Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early and Selective Impairments in Axonal Transport Kinetics of Synaptic Cargoes Induced by Soluble Amyloid β‐Protein Oligomers

The downstream targets of amyloid β (Aβ)‐oligomers remain elusive. One hypothesis is that Aβ‐oligomers interrupt axonal transport. Although previous studies have demonstrated Aβ‐induced transport blockade, early effects of low‐n soluble Aβ‐oligomers on axonal transport remain unclear. Furthermore, the cargo selectivity for such deficits (if any) or the specific effects of Aβ on the motility kinetics of transported cargoes are also unknown. Toward this, we visualized axonal transport of vesicles in cultured hippocampal neurons treated with picomolar (pm) levels of cell‐derived soluble Aβ‐oligomers. We examined select cargoes thought to move as distinct organelles and established imaging parameters that allow organelle tracking with consistency and high fidelity – analyzing all data in a blinded fashion. Aβ‐oligomers induced early and selective diminutions in velocities of synaptic cargoes but had no effect on mitochondrial motility, contrary to previous reports. These changes were N‐methyl d‐aspartate receptor/glycogen synthase kinase‐3β dependent and reversible upon washout of the oligomers. Cluster‐mode analyses reveal selective attenuations in faster‐moving synaptic vesicles, suggesting possible decreases in cargo/motor associations, and biochemical experiments implicate tau phosphorylation in the process. Collectively, the data provide a biological basis for Aβ‐induced axonal transport deficits.
Enhancement of GABAA-current run-down in the hippocampus occurs at the first spontaneous seizure in a model of temporal lobe epilepsy

Refractory temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is associated with a dysfunction of inhibitory signaling mediated by GABAA receptors. In particular, the use-dependent decrease (run-down) of the currents (IGABA) evoked by the repetitive activation of GABAA receptors is markedly enhanced in hippocampal and cortical neurons of TLE patients. Understanding the role of IGABA run-down in the disease, and its mechanisms, may allow development of medical alternatives to surgical resection, but such mechanistic insights are difficult to pursue in surgical human tissue. Therefore, we have used an animal model (pilocarpine-treated rats) to identify when and where the increase in IGABA run-down occurs in the natural history of epilepsy. We found: (i) that the increased run-down occurs in the hippocampus at the time of the first spontaneous seizure (i.e., when the diagnosis of epilepsy is made), and then extends to the neocortex and remains constant in the course of the disease; (ii) that the phenomenon is strictly correlated with the occurrence of spontaneous seizures, because it is not observed in animals that do not become epileptic. Furthermore, initial exploration of the molecular mechanism disclosed a relative increase in α4-, relative to α1-containing GABAA receptors, occurring at the same time when the increased run-down appears, suggesting that alterations in the molecular composition of the GABA receptors may be responsible for the occurrence of the increased run-down. These observations disclose research opportunities in the field of epileptogenesis that may lead to a better understanding of the mechanism whereby a previously normal tissue becomes epileptic.
Efficiency of particle swarm optimization applied on fuzzy logic DC motor speed control

This paper presents the application of Fuzzy Logic for DC motor speed control using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Firstly, the controller designed according to Fuzzy Logic rules is such that the systems are fundamentally robust. Secondly, the Fuzzy Logic controller (FLC) used earlier was optimized with PSO so as to obtain optimal adjustment of the membership functions only. Finally, the FLC is completely optimized by Swarm Intelligence Algorithms. Digital simulation results demonstrate that in comparison with the FLC the designed FLC-PSO speed controller obtains better dynamic behavior and superior performance of the DC motor, as well as perfect speed tracking with no overshoot.
HRM and the irresistible rise of the discourse of competence

Despite debate and criticism, the notion of “competence” has risen to prominence very rapidly and now has an important place in the vocabulary of human resource management (HRM). Seeks to explain such a rapid rise by drawing on discourse theory. The discourse of competence may be seen to arise through the convergence of discourses in four separate domains, and thereby gain legitimacy from the stocks of already formulated meanings in these separate domains. Taking a discourse theory approach also exposes the control aspects of competence through the constitution of the individual as a social subject in terms of the inscription of assessment judgements. However, the convergence of discourses has not resulted in complete closure. Concludes with some speculation about the degree to which the competence approach will successfully achieve employer commitment.
ForceDrag: using pressure as a touch input modifier

It is common to use modifier keys in a PC environment in order to change drag modes, but mobile devices with a touch screen do not provide this option. Thus, we present ForceDrag to address this issue, which is a touch drag operation where pressure is used as a modifier key to change touch drag modes. We also introduce the concept of force lock and we compare three selection techniques for performing a force lock in a user study. We also describe a prototype implementation and discuss early user feedback on ForceDrag.
Identity Politics and the Fragmenting of the 1970s Evangelical Left

