Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and pattern separation in DG: a role for feedback inhibition in modulating sparseness to govern population-based coding

The dentate gyrus (DG) of mammals harbors neural stem cells that generate new dentate granule cells (DGCs) throughout life. Behavioral studies using the contextual fear discrimination paradigm have found that selectively augmenting or blocking adult hippocampal neurogenesis enhances or impairs discrimination under conditions of high, but not low, interference suggestive of a role in pattern separation. Although contextual discrimination engages population-based coding mechanisms underlying pattern separation such as global remapping in the DG and CA3, how adult hippocampal neurogenesis modulates pattern separation in the DG is poorly understood. Here, we propose a role for adult-born DGCs in re-activation coupled modulation of sparseness through feed-back inhibition to govern global remapping in the DG.
Religion and Attitudes to Corporate Social Responsibility in a Large Cross-Country Sample

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the relationship between religious denomination and individual attitudes to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the context of a large sample of over 17,000 individuals drawn from 20 countries. We address two general questions: do members of religious denominations have different attitudes concerning CSR than people of no denomination? And: do members of different religions have different attitudes to CSR that conform to general priors about the teachings of different religions? Our evidence suggests that, broadly, religious individuals do not prioritise the responsibilities of the firm differently, but do tend to hold broader conceptions of the social responsibilities of businesses than non-religious individuals. However, we show that this neither true for all religious groups, nor for all areas of CSR.
Pricing Wind: A Revenue Adequate, Cost Recovering Uniform Price for Electricity Markets with Intermittent Generation

With greater penetration of renewable generation, the uncertainty faced in electricity markets has increased substantially. Conventionally, generators are assigned a pre-dispatch quantity in advance of real time, based on estimates of uncertain quantities. Expensive real time adjustments then need to be made to ensure demand is met, as uncertainty takes on a realization. We propose a new stochastic-programming market clearing mechanism to optimize pre-dispatch quantities, given the uncertainties’ probability distribution and the costs of real-time deviation. This model differs from similar mechanisms previously proposed in that pre-dispatch quantities are not subject to any network or other physical constraints; nor do they play a role in financial settlement. We establish revenue adequacy in each scenario (as opposed to “in expectation”), welfare enhancement and expected cost recovery (including deviation costs), for this market clearing mechanism. We also establish that this market clearing mechanism is social welfare optimizing.
The use of high pressure CO2‐facilitated pH swings to enhance in situ product recovery of butyric acid in a two‐phase partitioning bioreactor

Through the use of high partial pressures of CO2 (pCO2) to facilitate temporary pH reductions in two‐phase partitioning bioreactors (TPPBs), improved pH dependent partitioning of butyric acid was observed which achieved in situ product recovery (ISPR), alleviating end‐product inhibition (EPI) during the production of butyric acid by Clostridium tyrobutyricum (ATCC 25755). Through high pressure pCO2 studies, media buffering effects were shown to be substantially overcome at 60 bar pCO2, resulting in effective extraction of the organic acid by the absorptive polymer Pebax® 2533, yielding a distribution coefficient (D) of 2.4 ± 0.1 after 1 h of contact at this pressure. Importantly, it was also found that C. tyrobutyricum cultures were able to withstand 60 bar pCO2 for 1 h with no decrease in growth ability when returned to atmospheric pressure in batch reactors after several extraction cycles. A fed‐batch reactor with cyclic high pCO2 polymer extraction recovered 92 g of butyric acid to produce a total of 213 g compared to 121 g generated in a control reactor. This recovery reduced EPI in the TPPB, resulting in both higher productivity (0.65 vs. 0.33 g L−1 h−1) and yield (0.54 vs. 0.40). Fortuitously, it was also found that repeated high pCO2‐facilitated polymer extractions of butyric acid during batch growth of C. tyrobutyricum lessened the need for pH control, and reduced base requirements by approximately 50%. Thus, high pCO2‐mediated absorptive polymer extraction presents a novel method for improving process performance in butyric acid fermentation, and this technique could be applied to the bioproduction of other organic acids as well. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2014;111: 2183–2191. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
RFI Detection Algorithm: Accurate Geolocation of the Interfering Sources in SMOS Images

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite is strongly affected by radio-frequency interference (RFI). A detection algorithm has been developed to accurately obtain the coordinates of the interfering source emitters from the SMOS images. The results obtained from this detection algorithm are regularly used to locate the on-ground sources of interference. This has allowed the identification and termination of over 200 RFI sources observed by SMOS. In the majority of cases, the accuracy of the coordinates provided was better than 4 km, which is a very important achievement considering that SMOS spatial resolution is larger than 35 km and that the contamination of a single RFI can extend to several thousands of kilometers in some cases.
Learning What to Remember: Vocabulary Knowledge and Children's Memory for Object Names and Features.

