Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short-term dynamics of causal information transfer in thalamocortical networks during natural inputs and microstimulation for somatosensory neuroprosthesis

Recording the activity of large populations of neurons requires new methods to analyze and use the large volumes of time series data thus created. Fast and clear methods for finding functional connectivity are an important step toward the goal of understanding neural processing. This problem presents itself readily in somatosensory neuroprosthesis (SSNP) research, which uses microstimulation (MiSt) to activate neural tissue to mimic natural stimuli, and has the capacity to potentiate, depotentiate, or even destroy functional connections. As the aim of SSNP engineering is artificially creating neural responses that resemble those observed during natural inputs, a central goal is describing the influence of MiSt on activity structure among groups of neurons, and how this structure may be altered to affect perception or behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate the concept of Granger causality, combined with maximum likelihood methods, applied to neural signals recorded before, during, and after natural and electrical stimulation. We show how these analyses can be used to evaluate the changing interactions in the thalamocortical somatosensory system in response to repeated perturbation. Using LFPs recorded from the ventral posterolateral thalamus (VPL) and somatosensory cortex (S1) in anesthetized rats, we estimated pair-wise functional interactions between functional microdomains. The preliminary results demonstrate input-dependent modulations in the direction and strength of information flow during and after application of MiSt. Cortico-cortical interactions during cortical MiSt and baseline conditions showed the largest causal influence differences, while there was no statistically significant difference between pre- and post-stimulation baseline causal activities. These functional connectivity changes agree with physiologically accepted communication patterns through the network, and their particular parameters have implications for both rehabilitation and brain—machine interface SSNP applications.
Relationships between Electroencephalographic Spectral Peaks Across Frequency Bands

The degree to which electroencephalographic spectral peaks are independent, and the relationships between their frequencies have been debated. A novel fitting method was used to determine peak parameters in the range 2–35 Hz from a large sample of eyes-closed spectra, and their interrelationships were investigated. Findings were compared with a mean-field model of thalamocortical activity, which predicts near-harmonic relationships between peaks. The subject set consisted of 1424 healthy subjects from the Brain Resource International Database. Peaks in the theta range occurred on average near half the alpha peak frequency, while peaks in the beta range tended to occur near twice and three times the alpha peak frequency on an individual-subject basis. Moreover, for the majority of subjects, alpha peak frequencies were significantly positively correlated with frequencies of peaks in the theta and low and high beta ranges. Such a harmonic progression agrees semiquantitatively with theoretical predictions from the mean-field model. These findings indicate a common or analogous source for different rhythms, and help to define appropriate individual frequency bands for peak identification.
Using machine learning to predict hypertension from a clinical dataset

Hypertension is an illness that often leads to severe and life threatening diseases such as heart failure, thickening of the heart muscle, coronary artery disease, and other severe conditions if left untreated. An artificial neural network is a powerful machine learning technique that allows prediction of the presence of the disease in susceptible populations while removing the potential for human error. In this paper, we identify the important risk factors based on patients' current health conditions, medical records, and demographics. These factors are then used to predict the presence of hypertension in an individual. These risk factors are also indicative of the probability of a person developing hypertension in the future and can, therefore, be used as an early warning system. We present a neural network model for predicting hypertension with about 82% accuracy. This is good performance given our chosen risk factors as inputs and the large integrated data used for the study. Our network model utilizes very large sample sizes (185,371 patients and 193,656 controls) from the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) data set. Finally, we present a literature study to show the use of these risk factors in other works along with experimental results obtained from our model.
New data on Myxobolus longisporus (Myxozoa: Myxobolidae), a gill infecting parasite of carp, Cyprinus carpio haematopterus, from Chinese lakes.

The original description of Myxobolus longisporus Nie et Li, 1992, the species infecting gills of Cyprinus carpio haematopterus L. , is supplemented with new data on the spore morphology and pathogenicity. Spores are elongate pyriform with pointed anterior end, 15.7 (15.5-16.5) microm long, 6.7 (6-8) microm wide and 5.5 microm thick. Sutural ridge is straight and narrow. Mucus envelope is lacking. Two equal-sized elongate pyriform polar capsules are 8.5 microm long and 2.5 microm wide with convergent long axes. Polar filament coiled perpendicularly to the long axis of the capsule makes 9 (8-10) turns. Posterior end of polar capsules exceeds mid-spore by 15-20%. Cyst-like plasmodia are localised in the gill secondary lamellae. The infection is described in adult big host specimens. Gross lesions manifested as dark red colouration of gill tissues were restricted to the ventral part of the first gill arches. Remarkable site specificity (apical part of secondary lamellae) was observed in the course of development of microscopic lesions. M. longisporus is characterised also on the molecular level using sequences of SSU rRNA gene. Phylogenetic analysis based on these sequences has allowed clearer phylogenetic relationships to be established with other species of the genus Myxobolus sequenced to date.
Callous–unemotional traits in conduct disorder in relation to salivary cortisol level

