Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of social location on the experience of early dementia

This thesis investigates the intersections of social class and gender with the early dementia experience. 20 older people with a likely dementia diagnosis were recruited from memory clinic referrals. Unstructured interviews were conducted in the person’s home in the liminal space between referral and formal diagnosis and were analysed using interpretative phenomenological traditions. Drawing on Bourdieusian concepts of habitus and capital allowed a nuanced and complex understanding of meaning creation to be explored. Understandings and meanings of memory loss and dementia were conceptualised by participants in terms of biographical flow and expectations of ageing. Prior experience of dementia caring roles promoted earlier help seeking behaviour, whilst attitudes towards classifying dementia as a mental or physical illness, was a powerful instigator of uncertainty in meaning. The desire to reduce stigma prompted avoidance coping mechanisms in terms of physical withdrawal, and social and mental distancing from potentially challenging situations, and reinterpretation of cognitive limitations. These responses were simultaneously shaped and defended by a sense of a life lived and personal biography, whilst the level of challenge to biographical flow was directly related to the meaning attributed to memory loss. These findings uphold the view that dementia is not universally understood as a wholly devastating illness by those experiencing memory loss, and that services need to take account of personal biography and the level of interruption to biographical flow in assessing the meaning making related to memory loss. ‘One size’ of memory service, does not ‘fit all’.
Neck Proprioception Shapes Body Orientation and Perception of Motion

This review article deals with some effects of neck muscle proprioception on human balance, gait trajectory, subjective straight-ahead (SSA), and self-motion perception. These effects are easily observed during neck muscle vibration, a strong stimulus for the spindle primary afferent fibers. We first remind the early findings on human balance, gait trajectory, SSA, induced by limb, and neck muscle vibration. Then, more recent findings on self-motion perception of vestibular origin are described. The use of a vestibular asymmetric yaw-rotation stimulus for emphasizing the proprioceptive modulation of motion perception from the neck is mentioned. In addition, an attempt has been made to conjointly discuss the effects of unilateral neck proprioception on motion perception, SSA, and walking trajectory. Neck vibration also induces persistent aftereffects on the SSA and on self-motion perception of vestibular origin. These perceptive effects depend on intensity, duration, side of the conditioning vibratory stimulation, and on muscle status. These effects can be maintained for hours when prolonged high-frequency vibration is superimposed on muscle contraction. Overall, this brief outline emphasizes the contribution of neck muscle inflow to the construction and fine-tuning of perception of body orientation and motion. Furthermore, it indicates that tonic neck-proprioceptive input may induce persistent influences on the subject’s mental representation of space. These plastic changes might adapt motion sensitiveness to lasting or permanent head positional or motor changes.
Design, Prototyping, and Analysis of a Novel Modular Permanent-Magnet Transverse Flux Disk Generator

This paper presents the design, prototyping, and analysis of a novel modular transverse flux permanent-magnet disk generator. The disk-shaped structure simplifies the construction procedure by using laminated steel sheets. To reduce output harmonics, the excitation of the generator is done by circular flat shaped Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets. First, a typical low power generator is designed, and then partially optimized. The optimization objective is to find an inner radius which maximizes the power factor, the output power to mass ratio, and the efficiency. The generator equivalent circuit parameters are computed by three-dimensional finite-element analyses. The simulation results show that the power factor of the proposed structure is considerably greater than the power factor previously reported for other transverse flux permanent-magnet generator structures. To verify the simulation results, a prototype has been constructed and tested. The experimental results are in good agreement with simulation results.
On the Sample Complexity of End-to-end Training vs. Semantic Abstraction Training

We compare the end-to-end training approach to a modular approach in which a system is decomposed into semantically meaningful components. We focus on the sample complexity aspect, in the regime where an extremely high accuracy is necessary, as is the case in autonomous driving applications. We demonstrate cases in which the number of training examples required by the end-to-end approach is exponentially larger than the number of examples required by the semantic abstraction approach.
District Contributions to School Leaders’ Sense of Efficacy: A Qualitative Analysis

This study, based on interviews with 31 principals, was undertaken in response to quantitative evidence from a larger mixed-methods project that found school leaders’ collective efficacy to be a crucial link joining district leadership and conditions to school conditions and student learning. Results of this study suggest that districts contribute to building-level leaders’ sense of efficacy by establishing clear, widely shared purposes; awarding priority to the improvement of instruction; and ensuring that teachers and administrators have access to appropriate amounts of meaningful professional development aimed at developing the capacities needed to achieve the shared purposes.
Does training influence outcomes of organizations?: Some Australian evidence