Abstract In the early 1970s, a group of progressive evangelicals challenged the mid-century cultural conservatism of their tradition. Activists associated with Reformed, Anabaptist, and neo-evangelical institutions denounced militarism, racism, sexism, economic injustice, and President Richard Nixon's “lust for and abuse of power. ” When this coalition met in 1973 to issue the Chicago Declaration, delegates effused a profound sense of optimism. The evangelical left held very real potential for political impact. Within a decade, however, the movement seemed to be in disarray. This article suggests the centrality of identity politics to evangelicalism in the 1970s and outlines the fragmentation of the progressive evangelical coalition along gender, racial, and theological lines. The formation of the Evangelical Women's Caucus, the growing stridency of the National Black Evangelical Association, and the divergence of Anabaptist-oriented Evangelicals for Social Action and the Reformed-oriented Association for Public Justice sapped the evangelical left of needed resources and contributed to its impotence into the 1980s. The forces of identity politics, which also plagued the broader political left, were powerful enough to sabotage even a group of evangelicals with remarkably similar theological convictions, religious cultures, and critiques of conservative politics. The story of the fragmenting evangelical left, however, reflects more than broader culture's preoccupation with identity. It points to often-overlooked religious elements of the broader left. And alongside the New Left and the New Right, the evangelical left's debates over racial, sexual, and theological difference added to the disruptions of the liberal consensus in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Effect of IGF2BP2 Gene Polymorphisms on Pioglitazone Response in Chinese Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Background: Genome-wide association studies identified that insulin-like growth factor 2 mRNA-binding protein 2 (IGF2BP2) genetic polymorphisms are related to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in several populations. This study aimed to investigate whether the IGF2BP2 gene rs1470579 and rs4402960 polymorphisms were associated with T2DM and pioglitazone efficacy in Chinese T2DM patients. Methods: A total of 281 T2DM patients and 111 healthy volunteers were enrolled to identify the IGF2BP2 gene rs1470579 and rs4402960 polymorphisms; 86 patients were randomly selected and given a 12-week pioglitazone treatment (30 mg/day). Fasting plasma glucose, postprandial plasma glucose (PPG), glycated hemoglobin, serum triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were determined before and after pioglitazone treatment. Results: The results showed that the IGF2BP2 gene rs1470579 and rs4402960 polymorphisms were associated with T2DM in a Chinese population (OR = 2.002, 95% CI 1.170-3.426, p < 0.05; OR = 1.879, 95% CI 1.110-3.182, p < 0.05). The effect of pioglitazone on PPG (p < 0.05), TG (p < 0.01) and HDL-C (p < 0.05) was lower in patients with the rs1470579 AC+CC genotypes than in AA genotype carriers. Its effect on PPG level was also lower in patients with the GT+TT genotypes of rs4402960 than in patients with the GG genotype (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The IGF2BP2 gene rs1470579 and rs4402960 polymorphisms were associated with T2DM and therapeutic efficacy of pioglitazone in this Chinese population. i 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel
Leaning Over the Fence: Heritage Fair Projects as ‘Funds of Knowledge’

This paper is a response to an article, “Creepy White Gaze: Rethinking the Diorama as a Pedagogical Activity” (Sterzuk & Mulholland, 2011), published in the Alberta Journal of Educational Research, in which Sterzuk and Mulholland critiqued a heritage fair entry, “Great Plains Indians. ” I report on a school-university collaborative research project that examined the ways in which out-of-school practices and knowledges of Canadian Aboriginal students might provide these students with access to school literacy practices. Grounded in a ‘funds of knowledge’ approach, this paper presents an alternative reading, explaining how students’ linguistic and cultural resources from home and community networks were utilized to reshape school literacy practices through their involvement in a heritage fair program. Cet article est une reponse a un autre intitule “Creepy White Gaze: Rethinking the Diorama as a Pedagogical Activity” (Sterzuk & Mulholland, 2011), publie dans la revue Alberta Journal of Educational Research et dans lequel les auteurs ont critique une soumission, « Great Plains Indians » (Indiens des grandes plaines), a une fete du patrimoine. Je fais etat d’un projet de recherche collaboratif (ecole-universite) qui a examine les facons dont les pratiques et les connaissances en dehors du contexte scolaire d’eleves autochtones canadiens pourraient leur faciliter l’acces a des pratiques scolaires en matiere d’alphabetisation. Reposant sur une approche « fonds de connaissance », cet article presente une autre interpretation et explique dans quelle mesure les ressources linguistiques et culturelles acquises par les eleves a la maison et dans la communaute ont servi a remanier les pratiques scolaires en matiere d’alphabetisation par le biais de leur participation a un programme des fetes du patrimoine.
High-Involvement Work Design and Job Satisfaction

