Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Direct conversion CdZnTe and CdTe detectors for digital mammography

Hybrid CdZnTe and CdTe pixel detector arrays that convert X-rays directly into charge signals are under development at Nova for applications to digital mammography. CdZnTe and CdTe have superior X-ray conversion efficiency compared to either emulsion based film, phosphor-based detectors or other low-Z, solid-state detectors such as silicon. In this paper, latest results from thin (0.15 to 0.2 mm) CdZnTe and CdTe detectors will be presented in terms of MTF, DQE and phantom images. Single crystal CdZnTe detectors yield better results in DQE as well as phantom images, compared to the poly-crystal CdZnTe detectors. This is due to the non-uniformities in the poly-crystal that degrade the charge transport properties. Because of the charge-coupling limitation of the readout ASIC that was originally designed for Si detectors, the detector is biased to collect holes from the front side. This charge collection mode limits the CdZnTe detector performance. Their DQE measurements yield 25% and 65% for the poly-crystal and single-crystal CdZnTe detectors respectively. Poly-crystal CdTe test detectors were also hybridized to the same type charge readout chip. Since CdTe has much longer hole-propagation lengths compared to CdZnTe, it shows better performance in the hole-collecting mode. However, severe polarization effect degrades performance of the present device. Excellent images were also obtained from the CdTe detectors. Future work to redesign the readout ASIC and thus improve the detector performance is discussed. Applications to industrial imaging such as Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) and Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) are also discussed.
Mental health among UK inner city non-heterosexuals: the role of risk factors, protective factors and place – CORRIGENDUM

Due to a survey weight calculation correction to the South East London Community Health study (SELCoH) data, all weighted prevalence’s, odds ratios and confidence intervals have been amended. The following describes the main relevant updated univariate data in Tables 1–3. Rather than 5.4, 6.6% identified as non-heterosexual (4.8% homosexual, 1.4% bi-sexual and 0.5% ‘other’). Marital status (p = 0.054); reporting having ever been discouraged from continuing education (p = 0.180); that people ever acted as if they were afraid (p = 0.168) and not applying for work or training for fear of discrimination (p = 0.074) was no longer associated with sexual orientation.
Effects of video self-modelling as an intervention for teenagers with public speaking anxiety

Public Speaking Anxiety (PSA) arises from the real or anticipated performance of an oral presentation. People with PSA experience an increase in Heart Rate (HR), negative selffocused thoughts and observable behaviours such as, trembling or non-fluent speech. In this study Video Self-Modelling (VSM), an intervention based on observational learning, was used to increase performance fluency and decrease cognitive, behavioural, and physiological anxiety. Ten high school students with high PSA participated from an English class in a New Zealand school. Video self-models were created for each student through editing to depict confident speaking and then viewed by the students 5 to 8 times over a fortnight. Results indicated from pre-intervention to post-intervention that all students decreased their level of behavioural anxiety. Seven of the ten students decreased their level of self-reported speech anxiety and six students self-reported more positive thoughts about public speaking. There was a decrease in HR for two of the four students, who wore HR monitors during the study. These results suggest that VSM could be used as an intervention, within a high school setting, to reduce anxiety and improve public speaking performance.
β‐adrenergic signaling promotes posteriorization in Xenopus early development

Adrenaline (also known as Epinephrine) is a hormone, which works as major regulator of various biological events such stages of vertebrate, the role of adrenaline for early embryogenesis has been as heart rate, blood vessel and air passage diameters, and metabolic shifts. Although its specific receptors are expressing at the early developmental stage those functions are poorly understood. Here, we show that loss‐of‐functional effects of adrenergic receptor β‐2 (Adrβ2), which was known as the major receptor for adrenaline and highly expressed in embryonic stages, led posterior defects at the tadpole stage of Xenopus embryos, while embryos injected with Adrβ2 mRNA or treated with adrenaline hormone adversely lost anterior structures. This posteriorization effect by adrenaline hormone was dose‐dependently increased but effectively rescued by microinjection of antisense morpholino oligomer for Adrβ2 (Adrβ2‐MO). Combination of adrenaline treatments and microinjection of Adrβ2 mRNA maximized efficiency in its posteriorizing activity. Interestingly, both gain‐ and loss‐of‐functional treatment for β‐adrenergic signaling could not influence anterior neural fate induced by overexpression of Chordin mRNA in presumptive ectodermal region, meaning that it worked via mesoderm. Taken together with these results, we conclude that adrenaline is a novel regulator of anteroposterior axis formation in vertebrates.
Transistor Probes Local Potassium Conductances in the Adhesion Region of Cultured Rat Hippocampal Neurons

