Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impaired Verbal Learning Is Associated with Larger Caudate Volumes in Early Onset Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

Background Both brain structural abnormalities and neurocognitive impairments are core features of schizophrenia. We have previously reported enlargements in subcortical brain structure volumes and impairment of neurocognitive functioning as measured by the MATRICS Cognitive Consensus Battery (MCCB) in early onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders (EOS). To our knowledge, no previous study has investigated whether neurocognitive performance and volumetric abnormalities in subcortical brain structures are related in EOS. Methods Twenty-four patients with EOS and 33 healthy controls (HC) were included in the study. Relationships between the caudate nucleus, the lateral and fourth ventricles volumes and neurocognitive performance were investigated with multivariate linear regression analyses. Intracranial volume, age, antipsychotic medication and IQ were included as independent predictor-variables. Results The caudate volume was negatively correlated with verbal learning performance uniquely in the EOS group (r=-.454, p=.034). There were comparable positive correlations between the lateral ventricular volume and the processing speed, attention and reasoning and problem solving domains for both the EOS patients and the healthy controls. Antipsychotic medication was related to ventricular enlargements, but did not affect the brain structure-function relationship. Conclusion Enlargement of the caudate volume was related to poorer verbal learning performance in patients with EOS. Despite a 32% enlargement of the lateral ventricles in the EOS group, associations to processing speed, attention and reasoning and problem solving were similar for both the EOS and the HC groups.
Probabilistic design and upgrade of wastewater treatment plants in the EU Water Framework Directive context

The EU Water Framework Directive requires compliance with effluent and receiving water quality standards. This increased complexity implies that the evaluation of the impact of measures should be evaluated with adequate tools, both from the methodological point of view – by applying systems analysis investigations and modelling uncertainty assessment tools – and by making the developed methodology applicable in practice. Urban wastewater systems (UWWSs) are crucial components of river basins, since they usually contribute significantly to the pollution loads. They also have more flexibility in operation and management than other subsystems as agriculture. One part of this dissertation tries to answer the question “where” to improve the UWWS in a basin by means of systems analysis. A case study is tackled with the help of substance flow analysis (SFA) and of performance indicators. SFA allowed to identify the pressures on the receiving water. The indicators highlighted the critical structures in the basin. The spatial scale of the study was found to be of paramount importance. The other part of this dissertation deals with the question “how” to improve the UWWS, by proposing a systematic methodology to design correction measures, illustrated by the example of WWTP design and upgrade. The first step is the generation of influent time series to be fed to the WWTP models by means of a new phenomenological model of the draining catchment and sewer system. Ten different treatment process configurations were selected for the comparison. Further, eleven upgrade options were selected for evaluation, partly requiring real-time control (RTC) and partly the construction of additional treatment volume. For the immission-based evaluation, the integration of the WWTP model with a river model was made by means of the continuity-based interfacing method (CBIM). The propagation of the uncertainty on model parameters was performed with Monte Carlo simulations. Given the assumed boundary conditions, alternating systems show the best treatment cost-efficiency. RTC upgrades showed good potential for low-cost compliance, but with higher risk of limits exceedance. The immission-based evaluation revealed that considering the system from a holistic point of view can lead to substantial savings.
The awakened brain: From Wright's psychozoology to Barkow's selfless persons

Darwin, Sex and Status argues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for theories of psychology and culture is wrong, as are psychologies that could never have evolved or social sciences that posit impossible psychologies. Status develops theories of human self-awareness, cognition, and cultural capacity that are compatible with evolutionary theory. Recurring themes include: the importance of sexual selection in human evolution; our species' preoccupation with self-esteem and relative standing; the individual as an active strategist, regularly revising culturally provided information; and awareness as an impressionmanagement device. Culture is a somewhat structured information pool that itself evolves, often in ways that reduce the genetic fitness of its participants.
Regional Gray Matter Changes in Bipolar Disorder: A Voxel-Based Morphometric Study

Objective: To investigate structural abnormalities in bipolar disorder (BD) using optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in closely matched patients and controls, and to examine the relationship of clinical features with regional gray matter (GM) volumes. Methods: Twenty-four patients (six male) aged 19–59 years (mean=38.21 years, SD=11.04 years) with DSM-IV bipolar I disorder were compared with 25 control subjects, matched on age, sex, and years of education. VBM analyses were conducted on high-resolution T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging to detect regional GM volume differences between groups, ensuring statistical correlation for age, sex and total intracranial volumes. Within the patient groups, regional GM changes were also investigated. Results: Compared to controls, BD patients had increased GM volume in left parahippocampal gyrus and decreased GM volume in left middle temporal gyrus. Family history, psychotic symptoms and lithium status were associated with regional GM abnormalities in BD patients. Conclusions: This study presents evidence of gray matter volume abnormalities in adults with bipolar I disorder. Regional variation in relation to clinical factors suggests a neurobiological basis for clinical heterogeneity and posits the possibility of trait deficits.
Empowering Latino Parents to Transform the Education of Their Children

