Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arousal-Mediated Memory Consolidation: Role of the Medial Temporal Lobe in Humans

Although the influence of emotional arousal on declarative memory has been documented behaviorally, the mechanisms underlying arousal-memory interactions and their representation in the human brain remain uncertain. One route through which arousal achieves its effects on memory performance is by regulating consolidation processes. Animal research has revealed that the amygdala strengthens hippocampal-dependent memory consolidation in a limited time window following participation in an arousing task. To examine whether this integrative function of amygdalo-hippocampal structures extends to the human brain, we tested unilateral-temporallobectomy patients on an adaptation of a classic paradigm in which levels of physiological arousal at encoding modulate retention over time. Subjects rated emotionally arousing (taboo) and neutral words on an arousal scale while their skin conductance responses (SCRs) were monitored. Recall for the words was assessed immediately and after a 1-hr delay. Both temporal-lobectomy patients and control subjects generated enhanced SCRs and arousal ratings for the arousing words at the time of encoding. However, only control subjects exhibited an increase in memory for the arousing words over time. This group difference in the effect of arousal on the rate of forgetting suggests that the role of medial temporal lobe structures in memory consolidation for arousing events is conserved across species.
Methionine Sulfoxide Reductases Are Essential for Virulence of Salmonella Typhimurium

Production of reactive oxygen species represents a fundamental innate defense against microbes in a diversity of host organisms. Oxidative stress, amongst others, converts peptidyl and free methionine to a mixture of methionine-S- (Met-S-SO) and methionine-R-sulfoxides (Met-R-SO). To cope with such oxidative damage, methionine sulfoxide reductases MsrA and MsrB are known to reduce MetSOs, the former being specific for the S-form and the latter being specific for the R-form. However, at present the role of methionine sulfoxide reductases in the pathogenesis of intracellular bacterial pathogens has not been fully detailed. Here we show that deletion of msrA in the facultative intracellular pathogen Salmonella (S.) enterica serovar Typhimurium increased susceptibility to exogenous H2O2, and reduced bacterial replication inside activated macrophages, and in mice. In contrast, a ΔmsrB mutant showed the wild type phenotype. Recombinant MsrA was active against free and peptidyl Met-S-SO, whereas recombinant MsrB was only weakly active and specific for peptidyl Met-R-SO. This raised the question of whether an additional Met-R-SO reductase could play a role in the oxidative stress response of S. Typhimurium. MsrC is a methionine sulfoxide reductase previously shown to be specific for free Met-R-SO in Escherichia (E.) coli. We tested a ΔmsrC single mutant and a ΔmsrBΔmsrC double mutant under various stress conditions, and found that MsrC is essential for survival of S. Typhimurium following exposure to H2O2, as well as for growth in macrophages, and in mice. Hence, this study demonstrates that all three methionine sulfoxide reductases, MsrA, MsrB and MsrC, facilitate growth of a canonical intracellular pathogen during infection. Interestingly MsrC is specific for the repair of free methionine sulfoxide, pointing to an important role of this pathway in the oxidative stress response of Salmonella Typhimurium.
Convergence Theorem of a New Iterative Method for Mixed Equilibrium Problems and Variational Inclusions: Approach to Variational Inequalities

The purpose of this work, we present a new iterative algorithm for finding a common of the set of solutions of a mixed equilibrium problem, the set of a variational inclusion and the set of fixed point of nonexpansive mapping in a real Hilbert space. Under suitable conditions, some strong convergence theorems for approximating a common element of the above three sets are obtained. The results presented in the paper improve some recent results of Y. C. Liou, [An Iterative Algorithm for Mixed Equilibrium Problems and Variational Inclusions Approach to Variational Inequalities, Fixed Point Theory and Applications, Volume 2010, Article ID 564361, 15 pages. doi:10.1155/2010/564361].
Reconsidering our Graduation Efforts: The Economic Impact of Certificates, Associate’s, and Bachelor’s Degrees

ABSTRACT United States’ education policy efforts have focused on increasing college graduation rates, with an emphasis on bachelor’s degrees, with the expectation of greater economic prosperity. Most community college and university degrees differ in time to completion and should not be viewed as having the same short-term, medium-term, and long-term impact on US economic growth. Utilizing the Uzawa–Lucas endogenous growth theory through an econometric model, our research analyzes the impact of total higher education degrees; community college and university graduates; and certificate, associate, and bachelor’s degrees on US economic growth. Our findings demonstrate the significant impact of community colleges and community college degrees in the short and medium term on US economic growth compared to university and bachelor’s degrees. We conclude with an analysis of the findings and suggestions for future research.
Paper 4

