Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frontostriatal Connectivity in Children during Working Memory and the Effects of Prenatal Methamphetamine, Alcohol, and Polydrug Exposure

Various abnormalities in frontal and striatal regions have been reported in children with prenatal alcohol and/or methamphetamine exposure. In a recent fMRI study, we observed a correlation between accuracy on a working-memory task and functional activation in the putamen in children with prenatal methamphetamine and polydrug exposure. Because the putamen is part of the corticostriatal motor loop whereas the caudate is involved in the executive loop, we hypothesized that a loss of segregation between distinct corticostriatal networks may occur in these participants. The current study was designed to test this hypothesis using functional connectivity MRI. We examined 50 children ranging in age from 7 to 15, including 19 with prenatal methamphetamine exposure (15 of whom had concomitant prenatal alcohol exposure), 13 with prenatal exposure to alcohol but not methamphetamine, and 18 unexposed controls. We measured the coupling between blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fluctuations during a working-memory task in four striatal seed regions and those in the rest of the brain. We found that the putamen seeds showed increased connectivity with frontal brain regions involved in executive functions while the caudate seeds showed decreased connectivity with some of these regions in both groups of exposed subjects compared to controls. These findings suggest that localized brain abnormalities resulting from prenatal exposure to alcohol and/or methamphetamine lead to a partial rewiring of corticostriatal networks. These results represent important progress in the field, and could have substantial clinical significance in helping devise more targeted treatments and remediation strategies designed to better serve the needs of this population.
A Model for Setting Optimal Data-Acquisition Policy and its Application with Clinical Data

Manual data acquisition is often subject to incompleteness – data attributes that are missing due to time and data-availability constraints, which might damage data usability for analyses and decision making. This study introduces a novel optimization model for setting mandatory versus voluntary attributes in a dataset. This model may direct the decision of whether or not to enforce the acquisition of certain attributes, given certain constraints and dependencies. The feasibility and the potential contribution of the proposed model were evaluated with a clinical dataset that reflects Colonoscopy procedures performed in a large hospital over a 4-year period. The evaluation demonstrated that the model can be reasonably estimated within the given context, and that its implementation may contribute important insight toward improving data quality. The current data-acquisition setup was shown to be suboptimal, and some further evaluation identified factors that influence incompleteness and may require revisions to current data acquisition policies.
Bacterial profile of urinary tract infection and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern among pregnant women attending at Antenatal Clinic in Dil Chora Referral Hospital, Dire Dawa, Eastern Ethiopia

Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the bacterial profile of urinary tract infection (UTI) and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern among pregnant women attending at antenatal clinic in Dil Chora Referral Hospital, Dire Dawa, Eastern Ethiopia. Patients and methods An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted from February 18, 2015 to March 25, 2015. Clean-catch midstream urine specimens were collected from 186 pregnant women using sterile containers. Then, culture and antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed by standard disk diffusion method. Patient information was obtained using pretested structured questionnaire. Data were entered and cleaned using EpiData Version 3 and then exported to Statistical Package for Social Science (Version 16) for further analysis. Results The prevalence of significant bacteriuria was 14%. Gram-negative bacteria were more prevalent (73%). Escherichia coli (34.6%), coagulase-negative staphylococci (19.2%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (15.4%), and Klebsiella spp. (11.5%) were common bacterial isolates, where most of them were resistant against ampicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole, and chloramphenicol. Multidrug resistance (resistance in ≥2 drugs) was seen in 100% of the isolated bacteria. A majority of the bacterial isolates were sensitive to ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone, erythromycin, and gentamicin. Conclusion This study found a number of bacterial isolates with very high resistance to the commonly prescribed drugs from pregnant women with and without symptoms of UTI. Therefore, the early routine detection of causative agents of UTI and determining their drug susceptibility pattern are important for pregnant women to avoid complications in mother and fetus. Ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone, gentamicin, and erythromycin can be used with great care for the empirical treatment of UTI.
Traversing Knowledge Graphs in Vector Space

Path queries on a knowledge graph can be used to answer compositional questions such as "What languages are spoken by people living in Lisbon? ". However, knowledge graphs often have missing facts (edges) which disrupts path queries. Recent models for knowledge base completion impute missing facts by embedding knowledge graphs in vector spaces. We show that these models can be recursively applied to answer path queries, but that they suffer from cascading errors. This motivates a new "compositional" training objective, which dramatically improves all models' ability to answer path queries, in some cases more than doubling accuracy. On a standard knowledge base completion task, we also demonstrate that compositional training acts as a novel form of structural regularization, reliably improving performance across all base models (reducing errors by up to 43%) and achieving new state-of-the-art results.
Carbon dioxide uptake efficiency by outdoor microalgal cultures in tubular airlift photobioreactors

