Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes of serum TSH level during oral glucose tolerance test: comparison of morning and evening test with plain circadian TSH rhythm.

OBJECTIVE To compare the changes of TSH level in serum during oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) with those resulting from a plain circadian rhythm and, in addition, to compare such changes between the morning and evening hours. METHODS Oral glucose tolerance tests were performed in groups of 8-20 adults after the oral administration of glucose (75 g in 400 ml tap water) at 8.00, 10.00 and 20.00 h. Blood samples for the estimation of TSH (supersensitive IRMA method) were taken in 30 min intervals for following 3 hours. In the same groups of subjects the blood samples were obtained between 8.00 and 13.00 h or between 20.00 and 23.00 h one week later for the assessment of plain circadian rhythm of TSH levels. RESULTS The level of TSH in a group subjected to OGTT at 8.00 h was significantly decreased (P<0.05) between 8.30 and 10.30 h, i.e. 30-150 min after glucose administration which was parallel to the circadian decrease found in the same subjects. However, this was followed by an increase of TSH up to the original level reached at 11.00 h which was contrasting to a circadian decrease. Similar pattern was found also when OGTT was started at 10.00 h. In a group subjected to the evening OGTT at 20.00 h similar decrease of TSH level was found at 21.00 h which was contrasting to the circadian increase. However, this was followed by a remarkable increase of TSH level between 21.00 and 23.00 h which was parallel to the circadian trend, but much more abrupt than that found without the previous administration of glucose. CONCLUSIONS In both the morning and evening OGTT a decrease of TSH level was found between 30 and 90 min after glucose administration which was followed by an increase between 90 and 180 min after that. The decrease during the morning test was parallel to the circadian trend, while the increase was opposite to that. However, an inverse figure was found in the evening test, the decrease of TSH being opposite and following increase being parallel to the circadian trend.
A study of perceived vocal features in emotional speech

Perceived vocal features of emotional speech have rarely been investigated. In this contribution, a procedure allowing to collect reliable judgments on the perception of voice characteristics of emotional speech is presented. Relations between acoustic parameters and perceived features of speech are described. Some benefits and potential drawbacks of studying perceived vocal features in emotional speech are introduced and discussed.
High coronary mortality in cold regions of Sweden

Abstract. The hypothesis that cold climate is associated with high coronary mortality in Sweden is tested. Cold exposure was calculated in each of the 284 municipalities of Sweden. There was a significant association between cold exposure and coronary mortality in both sexes in all age groups. The strongest association was found in men aged 40–64 years (coefficient of determination k = 0.39). The decile of men aged 40–64 years who lived in the coldest municipalities had a 40% excess mortality. A significant association was also found between cold exposure and mortality from cerebrovascular diseases. We conclude that there is a strong regional association between cold exposure and high coronary mortality.
A statistical model for estimating the effect of process variations on crosstalk noise

Noise violation analysis due to crosstalk is recognized as one of the most challenging problems in Ultra Deep Submicron circuits, besides statistical techniques seem to be a promising approach both for early estimation and final signoff tasks. In this work a general closed form for the voltage distribution on the victim line, based on capacitance statistical distributions, is derived. Experimental results show that the proposed methodology is reliable to early estimate the effect of process variations on crosstalk noise.
Prevalence and causes of avoidable blindness and severe visual impairment in a tribal district of Maharashtra, India

Background: We present the outcomes of a survey conducted in Nandurbar, a tribal district of Maharashtra, India. It was based on “Rapid Assessment for Avoidable Blindness” methodology and conducted in 2009 in Nandurbar, a tribal district of Maharashtra, India. Materials and Methods: We examined persons of 50 years and older ages. Ophthalmic assistants noted the distant vision [best corrected vision (BCV) and as presented]. Ophthalmologist examined eyes of persons with vision less than 6/18. The principal cause of impairment in each eye and the most “preventable” or “treatable” cause were assigned. We calculated the prevalence rates of bilateral blindness, severe visual impairment (SVI), and moderate visual impairment (MVI). Result: We examined 2,005/2,300 persons (response rate 87.2%). The prevalence of blindness, SVI, and MVI for the BCV was 1.63% (95% CI 1.11–2.15), 5.93% (95% CI 4.96–6.90), and 14.6% (95% CI 13.2–16.1), respectively. The prevalence of blindness, SVI, and MVI for the presented vision was 1.87% (1.32–2.42), 6.72% (95% CI 5.70–7.74), and 19% (95% CI 17.4–20.6), respectively. Unoperated cataract was responsible for 77% of different visual disabilities. The coverage of existing cataract surgery service was 9.4%. Lack of knowledge about cataract surgery was the main cause of unoperated cataract among 41% of interviewed participants with cataract and SVI. Conclusion: Unoperated cataract was the main curable cause of visual disabilities in tribal population of India. Increasing awareness and offering cataract surgeries at affordable cost in the district would reduce visual disabilities.
Modeling user reputation in wikis

