Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connectomic Intermediate Phenotypes for Psychiatric Disorders

Psychiatric disorders are phenotypically heterogeneous entities with a complex genetic basis. To mitigate this complexity, many investigators study so-called intermediate phenotypes (IPs) that putatively provide a more direct index of the physiological effects of candidate genetic risk variants than overt psychiatric syndromes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a particularly popular technique for measuring such phenotypes because it allows interrogation of diverse aspects of brain structure and function in vivo. Much of this work however, has focused on relatively simple measures that quantify variations in the physiology or tissue integrity of specific brain regions in isolation, contradicting an emerging consensus that most major psychiatric disorders do not arise from isolated dysfunction in one or a few brain regions, but rather from disturbed interactions within and between distributed neural circuits; i.e., they are disorders of brain connectivity. The recent proliferation of new MRI techniques for comprehensively mapping the entire connectivity architecture of the brain, termed the human connectome, has provided a rich repertoire of tools for understanding how genetic variants implicated in mental disorder impact distinct neural circuits. In this article, we review research using these connectomic techniques to understand how genetic variation influences the connectivity and topology of human brain networks. We highlight recent evidence from twin and imaging genetics studies suggesting that the penetrance of candidate risk variants for mental illness, such as those in SLC6A4, MAOA, ZNF804A, and APOE, may be higher for IPs characterized at the level of distributed neural systems than at the level of spatially localized brain regions. The findings indicate that imaging connectomics provides a powerful framework for understanding how genetic risk for psychiatric disease is expressed through altered structure and function of the human connectome.
Novel High Step-Up DC–DC Converter for Distributed Generation System

In this paper, a novel high step-up dc-dc converter for distributed generation systems is proposed. The concept is to utilize two capacitors and one coupled inductor. The two capacitors are charged in parallel during the switch-off period and are discharged in series during the switch-on period by the energy stored in the coupled inductor to achieve a high step-up voltage gain. In addition, the leakage-inductor energy of the coupled inductor is recycled with a passive clamp circuit. Thus, the voltage stress on the main switch is reduced. The switch with low resistance RDS(ON) can be adopted to reduce the conduction loss. In addition, the reverse-recovery problem of the diodes is alleviated, and thus, the efficiency can be further improved. The operating principle and steady-state analyses are discussed in detail. Finally, a prototype circuit with 24-V input voltage, 400-V output voltage, and 200-W output power is implemented in the laboratory to verify the performance of the proposed converter.
CEO Pay and CEO Power: Evidence from a Dynamic Learning Model

If CEOs have considerable power over their own compensation, then we expect them to avoid pay cuts following bad news about their ability, and win large pay raises following good news. Contrary to this view, I find that CEOs capture only 20-33% of the surplus resulting from good news, and they bear 8-20% of the negative surplus resulting from bad news. These estimates are from a model in which agents learn gradually about CEO ability, and CEOs' bargaining power determines how their compensation responds to news about ability. I estimate the model's parameters by applying GMM to data on stock returns and changes in CEO pay. Since CEOs do not capture their full surplus, CEO ability matters more for shareholders, which is supported by predictions and data on unanticipated CEO deaths. The model helps explain the sensitivity of CEO pay to lagged stock returns, and also the changes in stock return volatility around CEO successions.
Precise radial un-distortion of images

Radial image distortion is a frequently observed defect when using wide angle, low focal length lenses. In this paper a new method for its calibration and removal is presented. An inverse distortion model is derived that is accurate to a sub-pixel level, over a broad range of distortion levels. An iterative technique for estimating the models parameters from a single view is also detailed. Results on simulated and real images clearly indicate significantly improved performance compared to existing methods.
Renewal and Permanency of the Spanish Members of Parliament (1977-1993): Reflections on the Institutionalization of the Spanish Parliament

Renewal and permanency of the Spanish members of Parliament, 1977-1993 : reflections on the institutionalization of the Spanish Parliament Author(s): Morán, María Luz Date 1996 Type Working Paper Series Estudios = Working papers / Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones, Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales 1996/81 City: Madrid Publisher: Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales
Management of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting by risk profile: role of netupitant/palonosetron