The influence of solar irradiance and carbon dioxide molar fraction of injected CO2-air mixtures on the behavior of outdoor continuous cultures of the mi- croalga Phaeodactylum tricornutum in tubular airlift pho- tobioreactors was analyzed. Instantaneous solar irradi- ance, pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, biomass con- centration, and the mass flow rates of both the inlet and outlet oxygen and carbon with both the liquid and gas phases were measured. In addition, elemental analysis of the biomass and the cell-free culture medium was per- formed. The oxygen production rate and carbon dioxide consumption rate increased hyperbolically with the inci- dent solar irradiance on the reactor surface. Carbon losses showed a negative correlation with the daily varia- tion of the carbon dioxide consumption rate. The maxi- mum CO2 uptake efficiency was 63% of the CO2 supplied when the CO2 concentration in the gas supplied was 60% v/v. Carbon losses were >100% during the night, due to CO2 production by respiration, and hyperbolically de- creased to values of 10% to 20% in the midday hours. An increase in the carbon fixed in the biomass with the solar cycle was observed. A slight daily decrease of carbon content of the cell-free culture medium indicated the ex- istence of carbon accumulation in the culture. A decrease in CO2 molar fraction in the injected gas had a double benefit: first, the biomass productivity of the system was enhanced from 2.05 to 2.47 g L ˛1 day ˛1 by reduction of CO2 inhibition and/or pH gradients; and second, the car- bon losses during the daylight period were reduced by 60%. The fluid dynamics in the reactor also influenced the carbon losses: the higher the liquid flow rate the higher the carbon losses. By using a previous mass transfer model the experimental results were simulated and the usefulness of this method in the evaluation and scale-up of tubular photobioreactors was estab- lished. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biotechnol Bioeng 67: 465-475, 2000.
Effect of Supplementation of Bacillus subtilis LS 1-2 Grown on Citrus-juice Waste and Corn-soybean Meal Substrate on Growth Performance, Nutrient Retention, Caecal Microbiology and Small Intestinal Morphology of Broilers

A feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation of Bacillus subtilis LS 1-2 grown on citrus-juice waste and corn-soybean substrate on growth performance, nutrient retention, caecal microbial population and intestinal morphology in broilers. Three hundred twenty d-old Ross chicks were randomly allotted to 4 treatments on the basis of BW in a randomized complete block design. Each treatment had 4 replicates of 20 chicks in each. Experimental diets were fed in 2 phases, starter (d 0 to 21) and finisher (d 21 to 35). Dietary treatments were; negative control (NC: basal diet without any antimicrobial), positive control (PC: basal diet added with 20 mg/kg Avilamycin), basal diet added with 0.30% Bacillus subtilis LS 1-2 grown on corn-soybean substrate (P1), and basal diet added with 0.30% Bacillus subtilis LS 1-2 grown on citrus-juice waste substrate (P2). Overall BW gain, feed intake and FCR were better (p
Modality‐independent representations of small quantities based on brain activation patterns

Machine learning or MVPA (Multi Voxel Pattern Analysis) studies have shown that the neural representation of quantities of objects can be decoded from fMRI patterns, in cases where the quantities were visually displayed. Here we apply these techniques to investigate whether neural representations of quantities depicted in one modality (say, visual) can be decoded from brain activation patterns evoked by quantities depicted in the other modality (say, auditory). The main finding demonstrated, for the first time, that quantities of dots were decodable by a classifier that was trained on the neural patterns evoked by quantities of auditory tones, and vice‐versa. The representations that were common across modalities were mainly right‐lateralized in frontal and parietal regions. A second finding was that the neural patterns in parietal cortex that represent quantities were common across participants. These findings demonstrate a common neuronal foundation for the representation of quantities across sensory modalities and participants and provide insight into the role of parietal cortex in the representation of quantity information. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1296‐1307, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
p120 ctn Acts as an Inhibitory Regulator of Cadherin Function in Colon Carcinoma Cells