Collaborative systems available on the Web allow millions of users to share information through a growing collection of tools and platforms such as wikis, blogs, and shared forums. By their very nature, these systems contain resources and information with different quality levels. The open nature of these systems, however, makes it difficult for users to determine the quality of the available information and the reputation of its providers. Here, we first parse and mine the entire English Wikipedia history pages in order to extract detailed user edit patterns and statistics. We then use these patterns and statistics to derive three computational models of a user's reputation. Finally, we validate these models using ground‐truth Wikipedia data associated with vandals and administrators. When used as a classifier, the best model produces an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of 0.98. Furthermore, we assess the reputation predictions generated by the models on other users, and show that all three models can be used efficiently for predicting user behavior in Wikipedia. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining 3: 126‐139, 2010
Group-Induced Decision Polarization: Further Generalizations

Three experiments on the group polarization phenomenon are reported. Experiments 1 and 2 found decision polarization on issues relevant to the South African socio-political context and among groups meeting repeatedly, over four sessions. Polarization in these more established groups was similar to that in typical single-session groups at the group decision stage, but established groups retained the degree of polarization to a greater extent. Nominal groups failed to polarize. Experiment 3 also found polarization with socially relevant items (attitudes towards women's equality) but failed to find differential effects owing to real and ‘symbolic encounters’. Overall, these results extend the generalizability of polarization, particularly to more established groups and with issues relevant to socio-political contexts. Additional findings concern group-size effects, methodological aspects, and recidivism of polarization effects.
Archeological Implications of Traditional House Construction Among the Nchumuru of Northern Ghana [and Comments and Reply]

Ethnographic data from the Nchumuru settlement of Wiae, Kete-Krachi District, northern Volta Region, Ghana, are used to examine the manner in which earth-walled houses in Nchumuru traditional settlements are transferred from the systemic to the archeological record. Archeological survey and excavation of two early Nchumuru sites were conducted to establish the extent to which the observed cultural and natural processes of house and settlement development could help identify the location and distribution of prehistoric structural features. The result was the almost complete reconstruction of the location and distribution of structural features at one of these sites. Knowledge of the mechanisms of construction and maintenance of earth-walled structures and of their deterioration and collapse proved basic to the identification of the spatial characteristics of the archeological sites. Further, the link between the archeological evidence and the processes of house construction and decay observed in modern Wiae underlines the cultural continuity of Nchumuru with the large Guangspeaking society of Ghana and adjoining territories. Finally, the study indicates that material identification and characterisation in archeology should include the processes of formation and decay of structural features.
The Distinct Alterations Produced in Cardiovascular Functions by Prednisolone and Nitro-prednisolone (NCX-1015) in the Rat Highlight a Causal Role for Endothelin-1

Daily administration of prednisolone, but not the derivative NCX-1015 (or prednisolone 21-[4′-nitrooxymethyl]benzoate), to rats resulted in a time- and dose-dependent increase in mean arterial blood pressure (MABP), significant after 1 week for the dose of 6.9 μmol/kg i.p. (n = 10; P < 0.05), and 3 weeks for the lower dose of 1.38 μmol/kg. A similar dichotomy of behavior was observed with respect to myocardial contractility and renal vascular resistance, in either case augmented by 3-week treatment with prednisolone but not NCX-1015. In contrast, both NCX-1015 and prednisolone reduced plasma levels of corticosterone in a dose- (dose range of 0.69-6.9 μmol/kg i.p.) and time-dependent (1-3 weeks) manner. Similar profiles were obtained for plasma nitrate values, although they were increased selectively after NCX-1015 administration. In contrast, prednisolone, but not NCX-1015, augmented plasma endothelin 1 (ET-1) with a profile that mirrored the changes observed in MABP and renal blood flow. Supply in the drinking water of the ET-1 receptor type A (ETA) antagonist FR139317 [(R-2-[(R)-2-[(S)-2-[[1-(hexahydro-1H-azepinyl)]-carbonyl]amino-4-methylpentanoyl]-amino-3-(2-pyridil)propionic] or mixed ETA/B, but not of selective ETB, antagonists prevented the changes produced by a 21-day treatment with prednisolone. In conclusion, this study indicates 1) a lack of occurrence of cardiovascular alterations by nitro-releasing derivative of prednisolone (NCX-1015), and 2) a functional link between prednisolone effects and the endogenous endothelin-1 system.
Assessment of the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on neurophysiologic, cognitive, and behavioral outcome measures

