Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modulation of auditory neural responses by a visual context in human fear conditioning

Responses to a stimulus signaling danger depend not only on the nature of that stimulus, but also on the context in which it is presented. A large body of work has been conducted in experimental animals investigating the neural correlates of contextual modulation of fear responses. However, much less is known about this process in humans. In this study we used functional MRI in a fear conditioning paradigm to explore this phenomenon. Responses to acoustic conditioned stimuli in auditory cortex were modulated by the presence of a visual context which signaled the likelihood of receiving an aversive unconditioned stimulus. Furthermore, the presence of the aversive visual context was associated with enhanced activity in parietal cortex, which may reflect an increase in attention to the presence of environmental threat stimuli.
M ay 2 00 8 KW-sections for exceptional type Vinberg ’ s θ-groups

Let k be an algebraically closed field of characteristic not equal to 2 or 3, let G be an almost simple algebraic group of type F 4 , G 2 or D 4 and let θ be an automorphism of G of finite order, coprime to the characteristic. In this paper we consider the θ-group (in the sense of Vinberg) associated to these choices; we classify the positive rank automorphisms and give their Kac diagrams and we describe the little Weyl group in each case. As a result we show that all such θ-groups have KW-sections, confirming a conjecture of Popov in these cases. 0 Introduction Let G be a reductive algebraic group over the algebraically closed field k and let g = Lie(G). Let θ be a semisimple automorphism of G of order m, let dθ be the differential of θ and let ζ be a primitive m-th root of unity in k. (Thus if k is of positive characteristic p then p ∤ m.) There is a direct sum decomposition g = g(0) ⊕. ⊕ g(m − 1) where g(i) = {x ∈ g | dθ(x) = ζ i x} This is a Z/mZ-grading of g, that is [g(i), g(j)] ⊂ g(i + j) (i, j ∈ Z/mZ). Let G(0) = (G θ) •. Then G(0) is reductive, Lie(G(0)) = g(0) and G(0) stabilizes each component g(i). In [18], Vinberg studied invariant-theoretic properties of the G(0)-representation g(1). The analysis in [18] centres on the concept of a Cartan subspace, which is a maximal subspace of g(1) which is commutative and consists of semisimple elements. The principal results of [18] (for k = C) are:-any two Cartan subspaces of g(1) are G(0)-conjugate and any semisimple element of g(1) is contained in a Cartan subspace. -the G(0)-orbit through x ∈ g(1) is closed if and only if x is semisimple, and is unstable (that is, its closure contains 0) if and only if x is nilpotent. -let c be a Cartan subspace of g(1) and let W c = N G(0) (c)/Z G(0) (c), the little Weyl group. Then there is a Chevalley restriction theorem: the embedding c ֒→ g(1) induces an isomorphism k[g(1)] G(0) → k[c] Wc . -W c is a finite group generated by pseudoreflections, hence k[c] Wc is a polynomial ring. In the case of an involution, the decomposition g = g(0) ⊕ g(1) is the symmetric space …
Contracting with Repeated Moral Hazard and Private Evaluations

A repeated moral hazard setting in which the Principal privately observes the Agent’s output is studied. It is shown that there is no loss from restricting the analysis to contracts in which the Agent is supposed to exert effort every period, receives a constant efficiency wage and no feedback until he is fired. The optimal contract for a finite horizon is characterized, and shown to require burning of resources. These are only burnt after the worst possible realization sequence and the amount is independent of both the length of the horizon and the discount factor (d). For the infinite horizon case a family of fixed interval review contracts is characterized and shown to achieve first best as d ? 1. The optimal contract when d
Implementation of the GMRES method using householder transformations

The standard implementation of the GMRES method for solving large nonsymmetric linear systems involves a Gram-Schmidt process which is a potential source of significant numerical error. An alternative implementation is outlined here in which orthogonalization by Householder transformations replaces the Gram-Schmidt process. This implementation requires slightly less storage but somewhat more arithmetic than the standard one; however, numerical experiments suggest that it is more stable, especially as the limits of residual reduction are reached. The extra arithmetic required may be less significant when products of the coefficient matrix with vectors are expensive or on vector and, in particular, parallel machines.
The Dark and the Bright Side of Liquidity Risks: Evidence from Open-End Real Estate Funds in Germany

