirty times greater than that of the population without these disorders, and that the risk of suicide compared to other causes of death may be increased early in the course of the illness.
The Impact of Cognitive Organizers and Technology-Based Practices on Student Success in Secondary Social Studies Classrooms

This study investigated the impact of cognitive organizers, with the integration of technology, Inspiration 6 software, compared to a traditional textbook instruction format on content-area learning in high school inclusive social studies classes. Twenty-nine tenth-grade students in general education and 20 students with mild disabilities were randomly assigned to receive instruction using a cognitive organizer or traditional textbook instruction format. A pretest/posttest treatment control group design was used to examine the effectiveness of cognitive organizers. Dependent measures included a 35-item open-ended production pre/posttest of declarative social studies knowledge to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Students in the cognitive organizer condition significantly outperformed students in the traditional textbook instruction condition. Limitations of the study, implications for practice for both general and special education teachers, and future research are discussed.
Influence of pump direction in all-optical gain-clamped erbium doped fiber amplifier

We demonstrate the influence of pump direction in the all-optical gain-clamped erbium doped fiber amplifier configuration using optical circulators in the feedback loop. The circulator disposition imposes the clamping laser to counterpropagate with the probe signal. We showed a better performance when the pump laser copropagates with the probe signal for operation conditions. We also compare the performance of this configuration with the one that uses directional couplers in the feedback loop
Oral Administration of a Seed-based Bivalent Rotavirus Vaccine Containing VP6 and NSP4 Induces Specific Immune Responses in Mice

Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrheal disease among newborns. Plant-based rotavirus vaccines have been developed in recent years and have been proven to be effective in animal models. In the present study, we report a bivalent vaccine candidate expressing rotavirus subunits VP6 and NSP4 fused with the adjuvant subunit B of E. coli heat-labile enterotoxin (LTB) in maize seeds. The RT-PCR and Western blot results showed that VP6 and LTB-NSP4 antigens were expressed and accumulated in maize seeds. The expression levels were as high as 0.35 and 0.20% of the total soluble protein for VP6 and LTB-NSP4, respectively. Oral administration of transgenic maize seeds successfully stimulated systemic and mucosal responses, with high titers of serum IgG and mucosal IgA antibodies, even after long-term storage. This study is the first to use maize seeds as efficient generators for the development of a bivalent vaccine against rotavirus.
Patterns of root growth acclimation: constant processes, changing boundaries

Plasticity, the hallmark of plant morphogenesis, extends to kinetics. To enhance acclimation, growing plant organs adeptly adjust their growth rate, up or down. In roots, rates of division and elemental expansion as well as the length of division and elongation zones are readily characterized because of their linear organization, radial symmetry, and indeterminate growth, and can be measured accurately with kinematic methods. Here, for roots, I describe key concepts from kinematics and review patterns of growth and division during acclimation. The growth rate of a root reflects the integral of elemental expansion activity over the span of the growth zone; therefore, an acclimating plant can change the rate of root growth by changing either or both the span of the growth zone or the rate of elemental expansion. The analogous dichotomy exists for cell division where the rate at which cells are produced reflects the integral of cell division rate over the span of the division zone. Surprisingly, expansion responses nearly always involve changes in the length of the growth zone. Similarly, although based on fewer data, changes in cell division rate are rare, whereas changes in meristem length are common. These patterns imply that setting the boundaries for meristem and elongation zone is the key regulatory act for root growth rate acclimation. WIREs Dev Biol 2013, 2:65–73. doi: 10.1002/wdev.94
Capacity Comparison Between MIMO-NOMA and MIMO-OMA With Multiple Users in a Cluster

In this paper, the performance of multiple-input multiple-output non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) is investigated, when multiple users are grouped into a cluster. The superiority of MIMO-NOMA over MIMO-OMA in terms of both sum channel capacity and ergodic sum capacity is proved analytically. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the more users are admitted to a cluster, the lower is the achieved sum rate, which illustrates the tradeoff between the sum rate and maximum number of admitted users. On this basis, a user admission scheme is proposed, which is optimal in terms of both sum rate and the number of admitted users when the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio thresholds of the users are equal. When these thresholds are different, the proposed scheme still achieves good performance in balancing both criteria. Moreover, under certain conditions, it maximizes the number of admitted users. In addition, the complexity of the proposed scheme is linear in the number of users per cluster. Simulation results verify the superiority of MIMO-NOMA over MIMO-OMA in terms of both sum rate and user fairness, as well as the effectiveness of the proposed user admission scheme.
Choices of Operand Truncation in the SRT Division Algorithm

