Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Isoflurane Antagonizes the Capacity of Flurothyl or 1,2-Dichlorohexafluorocyclobutane to Impair Fear Conditioning to Context and Tone

In animals, the conventional inhaled anesthetic, isoflurane, impairs learning fear to context and fear to tone, doing so at concentrations that produce amnesia in humans. Nonimmobilizers are inhaled compounds that do not produce immobility in response to noxious stimulation, nor do they decrease the requirement for conventional inhaled anesthetics. Like isoflurane, the nonimmobilizer 1,2-dichlorohexafluorocyclobutane (2N) impairs learning at concentrations less than those predicted from its lipophilicity to produce anesthesia. The capacity of the nonimmobilizer di-(2,2,2,-trifluoroethyl) ether (flurothyl) to affect learning and memory has not been studied. Both nonimmobilizers can cause convulsions. We hypothesized that if isoflurane, 2N, and flurothyl act by the same mechanism to impair learning and memory, their effects should be additive. We found that isoflurane, 2N, and flurothyl (each, alone) impaired learning fear to context and fear to tone in rats, with the nonimmobilizers doing so at concentrations less than those that cause convulsions. (Fear was defined by freezing [volitional immobility] in the presence of the conditioned stimulus [context or tone].) However, the combination of isoflurane and 2N or flurothyl produced an antagonistic rather than an additive effect on learning, a finding in conflict with our hypothesis. And flurothyl was no less potent than 2N (at least no less potent relative to the concentration of each that produced convulsions) in its capacity to impair learning. We conclude that conventional inhaled anesthetics and nonimmobilizers impair learning and memory by different mechanisms. The basis for this impairment remains unknown.
Effect of Academic Stress on Achievement Motivation among College Students.

The present study was conducted to find out the effect of academic stress on achievement motivation of college students. 50 college students of various professional, arts, and science colleges functioning in and around Puducherry were approached at random to collect data using purposive sampling method. Academic stress scale developed and standardized by Rajendran and Kaliappan (1990) and Achievement Motivation Scale by Pratibha Deo and Asha Mohan (1985) were used for data collection. The collected data were statistically analysed using ‘t’ test and one way ANOVA. The findings revealed that moderate stress leads to high achievement motivation.
Finite-State Chart Constraints for Reduced Complexity Context-Free Parsing Pipelines

We present methods for reducing the worst-case and typical-case complexity of a context-free parsing pipeline via hard constraints derived from finite-state pre-processing. We perform O(n) predictions to determine if each word in the input sentence may begin or end a multi-word constituent in chart cells spanning two or more words, or allow single-word constituents in chart cells spanning the word itself. These pre-processing constraints prune the search space for any chart-based parsing algorithm and significantly decrease decoding time. In many cases cell population is reduced to zero, which we term chart cell “closing. ” We present methods for closing a sufficient number of chart cells to ensure provably quadratic or even linear worst-case complexity of context-free inference. In addition, we apply high precision constraints to achieve large typical-case speedups and combine both high precision and worst-case bound constraints to achieve superior performance on both short and long strings. These bounds on processing are achieved without reducing the parsing accuracy, and in some cases accuracy improves. We demonstrate that our method generalizes across multiple grammars and is complementary to other pruning techniques by presenting empirical results for both exact and approximate inference using the exhaustive CKY algorithm, the Charniak parser, and the Berkeley parser. We also report results parsing Chinese, where we achieve the best reported results for an individual model on the commonly reported data set.
Depression in Contemporary Times: A Study of Its Determinants Among Middle-Aged Adults in the United States

Depression in Contemporary Times: A Study of Its Determinants Among Middle-Aged Adults in the United States By Takiyah L. Johnson April 23, 2018 BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (major depression) is a disabling mental illness that impairs mood, reduces physical functioning, and causes emotional distress. Depression studies often focus on adolescents and young adults or older adults, but evidence suggests that the most severe consequences of this illness increasingly affect those in the middle (ages 40-64). OBJECTIVE: This study examines the individual association between three health determinants (social support systems, health status, and access to health insurance) and major depressive symptoms among middle-aged adults. Also, factors such as demographic factors, socioeconomic status, military service, risky behaviors, and health-promoting behaviors were evaluated for their associations with depression. METHODS: This cross-sectional study utilizes secondary data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) from the 2007-2008 and 2013-14 cycles. The statistical analysis was performed using SAS. Univariate logistic regression was used to determine the association between social support, health status, and health insurance and five depressive symptoms. Then logistic regression analyses were performed between each determinant, two depressive symptoms (feeling bad and suicidality), and adjusted for the covariates. RESULTS: The sample included 3782 adults over 40 years old in 2007-2008 and 3627 in 2013-2014. The population was subset into young middle age, older middle age, and older adults to better characterize the age groups. The univariate logistic regression analyses indicate a statistically significant relationship between each determinant and the five depressive symptoms except among one factor in 2007-2008 and two in 2013-14. The adjusted logistic regression results are mixed. In reviewing the odds ratio results, health status has a strong statistically significant association with each depressive symptom. Health insurance generally does not show statistically significant associations. Social support is statistically associated with feeling bad, but not suicidality when the covariates are included. These findings are consistent with both cycles of data. CONCLUSION: This study finds that lack of social support and poor health status predict higher levels of low mood in a national sample of adults over 40, particularly those in middle age. Health status also associates strongly with suicidal thoughts. Although health insurance is not shown to be associated with clinical depression symptoms in this study, additional research is warranted considering the recent changes in national health insurance coverage. RUNNING HEAD: DEPRESSION IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES III
A Min-Plus Calculus for End-to-End Statistical Service Guarantees

