Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Double Dissociation of Functions in Developmental Dyslexia and Dyscalculia

This work examines the association between symbols and their representation in adult developmental dyscalculia and dyslexia. Experiment 1 used comparative judgment of numerals, and it was found that in physical comparisons (e.g., 3-5 vs. 3-5) the dyscalculia group showed a significantly smaller congruity effect than did the dyslexia and the control groups. Experiment 2 used Navon figures (D. Navon, 1977) in Hebrew, and participants were asked to name the large or the small letters. Phoneme similarity modulated performance of the control and the dyscalculia groups and showed a very small effect in the dyslexia group. This suggests that the dyscalculia population has difficulties in automatically associating numerals with magnitudes but no problems in associating letters with phonemes, whereas the dyslexia population shows the opposite pattern.
Effects of Organizational Culture on Sustainable Competitive Advantage in State Owned Corporations in Kenya: A Case of Postal Corporation of Kenya

Organizational culture and sustainable competitive advantage are crucial elements in any organization regardless of its size. It is a matter of concern that many of the state owned corporations in Kenya have continued to shrink in their business. The study sought to establish the effect of organizational culture on sustainable competitive advantage in Kenya’s state corporations. The study took place amongst the middle level managers in Postal Corporation of Kenya. The study variables included organizational values and sustainable competitive advantage. The study adopted descripto-explanatory research design. The census method was employed since all members of the target population participated in the study. The target population comprised of 47 middle level managers of the Postal Corporation of Kenya working in Nairobi, Rift Valley and Nyanza regions. A structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data. Validity and reliability of the research instrument was determined through pilot testing prior to conducting the main study. Validity was determined by seeking expert judgment of University supervisors while the reliability was tested by use of Cronbach alpha coefficient where all variables returned a coefficient greater than 0.7. The collected data was analyzed descriptively and inferentially and the findings were presented in form of tables. It was established that organizational values affected sustainable competitive advantage of Postal Corporation of Kenya this was due to the findings that, organizational values returned a weak, positive and statistically significant correlation with sustainable competitive advantage (r = 0.334; p < 0.05). It is recommended that, Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) should uphold organizational culture by ensuring that there is consultation amongst the stakeholders before the management makes any key decisions, since the foregoing was established to be key in ensuring sustainable competitive advantage of the corporations.
Ungulate Management

Predators, Equilibria, and Lack Thereof. 184 Exponential Population Growth and Ungulate Impacts on Biodiversity. 186 Wither the Balance of Nature? 189 Selective Hunting Selects! 190 Ungulate Population Dynamics With and Without Hunting . 193 Conclusions: What to Do? 196 Acknowledgments . 198 References . 198
Pharmacological and Biological Circadian Therapy in Alzheimer ’ s Disease

INTRODUCTION Alzheimer’s disease markedly affects the quality and quantity of both rapid eye movement (REM) and slow wave sleep (SWS). The disease is a multi-factorial condition that also affects cognitive, behavioral and neurophysiological function. Accordingly, effective pharmacological treatment of Alzheimer’s sleep related disorders focuses on achieving a balance in which the therapeutic benefits of improved sleep quality outweigh the adverse side effects. Currently, no single pharmacological target has been implicated in the pathology in Alzheimer’s type dementia (ATD) sleep disorders. As the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) still eludes science, pharmacologists are choosing to target the sleepwake circadian cycle directly. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative process affecting pyramidal neurons with concurrent formation of "plaques and tangles" resulting from abnormal ß-amyloid protein production. Particularly affected are the cholinergic neurons found in the basal nucleus of Meynert and their extensive projections. The characteristic "forgetfulness" (anteriograde amnesia) is derived from a decrease in hippocampal function. Because the disease develops differently from person to person, researchers believe that there may be more than one pathologic process that leads to the same outcome. There are two main areas of the brain involved in sleep and both undergo degeneration in AD (Figure 1): 1The Brainstem: Serotonergic and noradrenergic systems are active during the wakeful state and their activity declines markedly during REM sleep. Cholinergic neurons are active during REM sleep. 2The Suprachiasmatic nucleus: receives direct input from the optic nerve and pineal gland. Acetylcholine (ACh) release from the basal ganglia oscillates daily and plays an essential regulatory role in the sleep-wake cycle. Furthermore, it acts as the main neurotransmitter in attention and learning. Because these neurons degenerate in AD, normal ACh levels regulating the sleep-wake cycle are theoretically vulnerable to cholinomimetic drugs. ACh release measured with the use of neostigmine changes significantly across the sleep cycle in cortex and hippocampus, substantia innominata, thalamus and medullary reticular formation. Since ACh evidently plays an integral role in many brain processes, isolation of the cholinergic system with regards to sleep is a challenging prospect. Treatment of AD requires a pharmacological agent that targets only the degenerative cholinergic neurons; likewise, AD related sleep medications should only target the neurons pertinent to the sleep-wake cycle.
The Role of Wave Dynamics and Small-Scale Topography for Downslope Wind Events in Southeast Greenland