Adhesion interactions of neurons in a tissue may affect the ion conductance of the plasma membrane, inducing selective localization and modulation of channels. We studied the adhesion region of cultured neurons from rat hippocampus as a defined model where such effects could be observed electrophysiologically, taking advantage of extracellular recording by a transistor integrated in the substrate. We observed the K+ current through the region of soma adhesion under voltage-clamp and compared it with the current through the whole cell. We found that the specific A-type conductance was depleted, even completely, in the region of adhesion, whereas the specific K-type conductance was enhanced up to a factor of 12. The electrophysiological approach opens a new way to investigate targeting of ion channels in the cell membrane as a function of adhesion processes.
Applying Machine Learning to Reduce Overhead in DTN Vehicular Networks

VANETs benefit from Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) routing algorithms when connectivity is intermittent because of the fast movement of vehicles. Multi-copy DTN algorithms spread message copies to increase the delivery probability but increasing network overhead. In this work we apply machine learning algorithms to reduce network overhead by discriminating the worst intermediate nodes for the transmission of copies. The scenario is a VANET of public buses that follow specific routes and schedules. This repetitive behavior creates an opportunity for applying trained classifiers to predict the occurrence of performance-related events. As the main contribution, our method decreases overhead without degrading delivery probability.
Exact Numerical Perturbation

We present our exact numerical perturbation technique for eliminating degeneracies occurring in geometric modeling processes. Consider a geometric modeler that performs a set of geometric operations (e.g. CSG-based Boolean operations). We would like to make the geometric modeler “robust” with respect to degeneracies, meaning that it will not crash. Our approach achieves many of the same results as symbolic perturbation, but requires very little algorithmic adjustment. Our perturbation technique diers significantly from the other methods (such
Capturing Early Family Factors and Later Children’s Emotional Regulation in a Latent Profile Analysis of Family Functioning

Young children develop emotional regulation within the family context, and they learn how to appropriately and effectively regulate their emotional responses, in part, through their family interaction. Researchers have emphasized that the patterns of family functioning should be examined in relationship to children’s adjustment. Person-centered approaches attempt to capture the patterns of relationship quality across family systems and the richness of the qualitative descriptions. This study specifically examined the importance of particular patterns of family functioning using a person-centered approach — latent profile analysis approach (LPA) — for children’s emerging emotional regulation in early childhood, as well as the interplay of family factors that contribute to functioning within family systems in a sample of 290 children and their parents. This study is designed to investigate: (1) the pattern of family interaction quality; (2) the pattern of family emotional climate reflected by family-related factors; (3) the association between the patterns of family emotional climate and children’s emotional regulations as outcomes; and (4) the profile changes that emerged between family interaction and family emotional climate. First, family interaction was observed at dinnertime and coded live based on 15 dimensions, reduced to three: family harmony, control, and conflict. At the onset, I identified three patterns of family interaction: (a) cohesive; (b) disengaged; and (c) hostile. The second analysis indicated four types of family emotional climate as follows: (a) harmonious; (b) controloriented; (c) preoccupied with conflict; and (d) distressed. I found that the profile groups across the steps did not appear equivalent. Concerning the children’s emotional regulation associated with the types of family emotional climate, children in harmonious families exhibited a higher level of narrative coherence than those in control-oriented families. Additionally, children in harmonious families less frequently displayed dysregulated aggression than those in control-
Radial Optic Neurotomy: A New Surgical Approach for Glaucoma Treatment?

Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness worldwide, characterised by specific visual field defects due to the degeneration of retinal ganglion cells and damage to the optic nerve head (ONH). Elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is the most important risk factor for glaucoma development. One of the clinical hallmarks of glaucomatous optic neuropathy is the excavation of the ONH, which consists of a progressive posterior displacement of the ONH surface and excavation of the pre-laminar tissues beneath the anterior-most aspect of the scleral canal, known as the anterior scleral ring. Radial optic neurotomy (RON) is a surgical technique that has been proposed for treating central retinal vein occlusion. While the original rationale of RON was the relief of increased tissue pressure within the optic nerve that results from occlusion of the central retinal vein, recent results are discussed here which suggest that by relaxing of the scleral ring of the prelaminar and laminar regions of the ONH, RON may alleviate the IOP-related connective tissue stress, and in turn, prevent the onset and reduce the progression of glaucomatous neuropathy.
Optical Flow Estimation with Confidence Measures for Super-resolution based on Recursive Robust Total Least Squares