The paper presents an analysis of the number of partial remainder digits and divisor bits that must be examined in the SRT division algorithm. The number of examined digits is found to be the same for both signed digit and 2s complement partial remainder representations, and appears to increase as 3log/sub 2/r approximately, where r is the radix of the divider. In some cases, it proves advantageous to examine a fractional number of remainder digits by inspecting more positive than negative bits. >
A thermodynamic approach to designing structure-free combinatorial DNA word sets

An algorithm is presented for the generation of sets of non-interacting DNA sequences, employing existing thermodynamic models for the prediction of duplex stabilities and secondary structures. A DNA ‘word’ structure is employed in which individual DNA ‘words’ of a given length (e.g. 12mer and 16mer) may be concatenated into longer sequences (e.g. four tandem words and six tandem words). This approach, where multiple word variants are used at each tandem word position, allows very large sets of non-interacting DNA strands to be assembled from combinations of the individual words. Word sets were generated and their figures of merit are compared to sets as described previously in the literature (e.g. 4, 8, 12, 15 and 16mer). The predicted hybridization behavior was experimentally verified on selected members of the sets using standard UV hyperchromism measurements of duplex melting temperatures (Tms). Additional experimental validation was obtained by using the sequences in formulating and solving a small example of a DNA computing problem.
Localization of acoustic sources based on the Teager-Kaiser Energy Operator

This paper presents a new approach of microphone array sampling and processing for acoustic source localization. By sampling circular arrays in a round robin fashion, nonlinear modulations are purposefully induced by means of the Doppler effect. The discrete time Teager-Kaiser Energy Operator is then used to analyze these modulations. It enables a batch-based localization of multiple sound sources at low complexity. The proposal system uses a small circular array but is suitable for other array geometries as well. In contrast to cross-correlation based localization techniques, we process only two signals while we maintain a circular symmetric system with no preferred look direction. Experiments are reported for up to 5 simultaneously active speech sources.
A Pinching Strategy for Fabrics Using Wiping Deformation

This paper discusses a strategy by which a robotic hand can use the physical properties of a fabric to pinch the fabric. Pinching may be accomplished by using a wiping motion, during which the movement and deformation of a deformable object occur simultaneously. The wiping motion differs from the displacement of a deformable object. During the wiping motion, there is contact, but no relative movement, between the manipulator and the object, whereas, during displacement, there is both contact and relative movement between the object and the floor. This paper first describes wiping motion and distinguishes wiping slide from wiping deformation by displacement of the internal points of an object. Wiping motion is also shown to be an extended scheme of pushing and sliding of rigid objects. Our strategy for pinching a fabric is accomplished with a combination of wiping deformation and residual deformation of the fabric under unloaded conditions. Using this strategy, a single-armed robotic hand can pinch both surfaces of the fabric without handover motion.
Cepheids in External Galaxies. I. The Maser-Host Galaxy NGC 4258 and the Metallicity Dependence of Period-Luminosity and Period-Wesenheit Relations

