Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Neuroinflammatory Response in Male and Female Mice: A Role for BDNF

A growing body of evidence supports the close relationship between major depressive disorder (MDD), a severe psychiatric disease more common among women than men, and alterations of the immune/inflammatory system. However, despite the large number of studies aimed at understanding the molecular bases of this association, a lack of information exists on the potential cross-talk between systems known to be involved in depression and components of the inflammatory response, especially with respect to sex differences. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a neurotrophin with a well-established role in MDD etiopathology: it is altered in depressed patients as well as in animal models of the disease and its changes are restored by antidepressant drugs. Interestingly, this neurotrophin is also involved in the inflammatory response. Indeed, it can be secreted by microglia, the primary innate immune cells in the central nervous system whose functions may be in turn regulated by BDNF. With these premises, in this study, we investigated the reciprocal impact of BDNF and the immune system by evaluating the neuroinflammatory response in male and female BDNF-heterozygous mutant mice acutely treated with the cytokine-inducer lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Specifically, we assessed the potential onset of an LPS-induced sickness behavior as well as changes of inflammatory mediators in the mouse hippocampus and frontal cortex, with respect to both genotype and sex. We found that the increased inflammatory response induced by LPS in the brain of male mice was independent of the genotype, whereas in the female, it was restricted to the heterozygous mice with no changes in the wild-type group, suggestive of a role for BDNF in the sex-dependent effect of the inflammatory challenge. Considering the involvement of both BDNF and neuroinflammation in several psychiatric diseases and the diverse incidence of such pathologies in males and females, a deeper investigation of the mechanisms underlying their interaction may have a critical translational relevance.
The association between hormones and antipsychotic use: a focus on postpartum and menopausal women

During the postpartum and menopausal periods of women’s lives, there is a well-established and significant drop of circulating estrogens. This may be the reason why both these periods are associated with an increased risk for onset or exacerbation of psychiatric disorders. Whether symptoms are mainly affective or mainly psychotic, these disorders are frequently treated with antipsychotic medications, which calls for an examination of the relationship between hormone replacement and antipsychotic agents at these time periods. The aim of this narrative review is to summarize what is known about the association of hormones and antipsychotics in the postnatal period and at menopause. In the review, we focus on estrogen and oxytocin hormones and include, for the most part, only papers published within the last 10 years. Both estradiol and oxytocin have at various times been implicated in the etiology of postpartum disorders, and estrogens, sometimes combined with progesterone, have been tested as potential treatments for these conditions. The role of estradiol as an adjunct to antipsychotics in the prevention of postpartum relapses is currently controversial. With respect to oxytocin, studies are lacking. Psychosis in menopausal and postmenopausal women has been successfully treated with estrogens and selective estrogen-receptor modulators, mainly raloxifene, in addition to antipsychotics. Some symptoms appear to respond better than others. No oxytocin study has specifically targeted postmenopausal women. Because of feedback mechanisms, there is a theoretical danger of therapy with exogenous hormones interfering with endogenous secretion and disturbing the balance among inter-related hormones. When used with antipsychotics, hormones may also affect the metabolism and, hence, the brain level of specific antipsychotics. This makes treatment with antipsychotics plus hormones complicated. Dose, timing and route of intervention may all prove critical to efficacy. While much remains unknown, this literature review indicates that, within standard dose ranges, the combination of hormones and antipsychotics for postnatal and menopausal women suffering severe mental distress can be beneficial, and is safe.
Effect of different doses of low-intensity laser therapy on total active range of motion after hand flexor tendon repair