Background: Over the last 15-years, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a relatively novel form of neuromodulation, has seen a surge of popularity in both clinical and academic settings. Despite numerous claims suggesting that a single session of tDCS can modulate cognition in healthy adult populations (especially working memory and language production), the paradigms utilized and results reported in the literature are extremely variable. To address this, we conduct the largest quantitative review of the cognitive data to date. Methods: Single-session tDCS data in healthy adults (18e50) from every cognitive outcome measure reported by at least two different research groups in the literature was collected. Outcome measures were divided into 4 broad categories: executive function, language, memory, and miscellaneous. To account for the paradigmatic variability in the literature, we undertook a three-tier analysis system; each with less-stringent inclusion criteria than the prior. Standard mean difference values with 95% CIs were generated for included studies and pooled for each analysis. Results: Of the 59 analyses conducted, tDCS was found to not have a significant effect on any e regardless of inclusion laxity. This includes no effect on any working memory outcome or language production task. Conclusion: Our quantitative review does not support the idea that tDCS generates a reliable effect on cognition in healthy adults. Reasons for and limitations of this finding are discussed. This work raises important questions regarding the efficacy of tDCS, state-dependency effects, and future directions for this tool in cognitive research. 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Co-factorization machines: modeling user interests and predicting individual decisions in Twitter

Users of popular services like Twitter and Facebook are often simultaneously overwhelmed with the amount of information delivered via their social connections and miss out on much content that they might have liked to see, even though it was distributed outside of their social circle. Both issues serve as difficulties to the users and drawbacks to the services. Social media service providers can benefit from understanding user interests and how they interact with the service, potentially predicting their behaviors in the future. In this paper, we address the problem of simultaneously predicting user decisions and modeling users' interests in social media by analyzing rich information gathered from Twitter. The task differs from conventional recommender systems as the cold-start problem is ubiquitous, and rich features, including textual content, need to be considered. We build predictive models for user decisions in Twitter by proposing Co-Factorization Machines (CoFM), an extension of a state-of-the-art recommendation model, to handle multiple aspects of the dataset at the same time. Additionally, we discuss and compare ranking-based loss functions in the context of recommender systems, providing the first view of how they vary from each other and perform in real tasks. We explore an extensive set of features and conduct experiments on a real-world dataset, concluding that CoFM with ranking-based loss functions is superior to state-of-the-art methods and yields interpretable latent factors.
Interneuron firing precedes sequential activation of neuronal ensembles in hippocampal slices

Neuronal firing sequences that occur during behavioral tasks are precisely reactivated in the neocortex and the hippocampus during rest and sleep. These precise firing sequences are likely to reflect latent memory traces, and their reactivation is believed to be essential for memory consolidation and working memory maintenance. However, how the organized repeating patterns emerge through the coordinated interplay of distinct types of neurons remains unclear. In this study, we monitored ongoing spatiotemporal firing patterns using a multi‐neuron calcium imaging technique and examined how the activity of individual neurons is associated with repeated ensembles in hippocampal slice cultures. To determine the cell types of the imaged neurons, we applied an optical synapse mapping method that identifies network connectivity among dozens of neurons. We observed that inhibitory interneurons exhibited an increase in their firing rates prior to the onset of repeating sequences, while the overall activity level of excitatory neurons remained unchanged. A specific repeating sequence emerged preferentially after the firing of a specific interneuron that was located close to the neuron first activated in the sequence. The times of repeating sequences could be more precisely predicted based on the activity patterns of inhibitory cells than excitatory cells. In line with these observations, stimulation of a single interneuron could trigger the emergence of repeating sequences. These findings provide a conceptual framework that interneurons serve as a key regulator of initiating sequential spike activity.
Assessment of nootropic and amnestic activity of centrally acting agents

Cognitive deficits have long been recognized as severe and consistent neurological disorders associated with numerous psychiatric and neurodegenerative states such as Alzheimer's disease. Many experimental models are currently available for the evaluation of agents that affect learning and memory processes. Mazes are the traditional tool in assessing cognitive performance in animals. Apart from passive-avoidance task for short-term memory and Morris water maze task for spatial learning, other paradigms such as radial arm maze and Y-maze consistently measure the working/reference memory and agents that affect these processes. The transfer latency on elevated plus-maze is another simple paradigm to reveal the nootropic and amnestic activity of centrally acting agents. The complex-mazes such as Stone T-maze are built by combining several simple maze segments to assess mixed spatial, working/reference and taxon learning skills in animals. The active-avoidance behaviour induced by a sequence of conditioned and unconditional stimuli is a classic model for the assessment of cognitive performance after brain lesions or pharmacological disruption of cognition. Drug-induced acquisition/re-tention deficits, brain lesion-induced task specific cognitive dysfunction and electroshock-induced general amnesia may provide a consistent battery of screening models for the development of agents that ameliorates the memory deficits in rodents. Several human psychometric and verbal learning skill tests are also available for the clinical assessment and confirmation of nootropic activity. These rapid developments in the field of animal models of learning and memory processes may hopefully lead to an improved understanding of the pathophysiology of cognitive disorders, and finally permit a rational designing of novel therapeutic strategies. for distinct cognitive dysfunctions.
Natural Deduction for Hybrid Logic