Objectives To show the correlation between items of Callous Unemotional Inventory (CUI) and Conduct Disorder and to assess correlation between salivary cortisol and Conduct Disorder. Background Emerging evidence suggests that low levels of cortisol may act as a biological marker for the Callous Unemotional traits (CU Traits) subgroup of Conduct Disorder. Materials and methods The current study tested the presence of items of Callous Unemotional Inventory (CUI) and the salivary cortisol level among group of patients with Conduct Disorder (Forty patients from 12 to 16 years old, diagnosed according to criteria of DSM IV and recruited from Kasr El Aini Psychiatric hospital) and group of control (Forty healthy volunteers). Both groups were subjected to Callous Unemotional traits Inventory and salivary cortisol level was assessed using ELISA. Results Patient group showed high levels of CU traits compared to control group. Patient group showed significant difference in salivary cortisol level (mean is 3.188 ±1.1108) compared to control group (mean is 5.01±1.846). This study found correlation between Callous traits and severity of Conduct Disorder. Conclusion The current findings build upon recent research in suggesting that low cortisol level may be a biological marker for patients with Conduct Disorder and high levels of CU traits.
A Correlation Study of Professional Development Perception and School Achievement in North Carolina.

Adult learners have distinctly different needs and motivations compared to those of children. These needs and motivations need to be kept in mind to help ensure meaningful and successful learning experiences in professional development offered to educators. The purpose of this correlation study is to determine if the perceptions educators have of the professional development they receive had a statistically significant relationship to the school achievement within their North Carolina public schools. The educator perceptions regarding professional development were measured by using the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions (NCTWC) Survey. School achievement was measured by the school performance grade score. A random sample of 348 schools representing 116 districts in North Carolina participated in this study. Pearson product-moment correlations were calculated via SPSS 23 to test the three null hypotheses in order to assess the direction and strength of any possible relationship between educator perception of professional development and school achievement. The data analysis failed to yield any statistically significant correlation between the two variables. Although this analysis did not show a significant correlation, this research adds to the present body of literature and offers ideas for future research.
Near-infrared spectroscopic monitoring of WR 140 during the 2001 periastron passage