We perform a detailed analysis of Cepheids in NGC 4258, the Magellanic Clouds, and Milky Way in order to verify the reliability of the theoretical scenario based on a large set of nonlinear convective pulsation models. We derive Wesenheit functions from the synthetic BVI magnitudes of the pulsators, and we show that the sign and the extent of the metallicity effect on the predicted period-Wesenheit (P − W) relations change according to the adopted passbands. These P − W relations are applied to measured BVI magnitudes of NGC 4258, Magellanic, and Galactic Cepheids available in the literature. We find that Magellanic and Galactic Cepheids agree with the metallicity dependence of the predicted P − W relations. Concerning the NGC 4258 Cepheids, the results strongly depend on the adopted metallicity gradient across the galactic disk. The most recent nebular oxygen abundances support a shallower gradient and provide a metallicity dependence that agrees well with current pulsation predictions. Moreover, the comparison of Cepheid distances based on VI magnitudes with distance estimates based on the revised TRGB method for external galaxies, on the HST trigonometric parallaxes for Galactic Cepheids, and on eclipsing binaries in the Magellanic Clouds seems to favor the metallicity correction predicted by pulsation models. The sign and the extent of the metallicity dependence of the P − W and of the period-luminosity (P − L) relations change according to the adopted passbands. Therefore, distances based on different methods and/or bands should not be averaged. The use of extragalactic Cepheids to constrain the metallicity effect requires new accurate and extensive nebular oxygen measurements.
Selection effects at 21cm

Surveys in the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen are testing the completeness of the catalogs of nearby galaxies. The remarkable observational fact is that the potential wells that confine gas to sufficient density that it can remain neutral in the face of ionizing radiation also provide sites for star formation, so that there are no known cases of neutral intergalactic clouds without associated star light.
Scaling Laws in Phytoplankton Nutrient Uptake Affinity

Nutrient uptake affinity affects the competitive ability of microbial organisms at low nutrient concentrations. From the theory of diffusion limitation it follows that uptake affinity scales linearly with the cell radius. This is in conflict with some observations suggesting that uptake affinity scales to a quantity that is closer to the square of the radius, i.e. to cell surface area. We show that this apparent conflict can be resolved by nutrient uptake theory. Pure diffusion limitation assumes that the cell is a perfect sink which means that it is able to absorb all encountered nutrients instantaneously. Here we provide empirical evidence that the perfect sink strategy is not common in phytoplankton. Although small cells are indeed favored by a large surface to volume ratio, we show that they are punished by higher relative investment cost in order to fully benefit from the larger surface to volume ratio. We show that there are two reasons for this. First, because the small cells need a higher transporter density in order to maximize their affinity, and second because the relative cost of a transporter is higher for a small than for a large cell. We suggest that this might explain why observed uptake affinities do not scale linearly with the cell radius.
INSTABILITIES OF RVM

The relativistic Vlasov–Maxwell system describes the evolution of a collisionless plasma. The problem of linear instability of this system is considered in two physical settings: the so-called one and one-half dimensional case, and the three dimensional case with cylindrical symmetry. Sufficient conditions for instability are obtained in terms of the spectral properties of certain Schrödinger operators that act on the spatial variable alone (and not in full phase space). An important aspect of these conditions is that they do not require any boundedness assumptions on the domains, nor do they require monotonicity of the equilibrium.
Design Practice in Human Computer Interaction Design Education

As the need for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) designers increases so does the need for courses that best prepare students for their future work life. Multidisciplinary teamwork is what very frequently meets the graduates in their new work situations. Preparing students for such multidisciplinary work through education is not easy to achieve. In this paper, we investigate ways to engage computer science students, majoring in design, use, and interaction (with technology), in design practices through an advanced graduate course in interaction design. Here, we take a closer look at how prior embodied and explicit knowledge of HCI that all of the students have, combined with understanding of design practice through the course, shape them as human-computer interaction designers. We evaluate the results of the effort in terms of increase in creativity, novelty of ideas, body language when engaged in design activities, and in terms of perceptions of how well this course prepared the students for the work practice outside of the university.
The effect of seating assignments on student achievement in the biology classroom

This study investigated the relationship between classroom seating arrangements, student motivation and achievement in the science classroom. Data were collected over 16 weeks. Students were placed in three different seating arrangements for three weeks each: self-chosen seats, randomly assigned seats, and teacher assigned seats. Each was repeated to make a total of six treatment periods. Students’ attitudes and motivation to learn were measured by their attitude survey and interview responses. Multiple choice formative assessments were administered each day to measure each student’s level of engagement and understanding of the daily learning objectives. Curriculum unit difficulty levels were calculated to ensure that no one treatment was significantly different than the next. The results showed that teacher chosen seating arrangements yielded better performances across the entire population. When investigating higherand lowerperforming students, the high performers accomplished significantly better results with the aid of teacher chosen seats, whereas the lower-performers showed no improvement with any seating method. The findings also revealed that, within my student interview group, there was significant improvement in all performance levels with the teacher chosen seats. These results indicate that well-developed communication between instructor and student helps to inform the teacher of necessary accommodations for each student. The results revealed that the most effective teaching days occurred during teacher chosen seating treatments where I was more able to control the classroom environment while experiencing the highest level of comfort.
Theory of Planned Behavior-Based Models for Breastfeeding Duration Among Hong Kong Mothers

