Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatiotemporal Progression of Microcalcification in the Hippocampal CA1 Region following Transient Forebrain Ischemia in Rats: An Ultrastructural Study

Calcification in areas of neuronal degeneration is a common finding in several neuropathological disorders including ischemic insults. Here, we performed a detailed examination of the onset and spatiotemporal profile of calcification in the CA1 region of the hippocampus, where neuronal death has been observed after transient forebrain ischemia. Histopathological examinations showed very little alizarin red staining in the CA1 pyramidal cell layer until day 28 after reperfusion, while prominent alizarin red staining was detected in CA1 dendritic subfields, particularly in the stratum radiatum, by 14 days after reperfusion. Electron microscopy using the osmium/potassium dichromate method and electron probe microanalysis revealed selective calcium deposits within the mitochondria of degenerating dendrites at as early as 7 days after reperfusion, with subsequent complete mineralization occurring throughout the dendrites, which then coalesced to form larger mineral conglomerates with the adjacent calcifying neurites by 14 days after reperfusion. Large calcifying deposits were frequently observed at 28 days after reperfusion, when they were closely associated with or completely engulfed by astrocytes. In contrast, no prominent calcification was observed in the somata of CA1 pyramidal neurons showing the characteristic features of necrotic cell death after ischemia, although what appeared to be calcified mitochondria were noted in some degenerated neurons that became dark and condensed. Thus, our data indicate that intrahippocampal calcification after ischemic insults initially occurs within the mitochondria of degenerating dendrites, which leads to the extensive calcification that is associated with ischemic injuries. These findings suggest that in degenerating neurons, the calcified mitochondria in the dendrites, rather than in the somata, may serve as the nidus for further calcium precipitation in the ischemic hippocampus.
Electroweak phase transition and neutrino masses

The presently observed cosmological baryon asymmetry has been finally determined at the time of the electroweak phase transition, when baryon and lepton number violating interactions fell out of thermal equilibrium. We discuss the thermodynamics of the phase transition based on the free energy of the SU(2) Higgs model at finite temperature, which has been studied in perturbation theory and lattice simulations. The results suggest that the baryon asymmetry has been generated by lepton number violating interactions in the symmetric phase of the standard model, i.e., at temperatures above the critical temperature of the electroweak transition. The observed value of the baryon asymmetry, $n_B/s \sim 10^{-10}$, is naturally obtained in an extension of the standard model with right-handed neutrinos where $B-L$ is broken at the unification scale $\Lambda_{GUT}}\sim 10^{16}$ GeV. The corresponding pattern of masses and mixings of the light neutrinos $\nu_e$, $\nu_\mu$ and $\nu_\tau$ is briefly described.
Dynamic Optimization and Learning: How Should a Manager Set Prices When the Demand Function is Unknown?

This paper considers the problem of changing prices over time to maximize expectedrevenues in the presence of unknown demand distribution parameters. It providesand compares several methods that use the sequence of past prices and observeddemands to set price in the current period. A Taylor series expansion of the futurereward function explicitly illustrates the tradeoff between short term revenuemaximization and future information gain and suggests a promising pricing policyreferred to as a one-step look-ahead rule. An in-depth Monte Carlo study comparesseveral different pricing strategies and shows that the one-step look-ahead rulesdominate other heuristic policies and produce good short term performance. Thereasons for the observed bias of parameter estimates are also investigated.
Choroidal metastasis from granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor‐producing esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a case report

Granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF)‐producing esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is rare. Esophageal cancer is a highly aggressive disease and often spreads hematogenously; however, choroidal metastases are rarely seen. This report detailed an extremely rare case of G‐CSF‐producing ESCC with choroidal metastasis.
MULTILOCUS MODELS OF SYMPATRIC SPECIATION: BUSH VERSUS RICE VERSUS FELSENSTEIN