Although young children can map a novel name to a novel object, it remains unclear what they actually remember about objects when they initially make such a name-object association. In the current study we investigated 1) what children remembered after they were initially introduced to name-object associations and 2) how their vocabulary size and vocabulary structure influenced what they remembered. As a group, children had difficulty remembering each of the features of the original novel objects. Further analyses revealed that differences in vocabulary structure predicted children’s ability to remember object features. Specifically, children who produced many names for categories organized by similarity in shape (e.g., ball, cup) had the best memory for newly-learned objects’ features—especially their shapes. In addition, the more features children remembered, the more likely they were to retain the newly-learned name-object associations. Vocabulary size, however, was not predictive of children’s feature memory or retention. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that children’s existing vocabulary structure, rather than simply vocabulary size, influences what they attend to when encountering a new object and subsequently their ability to remember new name-object associations.
A Survey Study on Gastrointestinal Parasites of Stray Cats in Northern Region of Nile Delta, Egypt

A survey study on gastrointestinal parasites in 113 faecal samples from stray cats collected randomly from Kafrelsheikh province, northern region of Nile delta of Egypt; was conducted in the period between January and May 2010. The overall prevalence was 91%. The results of this study reported seven helminth species: Toxocara cati (9%), Ancylostoma tubaeforme (4%), Toxascaris leonina (5%), Dipylidium caninum (5%), Capillaria spp. (3%), Taenia taeniformis (22%) and Heterophyes heterophyes (3%), four protozoal species: Toxoplasma gondii (9%), Sarcocyst spp. (1%), Isospora spp. (2%) and Giardia spp. (2%) and two arthropod species; Linguatula serrata (2%) and mites eggs (13%). The overall prevalence of intestinal parasites may continue to rise due to lack of functional veterinary clinics for cat care in Egypt. Therefore, there is a need to plan adequate control programs to diagnose, treat and control gastrointestinal parasites of companion as well as stray cats in the region.
Exact topology identification of large-scale interconnected dynamical systems from compressive observations

In this paper, we consider the problem of identifying the exact topology of an interconnected dynamical network from a limited number of measurements of the individual nodes. Within the network graph, we assume that interconnected nodes are coupled by a discrete-time convolution process, and we explain how, given observations of the node outputs, the problem of topology identification can be cast as solving a linear inverse problem. We use the term compressive observations in the case when there is a limited number of measurements available and thus the resulting inverse problem is highly underdetermined. Inspired by the emerging field of Compressive Sensing (CS), we then show that in cases where network interconnections are suitably sparse (i.e., the network contains sufficiently few links), it is possible to perfectly identify the topology from small numbers of node observations, even though this leaves a highly underdetermined set of linear equations. This can dramatically reduce the burden of data acquisition for problems involving network identification. The main technical novelty of our approach is in casting the identification problem as the recovery of a block-sparse signal x ∈ RN from the measurements b = Ax ∈ RM with M <; N, where the measurement matrix A is a block-concatenation of Toeplitz matrices. We discuss identification guarantees, introduce the notion of network coherence for the analysis of interconnected networks, and support our discussions with illustrative simulations.
Serum neopterin levels in HIV infected patients with & without tuberculosis.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Three categories of prognostic markers are best documented as having significance in relation to prognosis of HIV infection. These include HIV viral load, CD4 T-cell levels and plasma levels of soluble markers of immune activation. The plasma activation markers, like neopterin, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukins etc., are products of cytokine activity and represent immunologic changes throughout the body. There is not much information available on serum neopterin estimation in patients infected with both HIV and tuberculosis (TB), though neopterin levels are known to be elevated in pulmonary TB patients. In this study we attempted to correlate neopterin levels with the presence of tuberculosis in HIV infected and uninfected individuals and studied the changes after antituberculosis treatment. METHODS Serum neopterin concentrations were measured by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in 25 HIV-seropositive (HIV-TB) and 10-seronegative (TB) patients with tuberculosis before, during and at the end of antituberculosis therapy (ATT). S-neo was also measured in 10 HIV-seropositive asymptomatic individuals and 10 healthy controls. The results were correlated with clinical, bacteriological and immunological status. RESULTS All TB patients regardless of HIV status had elevated s-neo concentrations at diagnosis, which declined gradually during treatment. Patients with HIV/TB with CD4 counts < 200/mm(3) had the highest levels at baseline with a steep fall during treatment. The median level at the end of treatment was significantly higher in HIV/TB than in TB patients, despite clinical improvement and bacteriological clearance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. HIV infected asymptomatic individuals had neopterin levels that were higher than healthy controls but lower than HIV-TB patients. INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION Serum neopterin levels are elevated in HIV-positive patients, with the highest levels in those with tuberculosis and CD4 counts < 200/mm(3). Though the levels decrease with anti tuberculosis therapy, persistently elevated levels indicate progressive HIV disease and a poor prognosis.
Low-grade inflammation and the phenotypic expression of myocardial fibrosis in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Objective To investigate the role of inflammation in the phenotypic expression of myocardial fibrosis in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Design Clinical study. Setting Kuopio University Hospital and University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland. Subjects Twenty-four patients with a single HCM-causing mutation D175N in the α-tropomyosin gene and 17 control subjects. Main outcome measures Endomyocardial biopsy samples taken from the patients with HCM were compared with matched myocardial autopsy specimens. Levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and proinflammatory cytokines were measured in patients and controls. Myocardial late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) in cardiac MRI (CMRI) was detected. Results Endomyocardial samples in patients with HCM showed variable myocyte hypertrophy and size heterogeneity, myofibre disarray, fibrosis, inflammatory cell infiltration and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) activation. Levels of hsCRP and interleukins (IL-1β, IL-1RA, IL-6, IL-10) were significantly higher in patients with HCM than in control subjects. In patients with HCM, there was a significant association between the degree of myocardial inflammatory cell infiltration, fibrosis in histopathological samples and myocardial LGE in CMRI. Levels of hsCRP were significantly associated with histopathological myocardial fibrosis. hsCRP, tumour necrosis factor α and IL-1RA levels had significant correlations with LGE in CMRI. Conclusions A variable myocardial and systemic inflammatory response was demonstrated in patients with HCM attributable to an identified sarcometric mutation. Inflammatory response was associated with myocardial fibrosis, suggesting that myocardial fibrosis in HCM is an active process modified by an inflammatory response.
Treatment of overt extraocular retinoblastoma.