The network calculus offers an elegant framework for determining worst-case bounds on delay and backlog in a network. This paper extends the network calculus to a probabilistic framework with statistical service guarantees. The notion of a statistical service curve is presented as a probabilistic bound on the service received by an individual flow or an aggregate of flows. The problem of concatenating per-node statistical service curves to form an end-to-end (network) statistical service curve is explored. Two solution approaches are presented that can each yield statistical network service curves. The first approach requires the availability of time scale bounds at which arrivals and departures at each node are correlated. The second approach considers a service curve that describes service over time intervals. Although the latter description of service is less general, it is argued that many practically relevant service curves may be compliant to this description
Enterprise Systems Success: A Measurement Model

This paper presents a validated measurement model and instrument for assessing enterprise systems success from multiple perspectives. The final validated study model employs 27 measures of the four dimensions: information quality, system quality, individual impact, and organizational impact. The model is empirically tested with survey data gathered from 27 public sector organizations that implemented SAP R/3 in the late 1990s. The study consists of an exploratory inventory survey (model building) to identify the salient success dimensions and measures, followed by a confirmatory weights survey, for testing model validity (model testing). Test results demonstrate the discriminant validity of the four dimensions, as well as their convergence on a single higher-order phenomenon: enterprise systems success (ESS). Criterion validity testing further demonstrates the additivity of the four dimensions of success, and the completeness of the resultant overarching, second-order measure of ESS.
A Framework for Performance Modeling and Prediction

Cycle-accurate simulation is far too slow for modeling the expected performance of full parallel applications on large HPC systems. And just running an application on a system and observing wallclock time tells you nothing about why the application performs as it does (and is anyway impossible on yet-to-be-built systems). Here we present a framework for performance modeling and prediction that is faster than cycle-accurate simulation, more informative than simple benchmarking, and is shown useful for performance investigations in several dimensions.
The Role of Rehabilitation in the Management of Patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease: Report of Two Cases

BACKGROUND: Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease is a hereditary disease with signs of chronic non-progressive motor-sensory neuropathy which is characterised by symmetric muscle atrophy and weakness of the distal portion of lower extremities. AIM: The aim is to present two cases with peroneal muscular atrophy, applied rehabilitation procedures and rehabilitation outcome. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patient DR, aged 51, and patient KH, aged 78. Both patients had weakness and pronounced atrophy of the distal portion of lower extremities, numbness down the legs, contractures in the ankles and walking difficulties. Evaluation of patients included a clinical examination, Barthel Index, Time Up and Go test, measurement of the ankle range of motion, and a manual muscle test. On admission, the Barthel Index score was 60 in the first case, and 80 in the second. The rehabilitation program included exercise therapy with for lower extremity, occupational therapy, stationary bicycle riding, galvanic current, water exercises, and ankle-foot orthoses for both legs. RESULTS: The therapy applied had no significant changes in the clinical neurological status of the patients, but yet it provided some improvement in ankle contractures, better mobility, and a more stable gait. CONCLUSION: The application of rehabilitation procedures in patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease can improve their functional status and walking stability.
Mismatched quantum filtering and entropic information

Quantum filtering is a signal processing technique that estimates the posterior state of a quantum system under continuous measurements and has become a standard tool in quantum information processing, with applications in quantum state preparation, quantum metrology, and quantum control. If the filter assumes a nominal model that differs from reality, however, the estimation accuracy is bound to suffer. Here I derive identities that relate the excess error caused by quantum filter mismatch to the relative entropy between the true and nominal observation probability measures, with one identity for Gaussian measurements, such as optical homodyne detection, and another for Poissonian measurements, such as photon counting. These identities generalize recent seminal results in classical information theory and provide new operational meanings to relative entropy, mutual information, and channel capacity in the context of quantum experiments.
Biological Principles of Control Selection for a Humanoid Robot's Dynamic Balance Preservation