As recommended by most recent antiemetic guidelines, the optimal prophylaxis of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) requires the combination of 5-HT3 receptor antagonist (RA) with an NK1-RA. Moreover, the major predictors of acute and delayed CINV include: young age, female sex, platinum- or anthracycline-based chemotherapy, nondrinker status, emesis in the earlier cycles of chemotherapy, and previous history of motion/morning sickness. Despite improved knowledge of the pathophysiology of CINV and advances in the availability of active antiemetics, an inconsistent compliance with their use has been reported, thereby resulting in suboptimal control of CINV in several cases. In this scenario, a new anti-emetic drug is now available, which seems to be able to guarantee better prophylaxis of CINV and improvement of adherence to guidelines. In fact, netupitant/palonosetron (NEPA) is a ready-to-use single oral capsule, combining an NK1-RA (netupitant) and a 5-HT3-RA (palonosetron), which is to be taken 1 hour before the administration of chemotherapy, ensuring the coverage from CINV for 5 days. We reviewed the role of NEPA in patients at high risk of CINV receiving highly emetogenic chemotherapy. In these patients, NEPA plus dexamethasone, as compared to standard treatments, achieved superior efficacy in all primary and secondary end points during the acute, delayed, and overall phases, including nausea assessment. Moreover, these results were also achieved in female patients receiving anthracycline plus cyclophosphamide-based chemotherapy. NEPA represents a real step forward in the prophylaxis of CINV.
Three Essays on the Health Insurance Coverage of Young Adults

OF DISSERTATION THREE ESSAYS ON THE HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE OF YOUNG ADULTS This dissertation examines the health insurance status of young adults during the transition to adulthood. In a series of three essays, I analyze what happens as young adults reach important milestones and the effects of public policies. The first essay is a descriptive study on how insurance status changes after reaching age 19 and graduating from college. The likelihood of becoming uninsured rises sharply once turning age 19 and then peaks at age 23. While the proportion uninsured also increases following college graduation, this increase disappears after one year. The second essay analyzes the effect of a dependent age law in New Jersey, which allowed dependent coverage for young adults up to age 30 and did not require full-time student status. Pennsylvania did not pass a law and was used as a control state. Among 19-to-22-year olds, there was a rise in health insurance coverage in New Jersey relative to Pennsylvania. There also was a negative effect on college enrollment in New Jersey relative to Pennsylvania. The final essay considers other unintended consequences of dependent age laws. Using a national dataset, I estimate that there were no clear effects on decisions related to living arrangements, marriage, and full-time employment.
Phonological Codes Constrain Output of Orthographic Codes via Sublexical and Lexical Routes in Chinese Written Production

To what extent do phonological codes constrain orthographic output in handwritten production? We investigated how phonological codes constrain the selection of orthographic codes via sublexical and lexical routes in Chinese written production. Participants wrote down picture names in a picture-naming task in Experiment 1or response words in a symbol—word associative writing task in Experiment 2. A sublexical phonological property of picture names (phonetic regularity: regular vs. irregular) in Experiment 1and a lexical phonological property of response words (homophone density: dense vs. sparse) in Experiment 2, as well as word frequency of the targets in both experiments, were manipulated. A facilitatory effect of word frequency was found in both experiments, in which words with high frequency were produced faster than those with low frequency. More importantly, we observed an inhibitory phonetic regularity effect, in which low-frequency picture names with regular first characters were slower to write than those with irregular ones, and an inhibitory homophone density effect, in which characters with dense homophone density were produced more slowly than those with sparse homophone density. Results suggested that phonological codes constrained handwritten production via lexical and sublexical routes.
Web Users' Cultural Profiles and E-Service Quality: Internationalization Implications for Tourism Web Sites

Although e-service quality (e-SQ) is vital for online purchases and loyalty, and the Internet is global-izing services, limited knowledge exists regarding the impact of Web users’ cultural profiles on theirperceptions of e-SQ. Within the tourism industry, this is crucial as Web sites target multicultural usersand firms are trying to develop localized Web stores. This study addresses this gap by examining thelink between cultural dimensions of Web site users and their e-SQ expectations. Based on an exten-sive literature review, research hypotheses are formulated and then tested by gathering data from amultinational student body. Findings provide useful implications for users’ segmentation and Website globalization.Key words: Culture; Impact; Users; Web site; Design; Tourism
Causal Interactions in Attention Networks Predict Behavioral Performance

Lesion and functional brain imaging studies have suggested that there are two anatomically nonoverlapping attention networks. The dorsal frontoparietal network controls goal-oriented top-down deployment of attention; the ventral frontoparietal network mediates stimulus-driven bottom-up attentional reorienting. The interaction between the two networks and its functional significance has been considered in the past but no direct test has been carried out. We addressed this problem by recording fMRI data from human subjects performing a trial-by-trial cued visual spatial attention task in which the subject had to respond to target stimuli in the attended hemifield and ignore all stimuli in the unattended hemifield. Correlating Granger causal influences between regions of interest with behavioral performance, we report two main results. First, stronger Granger causal influences from the dorsal attention network (DAN) to the ventral attention network (VAN), i.e., DAN→VAN, are generally associated with enhanced performance, with right intraparietal sulcus (IPS), left IPS, and right frontal eye field being the main sources of behavior-enhancing influences. Second, stronger Granger causal influences from VAN to DAN, i.e., VAN→DAN, are generally associated with degraded performance, with right temporal-parietal junction being the main sources of behavior-degrading influences. These results support the hypothesis that signals from DAN to VAN suppress and filter out unimportant distracter information, whereas signals from VAN to DAN break the attentional set maintained by the dorsal attention network to enable attentional reorienting.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Clinical features of the retinopathy , globe enlarged ( rge ) chick phenotype