Software peer review is practiced on a diverse set of software projects that have drastically different settings, cultures, incentive systems, and time pressures. In an effort to characterize and understand these differences we examine two Google-led projects, Android and Chromium OS, three Mi-crosoft projects, Bing, Office, and MS SQL, and projects internal to AMD. We contrast our findings with data taken from traditional software inspection conducted on a Lucent project and from open source software peer review on six projects, including Apache, Linux, and KDE. Our measures of interest include the review interval, the number of developers involved in review, and proxy measures for the number of defects found during review. We find that despite differences among projects, many of the characteristics of the review process have independently converged to similar values which we think indicate general principles of code review practice. We also introduce a measure of the degree to which knowledge is shared during review. This is an aspect of review practice that has traditionally only had experiential support. Our knowledge sharing measure shows that conducting peer review increases the number of distinct files a developer knows about by 66% to 150% depending on the project. This paper is one of the first studies of contemporary review in software firms and the most diverse study of peer review to date. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
A calbindin‐immunoreactive cone bipolar cell type in the rabbit retina

We have studied the distribution of the calcium‐binding protein calbindin in the adult rabbit retina by using a commercially available antibody and immunocytochemical methods. The most heavily labeled cells are A‐type horizontal cells, but B‐type horizontal cells are also lightly labeled by this antibody. Among the horizontal cells, there is a mosaic of small, well‐labeled somata, which we have identified as a subset of ON cone bipolar cells. In addition, some wide‐field amacrine cells and a few large ganglion cells are also labeled for calbindin. The calbindin bipolar cells form a regular mosaic with a peak density of approximately 1,700 cells/mm2, falling to 550 cells/mm2 in the periphery. They account for about one‐twelfth of cone bipolar cells, and they are narrowly stratified deep in sublamina 4 of the inner plexiform layer immediately above the rod bipolar terminals. Double‐label experiments using an antibody to protein kinase C (PKC) indicate that the calbindin bipolar cells are completely distinct from the population of rod bipolar cells. Rod bipolar cells outnumber the calbindin cone bipolar cells by a factor of four to five. Further double‐label experiments show that the calbindin bipolar cells are also labeled for recovering. The calbindin bipolar cells are well coupled to AII amacrine cells, and they account for roughly 23% of the AII coupled bipolar cells. This suggests that there are three to four additional ON cone bipolar cell types that are coupled to AII amacrine cells. The calbindin cone bipolar cell described in this paper shares many characteristics with a reconstructed cone bipolar cell that forms the most gap junctions with AII amacrine cells (Strettoi et al. [1994] J. Comp. Neurol. 347:139–149). We conclude that these different methodologies provide complementary descriptions of the same cone bipolar cell type. The calbindin antibody defines a subset of cone bipolar cells in the rabbit retina. The cells in this subset are almost certainly the deepest of the cone bipolar cells. The tight stratification of the calbindin cone bipolar cell suggests that the inner plexiform layer is stratified according to depth, with narrow functional divisions within the broad partition of sublamina b, where ON signals are processed. The strength of coupling between the calbindin cone bipolar cells and AII amacrine cells suggests this pathway plays a major role under scotopic conditions. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Pursuing the Giant in Random Graph Processes

We study the evolution of random graph processes that are based on the paradigm of the power of multiple choices. The processes we consider begin with an empty graph on n vertices. In each subsequent step a set with a specific number ` ≥ 2 of random vertices is presented, and we may select any edge among them to be included in the graph. For example, if ` = 2 this corresponds to the classical Erdős-Rényi (ER) process. A striking characteristic of the ER process is the phase transition with respect to the distribution of its component sizes. This distribution undergoes a drastic change when the number of edges is around n/2; at this point the so-called giant component emerges, which contains a linear fraction of the vertices. In this paper we address the component-size distribution of a general family rules. We determine the typical size of the giant component shortly after the phase transition in all these processes and provide bounds for the size distribution of small components. In particular, it has been conjectured by various authors that these processes have many similarities with the ER process, for example that the giant component grows with a constant “rate”. Our results confirm this conjecture. On the technical side, we develop a novel method for the analysis of the component size distribution based on partial differential equations (PDEs). We develop a novel analytic framework that allows us to study the solutions of a fairly general class of quasi-linear PDEs, the so-called family of Smoluchowski’s coagulation equations, that have several far-reaching applications in the study of large systems consisting of interacting particles. Finally, our family of rules allows us to “approximate” formally any general size rule by a sequence of appropriately defined bounded size rules, where the given size-bound increases gradually. Thus, our results open an avenue for the future research on general random graph processes.
Expression of the RNA Helicase DDX3 and the Hypoxia Response in Breast Cancer