AbstractIn Ammassalik, in southeast Greenland, downslope winds can reach hurricane intensity and represent a hazard for the local population and environment. They advect cold air down the ice sheet and over the Irminger Sea, where they drive large ocean–atmosphere heat fluxes over an important ocean convection region. Earlier studies have found them to be associated with a strong katabatic acceleration over the steep coastal slopes, flow convergence inside the valley of Ammassalik, and—in one instance—mountain wave breaking. Yet, for the general occurrence of strong downslope wind events, the importance of mesoscale processes is largely unknown. Here, two wind events—one weak and one strong—are simulated with the atmospheric Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model with different model and topography resolutions, ranging from 1.67 to 60 km. For both events, but especially for the strong one, it is found that lower resolutions underestimate the wind speed because they misrepresent the steepness of the .
Interferometric validation of image-based wave front sensing for NGST

To achieve and maintain excellent imaging performance, the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) will employ image-based phase retrieval methods to control its segmented primary mirror. In this paper, we present the experimental validation of a focus-diverse wave front sensing (WFS) algorithm with comparative interferometric measurements of a perturbed test mirror. Using sets of defocused point-spread functions measured with the NGST phase retrieval camera, we estimate the aberrations of the test optic in a perturbed and unperturbed state. Interleaved with the focus-diverse sets, we measure the surface figure of the mirror using a ZYGO interferometer. After briefly reviewing the basic WFS algorithm and describing the experimental setup, we show that we can obtain agreement that is better than 1/100th of a wave rms in the difference of the wave front estimates obtained in the perturbed and unperturbed states. Although this experiment does not establish the errors that are solely attributable to our WFS approach, it nevertheless validates the accuracy of our image-based methods for NGST, demonstrating that they are generally competitive with standard industrial optical metrology instruments.
A Quantitative Assay for Fatty Acid Composition of Castor Seed in Different Developmental Stages

The aim of this study was to detect and investigate the fatty acid composition of castor seed under different development stage using soxhlet extraction and capillary gas chromatography methods to find the dynamic change of fatty acid composition and their relationships. The results showed that oil content and twelve fatty acid compositions were identified in the seed development, while the content of oil and compositions were significantly different and monitored during seed development. Oil content displayed a linear increase from the beginning of seed formation to maturation. Several compositions, mytistic acid, behenic acid and lignoceric acid, were just found at initial seed filling phase and significantly declined with seed maturity, suggesting that fatty acid composition of castor seed in the initial phases of seed formation differed substantially form that of the mature seeds. The correlation analysis results revealed significant positive correlations of seed development time with mostly fatty acids, further demonstrating that the fatty acids were closely correlated with seed development. These obtained results will benefit for breeding research in high oil content of castor.
Income Inequality, Financial Crises, and Monetary Policy

We construct a general equilibrium model in which income inequality results in insufficient aggregate demand, deflation pressure, and excessive credit growth by allocating income to agents featuring low marginal propensity to consume, and if excessive, can lead to an endogenous financial crisis. This economy generates distributions for equilibrium prices and quantities that are highly skewed to the downside due to financial crises and the liquidity trap. Consequently, symmetric monetary policy rules designed to minimize fluctuations around fixed means become inefficient. A simultaneous reduction in inflation volatility and mean unemployment rate is feasible when an asymmetric policy rule is adopted.
Spatiotemporal Variation, Source Analysis, and Health Risk Assessment of Particle-bound PAHs in Urumqi, China