This paper presents a contribution to the study of control law structures and to the selection of relevant sensory information for humanoid robots in situations where dynamic balance is jeopardized. In the example considered, the system first experiences a large disturbance, and then by an appropriate control action resumes a "normal" posture of standing on one leg. In order to examine the control laws used by humans, an experiment was performed in which a human subject was subjected to perturbations and the ensuing reactions were recorded to obtain complete information about the subject's motion and ground reaction force. Then, a humanoid model was advanced with characteristics matching those of the experimental human subject. The whole experiment was simulated so as to achieve a simulated motion that was similar to that of the human test subject. The analysis of the control laws applied, and the behavior of selected ground reference points (ZMP, CMP and CM projection on the ground surface), provided valuable insight into balance strategies that humanoid robots might employ to better mimic the kinetics and kinematics of humans compensating for balance disturbances.
Sustainability of exercise-induced increases in bone density and skeletal structure

Background The prevalence of osteoporosis with related fragility fractures has increased during the last decades. As physical activity influences the skeleton in a beneficial way, exercise may hypothetically be used as a prophylactic tool against osteoporosis. Objective This review evaluates if exercise-induced skeletal benefits achieved during growth remain in a long-term perspective. Design Publications within the field were searched through Medline (PubMed) using the search words: exercise, physical activity, bone mass, bone mineral content (BMC), bone mineral density (BMD) and skeletal structure. We based our inferences on publications with the highest level of evidence, particularly randomised controlled trials (RCT). Results Benefits in BMD achieved by exercise during growth seem to be eroded at retirement, but benefits in skeletal structure may possibly be retained in a longer perspective. Recreational exercise seems to at least partially maintain exercise-induced skeletal benefits achieved during growth. Conclusions Exercise during growth may be followed by long-term beneficial skeletal effects, which could possibly reduce the incidence of fractures. Exercise during adulthood seems to partly preserve these benefits and reduce the age-related bone loss.
Utilizing a Parametric Channel Model to Improve Turbo Equalization for Underwater Communications

A model based method for channel estimation and synchronization in a sevearly doppler spread channel is presented. The model parameters are delay, amplitude and doppler (compression/expansion). The parametrs are succesively determined for a number of signal arrivals starting with the strongest and down to the level that is considered significant for the communication. The residual is taken care of by an ordinary non parametric channel estimation. Another novelty is the signal model that is presented. In soft recursive estimation of a message the channel is overestimated when the knowledge of the received symbols is small. To overcome this the phases or amplitudes are constrained to the values that are possible with respect to the modulation format. The results show considerably better convergence in channels with severe doppler shift and varying channel coefficients. The abstract goes here.
Multimedia Lab @ ACL WNUT NER Shared Task: Named Entity Recognition for Twitter Microposts using Distributed Word Representations

Due to the short and noisy nature of Twitter microposts, detecting named entities is often a cumbersome task. As part of the ACL2015 Named Entity Recognition (NER) shared task, we present a semisupervised system that detects 10 types of named entities. To that end, we leverage 400 million Twitter microposts to generate powerful word embeddings as input features and use a neural network to execute the classification. To further boost the performance, we employ dropout to train the network and leaky Rectified Linear Units (ReLUs). Our system achieved the fourth position in the final ranking, without using any kind of hand-crafted features such as lexical features or gazetteers.
Natal habitat-biased dispersal in the Siberian flying squirrel

Theoretically, dispersers should target the habitat where prospects for fitness will be highest. Aiming for a habitat similar to the natal area (natal habitat-biased dispersal) has been hypothesized as a probable rule of thumb for dispersers, but has received very little empirical support to date. We investigated similarities between natal and post-dispersal settlement sites with radio-collared Siberian flying squirrels (Pteromys volans L.). Juveniles born in small patches and raised in nests close to patch edge settled in small patches and used nests close to edges after dispersal. In addition, post-dispersal use of dreys (versus cavities) was similar to that observed in natal sites. However, the quality of settlement habitat was unrelated to the quality of the natal site, which suggests that natal experience on average-quality habitats may not lead to ecological traps for flying squirrels. This study provides evidence that habitat selection at the landscape scale is influenced by habitat of natal area.
Moving towards a New Paradigm for Woody Detritus Management 1