Aims DDX3 is an RNA helicase that has antiapoptotic properties, and promotes proliferation and transformation. In addition, DDX3 was shown to be a direct downstream target of HIF-1α (the master regulatory of the hypoxia response) in breast cancer cell lines. However, the relation between DDX3 and hypoxia has not been addressed in human tumors. In this paper, we studied the relation between DDX3 and the hypoxic responsive proteins in human breast cancer. Methods and Results DDX3 expression was investigated by immunohistochemistry in breast cancer in comparison with hypoxia related proteins HIF-1α, GLUT1, CAIX, EGFR, HER2, Akt1, FOXO4, p53, ERα, COMMD1, FER kinase, PIN1, E-cadherin, p21, p27, Transferrin receptor, FOXO3A, c-Met and Notch1. DDX3 was overexpressed in 127 of 366 breast cancer patients, and was correlated with overexpression of HIF-1α and its downstream genes CAIX and GLUT1. Moreover, DDX3 expression correlated with hypoxia-related proteins EGFR, HER2, FOXO4, ERα and c-Met in a HIF-1α dependent fashion, and with COMMD1, FER kinase, Akt1, E-cadherin, TfR and FOXO3A independent of HIF-1α. Conclusions In invasive breast cancer, expression of DDX3 was correlated with overexpression of HIF-1α and many other hypoxia related proteins, pointing to a distinct role for DDX3 under hypoxic conditions and supporting the oncogenic role of DDX3 which could have clinical implication for current development of DDX3 inhibitors.
Semantic Textual Similarity

Through this project, we will explore Semantic Textual Similarity a shared task in Sem Eval 2012. The problem involves comparing a pair of sentences for semantic equivalence, reporting the equivalence on a scale of 0 5 with 0 meaning no equivalence and 5 meaning semantically equivalent. This task is more challenging than determining if the two sentences are paraphrases (a simple yes/no answer), and thus is likely to have much wider applications for a host of NLP tasks like Machine Translation, Question-Answering and Information Retrieval. We build upon the winning 2012 Sem Eval entries, and in addition use a tree-kernel based Support Vector Regression that compares the top-k syntactic parses of the the two sentences as an added similarity measure. Our results seem promising, beating the 2012 winning entry overall, and even more importantly doing significantly better on the surprise test data. We also discuss future extensions that are likely to strengthen our approach.
Regional Trade Agreements and the Pattern of Trade: A Networks Approach

type="main" xml:id="twec12121-abs-0001"> This paper uses a complex network approach for the analysis trade effects from regional trade agreements on world trade flows. We use bilateral trade data to compute the network community structure for every year between 1970 and 2000. We compare this to null community structures that emerge from various models based on regional and geographical classifications, the implementation of RTA's and gravity models of trade. Our results show that RTA formation appears to have a cyclical pattern on the world trade network community structure. We document periods where bilateral trade flows and the structure of the world trade network are consistent with those predicted by formation of RTAs. These cycles occur in 1980–86 and 1990–96. At the same time, we document periods in which the pattern in the world trade network is not explained by RTA formation. Two periods, 1986–90 and 1997–2000, show a pattern of bilateral trade flows that moves away from the prediction that results from assuming RTA formation as the driving force in the determination of the world trade network structure. Factors contributing to the latter parts of the cycle during our sample period include formation of regional trade networks in East Asia that account for a significant portion of world trade but are not formalised by RTAs in force.
Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage and Running Economy in Humans

Running economy (RE), defined as the energy demand for a given velocity of submaximal running, has been identified as a critical factor of overall distance running performance. Plyometric and resistance trainings, performed during a relatively short period of time (~15–30 days), have been successfully used to improve RE in trained athletes. However, these exercise types, particularly when they are unaccustomed activities for the individuals, may cause delayed onset muscle soreness, swelling, and reduced muscle strength. Some studies have demonstrated that exercise-induced muscle damage has a negative impact on endurance running performance. Specifically, the muscular damage induced by an acute bout of downhill running has been shown to reduce RE during subsequent moderate and high-intensity exercise (>65% VO2max). However, strength exercise (i.e., jumps, isoinertial and isokinetic eccentric exercises) seems to impair RE only for subsequent high-intensity exercise (~90% VO2max). Finally, a single session of resistance exercise or downhill running (i.e., repeated bout effect) attenuates changes in indirect markers of muscle damage and blunts changes in RE.
GENDER ENCODING OF TYPOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS IN LITHUANIAN AND CROATIAN IRC