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in fine (PM2.5) and coarse (PM10) particles in five functional areas, namely, the traffic, industrial, residential, commercial, and educational areas, in Urumqi, a megacity in northwest China. Airborne PM10 and PM2.5 samples were collected from the five areas during heating (November 2015–March 2016) and non-heating (July–September 2016) periods, and 16 priority PAHs (Ʃ16‎PAHs) in the samples were quantified and analyzed. Over the study period, the average Ʃ16PAHs in the PM10 and PM2.5 were 116.97 ± 41.44 ng m–3 and 88.57 ± 31.22 ng m–3, respectively. During the heating period, Ʃ16PAHs in both of the fractions were more than 2.5 times those during the non-heating period, with the highest values found in the industrial area during the heating period and in the traffic area during the non-heating period. The northern part of the city had more PAH pollution than the southern part. The compositions of the particle-bound PAHs varied temporally and spatially, with 4-ring PAHs contributing more during the heating period than during the non-heating period and with 5- and 6-ring PAHs exhibiting the opposite trend. In addition, 4-ring PAHs contributed more in the industrial area, whereas 5- and 6-ring PAHs contributed more in the traffic area, reflecting the variety of emission sources. Principal component analysis and diagnostic molecular ratios showed that vehicular exhaust was the major source of PAHs during both periods at the traffic and central urban sites, while heavy-duty vehicular emissions and natural gas/biomass/coal combustion emissions dominated in the industrial area. The average Benzo[a]pyrene equivalent toxicity (BaPeq) ranged from 4.4 to 37.9 ng m–3, showing a generally similar spatiotemporal distribution with the Ʃ16PAHs. ‎ The results showed that the lifetime excess cancer risk (LCR) during the heating period was higher than during the non-heating period and that people who lived around the industrial and traffic areas had a higher likelihood of getting lung cancer than residents in other parts of the city.
Ramsey Equilibrium with Liberal Borrowing

This paper considers a multi-agent one-sector Ramsey equilibrium growth model with borrowing constraints. The extreme borrowing constraint used in the classical version of the model, surveyed in Becker (2006), and the limited form of borrowing constraint examined in Borissov and Dubey (2015) are relaxed to allow more liberal borrowing by the households. A perfect foresight equilibrium is shown to exist in this economy. We describe the steady state equilibria for the liberal borrowing regime and show that as the borrowing regime is progressively liberalized, the steady state wealth inequality increases. Unlike the case of a limited borrowing regime, an equilibrium path need not converge in the case of liberal borrowing regime. We show through an example that a two period cyclic equilibrium exists when agents are allowed to borrow against their two period future wage income. This result is similar to the possibility of non-convergent equilibrium capital stock sequences in the model with no borrowing.
An Adaptive Homeostatic Algorithm for the Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features

The formation of structure in the visual system, that is, of the connections between cells within neural populations, is by and large an unsupervised learning process. In the primary visual cortex of mammals, for example, one can observe during development the formation of cells selective to localized, oriented features, which results in the development of a representation in area V1 of images’ edges. This can be modeled using a sparse Hebbian learning algorithms which alternate a coding step to encode the information with a learning step to find the proper encoder. A major difficulty of such algorithms is the joint problem of finding a good representation while knowing immature encoders, and to learn good encoders with a nonoptimal representation. To solve this problem, this work introduces a new regulation process between learning and coding which is motivated by the homeostasis processes observed in biology. Such an optimal homeostasis rule is implemented by including an adaptation mechanism based on nonlinear functions that balance the antagonistic processes that occur at the coding and learning time scales. It is compatible with a neuromimetic architecture and allows for a more efficient emergence of localized filters sensitive to orientation. In addition, this homeostasis rule is simplified by implementing a simple heuristic on the probability of activation of neurons. Compared to the optimal homeostasis rule, numerical simulations show that this heuristic allows to implement a faster unsupervised learning algorithm while retaining much of its effectiveness. These results demonstrate the potential application of such a strategy in machine learning and this is illustrated by showing the effect of homeostasis in the emergence of edge-like filters for a convolutional neural network.
Modeling the adoption of internet of things services: A conceptual framework

Internet of Things (IoT) is a new emerging technology, investment on which is expected to reach more than three thousand billions dollars in 2020. The literature focus on the technical aspects of the IoT services and less attention on the behavioral studies that clarify the perception of customers about the adoption and usage of the IoT services. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of the adoption of IoT services. The model is built based on the theory of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and supplemented by a critical review of nine related articles. The outcome of this paper is a conceptual framework that links the ease of use and usefulness in TAM with social influence of UTAUT and other factors such as cost, trust, IT knowledge, and security and privacy for the IoT services
Dietary Amino Acid Density Effects on Growth and Carcass of Broilers Differing in Strain Cross and Sex