This article emphasizes the role of parental involvement in the college preparation of Latino elementary and secondary school students. Although literature shows that education is highly valued in Latino families, actual college enrollment rates for Latino youth are below average. This has been attributed to barriers including lack of financial resources, problems in communication with schools, and low familiarity with the college planning process. The American Dream Academy is a university outreach program that is designed to help Latino families overcome these barriers. We conducted a qualitative analysis of speeches that were prepared and delivered by parents at graduation ceremonies of the program from 2007 to 2009. Our analysis revealed six themes: facing challenges, envisioning success, understanding the school system, taking ownership, community raising a child, and creating a supportive home environment. The findings enrich existing literature and help understand the complex systems that are at play with parental involvement in Latino families.
Gender Stereotypes and the Perception of Male and Female Candidates

We investigate the origins of voters' expectations of greater female competency on "compassion" issues, such as dealing with poverty or the aged, and greater male competency on military and defense issues. We contrast two alternative explanations: gender-trait stereotypes, emphasizing a candidate's gender-linked personality traits; and gender-belief stereotypes, placing greatest importance on the differing political outlooks of male and female candidates. We test contrasting predictions from these two approaches with data from an experiment in which 297 undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to hear about a male or a female candidate with typically masculine or feminine traits. Overall, there was stronger support for the trait approach. Warm and expressive candidates were seen as better at compassion issues; instrumental candidates were rated as more competent to handle the military and economic issues. Moreover, masculine instrumental traits increased the candidate's perceived competence on a broader range of issues than the feminine traits of warmth and expressiveness. Finally, there was some limited support for the belief approach with gender-based expectations about the candidates' political views affecting their rated competency on compassion but not other types of political issues.
Learning e-Learning Skills for Vocational Training Using e-Learning: The Experience Pilonting the (e)VET2EDU Project Course

In this paper we present principal data of the experience of the piloting of a European eLearning international course VETeL. The Project E-VET2EDU “Supporting vocational teachers and trainers in eLearning” is a two-year international project, funded by the European Union, that has developed and piloted a completely open online course (VETeL), in 9 different languages, aimed to train vocational trainers in the facilitation of eLearning courses. Taking into account that the main gal of this project is not only the development of the course's materials and the multilingual learning environment related to the course, but the improvement of the knowledge about VET, the experience of students, facilitators and coordinators of the course it is very important. It could be crucial for the improvement of the course itself, as well as for getting a better knowledge about how the participants of an online course in a non-traditional modality of formal learning are affected by the different aspects of this and give us some key points for improving
On Integrable Backgrounds Self-dual under Fermionic T-duality

We study the fermionic T-duality symmetry of integrable Green-Schwarz sigma-models on AdS backgrounds with Ramond-Ramond fluxes in various dimensions. We show that sigma-models based on supercosets of PSU supergroups, such as AdS2 × S 2 and AdS3 × S 3 are self-dual under fermionic T-duality, while supercosets of OSp super- groups such as non-critical AdS2 and AdS4 models, and the critical AdS4×CP 3 background are not. We present a general algebraic argument to when a supercoset is expected to have a fermionic T-duality symmetry, and when it will fail to have one.
A 1V 220MHz-Tuning-Range 2.2GHz VCO Using a BAW Resonator

The frequency stability of integrated oscillators has become an increasingly important issue for the next generation of digital RF transceivers. RF oscillators using high-Q BAW resonators have been demonstrated to provide excellent performance in terms of stability, phase noise and power consumption. Nevertheless, the frequency tuning range of BAW oscillators is still limited by the piezoelectric coupling coefficient Kt2 of the piezoelectric material which defines the frequency shift between the resonance (series) and anti-resonance (shunt) frequencies of the resonator. The maximum tuning range for such a voltage-controlled oscillator will never exceed this frequency shift.
American Journal of Epidemiology Original Contribution Life-course Socioeconomic Position and Incidence of Dementia and Cognitive Impairment without Dementia in Older Mexican Americans: Results from the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging

There have been few investigations of the link between changes in life-course socioeconomic position (SEP) and cognitive decline or incidence of dementia. The authors examined the impact of changes in life-course SEP on incidence of dementia and cognitive impairment but not dementia (CIND) over a decade of follow-up. Participants of Mexican origin (n ¼ 1,789) were members of the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging cohort. Incidence of dementia/CIND was ascertained by using standard diagnostic criteria. SEP indicators at 3 life stages (childhood, adulthood, and midlife) were used to derive a measure of cumulative SEP (range, 0 to 8) and SEP mobility. Nearly 24% of the sample maintained a low SEP throughout life. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals were computed from Cox proportional hazards regression models. In fully adjusted models, participants with a continuously high SEP had lower hazard ratios for dementia/CIND compared with those with a continuously low SEP at all 3 life stages (hazard ratio ¼ 0.49, 95% confidence interval: 0.24, 0.98; P ¼ 0.04). In age-adjusted models, participants experienced a 16% greater hazard of dementia/CIND with every 1-unit increase in cumulative SEP disadvantage across the life course (hazard ratio ¼ 1.16, 95% confidence interval: 1.01, 1.33; P ¼ 0.04). Early exposures to social disadvantage may increase the risk of late-life dementia. There is a wealth of literature that suggests that low socioeconomic position (SEP), which is assessed by using a range of measures, including educational attainment (1–13) and occupation (2, 13–17), is associated with late-life dementia. These associations have been increasingly linked to early life socioeconomic environment (18–21), which may influence brain and cognitive development (19, 22–26) and potentially increase the risk of dementia later in life (19). Accordingly, the influence of SEP on dementia is best described within a life-course context. The proportion of older US Hispanics is growing quickly (27), and 66% are of Mexican descent. Mexican Americans and some other ethnic minority groups in the United States are disproportionately burdened with dementia (3, 28–30) and dementia risk factors, such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes (31–33), compared with non-Hispanic whites. The life-course socioeconomic experience of US Hispanics is complex; for example, beneficial changes in SEP trajecto-ries from childhood to adulthood have been documented (34–35) to have protective effects on cognitive function (34). However, most of the work examining racial/ethnic differences in dementia in the United States has focused on either non-Hispanic white or …
Perceptions of Sport-Oriented Professionals: A Multidimensional Scaling Analysis

A multidimensional scaling analysis was used to investigate the psychological structure underlying college students’ perceptions of 12 practitioners: sport psychologist, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, coach, psychiatrist, counselor, performance consultant, nutritionist, sports medicine specialist, strength coach, hypnotist, and technical equipment advisor. For this analysis, 200 male and female undergraduates completed 66 scales rating the psychological similarity between all possible pairs of the 12 practitioners. The R2 of . 84 and stress value of . 17 indicated that a two-dimensional solution was the best fit for the similarity ratings. The first dimension was identified as separating practitioners specializing in the mental aspects of performance from those specializing in the physical aspects of performance. The second dimension separated sport practitioners from nonsport practitioners. Interestingly, subjects perceived sport psychologists as being concerned with mental, nonsport issues. The r.
Attentional Selection and Action Selection in the Ventral and Orbital Prefrontal Cortex

Different accounts of the ventral and orbital prefrontal cortex (PFv+o) have emphasized either its role in learning conditional rules for action selection or the attentional selection of behaviorally relevant stimuli. Although the accounts are not mutually exclusive, it is possible that the involvement of PFv+o in conditional action selection is a consequence of its role in selecting relevant stimuli or that its involvement in attentional selection is a consequence of the conditional rules present in many attentional paradigms. Five macaques learned a conditional action-selection task in which the difficulty of identifying the stimulus relevant for guiding action selection was varied in a simple manner by either altering its distance from the action or presenting additional distracting stimuli. Simply increasing the spatial separation between the instructing stimulus led to slower responses. Experiment 1 showed that bilateral PFv+o lesions impaired conditional action selection even when attentional demands were kept to a minimum, but there was evidence that the impairment was exacerbated by manipulating stimulus selection difficulty. Experiment 2 confirmed the importance of PFv+o for conditional action selection even when stimulus selection difficulty was minimal. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the action-selection impairment was significantly increased by making identification of the behaviorally relevant stimulus difficult. PFv+o is central to the use of conditional rules when selecting courses of action, but conditional rules are also represented in premotor and striatal regions. A special contribution of PFv+o may be initial selection of behaviorally relevant stimuli.
Anomalous Reduction of Hot-Carrier-Induced On-Resistance Degradation in n-Type DEMOS Transistors