Abstract In populations of phytophagous insects that use the host plant as a rendezvous for mating, divergence in host preference could lead to sympatric speciation. Speciation requires the elimination of “generalist” genotypes, that is, those with intermediate host preference. This could occur because such genotypes have an inherent fitness disadvantage, or because preference alleles become associated with alleles that are oppositely selected on the two hosts. Although the former mechanism has been shown to be plausible, the latter mechanism has not been studied in detail. I consider a multilocus model (the “Bush model”) in which one set of biallelic loci affects host preference, and a second set affects viability on the hosts once chosen. Alleles that increase viability on one host decrease viability on the other, and all loci are assumed to be unlinked. With moderately strong selection on the viability loci, preference alleles rapidly become associated with viability alleles, and the population splits into two reproductively isolated host specialist populations. The conditions for speciation to occur in this model, as measured by the strength of selection required, are somewhat more stringent than in a model in which preference and viability are controlled by the same loci (one-trait model). In contrast, the conditions are much less stringent than in a model in which speciation requires buildup of associations between viability loci and loci controlling a host-independent assortative mating trait (canonical two-trait model). Moreover, in the one-trait model, and to a lesser extent the Bush model, the strength of selection needed to initiate speciation is only slightly greater than that needed to complete it. This indicates that documenting instances of sympatric species that are reproductively isolated only by host or habitat preference would provide evidence for the plausibility of sympatric speciation in nature.
Global Dissipativity for A-Stable Methods

This paper concerns the discretization of the initial value problem $u_{t}=f(u)$ under the three structural conditions:\\ (i) $f:{\Bbb C}^{N}\longrightarrow {\Bbb C}^{N},\;\;\;$ $\Re e\langle f(u),\, u\rangle\leq a-b|u|^{2},\;\;\;\;a\geq 0,\;b>0$ for all $u\in {\Bbb C}^{N}$; \\ (ii) $f:{\Bbb C}^{N}\longrightarrow {\Bbb C}^{N},\;\;\;$ $\Re e\langle f(u),\,u\rangle 0$;\\ (iii) $f:W\longrightarrow H,\;\;\;$ $\Re e\langle f(w),\,w\rangle_{H} \leq a -b|w|_{H}^{2},\;\;\;\;a\geq 0,\,b>0$ for all $w\in W$\\ for complex Hilbert spaces $W\subseteq H$. Dahlquist's G-stability theory is used to show that linear multistep and one-leg methods yield dissipative discretizations for all $f$ satisfying (i) if and only if the method $(\rho, \sigma)$ is A-stable. Extensions of G-stability theory are made to find necessary and sufficient conditions on $(\rho,\,\sigma)$ for similar properties to hold in cases (ii) and (iii). In every case, conditions are found for the strict contractivity of solutions for large initial data, and bounds for the asymptotic rate of decay are calculated in cases (i) and (iii).
How Many Slaps Is Equivalent to One Punch? New Approaches to Assessing the Relative Severity of Violent Acts

Objective: The study assesses the extent to which responses to different judgment tasks align consistently to reveal underlying rank orderings of violent acts by their level of severity. Method: There were 4 studies (total N = 540, adult sample). Participants were presented with a variety of tasks: ranking task: report your ranking of violent acts from least to most violent; trade-off task: report how many of less violent acts is equivalent to 1 more violent act? ; compensation task: report the financial compensation needed that would exactly compensate you for being a victim of a violent act. For these tasks they were required to consider 3 violent acts (Study 1), and 8 violent acts (Studies 2, 3, and 4). Results: The similarity in the rank ordering of violent acts by severity in each study was relatively high in each study (77–92%). In Study 4 the average compensation (USD) request was for a spit ($8,929), slap ($9,876), kick ($10,499), punch ($10,354), head-butt ($19,636), threaten with a knife ($11,631), choke ($118,119), and stab ($125,596). A meta-analysis conducted across studies (2–4) also revealed that there was general agreement in the way in which violent acts were ordered by severity (p < .0005); from least to most severe: spit, slap, kick, punch, head-butt, threaten with a knife, choke, and stab. Conclusion: People generally agree on their ranking of violent acts according to their severity, and from this it is possible to develop ranking systems that are sensitive to people’s judgments of the level of violence of various acts.
An Examination of Distraction Use in Exposure Therapy for Anxiety