Much sociolinguistic research discusses differences between male and female language. In this paper we consider the language of Internet Relay Chat (IRC), studying if and how non-standard typography depends on the gender of the writer. We distinguish two kinds of non-standard typography that are typical of IRC users: technology-conditioned and voluntary. Our results show that use of non-standard writing variants depends on writer gender in both cases. Comparable results are found for Lithuanian and Croatian chat.
Attentional bias in excessive Internet gamers: Experimental investigations using an addiction Stroop and a visual probe

Background and aims Internet Gaming Disorder is included in the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th edition) as a disorder that merits further research. The diagnostic criteria are based on those for Substance Use Disorder and Gambling Disorder. Excessive gamblers and persons with Substance Use Disorder show attentional biases towards stimuli related to their addictions. We investigated whether excessive Internet gamers show a similar attentional bias, by using two established experimental paradigms. Methods We measured reaction times of excessive Internet gamers and non-gamers (N = 51, 23.7 ± 2.7 years) by using an addiction Stroop with computer-related and neutral words, as well as a visual probe with computer-related and neutral pictures. Mixed design analyses of variance with the between-subjects factor group (gamer/non-gamer) and the within-subjects factor stimulus type (computer-related/neutral) were calculated for the reaction times as well as for valence and familiarity ratings of the stimulus material. Results In the addiction Stroop, an interaction for group × word type was found: Only gamers showed longer reaction times to computer-related words compared to neutral words, thus exhibiting an attentional bias. In the visual probe, no differences in reaction time between computer-related and neutral pictures were found in either group, but the gamers were faster overall. Conclusions An attentional bias towards computer-related stimuli was found in excessive Internet gamers, by using an addiction Stroop but not by using a visual probe. A possible explanation for the discrepancy could lie in the fact that the visual probe may have been too easy for the gamers.
Environmental Orientations and News Coverage: Examining the Impact of Individual Differences and Narrative News

This study examined the impact of narrative environmental news on issue and message attitudes, and the extent to which such attitudes might be moderated by individuals’ environmental orientations. We conducted an experiment in which we asked participants to read either a narrative or informational newspaper article on the environmental consequences of shale gas drilling. Individuals’ environmental orientations were measured a week before the experiment. Results indicated significant interaction effects between news formats and individuals’ environmental orientations on transportation, positive cognitive responses, sympathy, and issue attitudes. Those who were more concerned about the environment were more affected by narrative news than those less concerned. These findings suggest that news narratives have stronger effects when they resonate with individuals’ predispositions.
‘What does terrorism look like?’: university lecturers’ interpretations of their Prevent duties and tackling extremism in UK universities

ABSTRACT The UK Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) (CTSA) calls for a partnership between the government, individuals, organisations and communities to prevent the radicalisation of individuals and to prevent their participation in terrorist and illegal activities. As part of this strategy, universities have a statutory duty placed upon them to remain vigilant to signs of extremism. Based upon 20 interviews with UK university lecturers, the paper examines reactions of the academic community to this governmental mandate. Key to our understanding is the deputisation of lecturers into a security regime and how they perform the duty of identifying and monitoring extremism. Equally, forms of resistance are evident in how lecturers understand their new roles and for universities themselves a conservative approach to risk may be gaining traction. We argue there is confusion around the CTSA based upon the ambiguous language in which it is presented and the conservative and defensive reactions that have subsequently produced concern amongst lecturers and UK universities.
Geometric transform motion compensation for low bit rate video coding

In this paper it is shown that the combination of spatial transformation and image segmentation can be used to compensate non-uniform intensity changes in moving scenes. This method e ciently tracks movements such that, for low bit rate video coding, the motion vectors alone can be used to represent a complex motion of moving objects. The compression e ciency of the presented method is far superior to that of the conventional block matching motion estimation, and the computational complexity is still a ordable due to the use of fast transformation and interpolation algorithms.
Data-driven method for providing feedback to households on electricity consumption

The building sector is a major energy consumer and CO2 emitter, being responsible for approximately 40% of the total consumption in the EU. Active demand side participation of electricity customers is seen as crucial in the management and reduction of the building sector's CO2 emissions. However, today's electricity markets are often lacking strong incentives for active demand side participation. Understandable customer specific comparison information and easy-to-use energy displays can be used to influence customer behaviour and encourage customer participation. This paper presents a data-driven method for producing household level comparison information, based on hourly interval smart meter data and additional household information. Firstly, the customers are segmented by the heating system and the type of housing, followed by weighted clustering that is used to refine the comparison group. In the weighted clustering, normalized load profiles together with properties of the dwelling and the residents are considered, and weights are assigned to the properties according to how much they contribute to the electricity consumption. In this paper, the initial experimental results are presented and discussed, and future development ideas are laid out. The method is under development and testing as a part of the Finnish SGEM-project.