From previous research it appears that training of employees is strongly related to profit. The Australian Government collected data on approximately 10,000 registered small and medium enterprises conducting business in four studies over a four‐year period. A panel of 3,867 firms were measured over the four years and the influence of strategic decisions made in year one (such as increase production) could be plotted on how they inclined decisions on other issues such as training. It seems that the amount of training is an important precursor for firms who wish to improve their productivity. Those firms who have desired to increase production in the following three years are also more likely to be involved in training whilst those who have decided to reduce their production levels tend to reduce their levels of training.
Zic2 promotes axonal divergence at the optic chiasm midline by EphB1-dependent and -independent mechanisms

Axons of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) make a divergent choice at the optic chiasm to cross or avoid the midline in order to project to ipsilateral and contralateral targets, thereby establishing the binocular visual pathway. The zinc-finger transcription factor Zic2 and a member of the Eph family of receptor tyrosine kinases, EphB1, are both essential for proper development of the ipsilateral projection at the mammalian optic chiasm midline. Here, we demonstrate in mouse by functional experiments in vivo that Zic2 is not only required but is also sufficient to change the trajectory of RGC axons from crossed to uncrossed. In addition, our results reveal that this transcription factor regulates the expression of EphB1 in RGCs and also suggest the existence of an additional EphB1-independent pathway controlled by Zic2 that contributes to retinal axon divergence at the midline.
Autonomous learning of smooth pursuit and vergence through active efficient coding

We present a model for the autonomous and simultaneous learning of smooth pursuit and vergence eye movements based on principles of efficient coding. The model accounts for the joint development of visual encoding and eye movement control. Sparse coding models encode the incoming data and capture the statistics of the input in spatio-temporal basis functions while a reinforcement learner generates eye movements to optimise the efficiency of the encoding. We consider the embodiment of the approach in the iCub simulator and demonstrate the emergence of a self-calibrating smooth pursuit and vergence behaviour. Unlike standard computer vision approaches, it is driven by the interaction between sensory encoding and eye movements. Interestingly, our analysis shows that the emerging representations learned by this model are in line with results on velocity and disparity tuning properties of neurons in visual cortex.
Correlations between cannabis use and IQ change in the Dunedin cohort are consistent with confounding from socioeconomic status

Does cannabis use have substantial and permanent effects on neuropsychological functioning? Renewed and intense attention to the issue has followed recent research on the Dunedin cohort, which found a positive association between, on the one hand, adolescent-onset cannabis use and dependence and, on the other hand, a decline in IQ from childhood to adulthood [Meier et al. (2012) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(40):E2657–E2664]. The association is given a causal interpretation by the authors, but existing research suggests an alternative confounding model based on time-varying effects of socioeconomic status on IQ. A simulation of the confounding model reproduces the reported associations from the Dunedin cohort, suggesting that the causal effects estimated in Meier et al. are likely to be overestimates, and that the true effect could be zero. Further analyses of the Dunedin cohort are proposed to distinguish between the competing interpretations. Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, the methodology is flawed and the causal inference drawn from the results premature.
‘Bringing them back on the right track’: Perceptions of medical staff on the rehabilitation of individuals with violently acquired spinal cord injuries

Purpose. To explore the perceptions of medical staff on the rehabilitation of spinal cord injured individuals, who became disabled from street violence. Method. A total of 16 medical staff members from two rehabilitation hospitals were interviewed, using a semi-structured interview. The interview recorded demographic information about the staff and probed at differences in clinical goals and practices with violently and non-violently injured individuals with spinal cord injuries. In all, 34 interviews were conducted from staff. Responses were tabulated and interpreted using a grounded theory approach. Results. Staff set goals of ‘increasing independence’ that are informed by their professional backgrounds. The ‘differences’ in persons with violently acquired disabilities were noted, both in terms of needs, resources and attitudes. Depending on the professional and racial background of the staff, there was an indication of different degrees of tolerance toward patients' non-compliance with rehabilitation goals. Staff members are largely welcoming of the perceived impact of peer mentoring as it increases the cultural competence of the hospital in dealing with individuals who were violently disabled. Conclusions. Findings, although exploratory, emphasise the dynamics of perception development, through the tensions in the goal of independent functioning and perceived differences in persons who became disabled from street violence.
Extracellular Invertase Is an Essential Component of Cytokinin-Mediated Delay of Senescence

