Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reinnervation of the rat olfactory bulb after methyl bromide‐induced lesion: Timing and extent of reinnervation

We used the inhalation of methyl bromide gas to produce a near‐complete destruction of the rat olfactory epithelium and analyzed the reinnervation of the bulb during reconstitution of the epithelium. The degeneration of olfactory axons elicits a transient up‐regulation of glial cell proliferation and glial fibrillary acidic protein expression in the olfactory nerve and olfactory nerve layer of the bulb. Anterograde transport after intranasal infusion of wheat germ agglutinin conjugated horseradish peroxidase demonstrates that the first nascent axons reach the bulb within the first week after lesion. Subsequently, a massive wave of fibers arrives at the bulb between 1 and 2 weeks postlesion, and enters the glomeruli between 2 and 3 weeks postlesion. However, the olfactory projection does not stabilize until 8 weeks after lesion judging from the return in growth associated protein‐43 expression to control levels. The extent of reinnervation after lesion is correlated with the completeness with which the epithelium reconstitutes itself. In rats that are lesioned while fed ad libitum, there is near‐complete reconstitution of the neuronal population, and the projection onto the bulb fills the glomerular layer in its entirety. However, in rats that are lesioned while food restricted, a significant fraction of olfactory epithelium becomes respiratory during its reconstitution, and the population of reinnervating fibers is less. As a consequence, the posterior half of the bulb remains hypoinnervated overall and denervated at its caudal margin. The preferential reinnervation of the anterior bulb in the food‐restricted, methyl bromide gas–lesioned animals indicates that the mechanisms that guide the growth of the olfactory axons and restore receptotopy do not operate with the same precision in this setting as they do during development or during the lower level of turnover associated with the “normal” laboratory existence. Accordingly, we hypothesize that the persistence of a significant population of pre‐existing neurons is needed to preserve receptotopy during reinnervation. In addition, the results suggest that in the face of massive turnover and a reduced afferent population, there is a tendency for reinnervating axons to fill available synaptic space. J. Comp. Neurol. 412:439–457, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Promotion without Commitment: Signaling, Time Inconsistency and Decentralization of the Firm

This paper explores the consequences and implications of the "dual role of promotion" in an environment where a firm must simultaneously achieve two distinct goals -- assignment and incentive provision -- via the strategic use of promotions. We argue that the efficient promotion rule is generally not implementable, as it necessarily entails time-inconsistent objectives: the firm is always tempted ex post to promote the worker with the highest upside potential rather than the one with the highest output. This ex post bias towards the assignment role of promotion leads to inefficient task choices where too many workers are induced to work on the difficult task to signal their productivities. The framework identifies the costs and benefits of decentralization, in relation to factors such as the levels of human and social capital, the degree of market competition, firm size, and distance to the technology frontier, and provides predictions that are in line with recent empirical evidence.
Cognitions and emotions as predictors of recovery in conditions involving physical disability

Patients with conditions involving physical disability vary considerably in the course of their recovery. Initial severity as judged by clinical examination is the usual baseline for predicting eventual outcome but considerable variability has been observed in the process of recovery in patients with conditions of similar initial severity. Recognizing the many potential influences on the process of recovery, medical, personal, environmental and social, this study investigated psychological factors as predictors of different aspects of recovery. The hypotheses tested were that cognitions, such as the patients' perceptions of their condition and its implications for them, their perceptions about their control over their own recovery, the attributions made about their condition and events in their recovery, the ways in which they coped with the problems imposed by their condition and their emotional responses, would be more reliable predictors of different aspects of recovery from physical disability than initial clinical severity. Physical disability was conceptualized at two levels, as restriction in the performance of movements and restriction in the performance of functions and activities. The investigation was undertaken in four stages. Early exploratory work of the first two stages studied over 100 patients with physical disability during the process of their recovery, by observation, semi-structured interviews and videorecording. In the third stage methods of measurement of clinical indices of the selected conditions were developed and tested with the study population. Psychometric methods were also tested and where necessary developed. In the fourth stage hypotheses about the relationships between clinical indices and psychological factors were tested with 40 subjects with physical disability, 20 with stroke, 20 with a wrist fracture. There was considerable support for the overall hypothesis that psychological factors would be reliable predictors of different aspects of recovery. Initial clinical severity was a poor predictor of outcome in terms of performance of movements and functions, and individual perceptions of severity of condition showed little relationship to objective measurements of severity. Perceptions of personal control over recovery were associated with more effective recovery in terms of performance, and general level of raised emotional response with some less effective levels of performance. These results need to be re-examined using larger groups of subjects, and including those with other conditions involving physical disability to find if results can be generalized. The results provide information about factors influencing the process of recovery from conditions involving physical disability.
Telerobotic Haptic Exploration in Art Galleries and Museums for Individuals with Visual Impairments