Anomalous hot-carrier degradation phenomenon was observed in a 0.5-mum 12-V n-type drain-extended MOS transistors (N-DEMOS) with various n-type drain-drift (NDD) implant dosage. Under the same stress condition, the device with a higher NDD dosage produces a higher substrate current, a slightly higher transconductance degradation, but a lower ON-resistance (RON) degradation. Two degradation mechanisms are identified from the analysis of the electrical data and two-dimensional device simulations. The first mechanism is hot-electron injection in the accumulation region near the junction of the channel and accumulation regions. The second mechanism is hot-hole injection in the accumulation region near the spacer. This injection of hot holes creates a positive-charge trapping in the gate oxide, resulting in negative mirror charges in the accumulation region that reduces RON. The second mechanism is identified to account for the anomalous lower RON degradation
Memory for familiar environments learned in the remote past: fMRI studies of healthy people and an amnesic person with extensive bilateral hippocampal lesions

Preserved remote spatial memory in amnesic people with bilateral hippocampal damage, including the well‐studied case K.C. , challenges spatial theories, which assume that the hippocampus is needed to support all allocentric spatial representations, old or new. It remains possible, however, that residual hippocampal tissue is functional and contributes to successful performance. Here, we examine brain activity with fMRI during the retrieval of spatial information in K.C. and in healthy controls using landmark and route stimuli from a premorbidly familiar neighborhood that K.C. can navigate normally. In all participants, activity was found in the parahippocampal cortex, but not in the hippocampus itself, during all navigational tasks on which K.C. performs well, even though part of his hippocampus remains viable. The opposite pattern was observed on a house recognition task, which is inconsequential to navigation, and on which K.C. performed poorly. On that task, K.C. recruited the right hippocampus presumably because even “familiar” houses were treated as novel by him, whereas controls recruited occipitotemporal cortex, including parahippocampal cortex. The distinction between recent and remote memory, therefore, may apply as much to spatial theories of hippocampal function as it does to theories emphasizing the role of the hippocampus in other types of explicit memory. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Continuous Newton's Method for Power Flow Analysis

This paper describes the application of the continuous Newton's method to the power flow problem. This method basically consists in formulating the power flow problem as a set of autonomous ordinary differential equations. Based on this formal analogy, we propose an entire family of numerically efficient algorithms for solving ill-conditioned or badly-initialized power flow cases. The paper also shows that the classical Newton-Raphson's method and most robust power flow techniques proposed in the literature are particular cases of the proposed formulation. An example based on a 1254-bus model of the UCTE system is presented and discussed.
A Hybrid Approach to Protect Palmprint Templates

Biometric template protection is indispensable to protect personal privacy in large-scale deployment of biometric systems. Accuracy, changeability, and security are three critical requirements for template protection algorithms. However, existing template protection algorithms cannot satisfy all these requirements well. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach that combines random projection and fuzzy vault to improve the performances at these three points. Heterogeneous space is designed for combining random projection and fuzzy vault properly in the hybrid scheme. New chaff point generation method is also proposed to enhance the security of the heterogeneous vault. Theoretical analyses of proposed hybrid approach in terms of accuracy, changeability, and security are given in this paper. Palmprint database based experimental results well support the theoretical analyses and demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed hybrid approach.
Selective activation of the nucleus accumbens during risk-taking decision making

This study implemented a risk-taking task during fMRI to probe the brain circuitry involved in risk-taking decision-making in 12 healthy control subjects. Partially supporting the initial hypotheses, deliberation prior to selection of safe relative to risky responses generated greater activation in the inferior frontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus; and deliberation prior to selection of risky relative to safe responses generated greater activation in medial frontal cortex, occipital cortex, nucleus accumbens and caudate. Additionally, accumbens activation correlated positively with the harm avoidance subscale of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) 125. These findings may provide target neural systems to study in subjects who exhibit problematic risk-taking behaviors and may partially explain why certain risky behaviors occur.
Second-Order Slepian-Wolf Coding Theorems for Non-Mixed and Mixed Sources

The second-order achievable rate region in Slepian-Wolf source coding systems is investigated. The concept of second-order achievable rates, which enables us to make a finer evaluation of achievable rates, has already been introduced and analyzed for general sources in the single-user source coding problem. Analogously, in this paper, we first define the second-order achievable rate region for the Slepian-Wolf coding system to establish the source coding theorem in the second-order sense. The Slepian-Wolf coding problem for correlated sources is one of typical problems in the multiterminal information theory. In particular, Miyake and Kanaya, and Han have established the first-order source coding theorems for general correlated sources. On the other hand, in general, the second-order achievable rate problem for the Slepian-Wolf coding system with general sources remains still open up to present. In this paper, we present the analysis concerning the second-order achievable rates for general sources, which are based on the information spectrum methods developed by Han and Verdú. Moreover, we establish the explicit second-order achievable rate region for independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) correlated sources with countably infinite alphabets and mixtures of i.i. d. correlated sources, respectively, using the relevant asymptotic normality.