Leaf senescence is the final stage of leaf development in which the nutrients invested in the leaf are remobilized to other parts of the plant. Whereas senescence is accompanied by a decline in leaf cytokinin content, exogenous application of cytokinins or an increase of the endogenous concentration delays senescence and causes nutrient mobilization. The finding that extracellular invertase and hexose transporters, as the functionally linked enzymes of an apolasmic phloem unloading pathway, are coinduced by cytokinins suggested that delay of senescence is mediated via an effect on source-sink relations. This hypothesis was further substantiated in this study by the finding that delay of senescence in transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants with autoregulated cytokinin production correlates with an elevated extracellular invertase activity. The finding that the expression of an extracellular invertase under control of the senescence-induced SAG12 promoter results in a delay of senescence demonstrates that effect of cytokinins may be substituted by these metabolic enzymes. The observation that an increase in extracellular invertase is sufficient to delay leaf senescence was further verified by a complementing functional approach. Localized induction of an extracellular invertase under control of a chemically inducible promoter resulted in ectopic delay of senescence, resembling the naturally occurring green islands in autumn leaves. To establish a causal relationship between cytokinins and extracellular invertase for the delay of senescence, transgenic plants were generated that allowed inhibition of extracellular invertase in the presence of cytokinins. For this purpose, an invertase inhibitor was expressed under control of a cytokinin-inducible promoter. It has been shown that senescence is not any more delayed by cytokinin when the expression of the invertase inhibitor is elevated. This finding demonstrates that extracellular invertase is required for the delay of senescence by cytokinins and that it is a key element of the underlying molecular mechanism.
New Delay-dependent Robust Stability for T-S Fuzzy Systems with Interval Time-varying Delay

In order to alleviate the conservativeness of the robust stability criterion, the delay-dependent stability problem for uncertain T-S fuzzy time-delay systems with interval time-varying delay is to be investigated in this paper. A new Lyapunov-Krasovskii function and a further improved free-weighing matrix approach are used to analyze the stability. A new less conservative robust stability criterion is obtained. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the less conservativeness and effectiveness of our method.
Superspace duality in low-energy superstrings.

We extend spacetime duality to superspace, including fermions in the low-energy limits of superstrings. The tangent space is a curved, extended superspace. The geometry is based on an enlarged coordinate space where the vanishing of the d'Alembertian is as fundamental as the vanishing of the curl of a gradient.
The Transmission of US Shocks to Emerging Markets

To study the transmission of US shocks to emerging markets, we develop and estimate an asymmetric two-country real business cycle model. The asymmetries in the model arise due to the differences in the size and the riskiness of the economies, as well as the financial frictions in the emerging markets. Using 17 quarterly time series for Mexico and the US from 1994.I to 2007.IV, we estimate a subset of the parameters of the model, including key parameters that define the shocks and frictions. We find that at business cycles frequencies US shocks explain 40% of the volatility in the growth rate of Mexico's GDP, and 30% of the volatility in consumption's growth rate. A historical decomposition of the data shows that the transmission of shocks occur throughout the business cycles in the sample. In particular, it shows that Mexico's growth substantially benefited from the US growth in the second part of the 1990s, but it was adversely hit by the 2001 US recession. By contrast, during the 1994-1995 Tequila crisis, Mexican economy's poor performance was driven only by domestic shocks. Counter-factual experiments show that spill-overs from the US would be lower if the financial market imperfections were less stringent in Mexico, and/or if part of the bilateral trade were diversified with the rest of the World.
Interferon-&ggr; Release Assay for the Diagnosis of Latent Tuberculosis in Children Younger Than 5 Years of Age