We use a unique and comprehensive data set on open-end real estate funds in Germany to study a liquidity crisis that hit this industry between 2005 and 2006. Since this industry is comparably unregulated our data set permits us to contrast competing explanations of liquidity crisis. We find that fundamental factors matter for the liquidity outflow in normal times. During the crisis, however, they do not play a role. During the panic only strategic complementarities drive withdrawals. Furthermore, we find that funds with a higher load fee suffer from substantially larger outflows in the crisis period, while a higher load fee reduces gross outflows in normal times. As institutional investors predominately invest in funds with a low load fee this is in line with recent theory arguing that complementarities are mitigated by the involvement of large institutional investors who can at least partially correct for the coordination failure resulting from complementarities.
99mTc Pyrene Derivative Complex Causes Double-Strand Breaks in dsDNA Mainly through Cluster-Mediated Indirect Effect in Aqueous Solution

Radiation therapy for cancer patients works by ionizing damage to nuclear DNA, primarily by creating double-strand breaks (DSB). A major shortcoming of traditional radiation therapy is the set of side effect associated with its long-range interaction with nearby tissues. Low-energy Auger electrons have the advantage of an extremely short effective range, minimizing damage to healthy tissue. Consequently, the isotope 99mTc, an Auger electron source, is currently being studied for its beneficial potential in cancer treatment. We examined the dose effect of a pyrene derivative 99mTc complex on plasmid DNA by using gel electrophoresis in both aqueous and methanol solutions. In aqueous solutions, the average yield per decay for double-strand breaks is 0.011±0.005 at low dose range, decreasing to 0.0005±0.0003 in the presence of 1 M dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). The apparent yield per decay for single-strand breaks (SSB) is 0.04±0.02, decreasing to approximately a fifth with 1 M DMSO. In methanol, the average yield per decay of DSB is 0.54±0.06 and drops to undetectable levels in 2 M DMSO. The SSB yield per decay is 7.2±0.2, changing to 0.4±0.2 in the presence of 2 M DMSO. The 95% decrease in the yield of DSB in DMSO indicates that the main mechanism for DSB formation is through indirect effect, possibly by cooperative binding or clustering of intercalators. In the presence of non-radioactive ligands at a near saturation concentration, where radioactive Tc compounds do not form large clusters, the yield of SSB stays the same while the yield of DSB decreases to the value in DMSO. DSBs generated by 99mTc conjugated to intercalators are primarily caused by indirect effects through clustering.
Biomarker Profiles in Women with PCOS and PCOS Offspring; A Pilot Study

Objective To study metabolic/inflammatory biomarker risk profiles in women with PCOS and PCOS offspring. Design Cross-sectional comparison of serum biomarkers. Setting University Medical Center Utrecht. Patients Hyperandrogenic PCOS women (HA-PCOS, n = 34), normoandrogenic PCOS women (NA-PCOS, n = 34), non-PCOS reference population (n = 32), PCOS offspring (n = 14, age 6–8 years), and a paedriatic reference population (n = 30). Main Outcome Measure(s) Clustering profile of adipocytokines (IL-1b, IL-6, IL-13, IL-17, IL-18, TNF-α, adiponectin, adipsin, leptin, chemerin, resistin, RBP4, DPP-IV/sCD26, CCL2/MCP-1), growth factors (PIGF, VEGF, sVEGF-R1), soluble cell adhesion molecules (sICAM-1/sCD54, sVCAM-1/sCD106), and other inflammatory related proteases (MMP-9, S100A8, Cathepsin S). Differences in median biomarker concentrations between groups, and associations with the free androgen index (FAI; Testosterone/SHBG x100). Results The cluster analysis identified leptin, RBP-4, DPP-IV and adiponectin as potential discriminative markers for HA-PCOS with a specifically strong correlation in cases with increased BMI. Leptin (R2 = 0.219) and adiponectin (R2 = 0.182) showed the strongest correlation with the FAI. When comparing median protein concentrations adult PCOS women with or without hyperandrogenemia, the most profound differences were observed for leptin (P < 0.001), DPP-IV (P = 0.005), and adiponectin (P < 0.001). Adjusting for age, BMI and multiple testing attenuated all differences. In PCOS offspring, MMP-9 (P = 0.001) and S100A8 (P < 0.001) concentrations were significantly higher compared to a healthy matched reference population, even after correcting for age and BMI and adjustment for multiple testing. Conclusion In this preliminary investigation we observed significant differences in adipocytokines between women with or without hyperandrogenic PCOS and non-PCOS controls, mostly influenced by BMI. Leptin and adiponectin showed the strongest correlation with the FAI in adult women with PCOS. In PCOS offspring other inflammatory biomarkers (MMP-9, S100A8) were increased, suggesting that these children may exhibit increased chronic low-grade inflammation. Additional research is required to confirm results of the current exploratory investigation.
Ontology Learning and Its Application in Software-Intensive Projects