p120 ctn binds to the cytoplasmic domain of cadherins but its role is poorly understood. Colo 205 cells grow as dispersed cells despite their normal expression of E-cadherin and catenins. However, in these cells we can induce typical E-cadherin–dependent aggregation by treatment with staurosporine or trypsin. These treatments concomitantly induce an electrophoretic mobility shift of p120 ctn to a faster position. To investigate whether p120 ctn plays a role in this cadherin reactivation process, we transfected Colo 205 cells with a series of p120 ctn deletion constructs. Notably, expression of NH 2 -terminally deleted p120 ctn induced aggregation. Similar effects were observed when these constructs were introduced into HT-29 cells. When a mutant N-cadherin lacking the p120 ctn -binding site was introduced into Colo 205 cells, this molecule also induced cell aggregation, indicating that cadherins can function normally if they do not bind to p120 ctn . These ﬁndings suggest that in Colo 205 cells, a signaling mechanism exists to modify a biochemical state of p120 ctn and the modiﬁed p120 ctn blocks the cadherin system. The NH 2 terminus–deleted p120 ctn appears to compete with the endogenous p120 ctn to abolish the adhesion-blocking action.
Architectural Proposal for a Robotized Intelligent humanoid, IZiman

In nature, bipedal locomotion systems show high abilities at avoiding obstacles and tracking complex trajectories. Humanoids robotics proposes a panel of solutions to carry on locomotion intelligent control. In this paper, we present a hybrid intelligent architecture for a humanoid robot control, 'IZiman". A particle swarm based control is proposed to generate the joints trajectories for a human like walking strategy.
Persistence and change in symptoms of insomnia among adolescents.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the incidence, chronicity, and remission of symptoms of insomnia and to examine factors associated with the incidence and chronicity of insomnia among adolescents. METHODS Data were collected using diagnostic interviews and questionnaires from 4175 youths aged 11 to 17 years at baseline, and 3134 of these youths followed-up a year later. Subjects were sampled from large managed care populations in a metropolitan area of over 4.7 million. Insomnia was assessed by youth-reported DSM-IV symptom criteria. RESULTS One year incidence was 13.9% for 1 or more symptoms, 5.5% for 1 or more symptoms plus daytime fatigue or sleepiness, and 5.3% for insomnia caseness. Rates of chronicity were 45.8% for 1 or more symptoms, 34.7% with daytime fatigue or sleepiness, and 22.8% for insomnia caseness. There were no effects of age, sex, or family income in predicting incidence or chronicity of insomnia. There was a weak association of both somatic and psychological dysfunction with risk of future sleep outcomes, with stronger prediction for psychological dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS These results document further the public health burden of insomnia among adolescents. Prevalence of insomnia is comparable to that of other major psychiatric disorders such as mood, anxiety, disruptive, and substance use disorders. Incidence over one year also is high. Insomnia represents a chronic condition, further enhancing burden.
Social reward and threat processing

The aim of this project was to investigate the relationships between individual differences in social expectancies and motivation, and how these relate to broader personality traits and to social integration outcomes such as individuals’ sense of belonging. A cognitive model of social motivation and reactivity to social feedback was proposed. In this model, generalised expectancies are considered to play a pivotal role in motivating human social behaviour. Two novel measures were developed: the levels of dispositional expectancies of social threat and reward scale (the LODESTARS) and a task-based measure of social motivation and reactivity to social reward and punishment (the social and monetary incentive delay (SMID) task). Rigorous validation studies were employed to ensure the validity and utility of these measures. The research reported in this thesis employed multiple methods: self-report, task-based measures, and structural and functional (blood oxygenation-level-dependent; BOLD) neuroimaging. The findings of all studies conducted supported the key proposal that dispositional biases in expectancies of social reward and punishment are critical for understanding individual differences in reactivity to social feedback and social outcomes such as loneliness. In the proposed model, expectancies exert their effects both by informing social approach and avoidance motivations and by directly influencing perceptions of and reactions to social cues. Convergent findings from the multiple modalities employed were consistent with both these proposed mechanisms.
In Vivo Fitness Adaptations of Colistin-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Isolates to Oxidative Stress

ABSTRACT The loss of fitness in colistin-resistant (CR) Acinetobacter baumannii was investigated using longitudinal isolates from the same patient. Early CR isolates were outcompeted by late CR isolates for growth in broth and survival in the lungs of mice. Fitness loss was associated with an increased susceptibility to oxidative stress since early CR strains had reduced in vitro survival in the presence of hydrogen peroxide and decreased catalase activity compared to that of late CR and colistin-susceptible (CS) strains.
Financial Strength and Product Market Behavior: The Real Effects of Corporate Cash Holdings