The purpose of the study reported here was to characterize the clinical aspects of the autosomal recessive retinopathy, globe enlarged (rge) phenotype in chicks (Gallus gallus). Rge/rge, rge/+ and +/+ chicks were studied from hatch to 336 days of age by general clinical examination, post-mortem examination, vision testing with an optokinetic device, ophthalmoscopy, biomicroscopy, tonometry, central corneal pachymetry, a-mode ultrasonography, infrared photoretinoscopy and photokeratometry. Additionally, preliminary electroretinographic and histopathologic investigations were performed. There is a variable degree of vision loss in rge/ rge chicks at 1 day of age with further chicks losing vision over the next few weeks until all chicks become functionally blind by 30 days of age (although some optokinetic responses remain in some of the rge/rge chicks). Over the first few weeks of life rge/rge chicks develop thicker corneas with a larger radius, hyperopia, shallower anterior chambers and enlarged globes both radially and axially, compared to controls. A preliminary ERG study showed that 1 day old rge/rge chicks have an elevated response threshold, a lower amplitude a-wave with a markedly shallow leading slope, a lack of both oscillatory responses and c-waves and, at brighter flashes, an increased b-wave amplitude. Light microscopy revealed no gross retinal abnormalities in young chicks to account for the blindness. A thinning of all retinal layers developed in parallel with globe enlargement. The rge defect is a unique progressive retinal dystrophy that results in a severe visual deficit, abnormal electroretinographic waveforms, and secondary globe enlargement. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk

Motivated by the implications from a stylized self-contained general equilibrium model incorporating the effects of time-varying economic uncertainty, we show that the difference between implied and realized variation, or the variance risk premium, is able to explain a nontrivial fraction of the time-series variation in post-1990 aggregate stock market returns, with high (low) premia predicting high (low) future returns. Our empirical results depend crucially on the use of “model-free,” as opposed to Black–Scholes, options implied volatilities, along with accurate realized variation measures constructed from high-frequency intraday as opposed to daily data. The magnitude of the predictability is particularly strong at the intermediate quarterly return horizon, where it dominates that afforded by other popular predictor variables, such as the P/E ratio, the default spread, and the consumption–wealth ratio. (JEL C22, C51, C52, G12, G13, G14)
Control performance comparison of asynchronous and synchronous sensor system in UAV applications

This paper investigates the control performance of asynchronous and synchronous sensor systems in UAV applications. In addition, this paper is a first attempt to confirm theoretical results for performance of these systems, which we have shown, experimentally. The asynchronous and synchronous sensor system consists of two cameras, respectively, and a small RC helicopter is used as a control target. In the synchronous sensor system the two cameras are synchronized and capture images at the same time, while no adjustment for the capture time of the two cameras is made in the asynchronous sensor system. It is demonstrated that the asynchronous sensor system can provide better control performance than the synchronous sensor system, which had not been confirmed experimentally.
Reinforcement learning agents providing advice in complex video games

This article introduces a teacher–student framework for reinforcement learning, synthesising and extending material that appeared in conference proceedings [Torrey, L. , & Taylor, M. E. (2013)]. Teaching on a budget: Agents advising agents in reinforcement learning. {Proceedings of the international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems}] and in a non-archival workshop paper [Carboni, N. , &Taylor, M. E. (2013, May)]. Preliminary results for 1 vs. 1 tactics in StarCraft. {Proceedings of the adaptive and learning agents workshop (at AAMAS-13)}]. In this framework, a teacher agent instructs a student agent by suggesting actions the student should take as it learns. However, the teacher may only give such advice a limited number of times. We present several novel algorithms that teachers can use to budget their advice effectively, and we evaluate them in two complex video games: StarCraft and Pac-Man. Our results show that the same amount of advice, given at different moments, can have different effects on student learning, and that teachers can significantly affect student learning even when students use different learning methods and state representations.
An ion bipolar junction transistor