Software artifacts, such as requirements, design, source code, documentation, and safety-related artifacts are typically expressed using domain-specific terminology. Automated tools which attempt to analyze software artifacts in order to perform tasks such as trace retrieval and maintenance, domain analysis, program comprehension, or to service natural language queries, need to understand the vocabulary and concepts of the domain in order to achieve acceptable levels of accuracy. Domain concepts can be captured and stored as an ontology. Unfortunately, constructing ontologies is extremely time-consuming and has proven hard to automate. This dissertation proposes a novel approach for semi-automated ontology building that leverages user-defined trace links to identify candidate domain facts. It uses a variety of web-mining, Natural Language Processing, and machine learning techniques to filter and rank the candidate facts, and to assist the user in building a domain-specific ontology. The benefits of the constructed ontology are described and evaluated within the context of automated trace link creation.
Abelian magnetic monopole dominance in quark confinement

We prove Abelian magnetic monopole dominance in the string tension of QCD. Abelian and monopole dominance in low energy physics of QCD has been confirmed for various quantities by recent Monte Carlo simulations of lattice gauge theory. In order to prove this dominance, we use the reformulation of continuum Yang-Mills theory in the maximal Abelian gauge as a deformation of a topological field theory of magnetic monopoles, which was proposed in the previous article by the author. This reformulation provides an efficient way for incorporating the magnetic monopole configuration as a topological non-trivial configuration in the functional integral. We derive a version of the non-Abelian Stokes theorem and use it to estimate the expectation value of the Wilson loop. This clearly exhibits the role played by the magnetic monopole as an origin of the Berry phase in the calculation of the Wilson loop in the manifestly gauge invariant manner. We show that the string tension derived from the diagonal (abelian) Wilson loop in the topological field theory (studied in the previous article) converges to that of the full non-Abelian Wilson loop in the limit of large Wilson loop. Therefore, within the above reformulation of QCD, this result (together with the previous result) completes the proof of quark confinement in QCD based on the criterion of the area law of the full non-Abelian Wilson loop.
Iterative Decoding for Wireless Networks

The invention of turbo codes and low density parity check (LDPC) codes has made it possible for us for design error correcting codes with low decoding complexity and rates close to channel capacity. However, such codes have been studied in detail only for the most basic communication system, in which a single transmitter sends data to a single receiver over a channel whose statistics are known to both the transmitter and the receiver. Such a simplistic model is not valid in the case of a wireless network, where multiple transmitters might want to communicate with multiple receivers at the same time over a channel which can vary rapidly. While the design of efficient error correction codes for a general wireless network is an extremely hard problem, it should be possible to design such codes for several important special cases. This thesis takes a few steps in that direction. We analyze the performance of low density parity check codes under iterative decoding in certain simple networks and prove Shannon-theoretic results for more complex networks. More specifically, we analyze the iterative decoding algorithm in two very important special cases: (a) when the transmitter and receiver have no prior knowledge of the channel and (b) when the channel is a multiple access channel. We also apply iterative decoding to some non-LDPC codes on the binary symmetric channel and the additive white Gaussian noise channel. Finally, we derive capacity results for a class of wireless multicast networks and a class of fading channels.
Effectiveness of the First Dose of BCG against Tuberculosis among HIV-Infected, Predominantly Immunodeficient Children