Objective To investigate the difference between the effects of different doses of low-level laser therapy (4 or 1 J/cm2) on the return of hand active range of motion (ROM) after flexor tendon repair. Participants and methods A small trial was conducted on 33 patients with 45 injured fingers of both sexes who underwent primary repair after complete cut of hand flexor tendon. Their age ranged from 20 to 40 years old. They were recruited from the plastic surgery department. The treatment began the first day postoperatively after permission by surgeons using Duran protocol and splinting. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), as well as LASER therapy, was started the seventh day after surgery. Laser treatment lasted for 3 weeks only, whereas other modalities lasted for 3 months. The sample was randomly divided into three groups each of 15 injured tendons. Group A received the conventional treatment plus laser therapy (1 J/cm2), three sessions/week for 3 weeks. Group B received the traditional treatment plus laser therapy (4 J/cm2), three sessions/week for 3 weeks. Control group received the conventional treatment only. All patients received the early conventional physical therapy after permission by the surgeon: TENS plus early therapeutic exercises following Duran protocol, three sessions/week for 3 months. The ROM was measured at eighth and 12th week after the commencement of treatment. Results At second month after commencement of treatment, there was a positive effect of laser therapy with either doses 1 or 4 J/cm2 on total hand active ROM after flexor tendons repair, with more effect noticed in group B (4 J/cm2). At third month after commencement of treatment, best results in hand active ROM were seen in group B (4 J/cm2), with prognosis being excellent in 46.7% of patients, good in 33.3% and fair in 20.0% according to the modified Strickland classification. Conclusion The 4-J/cm2 laser dose is more efficient than laser dose of 1 J/cm2 in the treatment of repaired hand flexor tendons in addition to conventional treatment (TENS stimulation plus Duran protocol therapeutic exercises) in early regain of active ROM that can affect return of early better hand function.
An ALMA survey of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey UKIDSS/UDS field: source catalogue and properties

We present the catalogue and properties of sources in AS2UDS, an 870-$\mu$m continuum survey with the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) of 716 single-dish sub-millimetre sources detected in the UKIDSS/UDS field by the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey. In our sensitive ALMA follow-up observations we detect 708 sub-millimetre galaxies (SMGs) at $>$\,4.3$\sigma$ significance across the $\sim$\,1-degree diameter field. We combine our precise ALMA positions with the extensive multi-wavelength coverage in the UDS field to fit the spectral energy distributions of our SMGs to derive a median redshift of $z_{\rm phot}=$\,2.61$\pm$0.09. This large sample reveals a statistically significant trend of increasing sub-millimetre flux with redshift suggestive of galaxy downsizing. 101 ALMA maps do not show a $>$\,4.3$\sigma$ SMG, but we demonstrate from stacking {\it Herschel} SPIRE observations at these positions, that the vast majority of these blank maps correspond to real single-dish sub-millimetre sources. We further show that these blank maps contain an excess of galaxies at $z_{\rm phot}=$\,1.5--4 compared to random fields, similar to the redshift range of the ALMA-detected SMGs. In addition, we combine X-ray and mid-infrared active galaxy nuclei activity (AGN) indicators to yield a likely range for the AGN fraction of 8--28\,\% in our sample. Finally, we compare the redshifts of this population of high-redshift, strongly star-forming galaxies with the inferred formation redshifts of massive, passive galaxies being found out to $z\sim$\,2, finding reasonable agreement -- in support of an evolutionary connection between these two classes of massive galaxy.
Accelerated Nonparametric Bayesian Double Articulation Analyzer for Unsupervised Word Discovery

This paper describes an accelerated nonparametric Bayesian double articulation analyzer (NPB-DAA) for enabling a developmental robot to acquire words and phonemes directly from speech signals without labeled data in more realistic scenario than conventional NPB-DAA. Word discovery and phoneme acquisition are known as important tasks in human child development. Human infants can discover words and phonemes from raw speech signals at eight months without any label data, unlike supervised learning-based speech recognition systems. NPB-DAA was proposed by Taniguchi et al. and shown to be able to perform simultaneous word and phoneme discovery without any label data. However, the computational cost of NPB-DAA was extremely large, and thus could not be applied to large-scale speech data. In this paper, we introduce lookup tables for conventional NPB-DAA to reduce the computational cost and developed an accelerated NPB-DAA. Using the lookup tables, values calculated in each subroutine are memorized and reused in the subsequent calculations. This acceleration does not harm the quality of word and phoneme discovery because the introduction of the lookup tables is theoretically supported. This paper also shows that our accelerated NPB-DAA significantly reduced the computational cost by 90% compared to conventional NPB-DAA.
Different usage profiles for listeners of music delivered via interactive television, free-to-air radio, and personal music collections

This study examines the audience profile and usage patterns of interactive cable/satellite audio (ICSA) listeners and compares them with listeners of free-to-air radio (FTA) and personal music collections(PMC). A survey of ICSA users in Australia reveals that heavy users of ICSA are also likely to be heavy users of FTA and PMC. However, ICSA listeners are significantly older than FTA or PMC listeners and prefer music formats different to those reflected in radio audiences and CD sales. Disciplines Business Publication Details Areni, C. S. & Miller, R. (2012). Different usage profiles for listeners of music delivered via interactive television, free-to-air radio, and personal music collections. Proceeding of the ANZMAC 2012 Conference (pp. 1-7). This conference paper is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow. edu.au/gsbpapers/488
Frobenius pairs in abelian categories: correspondences with cotorsion pairs, exact model categories, and Auslander-Buchweitz contexts