W epresent new spectra of WR 140 (HD 193793) in the JHK bands, with some covering the 1.083- mH e Iemission line at higher resolution, observed between 2000 October and 2003 May to cover its 2001 periastron passage and maximum colliding-wind activity. The WC7 O4—5 spectroscopic binary WR 140 is the prototype of colliding-wind, episodic dust-making Wolf—Rayet systems, which also show strong variations in radio and X-ray emission. The JHK spectra showed changes in continuum and in the equivalent widths of the WC emission lines, consistent with the formation of dust, starting between 2001 January 3 and March 26 (orbital phases 0.989 and 0.017) and its subsequent fading and cooling. The 1.083- mH e Iline has a P Cygni profile, which showed variations in both absorption and emission components as WR 140 went through periastron passage. The variation of the absorption component of the profile yielded tight constraints on the geometry of the wind-collision region, giving 50 8 for the opening semi-angle of the interaction region ‘cone’, indicating a wind-momentum ratio ( œ M )O ( œ M )WR 0 10, about three times larger than previously believed. As the system approached periastron, the normally flat-topped emission component of the 1.083- m line profile showed the appearance of a significant subpeak. The movement of the subpeak across the profile was seen to be consistent with its formation in wind material flowing along the contact discontinuity between the WC7 and O4—5 stellar winds and the changing orientation of the colliding-wind region as the stars moved in their orbits. The flux carried in the subpeak was significant, exceeding the X-ray fluxes measured at previous periastron passages. This additional source of radiative cooling of the shock-heated gas probably causes it to depart from being adiabatic around periastron passage, thereby accounting for the departure of the X-ray flux from its previously expected 1 d dependence.
Dentoskeletal effects of the Bite-Jumping Appliance and the Twin-Block Appliance in the treatment of skeletal Class II malocclusion: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES The current parallel group, randomized controlled trial aimed to compare the dentoalveolar and skeletal changes resulting from treatment using two popular functional appliances: the Bite-Jumping Appliance (BJA) and the Twin-Block Appliance (TBA). STUDY DESIGN This study is designed as a parallel-group, randomized controlled trial. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients were screened from the patients who were seeking treatment at the Department of Orthodontics, Al-Baath University. Eligibility criteria included skeletal Class II division 1 malocclusion resulting from the retrusion of the mandible. A computer-generated randomization list was used to randomly divide the patients into two equal groups to be treated with either the BJA or the TBA. Blinding was applicable for outcome assessment only. Forty-four patients (22 male and 22 female) aged 10.2-13.5 years were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to either the BJA or the TBA groups, and four patients were lost to follow-up (two from each group). Lateral cephalometric radiographs were obtained before treatment and after 12 months of active appliance therapy. Inter-group differences were evaluated with two-sample t-tests, and intra-group differences were assessed with paired-sample t-tests at the P <0.05 level. RESULTS Forty patients (20 in each group) were available for the statistical analysis. Baseline characteristics were similar between groups. Similar changes were observed in the sagittal plane, including a significant increase in the SNB angle. No significant changes were observed in the maxilla. The lower incisors were significantly proclined, and the upper incisors significantly retruded. In the vertical plane, BJA induced mandibular clockwise rotation, and the SN:MP angle increased by 2.14 ± 2.97° (P = 0.002). Conversely, no significant changes took place in this angle in the TBA group 0.75 ± 2.37° (P = 0.096). Similarly, Jarabak ratio decreased significantly in the BJA group by -1.78 ± 0.85% (P = 0.002) and increased significantly in the TBA group by 1.26 ± 0.76% (P = 0.032), with significant differences between the two groups (P ≤ 0.001). No serious harm was observed. LIMITATIONS A limitation of this research is a lack of an untreated control group. However, the resulting differences between the two groups can be attributed to the appliance differences, which fulfil the aim of the current research. CONCLUSIONS Each of the two appliances is recommended for the functional treatment of skeletal Class II malocclusion resulting from the retrusion of the mandible. The BJA is recommended when clockwise rotation is desired, whereas the TBA is recommended to inhibit vertical development. REGISTRATION This trial was registered at the Department of Orthodontics, Al-Baath University, Number 16, on 6/25/2012. PROTOCOL The protocol was not published before trial commencement. FUNDING No funding or conflict of interest to be declared.
Not all lactic acid bacteria are probiotics, ...but some are.

The WHO defines probiotics as: ‘live microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host’, a definition which implies that a beneficial health effect must be demonstrated in human subjects. In October 2009, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) issued scientific opinions concerning more than 500 health claim applications; all those concerning probiotics were unfavourable. The EFSA has clearly explained that in nearly all cases, the rejection of a probiotic claim was due to a lack of characterisation of the micro-organism. Unfortunately, the media’s interpretation of the EFSA’s negative response, and subsequently the consumers’ understanding, has been that all probiotics are the same and all are equally ineffective. We would like to correct this misinterpretation and reemphasise that micro-organisms are defined by their genus (for example, Lactobacillus), their species (for example, rhamnosus or johnsonii) and finally their strain name (for example, L. rhamnosus GG (LGG) or NCC533). Inclusion of all lactobacilli in one ‘probiotic group’ is misleading in the same way that the Homo sapiens species should not be confused with other Homo species that have lived on earth; the assertion that the complete Homo genus is responsible for prehistoric drawings and having walked on the moon is, at best, erroneous. The same works for lactobacilli: the fact that a bacterium belongs to a lactobacilli (or bifidobacteria) genus does not alone confer the status of ‘probiotic’. As well as taxonomic considerations, we believe the species and strain levels to be critical when studying the biological effects of probiotic bacteria, and probably the clinical effects that they may elicit. We list below the various arguments that support our position, illustrated by a selection of recent studies on this topic.
Cost Outcomes for Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder Across Professional License Types and Modalities

Cost Outcomes for Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder Across Professional License Types and Modalities Julia H. Jones School of Family Life, BYU Master of Science The purpose of this study was to compare outcomes for patients with Bipolar Disorder or Major Depressive Disorder based on severity of diagnosis. This study also compared psychotherapy providers and therapy modalities on total cost, number of sessions, and dropout. Our data set (N=136,439) came from Cigna, a national health care company. Results showed significant differences by severity of diagnosis. The comparison of providers showed that psychologists had higher costs and session numbers, while the other providers were not significantly different. However, all providers successfully provided low cost treatment on both MDD and BD. There is no support for the idea that one profession is more successful at providing low cost treatment for MDD and BD. Family therapy did significantly better on all outcomes except dropout rate when compared to individual or mixed (individual and family sessions) therapy. It is a low-cost option when treating MDD and BD, regardless of severity.
The extant rationale for mandated therapy during psychotherapy and counselling training: a critical interpretive synthesis