This paper shows that large cash reserves lead to systematic future market share gains at the expense of industry rivals. Using shifts in import tariffs to identify exogenous intensification of competition, difference-in-difference estimations support the "causal" impact of cash on product market performance. Moreover, the analysis reveals that the "competitive" effect of cash is markedly distinct from the strategic effect of debt on product market outcomes. This effect is stronger when rivals face tighter financing constraints and when the number of interactions between competitors is large. Overall, the results suggest that cash policy encompasses a substantial strategic dimension. Copyright (c) 2010 The American Finance Association.
A uniform type structure for secure information flow

The π-calculus is a formalism of computing in which we can compositionally represent dynamics of major programming constructs by decomposing them into a single communication primitive, the name passing. This work reports our experience in using a linear/affine typed π-calculus for the analysis and development of type systems of programming languages, focussing on secure information flow analysis. After presenting a basic typed calculus for secrecy, we demonstrate its usage by a sound embedding of the dependency core calculus (DCC) and by the development of a novel type discipline for imperative programs which extends both a secure multi-threaded imperative language by Smith and Volpano and (a call-by-value version of) DCC. In each case, the embedding gives a simple proof of noninterference.
Towards grammar checker development for Persian language

With improvements in industry and information technology, large volumes of electronic texts such as newspapers, emails, weblogs, books and thesis are produced daily. Producing electrical documents has considerable benefits such as easy organizing and data management. Therefore, existence of automatic systems such as spell and grammar checker/corrector can help in reducing costs and increasing the electronic texts and it will improve the quality of electronic texts. You can input your text and the computer program will point out to you the spelling errors. It may also help with your grammar. Grammatical errors are described as wrong relation between words like subject-verb disagreement or wrong sequence of words like using plural noun where a single noun is needed. Grammar checking phase starts after spell checking is finished. This paper briefly describes the concepts and definition of grammar checkers in general followed by developing the first Persian (Farsi) grammar checker leading to an overview of the error types of Persian language. The proposed system detects and corrects about 20 frequent Persian grammar errors and tested on a sample dataset, retrieved about 70% and 83% accuracy respect to precision and recall metrics.
Activated Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription (STAT) 3

Constitutive activation of the Janus-activated kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) pathway promotes the proliferation and survival of cancer cells in culture and is associated with various cancers, including those of the ovary. We found that constitutively activated STAT3 levels correlated with aggressive clinical behavior of ovarian carcinoma specimens. Furthermore, inhibition of STAT3 reduced the motility of ovarian cancer cells in vitro. Surprisingly, we found that activated STAT3 localized not only to nuclei but also to focal adhesions in these cells. Activated STAT3 coimmunoprecipitated with phosphorylated paxillin and focal adhesion kinase and required paxillin and Src for its localization to focal adhesions. These results suggest that Janus-activated kinase/STAT signaling may contribute to ovarian cancer cell invasiveness.
Verification of Behavioral Substitutability in Object-Oriented Models for Industrial Controllers

The aim of the paper is to provide a practical method to introduce design principles typical of the object-oriented approach, like “design by extension”, to the application domain of manufacturing systems control design. The proposed method is based on a domain-specific extension of the modeling language UML and on the formalization of design models as transition systems for verification purposes. Object-oriented models, formalized according to the proposed semantics, can be analyzed with model checking techniques in order to verify the behavioral conformity of object classes, according to a notion of substitutability which is defined in the paper specifically for the proposed modeling language.
How peculiar is the ‘peculiar variable’ DZ Crucis (Nova Cru 2003)?

The variable star DZ Cru was thought to be a nova when it was discovered in eruption in 2003 August. This explanation was later challenged, however, when the first spectra of the object were reported. We present near infrared spectroscopy of DZ Cru obtained at the New Technology Telescope on 3 occasions, starting � 1.5 years after outburst, with the aim of establishing the nature of the object. The spectra display H i, O i, [N i] emission lines, together with He i P Cygni lines superposed on a dust continuum. These observations suggest the “peculiar variable in Crux” is a classical nova.
Interactions Between System Evaluation and Theory Testing : A Demonstration of the Power of a Multifaceted Approach to Information Systems Research

Historically, information systems (IS) researchers have questioned which research paradigms, activities, and methods IS research should follow. In this paper, we argue that different research methods and activities may interact with each other, different research paradigms may complement each other due to such interactions, and therefore, a multimethodological, cross-paradigm research approach may result in better IS research than a singular approach. Three existing multimethodological IS research frameworks are reviewed and summarized into an integrated approach. Two types of interactions between different research methods across system evaluation and theory testing research activities are identified. A three-year research study about a computer-based training system for deception detection (Agent99 Trainer) provides a concrete example to demonstrate the existence and research benefits of these two types of interactions, as well as the benefits of a multimethodological, crossparadigm IS research approach.