Background: There are limited data available on interferon-&ggr; release assay (IGRA) performance in children up to 5 years of age, with documented exposure to active tuberculosis (TB). The aim of this study was to evaluate (1) the influence of infectivity of adult source cases on test results, (2) the impact of age, and (3) the level of agreement, between IGRA and tuberculin skin test (TST) results. Methods: A total of 142 Bacille Calmette-Guerin-vaccinated children up to 5 years of age were investigated because of a history of exposure to active TB. QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube IGRA (QFT) and TST assays were performed. Results: Test results were significantly influenced by positive finding of cavitary lesions (QFT, odds ratio [OR] = 6.15; TST, OR = 7.48) and positive acid-fast bacilli (QFT, OR = 4.01; TST, OR = 4.47) in active TB contacts. QFT resulted in 1 indeterminate response (0.7%), attributable to low mitogen. There was no evidence for age having any effect on QFT performance. The 2 tests showed a moderate overall concordance (89%; &kgr; = 0.591) at a TST cutoff value of ≥10 mm. Conclusions: Association of positive QFT and TST results with risk factors for infection in child contacts (presence of cavitary lesions and acid-fast bacilli smear positivity in index cases) suggests that both the tests have good diagnostic accuracy. However, there was significant discord between results of the 2 tests that could not be definitively resolved. Thus, in a high-risk population of children up to 5 years of age, both tests (QFT and TST) should be performed and the child should be considered infected if either or both tests are positive.
Predictability of Weather and Climate: Ensemble forecasting and data assimilation: two problems with the same solution?

Until 1991, operational NWP centers used to integrate a single control forecast starting from the analysis, which is the best estimate of the state of the atmosphere at the initial time. In December 1992, both NCEP and ECMWF started running ensembles of forecasts from slightly perturbed initial conditions (Molteni and Palmer, 1993, Buizza, 1997, Toth and Kalnay, 1993, Tracton and Kalnay, 1993, Toth and Kalnay, 1997).
NeuroD1/beta2 contributes to cell-specific transcription of the proopiomelanocortin gene

NeuroD1/beta2 is a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) factor expressed in the endocrine cells of the pancreas and in a subset of neurons as they undergo terminal differentiation. We now show that NeuroD1 is expressed in corticotroph cells of the pituitary gland and that it is involved in cell-specific transcription of the proopiomelanocortin (POMC) gene. It was previously shown that corticotroph-specific POMC transcription depends in part on the action of cell-restricted bHLH factors that were characterized as the CUTE (corticotroph upstream transcription element) (M. Therrien and J. Drouin, Mol. Cell. Biol. 13:2342-2353, 1993) complexes. We now demonstrate that these complexes contain NeuroD1 in association with various ubiquitous bHLH dimerization partners. The NeuroD1-containing heterodimers specifically recognize and activate transcription from the POMC promoter E box that confers transcriptional specificity. Interestingly, the NeuroD1 heterodimers activate transcription in synergy with Ptx1, a Bicoid-related homeodomain protein, which also contributes to corticotroph specificity of POMC transcription. In the adult pituitary gland, NeuroD1 transcripts are detected in POMC-expressing corticotroph cells. Taken together with the restricted pattern of Ptx1 expression, these results suggest that these two factors establish the basis of a combinatorial code for the program of corticotroph-specific gene expression.
Presenilin 1 Glu318Gly Polymorphism Interpret With Caution

Background : The significance of the presenilin 1 ( PSEN1 ) Glu318Gly polymorphism has been described as either a causal mutation with reduced penetrance or a benign polymorphism. When this polymorphism is found in a symptomatic person with a family history of dementia, counseling on recurrence risk becomes very problematic. Objective : To demonstrate that the PSEN1 Glu318Gly polymorphism should be interpreted cautiously.
Knowledge and understanding of antibiotic resistance and the risk of becoming a carrier when travelling abroad: A qualitative study of Swedish travellers

Background: Increasing globalisation, with the migration of people, animals and food across national borders increases the risk of the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. To avoid becoming a carrier of antibiotic-resistant bacteria when travelling, knowledge about antibiotic resistance is important. Materials and methods: We aimed to describe the knowledge and understanding of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and of the risk for becoming a carrier of such bacteria, among Swedish travellers before their travel to high-risk areas. A questionnaire with three open-ended questions was distributed to 100 individuals before departure. Results: The travellers’ answers were analysed using content analysis, resulting in the theme ‘To be an insecure traveller who takes control over one’s own journey’. Our results showed that the travellers were aware of what the term ‘antimicrobial resistance’ meant, but did not understand its real significance, nor the consequences for the individual nor for society. They also distanced themselves from the problem. Few thought that their travel would entail a risk of becoming a carrier of resistant bacteria. The lack of knowledge caused an uncertainty among the travellers, whom tried to master the situation by using coping strategies. They proposed a number of measures to prevent carriership. The measures were general and primarily aimed at avoiding illness abroad, particularly acute gastro-intestinal infection. Conclusions: In health care and vaccination clinics, there is a need for improved information for persons intending to travel to high-risk areas, both about the risks of contracting antibiotic- resistant bacteria and about effective preventive measures.