ABSTRACT Attending personal therapy sessions is a requirement in many counselling and psychotherapy trainings worldwide. More research is needed to establish why the requirement is essential and what it is intended to achieve. This study focused on the question, what is the rationale for mandated self-development requirements in therapy trainings? From a selective literature search, 19 highly relevant papers were found which formed a sampling frame. The papers included qualitative studies, mixed method reports, review and opinion papers. Research participants across all reports included therapy and psychiatry trainees (N = 1134), and current therapy practitioners (N = 194) totalling 1328 participants. The papers were analysed using Critical Interpretive Synthesis method to devise a synthesising statement. The analysis resulted in a synthesising statement about the rationale for personal psychotherapy during training, and the stated risks of this requirement as reflected in the materials consulted. A strong coherent rationale exists for the recommendation that trainee therapists undertake personal psychotherapy. However, the risks of mandating this requirement present multiple challenges, and the evidence for the intended outcomes of personal psychotherapy undertaken during training is weak.
Classification of Ultrasound Kidney Images using PCA and Neural Networks

In this paper, a computer-aided system is proposed for automatic classification of Ultrasound Kidney diseases. Images of five classes: Normal, Cyst, Stone, Tumor and Failure were considered. A set of statistical features and another set of multi-scale wavelet-based features were extracted from the region of interest (ROI) of each image and the principal component analysis was performed to reduce the number of features. The selected features were utilized in the design and training of a neural network classifier. A correct classification rate of 97% has been obtained using the multi-scale wavelet-based features.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ebs1p is a putative ortholog of human Smg7 and promotes nonsense-mediated mRNA decay

The Smg proteins Smg5, Smg6 and Smg7 are involved in nonsense-mediated RNA decay (NMD) in metazoans, but no orthologs have been found in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Sequence alignments reveal that yeast Ebs1p is similar in structure to the human Smg5-7, with highest homology to Smg7. We demonstrate here that Ebs1p is involved in NMD and behaves similarly to human Smg proteins. Indeed, both loss and overexpression of Ebs1p results in stabilization of NMD targets. However, Ebs1-loss in yeast or Smg7-depletion in human cells only partially disrupts NMD and in the latter, Smg7-depletion is partially compensated for by Smg6. Ebs1p physically interacts with the NMD helicase Upf1p and overexpressed Ebs1p leads to recruitment of Upf1p into cytoplasmic P-bodies. Furthermore, Ebs1p localizes to P-bodies upon glucose starvation along with Upf1p. Overall our findings suggest that NMD is more conserved in evolution than previously thought, and that at least one of the Smg5-7 proteins is conserved in budding yeast.
Robot Learning from Human Demonstration: Interpretation, Adaptation, and Interaction

Robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD) is a research area that focuses on how robots can learn new skills by observing how people perform various activities. As humans, we have a remarkable ability to imitate other human’s behaviors and adapt to new situations. Endowing robots with these critical capabilities is a significant but very challenging problem considering the complexity and variation of human activities in highly dynamic environments. This research focuses on how robots can learn new skills by interpreting human activities, adapting the learned skills to new situations, and naturally interacting with humans. This dissertation begins with a discussion of challenges in each of these three problems. A new unified representation approach is introduced to enable robots to simultaneously interpret the high-level semantic meanings and generalize the low-level trajectories of a broad range of human activities. An adaptive framework based on feature space decomposition is then presented for robots to not only reproduce skills, but also autonomously and e ciently adjust the learned skills to new environments that are significantly di↵erent from demonstrations. To achieve natural Human Robot Interaction (HRI), this dissertation presents a Recurrent Neural Network based deep perceptual control approach, which is capable of integrating multi-modal perception sequences with actions for robots to interact with humans in long-term tasks. Overall, by combining the above approaches, an autonomous system is created for robots to acquire important skills that can be applied to human-centered applications. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a discussion of future directions that could
Habit Formation and the Persistence of Monetary Shocks

This paper studies the persistent e®ects of monetary shocks on output. Previous empirical literature documents this persistence, but standard general equilibrium models with sticky prices fail to generate output responses beyond the duration of nominal contracts. This paper constructs and estimates a general equilibrium model with price rigidities, habit formation, and costly capital adjustment. The model is estimated via Maximum Likelihood using U.S. data on output, real money balances, and the nominal interest rate. Econometric results suggest that habit formation and adjustment costs to capital play an important role in explaining the output e®ects of monetary policy. In particular, impulse response analysis shows that the model generates persistent, hump-shaped output responses to monetary shocks.