Individuals often utilize distraction strategies to cope with distress that results from anxiety-provoking situations. While some theories suggest that distraction will impede improvement during exposure, others suggest it may not be harmful, and may in fact aid in fear reduction. Experimental results parallel these divergent theories, with support for distraction both helping and hindering treatment. Given these mixed findings, the goal of these studies was to investigate factors that may help explain the differences observed in the extant literature. In Study 1 a measure of maladaptive beliefs about distraction, the Beliefs about Distraction Inventory (BADI), was developed and validated in an unselected student sample (N = 506) and confirmed in a contamination-fearful sample (N = 132). Results indicated that the BADI was psychometrically sound and consisted of two factors: Distraction is Necessary and Distraction is Effective. This factor structure was confirmed in the contamination-fearful sample, and similar psychometric properties were observed. Study 2 was comprised of two studies that together aimed to assess the impact of differing levels of distraction on exposure outcome. In Experiment 1 verbal distraction tasks were experimentally validated in an undergraduate sample (N = 180) using a reaction time task. Three different levels of distraction were established, categorized as utilizing low, moderate, and high levels of cognitive load. In Experiment 2 the three tasks varying in distraction intensity were compared to a no distraction control during an exposure session with contamination-fearful individuals (N = 124). Changes in behavioural approach did not differ significantly across conditions at post-exposure or at one-week follow-up. However, treatment acceptability was highest in conditions utilizing moderate or high levels of distraction, and changes in self-efficacy were greatest in the moderate distraction condition. Finally, preliminary analyses were conducted to assess the impact of maladaptive beliefs about distraction on exposure outcome. Results showed that high BADI scores were related to less improvement over the course of an exposure session when moderate distraction was utilized. The results of these studies are discussed in terms of theoretical and clinical implications, including the cognitive-behavioural treatment of anxiety and related disorders.
Phenomenological modeling of the nucleated polymerization of human islet amyloid polypeptide : a combined experimental and theoretical approach

The inverse scattering problem is based on the scattering theory in physics, where measured data such as radiation from an object is used to determine the unique structure of the object in question. This approach has been widely successful in fields ranging from geophysics and medical imaging, to quantum field theory. In 1996 Henrik Flyvbjerg suggested that a similar approach could be used to study a reaction far from equilibrium of the self-assembly of a nucleation dependent biopolymer and, under certain conditions, uniquely determine the kinetics of the assembly. Here we use this approach to elucidate the unique structure of human islet amyloid polypeptide, also known as amylin, in-vitro. We use a systematic phenomenological analysis of the amount of monomer in fibril, of amylin, for various initial concentrations from an unstructured monomer pool. Using the assumption that nucleation is the rate-limiting step in fibril formation, we invoke mass action to develop our model. We find that the fibrillogenesis of amylin is well described by a nucleation dependent polymerization event that is characteristic of the sigmoidal shape of the reaction profile generated by our data. Furthermore, we find a second nucleation event is needed to accurately match model predictions to the observed data for the kinetic profiles of fibril formation, and the experimental length distributions of mature fibrils from in-vitro assays. This analysis allows for the theoretical determination of each step of assembly in the nucleation process. Specifically, we find the number of steps to nucleation, the size of each oligomer formed in the nucleation process, the nucleus size, and the elongation kinetics of fibrils. The secondary nucleation process is found to be a fibril dependent surface mediated nucleation event and is similar in reaction order to the primary nucleation step. Model predictions are found to be congruent with experimental assay results of oligomer populations and monomer concentration. We demonstrates that, a persistent oligomer formation is a natural and necessary consequence of nucleated fibril formation, given certain qualitative features of the kinetic profile of fibril formation. Furthermore, the modeling assumptions about monomer and fibril mass are in agreement with experiment.
Statistical attack against iris-biometric fuzzy commitment schemes