Dynamic control of chemical microenvironments is essential for continued development in numerous fields of life sciences. Such control could be achieved with active chemical circuits for delivery of ions and biomolecules. As the basis for such circuitry, we report a solid-state ion bipolar junction transistor (IBJT) based on conducting polymers and thin films of anion-and cation-selective membranes. The IBJT is the ionic analogue to the conventional semiconductor BJT and is manufactured using standard microfabrication techniques. Transistor characteristics along with a model describing the principle of operation, in which an anionic base current amplifies a cationic collector current, are presented. By employing the IBJT as a bioelectronic circuit element for delivery of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, its efficacy in modulating neuronal cell signaling is demonstrated. 3 \body Numerous biochemical, biomedical and clinical applications demand technology allowing for the spatiotemporally controlled delivery of ions and biomolecules. In order to gain dynamic control of cellular microenvironments, substance delivery in complex high-resolution patterns where each point of delivery is individually addressable is required. In analogy to the addressing schemes found in active matrix displays (1-2), addressability in active chemical circuits can be achieved by introducing transistor functionality into each delivery point. Transistors are generally three-terminal devices in which the current between the first and second terminals is controlled by an electric signal applied to the third. The semiconductor solid state transistor (3) is the key component which enables amplification, addressing and processing of electronic signals in circuits. Analogously, a transistor based on transport of ions rather than electrons would render the same functionality possible in chemical circuits, e.g. for addressable delivery of charged ions and biomolecules. To date, few reports of transistor-like active control of ion transport have been published (4-8). The principle of operation in the majority of these devices is the modulation of the surface charge in nanochannels and nanoporous membranes. However, these devices are typically difficult to manufacture, hard to integrate into circuits, and do not operate well at the high ion concentrations required to generate physiologically relevant conditions. Bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) (3) are a major class of transistors with their own nomenclature: the input, output and control terminals are denoted emitter, collector and base, respectively. A pnp-BJT can bee seen as two pn-junctions sharing a narrow base region, where the emitter and collector are p-doped and the base is n-doped. Anion-and 4 cation-selective membranes (9) are the ionic equivalents to …
Micro-CT arthrography: a pilot study for the ex vivo visualization of the rat knee joint.

OBJECTIVE In our study, we evaluated the potential of micro-CT for the assessment of the rat knee joint using ex vivo micro-CT arthrography. The aims of the study were to introduce the technique of micro-CT arthrography and to visualize the normal anatomy of the rat knee. The secondary aims were the quantification of retropatellar cartilage thickness and the analysis of microstructural cancellous bone parameters within the tibial epiphysis. CONCLUSION Micro-CT arthrography is a novel technique for the indirect visualization of the distinct features and structural analysis of the rat knee joint. This technique represents an additional imaging and analysis tool in small-animal research.
He said, she said: The gendered use of public testimony in the child support reform process

This paper examines the evidence used to support the claims made in the Child Support chapter of the 2003 Inquiry into Child Custody report. Of the 220 references cited in the chapter, 110 refer to individual witnesses or representatives from gendered advocacy groups. We examine these 110 references to community hearing testimony and written submissions, paying particular attention to the gender of the informant and whose interests they served. Confirming the work of feminist legal and policy scholars, we found that most references were made to men or served the interest of payers (who are mostly men). Further, of the 31 references to statements made by women, the majority of these served the interests of payers. Thus, what was presented as legitimate evidence was gendered. We conclude that the voices and interests of women were marginalized in this part of the reform process.
Persuasive Silence Persuasive Silence

In the market where inattentive buyers can fail to notice some feasible choices, the key role of marketing is to make buyers aware of products. However, the e¤ective marketing strategy is often subtle since marketing tactics can make buyers cautious. This paper provides a framework to analyze an e¤ective marketing strategy to persuade an inattentive buyer in an adverse selection environment. We investigate how an attention-grabbing marketing can back reand when it can be e¤ective.
Similar mortality rates in hip fracture patients over the past 31 years

Background Over 320,000 hip fractures occur in North America each year and they are associated with a mortality rate ranging from 14% to 36% within 1 year of surgery. We assessed whether mortality and reoperation rates have improved in hip fracture patients over the past 31 years. Methods 3 electronic databases were searched for randomized controlled trials on hip fracture management, published between 1950 and 2013. Articles that assessed the surgical treatment of intertrochanteric or femoral neck fractures and measured mortality and/or reoperation rates were obtained. We analyzed overall mortality and reoperation rates, as well as mortality rates by fracture type, comparing mean values in different decades. Our primary outcome was the change in 1-year postoperative mortality. Results 70 trials published between 1981 and 2012 were included in the review. Overall, the mean 1-year mortality rate changed from 24% in the 1980s to 23% in the 1990s, and to 21% after 1999 (p = 0.7). 1-year mean mortality rates for intertrochanteric fractures diminished from 34% to 23% in studies published before 2000 and after 1999 (p = 0.005). Mean mortality rates for femoral neck fractures were similar over time (~20%). Reoperation rates were also similar over time. Interpretation We found similar mortality and reoperation rates in surgically treated hip fracture patients over time, with the exception of decreasing mortality rates in patients with intertrochanteric fractures.