BACKGROUND Overt extraocular retinoblastoma is common in developing countries and little information about its treatment is available. The aim of this study is to report our experience in the treatment of these cases using a uniform approach. PROCEDURE Patients with overt extraocular retinoblastoma including orbital extension, preauricular lymph node invasion and/or metastatic disease on diagnosis or after extraocular relapse admitted to the Hospital JP Garrahan from August 1987 to December 2000 were retrospectively reviewed. Patients were treated according to two different protocols (1987-1993 and 1994-2000). Treatment included: neoadjuvant combination chemotherapy followed by limited surgery in case of orbital extension (enucleation or resection of residual orbital mass) and adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy included cyclophosphamide, vincristine, etoposide, doxorubicin (in protocol 87), idarubicin (in protocol 94), cisplatin (in protocol 87), and carboplatin (in protocol 94). RESULTS Forty-one patients were included. Fifteen of them had orbital or preauricular disease and had a 5-year event-free survival (pEFS) of 84%. Twenty-six had distant metastatic disease and non survived 5-years. One patient died of toxicity and one died in complete remission. One patient had a secondary leukemia. The remaining adverse events included CNS and/or systemic relapse. CONCLUSIONS This treatment strategy was highly efficacious for patients with orbital and/or lymph node extension. Orbital exenteration is not necessary for these patients. Those patients with distant metastatic or CNS disease were not curable with this approach.
Occurrence and Antibiotic Resistance of Mesophilic Aeromonas in Three Riverine Freshwaters of Marrakech, Morocco

I n order to evaluate the impact of pollution and sewage on the occurrence and antibiotic resistance of mesophilic aeromonads in riverine freshwaters of Marrakech, samples were collected from three rivers (Oukaimeden, Ourika, and Tensift) upstream and downstream from the principal bordering villages. During a 2-year study, indicators of pollution increased dramatically in the downstream waters. Bacterial indicators (faecal coliforms and faecal streptococci) correlated with mesophilic aeromonads only in heavily polluted waters. In low and moderately polluted sources, densities of mesophilic aeromonads were independent of water quality indicators and did not correlate statistically with faecal indicators. Average counts of Aeromonas in low and heavily polluted waters were 2.5 × 103 and 2.1 × 106 colony forming units per 100 ml, respectively. The biochemical identification of 841 isolates indicated a predominance of A. caviae in heavily and moderately polluted water and sediment. A. hydrophila was dominant only in low polluted waters and when the temperature was below 12°C. High densities of A. sobria were found in low, moderately polluted, or cleaned waters and when the water temperature was above 18°C. All selected isolates (total = 841) were tested for antibiotic susceptibility against 21 antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance frequencies recorded were: ampicillin and amoxicillin, 100%; novobiocin, 96%; cefalotin, 81%; colistin, 72%; sulfamethoxazole, 40%; cefamandole, 37%; polymyxin B, 23%; trimethoprim, 17%; erythromycin, 15%; streptomycin, 8%; amoxicillin-clavulanate, 5%. Resistance to cefotaxime, kanamycin, gentamycin, chloramphenicol, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, nalidixic acid, rifampicin, or trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole was found to be <5%. Antibiotic resistance rates did vary according to the source of a strain’s isolation, and high numbers of antibiotic resistant strains were recorded in polluted samples. Since no correlation between mesophilic aeromonads and conventional faecal pollution indicators was observed in low or moderately polluted waters, and since these freshwaters are used for domestic supply, we propose the use of mesophilic aeromonads as complementary water pollution indicators to ensure the safety of water.
The Miniaturization of a Partially 3-D Printed Quadrifilar Helix Antenna