The fuzzy commitment scheme has been leveraged as a means of biometric template protection. Binary templates are replaced by helper data which assist the retrieval of cryptographic keys. Biometric variance is overcome by means of error correction while authentication is performed indirectly by verifying key validities. A statistical attack against the fuzzy commitment scheme is presented. Comparisons of different pairs of binary biometric feature vectors yield binomial distributions, with standard deviations bounded by the entropy of biometric templates. In case error correction consists of a series of chunks helper data becomes vulnerable to statistical attacks. Error correction codewords are bound to separate parts of a binary template among which biometric entropy is dispersed. As a consequence, chunks of the helper data are prone to statistical significant false acceptance. In experiments the proposed attack is applied to different iris-biometric fuzzy commitment schemes retrieving cryptographic keys at alarming low effort.
Modelling the transmission dynamics of online social contagion

During 2014-15, there were several outbreaks of nominated-based online social contagion. These infections, which were transmitted from one individual to another via posts on social media, included games such as 'neknomination', 'ice bucket challenge', 'no make up selfies', and Facebook users re-posting their first profile pictures. Fitting a mathematical model of infectious disease transmission to outbreaks of these four games in the United Kingdom, I estimated the basic reproduction number, $R_0$, and generation time of each infection. Median estimates for $R_0$ ranged from 1.9-2.5 across the four outbreaks, and the estimated generation times were between 1.0 and 2.0 days. Tests using out-of-sample data from Australia suggested that the model had reasonable predictive power, with $R^2$ values between 0.52-0.70 across the four Australian datasets. Further, the relatively low basic reproduction numbers for the infections suggests that only 48-60% of index cases in nomination-based games may subsequently generate major outbreaks.
The Perceptions of Race and Gender and its Effect on a Leader’s Favorability

This experiment aimed to find out how race and gender (Black, White, male, female) could affect perceptions of leadership favorability. Previous research showed that White male leaders are considered more favorable in leadership positions than White female and Black leaders. This is related to stereotypical characteristics of White women and Black men that are perceived to be inconsistent with those of prototypical leaders (White men). Although Black women do not fit into the leader prototype of being White or a male, I hypothesized that White men and Black women would receive comparably higher evaluations in comparison to White women and Black men in post evaluations. Past research has also shown how these negative stereotypes and perceptions may affect minorities’ ability to gain positions of leadership. I also considered the influence of legitimate power (i.e. determining perceptions of leaders from different social groups). I anticipated that the effect of a leader’s gender and race on ratings of leader performance and interpersonal ratings would be buffered when their position was legitimized. Participants completed the Lost at Sea Survival Task and Moon Survival Task. They also completed the Modern Sexism, Modern Racism/Social Dominance, and Leader Evaluations measures that asked about their thoughts of race, gender and the leadership ability of a leader. The result of this study did not reveal any significant results that support our hypotheses; we offer possible explanations and limitations of the study.
High-speed online MPC based on a fast gradient method applied to power converter control

Bounding the computational complexity of an online optimization method in a real-time environment with hard time constraints is a challenging problem. This paper investigates a new solution approach based on a fast gradient method in the context of model predictive control (MPC) of power converters. Different from other solution methods that either provide bounds that are far off from the practically observed ones or do not allow for bounding the computational effort at all this method enables easy to compute and meaningful bounds that can further be decreased by means of a pre-conditioning technique.We report an implementation of the fast gradient method on an industrial-type digital signal processor with integer arithmetics and show that worst case runtimes are in the order of tens of μs using less than one kByte of memory while being numerically robust. Moreover, this method also improves the control performance compared to explicit MPC.
‘Off to the best start’? A multimodal critique of breast and formula feeding health promotional discourse