In this paper we give a natural deduction formulation of hybrid logic. Our natural deduction system can be extended with additional inference rules corresponding to conditions on the accessibility relations expressed by so-called geometric theories. Thus, we give natural deduction systems in a uniform way for a wide class of hybrid logics which appears to be impossible in the context of ordinary modal logic. We prove soundness and completeness and we prove a normalization theorem. We finally prove a result which says that normal derivations in the natural deduction system correspond to derivations in a cut-free Gentzen system.
Hypoxia increases calcium flux through cortical neuron glutamate receptors via protein kinase C

The effects of 30 s to 10 min hypoxia (PO2−10 mmHg) on glutamate receptor activity were studied in murine cortical neurons. Receptor activity was assessed as a rise in intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) following a 10 s application of 1 mm glutamate or 100 µmN‐methy‐d‐aspartate (NMDA) in the presence of 0.1 mm Mg2+ and 10 µm glycine. Change in [Ca2+]i elicited by glutamate increased 26% (n = 192, p < 0.001) and that to NMDA by 74% (n = 9, p < 0.01) during a 100‐s period of hypoxia. After 10 min hypoxia, responses to glutamate were 62% smaller than those in normoxia, with increased basal intracellular [Ca2+]i predicting reduced receptor activity. When neurons were exposed to NMDA after 10 min of hypoxia, [Ca2+]i increases were 12% smaller than after 100 s hypoxia, but still 53% larger than in oxygenated neurons (n = 9, p = 0.01). Neurons expressed relatively similar amounts of NR2A, ‐B, ‐C, and ‐D subunits. The phosphorylation of NMDA NR1 subunits increased during hypoxia. Pre‐treatment of neurons with a protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor (chelerythrine, 10 µm) prevented increases in N‐methy‐d‐aspartate receptor (NMDAR) activity during hypoxia and reduced the phosphorylation of NR1 subunits. These results suggest that enhancement of glutamate receptor activity during the first minutes of hypoxia is mediated by phosphorylation of NMDARs by PKC and that other mechanisms, possibly involving intracellular calcium, limit glutamate receptor‐mediated calcium influx during longer periods of hypoxia.
Activism of immigrants in vulnerable conditions and radical-left allies: a case study of Italy’s Struggle of the Crane

ABSTRACT As interest in immigrant mobilisations in hostile national environments grows among migration scholars, the reasons why immigrants in vulnerable conditions engage in radicalised mobilisation at the local level and why they make alliances with controversial non-institutional radical-left actors need to be further explained. This study examines the conditions of mobilisation and radicalisation by undocumented immigrants in Brescia (a mid-sized city in Northern Italy) through the lens of a contentious moment that took place for two months in 2010, known as the Struggle of the Crane (Lotta della gru). It addresses two questions: why have undocumented immigrants in Brescia been mobilised to contentious political activism? And, why have they created partnerships with non-institutional radical-left organisations, rather than institutional non-state organisations, such as the Church and traditional trade unions? In addition to the hostile national context, discrimination and repression by local authorities triggered the motivation for mobilisation and nourished the radicalisation of the struggle and its endurance. Additionally, competing discourses and practices over immigrants’ access to rights and deservingness by multiple non-state actors played a key role in shaping alliances. The long-lasting alliance with the radical left since the 1990s was renewed and reinforced in 2010 by immigrants’ growing distrust towards institutional non-state actors.
Deliberation favours social efficiency by making people disregard their relative shares: evidence from USA and India

Groups make decisions on both the production and the distribution of resources. These decisions typically involve a tension between increasing the total level of group resources (i.e. social efficiency) and distributing these resources among group members (i.e. individuals' relative shares). This is the case because the redistribution process may destroy part of the resources, thus resulting in socially inefficient allocations. Here we apply a dual-process approach to understand the cognitive underpinnings of this fundamental tension. We conducted a set of experiments to examine the extent to which different allocation decisions respond to intuition or deliberation. In a newly developed approach, we assess intuition and deliberation at both the trait level (using the Cognitive Reflection Test, henceforth CRT) and the state level (through the experimental manipulation of response times). To test for robustness, experiments were conducted in two countries: the USA and India. Despite absolute-level differences across countries, in both locations we show that: (i) time pressure and low CRT scores are associated with individuals' concerns for their relative shares and (ii) time delay and high CRT scores are associated with individuals' concerns for social efficiency. These findings demonstrate that deliberation favours social efficiency by overriding individuals' intuitive tendency to focus on relative shares.