This paper presents a haptic telepresence system that enables visually impaired users to explore locations with rich visual observation such as art galleries and museums by using a telepresence robot, a RGB-D sensor (color and depth camera), and a haptic interface. The recent improvement on RGB-D sensors has enabled real-time access to 3D spatial information in the form of point clouds. However, the real-time representation of this data in the form of tangible haptic experience has not been challenged enough, especially in the case of telepresence for individuals with visual impairments. Thus, the proposed system addresses the real-time haptic exploration of remote 3D information through video encoding and real-time 3D haptic rendering of the remote real-world environment. This paper investigates two scenarios in haptic telepresence, i.e., mobile navigation and object exploration in a remote environment. Participants with and without visual impairments participated in our experiments based on the two scenarios, and the system performance was validated. In conclusion, the proposed framework provides a new methodology of haptic telepresence for individuals with visual impairments by providing an enhanced interactive experience where they can remotely access public places (art galleries and museums) with the aid of haptic modality and robotic telepresence.
Vitamin D supplementation for diffuse musculoskeletal pain: Results of a before-and-after study

Abstract Background: Several studies have shown that vitamin D supplementation could be useful for treating diffuse musculoskeletal (DMS) pain in adults. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of correcting a vitamin D deficiency (≤ 50 nmol/l) on DMS pain and quality of life in adults. Methods: A pragmatic prospective study was conducted in a general practice setting in the Rhone-Alps area between 1 February and 30 April 2009. Patients between the ages of 18 and 50 years old who consulted their general practitioner (GP) for DMS pain or chronic unexplained asthenia and had a deficient serum 25 (OH) D level with no signs of any other disease were enrolled in this study. The patients received high doses of vitamin D supplements (400 000 to 600 000 units). Mean pain evaluation scores were evaluated before and after vitamin D supplementation using mixed models and accounting for repeated measures. Results: Before vitamin D supplementation, the adult study cohort (n = 49) had an adjusted mean serum 25 (OH) D level of 23.7 nmol/l, a mean pain evaluation score of 5.07 and a mean quality of life score of 3.55. After vitamin D supplementation, the adjusted mean serum 25 (OH) D level increased to 118.8 nmol/l (P < 0.001), the mean quality of life score increased to 2.8 nmol/l (P < 0.001) and the mean pain evaluation score decreased to 2.8 (P < 0.001). Conclusion: In this small before-and-after study, vitamin D supplementation decreased pain scores in adult patients with diffuse musculoskeletal pain and vitamin D deficiency. These results must be confirmed by further studies.
Multiple Time Scales of Adaptation in Auditory Cortex Neurons

Neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1) of cats show strong stimulus-specific adaptation (SSA). In probabilistic settings, in which one stimulus is common and another is rare, responses to common sounds adapt more strongly than responses to rare sounds. This SSA could be a correlate of auditory sensory memory at the level of single A1 neurons. Here we studied adaptation in A1 neurons, using three different probabilistic designs. We showed that SSA has several time scales concurrently, spanning many orders of magnitude, from hundreds of milliseconds to tens of seconds. Similar time scales are known for the auditory memory span of humans, as measured both psychophysically and using evoked potentials. A simple model, with linear dependence on both short-term and long-term stimulus history, provided a good fit to A1 responses. Auditory thalamus neurons did not show SSA, and their responses were poorly fitted by the same model. In addition, SSA increased the proportion of failures in the responses of A1 neurons to the adapting stimulus. Finally, SSA caused a bias in the neuronal responses to unbiased stimuli, enhancing the responses to eccentric stimuli. Therefore, we propose that a major function of SSA in A1 neurons is to encode auditory sensory memory on multiple time scales. This SSA might play a role in stream segregation and in binding of auditory objects over many time scales, a property that is crucial for processing of natural auditory scenes in cats and of speech and music in humans.
Delayed Auditory Feedback