This study critically examines the multimodal discourses of baby-feeding practices in contemporary health promotion in the UK. Comparing two parallel texts from the ongoing Start4life campaign (one dedicated to breastfeeding, the other to bottle/formula feeding), our multimodal critical discourse analysis identifies a series of recurring, multisemiotic strategies through which these texts aim to promote breastfeeding as the most desirable, natural and even morally responsible method of infant nutrition. These discursive strategies, we argue, are underpinned and driven by neoliberal assumptions about infant feeding, health and risk, which fail to take into account the structural constraints that affect the take-up of the ‘ideal’ of breastfeeding, all the while propagating unobtainable and often contradictory notions of total motherhood and familial relations - discursive moves that can have negative consequences for the health and wellbeing of new mothers and their infants.
Toward Future Scenario Generation: Extracting Event Causality Exploiting Semantic Relation, Context, and Association Features

We propose a supervised method of extracting event causalities like conduct slash-and-burn agriculture! exacerbate desertification from the web using semantic relation (between nouns), context, and association features. Experiments show that our method outperforms baselines that are based on state-of-the-art methods. We also propose methods of generating future scenarios like conduct slash-and-burn agriculture! exacerbate desertification! increase Asian dust (from China)! asthma gets worse. Experiments show that we can generate 50,000 scenarios with 68% precision. We also generated a scenario deforestation continues! global warming worsens! sea temperatures rise! vibrio parahaemolyticus fouls (water), which is written in no document in our input web corpus crawled in 2007. But the vibrio risk due to global warming was observed in Baker-Austin et al. (2013). Thus, we “predicted” the future event sequence in a sense.
Embeddedness in the Making of Financial Capital: How Social Relations and Networks Benefit Firms Seeking Financing

I investigate how social embeddedness affects an organization's acquisition and cost of financial capital in middle-market banking—a lucrative but understudied financial sector. Using existing theory and original fieldwork, I develop a framework to explain how embeddedness can influence which firms get capital and at what cost. I then statistically examine my claims using national data on small-business lending. At the level of dyadic ties, I find that firms that embed their commercial transactions with their lender in social attachments receive lower interest rates on loans. At the network level, firms are more likely to get loans and to receive lower interest rates on loans if their network of bank ties has a mix of embedded ties and arm's-length ties. These network effects arise because embedded ties motivate network partners to share private resources, while arm's-length ties facilitate access to public information on market prices and loan opportunities so that the benefits of different types of ties are optimized within one network. I conclude with a discussion of how the value produced by a network is at a premium when it creates a bridge that links the public information of markets with the private resources of relationships.
PENGEMBANGAN MODEL PERSEDIAAN BAHAN BAKU DENGAN MEMPERTIMBANGKAN WAKTU KADALUWARSA DAN FAKTOR UNIT DISKON

Persediaan dalam suatu unit usaha dapat dikategorikan sebagai modal kerja yang berbentuk barang. Keberadaannya di satu sisi dianggap sebagai pemborosan, tetapi di sisi lain juga dianggap sebagai asset yang sangat diperlukan untuk menjamin kelancaran pemenuhan permintaan. Persediaan yang terlalu banyak akan mengakibatkan biaya persediaan meningkat karena bahan yang rusak, terutama karena bahan telah melewati batas waktu kadaluwarsa. Untuk meminimalkan total biaya persediaaan, perusahaan dapat juga mengusahakan penurunan biaya pembelian yang bisa diperoleh dengan mempertimbangkan potongan harga pembelian dari pemasok bila memesan dalam jumlah yang besar. Dengan demikian perlu dicari persediaan yang memberikan biaya yang paling minimal dalam pengadaan persediaan. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan tujuan untuk menghasilkan model perencanaan persediaan bahan baku dengan kendala keterbatasan waktu kadaluwarsa bahan dan terdapatnya faktor diskon, khususnya all unit discount quantity, yang diberlakukan oleh pemasok. Sedangkan model dasar yang digunakan yaitu model persediaan Economic Order Quantity (EOQ). Validasi model dilakukan dengan meniadakan unsur kadaluwarsa dan faktor unit diskon pada model. Validasi tersebut menyatakan bahwa model yang dikembangkan valid. Pada bagian akhir disajikan algoritma sederhana pencarian solusi model dan contoh numeriknya.