The objective of this study was to estimate the protective effect of Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine against tuberculosis among (predominantly immunodeficient) HIV-infected children in Angola. A hospital-based case-control study was conducted with 230 cases, children coinfected with tuberculosis, and 672 controls, HIV-infected children from the same hospital, aged 18 months to 13 years. The presence of a vaccination scar was taken as a proxy marker for BCG vaccination. The crude effectiveness was 8% (95% CI: −26 to 32) and the adjusted effectiveness was 30% (95% CI: −75 to 72). The present study suggests that BCG does not have a protective effect against tuberculosis among immunodeficient HIV-infected children. Since BCG is no longer given to HIV-infected children, the study may not be replicated. Accepting that these findings should be considered with caution, they are nonetheless likely to be the last estimate of BCG efficacy in a sufficiently powered study.
An “Escape Clock” for Estimating the Turnover of SIV DNA in Resting CD4+ T Cells

Persistence of HIV DNA presents a major barrier to the complete control of HIV infection under current therapies. Most studies suggest that cells with latently integrated HIV decay very slowly under therapy. However, it is much more difficult to study the turnover and persistence of HIV DNA during active infection. We have developed an “escape clock” approach for measuring the turnover of HIV DNA in resting CD4+ T cells. This approach studies the replacement of wild-type (WT) SIV DNA present in early infection by CTL escape mutant (EM) strains during later infection. Using a strain-specific real time PCR assay, we quantified the relative amounts of WT and EM strains in plasma SIV RNA and cellular SIV DNA. Thus we can track the formation and turnover of SIV DNA in sorted resting CD4+ T cells. We studied serial plasma and PBMC samples from 20 SIV-infected Mane-A*10 positive pigtail macaques that have a signature Gag CTL escape mutation. In animals with low viral load, WT virus laid down early in infection is extremely stable, and the decay of this WT species is very slow, consistent with findings in subjects on anti-retroviral medications. However, during active, high level infection, most SIV DNA in resting cells was turning over rapidly, suggesting a large pool of short-lived DNA produced by recent infection events. Our results suggest that, in order to reduce the formation of a stable population of SIV DNA, it will be important either to intervene very early or intervene during active replication.
Global Optimization of Polynomials Using Gradient Tentacles and Sums of Squares

We consider the problem of computing the global infimum of a real polynomial $f$ on $\mathbb R^n$. Every global minimizer of $f$ lies on its gradient variety, i.e., the algebraic subset of $\mathbb R^n$ where the gradient of $f$ vanishes. If $f$ attains a minimum on $\mathbb R^n$, it is therefore equivalent to look for the greatest lower bound of $f$ on its gradient variety. Nie, Demmel, and Sturmfels proved recently a theorem about the existence of sums of squares certificates for such lower bounds. Based on these certificates, they find arbitrarily tight relaxations of the original problem that can be formulated as semidefinite programs and thus be solved efficiently. We deal here with the more general case when $f$ is bounded from below but does not necessarily attain a minimum. In this case, the method of Nie, Demmel, and Sturmfels might yield completely wrong results. In order to overcome this problem, we replace the gradient variety by larger semialgebraic subsets of $\mathbb R^n$ which we call gradient tentacles. It now gets substantially harder to prove the existence of the necessary sums of squares certificates.
IT, Hedonic Price Indexes, and Productivity

National accounts deflators for computers and IT (information technology) equipment differ enormously. Computer equipment deflators in the national accounts of OECD countries recorded changes that ranged from +80% to –72% for the decade of the 1980s (Wyckoff, 1995). As these are internationally traded commodit ies, it is not plausible that internal market conditions in developed countries can create differences of this magnitude. A Eurostat task force (Eurostat, 1999) found a smaller dispersion among European countries’ IT deflators for the early 1990s. But still, price declines recorded by national computer deflators in Europe ranged from -10% to -47%. Again, such variations within a common market are too large to be caused by differences in national distribution systems and market conditions.
Integration by parts and representation of information functionals