In this paper, the design and implementation of a quadrifilar helix antenna are presented where the four arms are 3-D printed. The antenna structure is miniaturized by resorting to a combination of two approaches. The first approach is based on loading the tips of the four helical arms with circular conductive disks. The size and location of these elements directly affect the antenna’s operating frequency. The second miniaturization approach is based on incorporating an FR-4 dielectric material into the vacant space between the four arms of the quadrifilar helix. As a result, the length of the antenna is reduced by a ratio of 43%. The quadrifilar helix antenna is also designed on top of a ground plane with an optimized conical shape and topology. The antenna is partially fabricated using 3-D printing additive technology, where measurements show great agreement with simulated results.
Thai Relational Development and Rhetorical Sensitivity as Potential Contributors to Intercultural Communication Effectiveness: JAI YEN YEN

Rhetorical sensitivity theory may provide a foundation to define intercultural communication effectiveness. This study, part of a systematic program of research, seeks to clarify the Thai communication behaviors associated with intercultural communication effectiveness. The fundamental interaction consciousness Thais exhibit, a condition compatible with rhetorical sensitivity, makes Thailand a laboratory for intercultural communication study. This study clarifies previous findings with respect to rhetorical sensitivity and willingness to communicate. The relatively low initial Thai willingness to communicate may be characteristic of rhetorical reflection employed early in a relationship to collect information upon which to build rhetorical sensitivity. Therefore, the study involves two hypotheses: Thais will display higher rhetorical reflector traits in short-term relationships than in long-term relationships; and, Thais will display higher rhetorical sensitivity in long-term relationships than in short-term relationships. Undergraduate students from Mahidol and Bangkok Universities in Thailand (N = 400) generated data using the THAIRHETSEN instrument. The results do not support the first hypothesis, but support the second hypothesis. Post hoc investigation of US American rhetorical sensitivity behavior displays a tendency for the development of noble self behavior as a relationship history evolves. The paper concludes with a description of the study's limitations and presents suggestions for additional research.
PDC measurement evaluation on oil-pressboard samples

In this paper the measuring results of polarization and depolarization currents (PDC) on oil-pressboard samples will be presented. The measurements were carried out under different condition and the results compared. For repeatability purpose the samples were provided at specific condition. Moisture of samples was measured by Karl Fischer titration method. To obtain a quantitative parameter from PDC for the evaluation of the moisture content of the solid insulation, the depolarization current curves are decomposed to basic exponential functions. Obtained results show a relation between magnitude of mid decade (100 s - 1000 s) approximate exponential function and moisture content of solid insulation.
`Not Gay, but Not Homophobic': Male Sexuality and Homophobia in the `Lifestyle'

This article explores the relative lack of male same-sex activity in heterosexual `swinging', or `the lifestyle', especially compared to the ubiquity of female same-sex activity and eroticism. `Lifestyle sexuality' is conceptualized as a system of erotic relations and a cultural experience as a way of theorizing beyond identity and the binary oppositions of homo/hetero or straight/queer that often underlie discussions of sexual desire, practice, and homophobia (Ward, 2007). Desires, aesthetics, sexual styles, ethical premises, and beliefs about gender and sexuality are variously configured in different heterosexual communities. Exploring their specificities strengthens our ability to analyze distributions of power, privilege and stigma, and allows us to explore more precisely how changing meanings of love, sex, and commitment, along with developments in the organization and experience of late capitalism, are affecting sexual practices and identities. The analysis here thus examines how lifestyle sexuality is integrated into other political, economic, social, cultural, and erotic spheres and what this means for theorizations of homophobia and heteronormativity.