Some broiler integrators in the United States commonly reduce diet nutrient density as a way of reducing overall diet cost because feed represents the majority of live production costs. There is disagreement about amino acid feeding regimens for broilers, particularly when raising heavy broilers for maximum carcass and breast meat yields. Two experiments evaluated the effect of feeding a nutritional program similar to that currently used by the US poultry industry (low amino acid density; LD) and an isocaloric program with higher amino acid levels (high amino acid density; HD) on the performance of broilers varying in sex and strain cross (1 high-yield strain and 2 multipurpose strains). Data from both experiments were pooled because no interactions between trials were noted. Broilers fed HD diets had increased BW and decreased feed conversion (g of feed/g of gain) throughout all phases of the study when compared with broilers fed LD diets. Males had higher BW and lower feed conversion than females. Mortality was unaffected by diet type, strain, or sex. Broilers of the high-yield strain had lower BW and higher feed conversions when compared with the 2 multipurpose strains. Broilers fed HD diets resulted in lower abdominal fat percentage, as well as higher fillet and tender yields at 42 and 56 d of age. No effect of dietary regimen was observed for yield of carcass, wings, drums, or saddle. Carcasses from female broilers typically had higher percentages of fat and wings and lower drum and saddle yields. The high-yield strain had higher percentages of fillets, tenders and carcass and lower fat and saddle yields when compared with the multipurpose strains. Overall improvements in economically important parameters (i.e., feed conversion, and white meat yield) observed after feeding an amino acid concentration greater than that typically used by some broiler integrators in the US suggest that industry standard nutritional programs may be low in amino acids. Considerations for increasing current amino acid concentrations should be made on a cost-benefit basis.
Borehole flexural modes in anisotropic formations

A perturbation method of solution is an efficient way of analyzing elastic wave propagation along a borehole in anisotropic formations. The perturbation model allows us to calculate changes in the modal dispersion curves caused by the differences in elastic constants between the anisotropic formation of interest and a reference, or unperturbed, isotropic formation. The equivalent isotropic constants in the reference formation are obtained from the appropriate compressional‐and shear‐wave velocities for the selected propagation and polarization directions of the flexural mode. This choice of the unperturbed solution means that the required perturbation is minimal, resulting in enhanced accuracy of the perturbed solution. Computational results are presented for the dispersion curves of borehole flexural waves in a transversely isotropic (TI) formation as a function of borehole deviation from the TI symmetry axis. In addition, radial distributions of displacement and stress fields associated with the flexura.
MicroRNA-124 alleviates hyperoxia-induced inflammatory response in pulmonary epithelial cell by inhibiting TLR4/NF-κB/CCL2.

BACKGROUND Lung epithelial cell dysfunction induced by hyperoxia-associated oxidative stress is a prominent feature involved in the development of acute lung injury (ALI). How the underlying molecular mechanisms contributed to this process are poorly defined. In the present study, we sought to identify the role of miR-124 in hyperoxia-induced cell apoptosis and excessive inflammatory response in pulmonary epithelial cell. METHODS The miR-124 levels in pulmonary epithelial cell were assayed by qRT-PCR. MiR-124 mimics and inhibitors were transfected to gain or loss of miR-124 function. Cell proliferation was analyzed by CCK8 assay. Cell apoptosis was analyzed by flow cytometry. The targeted genes were predicted by a bioinformatics algorithm and confirmed by a dual luciferase reporter assay. The protein levels were assayed by western blotting. RESULTS The results showed that miR-124 was significantly down-regulated in Beas2B cells and primary LECs upon hyperoxia exposure conditions. However, overexpression of miR-124 dramatically attenuated hyperoxia-provoked TLR4, NF-κB and pro-inflammatory cytokines production. In vitro, the cell viability and apoptosis was significantly reversed following transfection with miR-124 mimics in the presence of hyperoxia. Furthermore, the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of CCL2 was bound by miR-124. CONCLUSION It was concluded that miR-124 inhibited hyperoxia-induced apoptosis and excessive inflammatory response in Beas2B cells and primary LECs, at least partially, through the inhibition of TLR4/NF-κB/CCL2 signaling cascades.
Frozen ground temperature trends associated with climate change in the Tibetan Plateau Three River Source Region from 1980 to 2014

Long-term (1981�2014) trends in soil temperatures at depths ranging from 0�320 cm were used to examine relationships between regional climate change and soil temperatures in the Three River Source Region (TRSR) of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Air temperature, precipitation, maximum depth of frozen ground and maximum snow depth were also analysed for trends and for correlations with soil temperatures. A significant warming trend was evident in the TRSR during the 35 yr analysed. Significant soil warming was detected, at rates of 0.706°C decade �1 for surface soils (0 cm), 0.477°C decade �1 for shallow layer soils (5�20 cm) and 0.417°C decade �1 for deep layer soils (40�320 cm). There was a clear effect of air temperature on soil temperature, as seen from the concurrent significant increases in air and soil temperature trends and the strong cor - relation between them. The relationship between precipitation and soil temperatures was com - plicated. Higher levels of precipitation on the ground also resulted in higher soil temperatures during the summer in the frozen soil, while the process of freezing and thawing had an inhibitory effect on the soil temperature increase. The warming trends in soil temperature are expected to continue with the degradation of frozen soil in the TRSR.