In this work, we revisit Auslander-Buchweitz Approximation Theory and find some relations with cotorsion pairs and model category structures. From the notions of relatives generators and cogenerators in Approximation Theory, we introduce the concept of left Frobenius pairs $(\mathcal{X},\omega)$ in an abelian category $\mathcal{C}$. We show how to construct from $(\mathcal{X},\omega)$ a projective exact model structure on $\mathcal{X}^\wedge$, as a result of Hovey-Gillespie Correspondence applied to two compatible and complete cotorsion pairs in $\mathcal{X}^\wedge$. These pairs can be regarded as examples of what we call cotorsion pairs relative to a thick subcategory of $\mathcal{C}$. We establish some correspondences between Frobenius pairs, relative cotorsion pairs, exact model structures and Auslander-Buchweitz contexts. Finally, some applications of these results are given in the context of Gorenstein homological algebra by generalizing some existing model structures on the categories of modules over Gorenstein and Ding-Chen rings, and by encoding the stable module category of a ring as a certain homotopy category. We also present some connections with perfect cotorsion pairs, covering classes, and cotilting modules.
A Robust Statistical Framework for Instantaneous Electroencephalogram Phase and Frequency Analysis

In recent decades, instantaneous phase (IP) and instantaneous frequency (IF) of the electroencephalogram (EEG) has received great attention as a notable complement for conventional EEG spectral analysis. The calculation of these parameters commonly includes narrow-bandpass filtering followed by the calculation of the analytical form of the signal using the Hilbert transform. In this research, using this widely accepted phase calculation approach and well-established methods from statistical signal processing, a stochastic model is proposed for the superposition of narrow-band foreground and background EEG activities. Using this model, the probability density functions of the instantaneous envelope (IE) and IP of EEG signals are derived analytically. It is rigorously shown that the IP estimation quality highly depends on the IE and any phase of frequency interpretations in low IE are unreliable for phase analysis. Based on these findings, a Monte Carlo estimation scheme is proposed for the accurate estimation and smoothing of phase related parameters. The impact of this approach on previous studies including time-domain phase synchrony, phase resetting, phase locking value and phase amplitude coupling are studied with examples.
Embedded systems: teaching and design challenges for nonhomogeneous classes

The growth of technology leads the industry to move beyond and crosses the boundaries of its own disciplines. The changes from pure mechanical system, to electronics systems and the integration with control software brings new challenges to the engineers working in the industry and to the source shaped the engineers. As a result, institutes of higher education need to make the necessary changes to meet this continuing market demands. This work address the issue and describes a new systematic and an effective approach for teaching hardware based courses for large non-homogenous (Computer Science and Electronics students) class setting using existing e-learning system in the university to promote powerful, long-lasting learning outcomes. It is a blend of several approaches with an insightful goal to provoke deeper understanding in various topics in microprocessors and microcontrollers details, intended to teach the computer science students to learn low-level hardware interfacing, interrupt handling, and other microprocessors issues, as well as embedded systems through learning microcontrollers. Our methodology revolute around three steps: using visual simulators, incrementally weighted exercises, from easiest to hardest, and finally working on real hardware controllers. The proposed approaches developed for the course “Embedded Controller Technology”, but any other hardware based course can apply them. The approach comprises a 3-hour a week lecture and 2-hour a week laboratory, both taught in the 3rd semester. Imposing the approach leads to the overall improvement of the course quality: student satisfaction and interest, increased number of completed hardware projects and significant improvement in grade distribution and it has been observed that students feel better prepared to face the challenges to be found in their future professional activities.
Chineseness across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States

What happens when Chinese American youths travel to mainland China in search of their ancestral roots, only to realize that in many ways they still feel out of place, or when mainland Chinese realize that the lives of the Chinese abroad may not be as good as they had imagined? By considering programs designed to facilitate interactions between overseas Chinese and their ancestral homelands, Andrea Louie highlights how these programs not only create opportunities for new connections but also reveal the disjunctures that now separate Chinese Americans from China and mainland Chinese from the Chinese abroad. Louie focuses on “In Search of Roots,” a program that takes young Chinese American adults of Cantonese descent to visit their ancestral villages in China’s Guangdong province. Through ethnographic interviews and observation, Louie examines the experiences of Chinese Americans both during village visits in China and following their participation in the program, which she herself took part in as an intern and researcher. She presents a vivid portrait of two populations who, though connected through family ties generations back, are meeting for the first time in the context of a rapidly changing contemporary China. Louie situates the participants’ and hosts’ shifting understandings of China and Chineseness within the context of transnational flows of people, media, goods, and money; China’s political and economic policies; and the racial and cultural politics of the United States.
On the magnetization of BL Lac jets