Woody detritus has become an important focus of many scientific and management questions in forests. Perspectives of the role of this part of the ecosystem have greatly changed over time. Today forest managers are moving away from a “blanket” removal of all the woody detritus possible to retaining and even enhancing the amounts in forests. To understand how much woody detritus is required to sustain ecosystem functions, we need to develop a dynamic and specific objective-oriented approach. This can be based on existing data on tree mortality and decomposition, but these will have to be coupled with process and species responses to coarse wood quantities as well as a landscape perspective.
Can Couples Assessment and Feedback Improve Relationships ? Assessment as a Brief Relationship Enrichment Procedure

Many counseling psychologists provide marital assistance to couples who have relationship problems and those who seek to enrich their relationships. The authors investigated the effects of individualized relationship assessment and feedback in relation to merely completing written questionnaires about the relationships on couples' satisfaction and commitment. Student couples (N = 48; 26 married, 15 cohabiting, 7 engaged) participated either in (a) 3 sessions of assessment feedback (n = 28) or (b) written assessment only (n = 20). Assessment-feedback couples improved more over time than did written-assessment-only couples. The authors concluded that assessment and feedback produce small positive changes in already well-functioning relationships. Those changes may account for a substantial proportion of the changes produced by relationship enrichment programs.
Aqueous exposure to 4‐nonylphenol and 17β‐estradiol increases stress sensitivity and disrupts ion regulatory ability of juvenile Atlantic salmon

Population declines of wild Atlantic salmon have been attributed to an array of anthropogenic disturbances, including dams, commercial and recreational fishing, habitat loss, and pollution. Environmental contaminants in particular, can act as environmental stressors on fish, typically causing disruption of ion homeostasis due to their close association with the aquatic environment. To examine the effects of the xenoestrogen 4‐nonylphenol (NP) or 17β‐estradiol (E2) on stress sensitivity and ion regulation, we exposed juvenile Atlantic salmon continuously for 21 d to either 10 or 100 μg/L NP (NP‐L or NP‐H), 2 μg/L E2 (positive control), or vehicle control during the parr‐smolt transformation in April. After treatment, fish were sampled in freshwater (FW), transferred to 30‰ seawater (SW) for 24 h, or subjected to a handling stress. Estradiol and NP‐H increased plasma vitellogenin in males and females, and E2 increased gonadosomatic index only in males. In FW, E2 reduced sodium potassium–activated adenosine triphosphatase activity as well as plasma levels of growth hormone, insulin‐like growth factor I, and triiodothyronine. Both E2 and NP‐H reduced plasma sodium in FW and increased plasma chloride in SW. Plasma Cortisol levels pre‐ and poststressor were significantly elevated by all treatments relative to controls, but only E2 increased plasma glucose before and after the stressor. These results indicate that exposure of anadromous salmonids to environmental estrogens heightens sensitivity to external stressors, impairs ion regulation in both FW and SW, and disrupts endocrine pathways critical for smolt development.
Hubble Space Telescope survey of the Perseus Cluster – I. The structure and dark matter content of cluster dwarf spheroidals

We present the results of a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) study of dwarf galaxies in the core of the rich nearby Perseus Cluster, down to M-V = -12. We identify 29 dwarfs as cluster members, 17 of which are previously unstudied. All the dwarfs we examine are remarkably smooth in appearance, and lack internal features. This smoothness is quantified by parametric fitting of the two-dimensional light distribution, and through non-parametric structural parameters. The dwarfs in this study are found to be very smooth, and have very low asymmetry and clumpiness values ( = 0.03 +/- 0.04, = 0.02 +/- 0.09) throughout their entire structure, showing no evidence for internal features or star formation that could be the result of tidal processes or star formation induced by the cluster environment. Based on these observations, and the sizes of these dwarfs, we argue that some of the dwarfs in our sample must have a large dark matter content to prevent disruption by the cluster potential. We derive a new method, independent of kinematics, for measuring the dark matter content of dEs, based on the radius of the dwarf, the projected distance of the dwarf from the cluster centre, and the total mass of the cluster interior to it. We use this method to determine the mass-to-light ratios for 25 of the dwarfs in our sample, the others being too close to bright stars to accurately determine their radii. At their current positions in the cluster, 12 out of 25 of the dwarfs in our sample require dark matter to remain stable against the cluster potential. These 12 dwarfs are all fainter than M-V = -14, and nearly all dEs with M-V < -13 require dark matter to survive. We also consider the mass that the dwarfs would require to survive the tidal forces at the centre of the cluster, at a pericentric distance of 35 kpc from the cluster centre. We find that at this distance, the mass-to-light ratios of these dwarfs are comparable to those of the Local Group dSphs, ranging between M-circle dot/L-circle dot approximate to 1 and 120.