When S hears his own voice with a small time delay his speech may be seriously affected. The effects produced by delayed auditory feedback (DAF) include prolongation of vowels, repetition of consonants, increased intensity of utterance, and other articulatory changes. The significance of individual differences in susceptibility to DAF is considered in relation to personality and physiological characteristics. The technique may prove useful in the detection of auditory malingering and has possible implications for the understanding of stammering. The discussion relates the findings to models of speech control. Methodo-logical problems and future research needs are outlined.
A physical frequency-dependent compact model for RF integrated inductors

A frequency-dependent compact model for inductors in high ohmic substrates, which is based on an energy point-of-view, is developed. This approach enables the description of the most important coupling phenomena that take place inside the device. Magnetically induced losses are quite accurately calculated and coupling between electric and magnetic fields is given by means of a delay constant. The later coupling phenomenon provides a modified procedure for the computation of the fringing capacitance value, when the self-resonance frequency of the inductor is used as a fitting parameter. The model takes into account the width of every metal strip and the pitch between strips. This enables the description of optimized layout inductors. Data from experiments and electromagnetic simulators are presented to test the accuracy of the model.
QoS Prediction of Web Services Based on Two-Phase K-Means Clustering

QoS prediction for Web services is a hot research problem in the field of services computing. As one of the most important methods for QoS prediction, Collaborative Filtering (CF) makes prediction based on the historical QoS data contributed by similar users and services. The key issue in this process is to detect the unreliable data offered by untrustworthy users, which has attracted limited attentions so far. The utilization of unreliable data decreases the prediction accuracy greatly. In this paper, we propose a novel credibility-aware QoS prediction method (named CAP) to address this problem. Our method first employs two-phase K-means clustering to identify the untrustworthy users, which clusters QoS values for untrustworthy index calculation in the first phase and clusters users according to their index in the second phase, and then predicts the missing QoS value based on the credible clustering information. The evaluation results demonstrate that CAP provides considerable improvement on the prediction accuracy compared with other approaches and is robust against various percentages of untrustworthy users.
"Who is who": the roles in an intelligent system for foreign language terminology learning

ITELS is an intelligent system for foreign language terminology learning. It is aimed not only at assisting language learning focused on specific terminology but also at enhancing learner's conceptual knowledge in the subject area. The system could be tuned to aid learning in different terminological areas and supports three styles of tutoring: system-initiated, collaborative, and learner-initiated. Three agents take part in the instructional process supported by ITELS: the human teacher, the system, and the learner. Each of them is an active agent characterised by a set of specific roles with respect to the system functioning. In this paper we describe ITELS with emphasis on the roles of these agents.
Peer Conversations about Inter-racial and Inter-ethnic Friendships

i Dedication ii Chapter 1: Introduction page 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review page 5 Chapter 3: Methods page 30 Chapter 4: Findings page 44 Chapter 5: Discussion page 81 References page 89 Appendix A: Discussion Questions page 99 Appendix B: Friends Sheet page 100 Appendix C: Introductory Script page 101 Appendix D: Informed Consent Form page 102 Appendix E: Table of Transcription Symbols page 103
Gamma knife thalamotomy for movement disorders: evaluation of the thalamic lesion and clinical results.

OBJECT The authors studied the effects of gamma knife thalamotomy (GKT) on Parkinson disease-related tremor and essential tremor before and after reloading of radioactive cobalt. METHODS Based on experience in stereotactic thalamotomy aided by depth microrecording, the target was located at the lateral border of the thalamic ventralis intermedius nucleus (VIM). For more precise targeting, the percentage representation of the thalamic VIM in relation to the entire thalamic length is useful. The location of the target was determined on magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and computerized tomography scanning. A maximum dose of 130 Gy was delivered to the target by using a single isocenter with the 4-mm collimator. In more recent cases, a systematic follow-up examination was performed at 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after GKT. Since 1993, the authors have treated 70 patients with PD. Throughout the series the same dosimetric technique has been used. The course after GKT was compared between the 25 cases with PD treated before reloading and the 35 cases treated after reloading. In the majority (80-85%) treated after reloading, tremor and rigidity were reduced around 6 months after GKT. In the cases treated before reloading this effect took approximately 1 year. The thalamic reaction on MR imaging showed the same two lesion types in both series: a restricted and a diffuse. After reloading the restricted lesion was more frequent and the lesion volume was smaller. CONCLUSIONS The shorter delay in clinical improvement and smaller lesion size may be related to an increased radiation dose.
Empirical Study of Multi-scale Filter Banks for Object Categorization