In this paper we propose a novel optical flow estimation method accompanied by confidence measures. Our main goal is fast and highly accurate motion estimation in regions where information is available and a confidence measure which identifies these regions. Therefore we extend the structure tensor method to robust recursive total least squares (RRTLS) and run it on a GPU for real-time processing. Based on a coarse-to-fine framework we propagate not only the motion estimates to finer scales but also the covariance matrices, which may be used as confidence measures. Experiments on synthetic data show the benefits of our approach. We applied the RRTLS framework to a real-time super-resolution method for deforming objects which incorporates the confidence measures and demonstrates that propagating the covariances through the pyramid improves super-resolution results.
Properties of concentrically organized X and Y ganglion cells of macaque retina.

1. Macaque retinal ganglion cells having concentrically organized receptive fields were classified as X- or Y-cells on the basis of the linearity or nonlinearity of their spatial summation to a "null" test of alternating contrast and drifting gratings. 2. When an alternating-phase, bipartite field positioned at the middle of the receptive field was used as a stimulus, X-cells had a null position, whereas Y-cells showed a doubling of the response frequency. When drifting sine-wave gratings of low contrast were used as a stimulus, X-cells showed a periodic modulation of their discharge having the same mean value for different spatial frequencies, whereas Y-cells showed a large increase in the mean value of their discharges. 3. X-cells had opponent-color responses that received cone-specific signals, i.e., center and surround responses were mediated by input from spectrally different types of cone, whereas Y-cells had broad-band spectral responses receiving mixed-cone signals, i.e., center and surround responses were totally or partly mediated by input from the same type(s) of cone. In most Y-cells, the spatially opponent responses from the center and the surround were mediated by the same types of cone and were thus spectrally nonopponent; other Y-cells showed spectral opponency, since one of the types of cone mediating responses of one region of the receptive field (e.g., center) was absent in the responses of the other region (e.g., surround). 4. X- and Y-cells projected to the lateral geniculate body. Opponent-color X- and Y-cells did not project to the superior colliculus, whereas a fraction of spectrally non-opponent Y-cells projected to this structure. 5. X-cells tended to have longer conduction latencies, less transient responses to small stimuli, and a more central retinal distribution than Y-cells; these differences, however, represented tendencies and not invariant properties. 6. The results show that the X/Y dichotomy of ganglion cells is present in the retina of macaques and indicate that the degree of the linearity of spatial summation of incoming cone signals to the cells is related to the degree of cone specificity of spectral inputs to the receptive-field mechanisms.
Efficacy of N-Butylphthalide and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy on Cognitive Dysfunction in Patients with Delayed Encephalopathy After Acute Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Background Delayed encephalopathy after acute carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning (DEACMP) is one of the most serious complications after CO poisoning. This study was conducted to explore the efficacy of the combined application of N-Butylphthalide and hyperbaric oxygenation therapy (HBO) on cognitive dysfunction in patients with DEACMP. Material/Methods A total of 184 patients with DEACMP were randomly assigned to either receive HBO or N-Butylphthalide and HBO. Meanwhile, all patients received conventional treatment. The total remission rate (RR) was used to assess the clinical efficacy. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was used to assess the cognitive function, and the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) was used to assess the neurological function. Results Finally, there were 90 and 94 patients in the control and experimental groups, respectively. After eight weeks of treatment, the total RR in the experimental group (47.9%) was significantly higher than that in the control group (33.3%). Compared to the control group, significantly more patients in the experimental group had MMSE scores of 24–30. The lower NIHSS score in the experimental group showed that N-Butylphthalide had the effect of preservation and restoration of neurological function. No obvious drug toxicity or liver and kidney dysfunction was observed, and there was no significant change in the level of blood glucose and blood lipids. Conclusions These results indicated that the combined application of N-Butylphthalide and HBO could significantly improve the cognitive dysfunction of patients with DEACMP and have great clinical efficacy, which should be further studied.
An Investigation Into The Use Of E-Learning Resources Within An Environmental Context For Schools