The current paradigm foresees that relativistic jets are launched as magnetically dominated flows, whose magnetic power is progressively converted to kinetic power of of the matter of the jet, until equipartition is reached. Therefore, at the end of the acceleration phase, the jet should still carry a substantial fraction ($\approx$ half) of its power in the form of a Poynting flux. It has been also argued that, in these conditions, the best candidate particle acceleration mechanism is efficient reconnection of magnetic field lines, for which it is predicted that magnetic field and accelerated relativistic electron energy densities are in equipartition.Through the modeling of the jet non--thermal emission, we explore if equipartition is indeed possible in BL Lac objects, i.e. low-power blazars with weak or absent broad emission lines. We find that one-zone models (for which only one region is involved in the production of the radiation we observe) the particle energy density is largely dominating (by 1-2 orders of magnitude) over the magnetic one. As a consequence, the jet kinetic power largely exceeds the magnetic power. Instead, if the jet is structured (i.e. made by a fast spine surrounded by a slower layer), the amplification of the IC emission due to the radiative interplay between the two components allows us to reproduce the emission in equipartition conditions.
Frame Assignment with Active Learning

Recently natural language understanding is given a special attention, since in natural language processing techniques syntactic analysis such as part-of-speech tagging and parsing had a great progress and semantic analysis did not have such a rapid progress. In information extraction and question-answering systems semantic understanding techniques are required. Frame semantics structure analysis is one of the understanding techniques. In this type of analysis, the semantic roles of elements participated in the action would be identified. To determine the roles automatically, two steps are required: one is frame assignment, and the other one is role assignment. What we aim to do is assigning frames with a supervised machine learning method called 'active learning'. Supervised learning method requires a huge amount of labeled data. The aim of active learning promises to maximize the performance by minimizing the human's effort to label the data. To our end, we have selected pool-based active learning with uncertainty sampling method; and also we have chosen 14 frequent targets from FrameNet data set for our task. Random sampling which represents the distribution of frames in the corpus would be our baseline to find how effective active learning is. Since for each target there was at least one dominant frame, we faced the imbalanced problem which might have a negative impact on the classifier; so over-sampling is used to resolve this problem. According to the results, active learning worked out for most of the targets; for some of them it was not that much effective; and for some it had a negative impact which shows active learning could not always be a help. We have discussed this issue in details. As we know active learning is an iterative process, it should be stopped when the classifier has reached to the maximum performance. Reaching this point is so difficult; so, we have proposed a new stopping criterion which stops active learning in a near-optimum point. This stopping criterion is based on the confidence score of the classifier on the extra unlabeled data such that it uses the variance of classifier's confidence score for a certain number of samples which are selected in each iteration. 3 Dedication To my parents and my wife, Saeedeh for their true love and support. 4 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is by my own work and effort. Where other sources of information have been used, they have been acknowledged.
Interest Detection in Image, Video and Multiple Videos: Model and Applications

Interest detection is to detect an object, event, or process which causes attention. In this work, we focus on the interest detection in the image, video and multiple videos. Interest detection in an image or a video, is closely related to the visual attention. However, the interest detection in multiple videos needs to consider all the videos as a whole rather than considering the attention in each single video independently.
The Evolution of the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation over the past 6 Gyr

Abstract Scaling relations are salient ingredients of galaxy evolution and formation models. I summarize results from the IMAGES survey, which combines spatially-resolved kinematics from FLAMES/GIRAFFE with imaging from HST/ACS and other facilities. Specifically, I will focus on the evolution of the stellar mass and baryonic Tully-Fisher Relations (TFR) from z = 0.6 down to z = 0. We found a significant evolution in zero point and scatter of the stellar mass TFR compared to the local Universe. Combined with gas fractions derived by inverting the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation, we derived for the first time a baryonic TFR at high redshift. Conversely to the stellar mass TFR, the baryonic relation does not appear to evolve in zero point, which suggests that most of the reservoir of gas converted into stars over the past 6 Gyr was already gravitationally bound to galaxies at z = 0.6.