The aim of this work is the evaluation of different multi-scale filter banks, mainly based on oriented Gaussian derivatives and Gabor functions, to be used in the generation of robust features for visual object categorization. In order to combine the responses obtained from several spatial scales, we use the biologically inspired HMAX model (Riesenhuber and Poggio, 1999). We have tested the different sets of features on the challenging Caltech-101 database, and we have performed the categorizarion procedure with AdaBoost, support vector machines and JointBoosting classifiers, achieving remarkable results
Synthetically trained multi-view object class and viewpoint detection for advanced image retrieval

This paper proposes a novel approach to multi-view object class and viewpoint detection for the retrieval of images showing one or several objects from a given viewpoint, a viewpoint range or any viewpoint in image databases. All detectors are trained exclusively on a few synthetic 3D models without any manual bounding-box, viewpoint or part annotation, making object class and viewpoint detection a scalable learning task. Previous work on this topic relies on the detection of object parts for each individual viewpoint, ignoring the responses of part detectors specific to other viewpoints. Instead, we explicitly exploit appearance ambiguities caused by spurious detections of parts under more than one viewpoint by combining all detector responses in a joint spatial pyramid encoding. We achieve state-of-the-art results in multi-view object class detection and viewpoint determination on current benchmarking data sets and demonstrate increased robustness to partial occlusion.
Simulation Study of an Energy-Efficient Time Synchronization Scheme based on Source Clock Frequency Recovery in Asymmetric Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we report preliminary results of a simulation study on an energy-efficient time synchronization scheme based on source clock frequency recovery (SCFR) at sensor nodes in asymmetric wireless sensor networks (WSNs), where a head node --- serving as a gateway between wired and wireless networks --- is equipped with a powerful processor and supplied power from outlet, and sensor nodes --- connected only through wireless channels --- are limited in processing and battery-powered. In the SCFR-based WSN time synchronization scheme, we concentrate on battery-powered sensor nodes and reduce their energy consumption by minimizing the number of message transmissions from sensor nodes to the head node. Through simulation experiments we analyze the performance of the SCFR-based WSN time synchronization scheme, including the impact of SCFR on time synchronization based on two-way message exchange, and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed time synchronization scheme.
Testosterone, Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin and the Metabolic Syndrome in Men: An Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

Background Low total testosterone (TT) and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) concentrations have been associated with the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in men, but the reported strength of association varies considerably. Objectives We aimed to investigate whether associations differ across specific subgroups (according to age and body mass index (BMI)) and individual MetS components. Data sources Two previously published meta-analyses including an updated systematic search in PubMed and EMBASE. Study Eligibility Criteria Cross-sectional or prospective observational studies with data on TT and/or SHBG concentrations in combination with MetS in men. Methods We conducted an individual participant data meta-analysis of 20 observational studies. Mixed effects models were used to assess cross-sectional and prospective associations of TT, SHBG and free testosterone (FT) with MetS and its individual components. Multivariable adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated and effect modification by age and BMI was studied. Results Men with low concentrations of TT, SHBG or FT were more likely to have prevalent MetS (ORs per quartile decrease were 1.69 (95% CI 1.60-1.77), 1.73 (95% CI 1.62-1.85) and 1.46 (95% CI 1.36-1.57) for TT, SHBG and FT, respectively) and incident MetS (HRs per quartile decrease were 1.25 (95% CI 1.16-1.36), 1.44 (95% 1.30-1.60) and 1.14 (95% 1.01-1.28) for TT, SHBG and FT, respectively). Overall, the magnitude of associations was largest in non-overweight men and varied across individual components: stronger associations were observed with hypertriglyceridemia, abdominal obesity and hyperglycaemia and associations were weakest for hypertension. Conclusions Associations of testosterone and SHBG with MetS vary according to BMI and individual MetS components. These findings provide further insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms linking low testosterone and SHBG concentrations to cardiometabolic risk.