The premise of this study was to take a game-based learning and investigate whether pupil engagement was enhanced through an environmental context and a competitive environment. Despite game-based learning being an active research area, there appears to be a relatively slow uptake by teachers (Axe & Routledge, 2011) which perhaps gives light to a certain pragmatism amongst teachers to adopt games in education. However, credibility is given to this body of research by a number of prominent authors (Becta, 2001; Kirriemuir & McFarlane, 2003; Shaffer, Squire, Halverson & Gee, 2004). Research has shown the most effective way of integrating game-based learning is to firstly identify the pedagogy for the learning tool and then wrap this with gamified elements (Gee 2003; Gee 2004). What this study aimed to do was provide a system where pupils could learn about environmental topics through a series of educational activities during a prescribed set of trials in school but also have the opportunity to use the system as much or as little as they liked outside of school hours. In addition, this study introduced a contextualised scenario which challenged participants to make decisions based on both moral and competitive judgement in order to determine whether there was an underlying pattern of competitive behaviour or whether users were motivated by more than just winning, a suggestion made by Deen & Schouten 2011). As a concept, gaming strategies are ways that participants utilise an educational tool to win or succeed at the game-based element without explicitly fulfilling the pedagogical purpose. Literature suggests mixed results with previous studies as to the demographic profiles of participants who employ gaming strategies and also their motivations behind those strategies (Baker et al, 2004; Baker et al, 2005). This study aimed to identify basic demographic information for participants who used gaming strategies throughout the usage of this contextual e-learning system as well as the ways in which various strategies were used. One of the fundamental parts of this study was a feature designed to test whether participants were more likely to exhibit selfish or morally responsible behaviour when posed with a number of environmental disaster scenarios. The questions took the form of Environmental Decision Points and provided users with an environmental disaster scenario and three options carrying different points values. The decision participants had to make was whether they chose the more selfish option (and progressed further up their class league table) or whether they took the socially responsible option (where they could perhaps feel better inside but had nothing tangible to show). Overall, this study was designed to further learning in the areas of game-based learning, contextualised learning and gaming strategies within a cohort of Primary and Secondary school pupils.
Rab17 mediates intermixing of phagocytosed apoptotic cells with recycling endosomes

ABSTRACT Efferocytosis—the phagocytic removal of apoptotic cells—is required for preventing the presentation of apoptotic cell-derived antigens. This process is regulated by Rab17-dependent sorting of efferocytosed cargos from the phagolysosome to recycling endosomes. In this study we demonstrate that Rab17 is rapidly recruited to efferosomes, followed by migration of the efferosome to the cell center where it intermixes with lysosomes and undergoes Rab17-dependent vesiculation. These efferosome-derived vesicles then traffic in a Rab17-dependent manner to the cell periphery, where they transfer cargo to recycling endosomes. Combined, our observations support a model wherein efferosomes migrate to the cell center to acquire degradative enzymes, followed by peripheral migration to prevent further phagolysosome maturation and to enable cargo transfer to recycling endosomes.
The Neurobiology of Reference-Dependent Value Computation

A key focus of current research in neuroeconomics concerns how the human brain computes value. Although, value has generally been viewed as an absolute measure (e.g., expected value, reward magnitude), much evidence suggests that value is more often computed with respect to a changing reference point, rather than in isolation. Here, we present the results of a study aimed to dissociate brain regions involved in reference-independent (i.e., “absolute”) value computations, from those involved in value computations relative to a reference point. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, subjects acted as buyers and sellers during a market exchange of lottery tickets. At a behavioral level, we demonstrate that subjects systematically accorded a higher value to objects they owned relative to those they did not, an effect that results from a shift in reference point (i.e., status quo bias or endowment effect). Our results show that activity in orbitofrontal cortex and dorsal striatum track parameters such as the expected value of lottery tickets indicating the computation of reference-independent value. In contrast, activity in ventral striatum indexed the degree to which stated prices, at a within-subjects and between-subjects level, were distorted with respect to a reference point. The findings speak to the neurobiological underpinnings of reference dependency during real market value computations.
Understanding Features and Distance Functions for Music Sequence Alignment

We investigate the problem of matching symbolic representations directly to audio based representations for applications that use data from both domains. One such application is score alignment, which aligns a sequence of frames based on features such as chroma vectors and distance functions such as Euclidean distance. Good representations are critical, yet current systems use ad hoc constructions such as the chromagram that have been shown to work quite well. We investigate ways to learn chromagram-like representations that optimize the classification of “matching” vs. “non-matching” frame pairs of audio and MIDI. New representations learned automatically from examples not only perform better than the chromagram representation but they also reveal interesting projection structures that differ distinctly from the traditional chromagram.