We introduce a new formalism for computing expectations of functionals of arbitrary random vectors, by using generalised integration by parts formulae. In doing so we extend recent representation formulae for the score function introduced in [19] and also provide a new proof of a central identity first discovered in [7]. We derive a representation for the standardised Fisher information of sums of i.i. d. random vectors which we use to provide rates of convergence in information theoretic central limit theorems (both in Fisher information distance and in relative entropy) and a Stein bound for Fisher information distance.
Entropy power inequalities for qudits

Shannon’s entropy power inequality (EPI) can be viewed as a statement of concavity of an entropic function of a continuous random variable under a scaled addition rule: f(a X+1−a Y)≥af(X)+(1−a)f(Y)∀ a∈[0,1]. Here, X and Y are continuous random variables and the function f is either the differential entropy or the entropy power. Konig and Smith [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 60(3), 1536–1548 (2014)] and De Palma, Mari, and Giovannetti [Nat. Photonics 8(12), 958–964 (2014)] obtained quantum analogues of these inequalities for continuous-variable quantum systems, where X and Y are replaced by bosonic fields and the addition rule is the action of a beam splitter with transmissivity a on those fields. In this paper, we similarly establish a class of EPI analogues for d-level quantum systems (i.e., qudits). The underlying addition rule for which these inequalities hold is given by a quantum channel that depends on the parameter a ∈ [0, 1] and acts like a finite-dimensional analogue of a beam splitter with transmissiv.
Tracking topics in broadcast news data

This paper describes a topic tracking system and its ability to cope with sparse training data for broadcast news tracking. The baseline tracker which relies on a unigram topic model. In order to compensate for the very small amount of training data for each topic, document expansion is used in estimating the initial topic model, and unsupervised model adaptation is carried out after processing each test story. A new technique of variable weight unsupervised online adaptation has been developed and was found to outperform traditional fixed weight online adaptation. Combining both document expansion and adaptation resulted in a 37% cost reduction tested on both English and machine translated Mandarin broadcast news data transcribed by an ASR system, with manual story boundaries. Another challenging condition is one in which the story boundaries are not known for the broadcast news data. A window-based automatic story boundary detector has been developed for the tracking system. The tracking results with the window-based tracking system are comparable to those obtained with a state-of-the-art automatic story segmentation on the TDT3 corpus.
Why Do Secondary School Students Lose Their Interest in Science? Or Does it Never Emerge? A Possible and Overlooked Explanation

In this paper, we review research on how students’ interest in science changes through the primary to secondary school transition. In the literature, the findings generally show that primary students enjoy science but come to lose interest during secondary school. As this claim is based mainly on interview and questionnaire data, that is on secondary reports from students about their interest in science, these results are reexamined through our own extensive material from primary and secondary school on how interest is constituted through classroom discourse. Our results suggest the possibility that primary students do not lose their interest in science, but rather that an interest in science is never constituted. The overview indicates that studies relying on interviews and questionnaires make it difficult to ascertain what the actual object of interest is when students act in the science classroom. The possibility suggested should, if valid, have consequences for science education and be worthy of further examination.
The Secrecy Capacity Region of the Gaussian MIMO Broadcast Channel

In this paper, we consider a scenario where a source node wishes to broadcast two confidential messages for two respective receivers via a Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel. An eavesdropper also receives the transmitted signal via another MIMO channel. We first consider the discrete memoryless channel and obtain the capacity region of the degraded channel. The secret dirty paper coding (SDPC) region as an achievable rate region for the general discrete channel is introduced. Relying on the results for the discrete channel, we fully characterize the secrecy capacity region of MIMO broadcast channel. It is shown that the SDPC scheme is optimal. The converse part of the proof relies on the generalized Costa's entropy power inequality and a new channel enhancement strategy in which we only need to enhance the channels of the legitimate receivers, and the channel of the eavesdropper remains unchanged.