BackgroundThe theory of planned behavior (TPB) has been used to explain breastfeeding behaviors in Western cultures. Theoretically-based investigations in other groups are sparse. ObjectiveTo evaluate cross-cultural application of TPB-based models for breastfeeding duration among new mothers in Hong Kong. MethodFirst-time breastfeeding mothers (N = 209) with healthy newborns provided self-reports of TPB predictor variables during postpartum hospitalization and information about breastfeeding experiences at 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months postdelivery or until they weaned. Three predictive models were proposed: (a) a strict interpretation of the TPB with two added proximal predictors of breastfeeding duration; (b) a replication with modification of the TPB-based model for more fully employed breastfeeding mothers from a previous study (Duckett et al., 1998); and (c) a model that posited perceived control (PC) as a mediating factor linking TPB motivational variables for breastfeeding with breastfeeding intentions and behavior. LISREL was used for the structural equation modeling analyses. ResultsExplained variance in PC and duration was high in all models. Overall fit of the strict TPB model was poor (GOFI = 0.85). The TPB for breastfeeding employed women and the PC-mediated models fit equally well (GOFI = 0.94; 0.95) and residuals were small (RMSR = 0.07). All hypothesized paths in the PC-mediated model were significant (p < .05); explained variance was 0.40 for perceived control and 0.36 for breastfeeding duration. DiscussionModels were interpreted in light of the TPB, previous findings, the social context for breastfeeding in Hong Kong, and statistical model-building. Cross-cultural measurement issues and the need for prospective designs are continuing challenges in breastfeeding research.
The Core of the Case Against Judicial Review

This Essay states the general case against judicial review of legislation clearly and in a way that is uncluttered by discussions of particular decisions or the history of its emergence in particular systems of constitutional law. The Essay criticizes judicial review on two main grounds. First, it argues that there is no reason to suppose that rights are better protected by this practice than they would be by democratic legislatures. Second, it argues that, quite apart from the outcomes it generates, judicial review is democratically illegitimate. The second argument is familiar; the first argument less so. However, the case against judicial review is not absolute or unconditional. In this Essay, it is premised on a number of conditions, including that the society in question has good working democratic institutions and that most of its citizens take rights seriously (even if they may disagree about what rights they have). The Essay ends by considering what follows from the failure of these conditions. author. University Professor in the School of Law, Columbia University. (From July 2006, Professor of Law, New York University.) Earlier versions of this Essay were presented at the Colloquium in Legal and Social Philosophy at University College London, at a law faculty workshop at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at a constitutional law conference at Harvard Law School. I am particularly grateful to Ronald Dworkin, Ruth Gavison, and Seana Shiffrin for their formal comments on those occasions and also to James Allan, Aharon Barak, Richard Bellamy, Aileen Cavanagh, Arthur Chaskalson, Michael Dorf, Richard Fallon, Charles Fried, Andrew Geddis, Stephen Guest, Ian Haney-Lopez, Alon Harel, David Heyd, Sam Issacharoff, Elena Kagan, Kenneth Keith, Michael Klarman, John Manning, Andrei Marmor, Frank Michelman, Henry Monaghan, Veronique Munoz-Darde, John Morley, Matthew Palmer, Richard Pildes, Joseph Raz, Carol Sanger, David Wiggins, and Jo Wolff for their suggestions and criticisms. Hundreds of others have argued with me about this issue over the years: This Essay is dedicated to all of them, collegially and with thanks. WALDRON 3/23/2006 6:53:29 PM the core of the case against judicial review