Using data from the 1999–2002 Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, the authors investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and high-involvement work practices such as quality circles, feedback, suggestion programs, and task teams. They consider the direction of causality, identifying both reasons that work practices might affect job satisfaction, and reasons that satisfaction might affect participation in high-involvement practices. They find that satisfaction was positively associated with high-involvement practices, a result that held across different specifications of the empirical model and different subsets of data. Conversely, worker outcomes that might signal dissatisfaction, like work-related stress or grievance filing, appear to have been unrelated to high-involvement jobs. However, the data suggest the presence of self-selection: satisfied workers were more likely to increase participation in high-involvement practices, but participation did not predict future increases in satisfaction.
What's in season for rheumatoid arthritis patients? Seasonal fluctuations in disease activity.

OBJECTIVES To examine whether a seasonal fluctuation exists with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) activity and to analyse seasonal effects of varying components that express disease activity in RA patients. METHODS A group of 1665 RA patients (mean age 57.2 yrs, mean disease duration 9.9 yrs) whose data were available for 10 consecutive phases from a large observational cohort study conducted at our institution from October 2000 to April 2005, bi-annually, were evaluated. Ten criteria were analysed to assess RA disease activity. RESULTS All criteria revealed decrease in disease activity during fall and increase in disease activity during spring, except for the physician's global assessment of disease activity in which significant differences were not observed between the two seasons. CONCLUSIONS We found definite seasonal differences in RA patients, both subjectively and objectively. RA disease activity was higher in spring and lower during fall. Seasonal changes may play an important role in evaluating disease activity of RA patients and should be taken into account when examining these patients.
An Appraisal of the Prevalence and Attributes of Traumatic Dental Injuries in the Permanent Anterior Teeth among 7–14-Year-Old School Children of North East Delhi

Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence, associated risk factors, characteristics, and pattern of traumatic dental injuries (TDIs) in the permanent anterior teeth among school children of North East Delhi area. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional study was done in 3000 school-going children aged 7–14 years. Materials and Methods: A detailed case history and clinical examination were performed on the entire sample population. TDIs were recorded according to Andreasen's epidemiological classification of TDIs including World Health Organization codes. Statistical Analysis Used: For finding the independent association of the significant variables with outcome, multivariable logistic regression analysis was used. Results: A prevalence of 10.7% was observed in the sample being studied. Dental trauma was significantly (P < 0.05) associated with male gender, and high statistical significance (P < 0.001) was noted with age, participation in sports, lip seal, and overjet. Fall of the child while playing by himself/herself was the most common cause; afternoon and schools were the most common time and place of occurrence of TDIs, respectively. Single tooth enamel fractures in the left maxillary central incisors were most commonly seen. Adhesive restorations were the most frequent form of treatment required. Conclusions: Organizing studies addressing the prevention and treatment needs of TDIs and educational programs aimed toward parents and school teachers are of paramount importance. Furthermore, recognizing the tremendous treatment negligence is extremely critical to adequately analyze indifference of the people toward dental trauma and its consequences.
Knee pain and the infrapatellar branch of the saphenous nerve

Pain over the front of the knee is common after surgery or trauma but often a definite diagnosis is difficult to make. Over the past year we have seen five cases in which the pain could be ascribed to damage to a branch of the infrapatellar branch of the saphenous nerve. Two were subsequent to trauma and three to surgical procedures. In all five cases surgical exploration gave symptomatic relief. Eight cadaveric knees were prosected to explore further the anatomy of this nerve in relation to the injuries. Injury to one of these branches should be considered in cases of persistent anterior, anteromedial or anterolateral knee pain or neurological symptoms following surgery or trauma.
Evaluating cognitive load in spoken language interfaces using a dual-task paradigm

As speech interfaces become more prevalent, it i s becoming more crucial that they be developed in a way that minimizes cognitive load for users. One major barrier to creating systems that are more human-centered has been the lack of an accepted online methodology for directly evaluating the cognitive resource demands of different systems. The present study extends a classic tool from cognitive psychology, the dual-task paradigm, to speech interface evaluation. Participants follow simple instructions generated by a system, while simultaneously monitoring for a simple visual probe. Performance on the monitoring task is used as a measure of cognitive resource demands; whenever language understanding is more demanding, performance on the monitoring task suffers. In the present study we used this methodology to investigate patterns of reference generation and how they impact human understanding.
Object Matching using Skeletonization based on Hamming Distance

of an object from a dynamic background is a challenging process in computer vision and pattern matching research. The proposed algorithm identifies moving objects from the sequence of video frames which contains dynamically changing backgrounds in the noisy environment. In connection with our previous work, here we have proposed a methodology to perform skeletanization of an object and identifies it. The recent vehicle recognition methods could fail to recognize an object and produce more false acceptance rate(FAR) or false rejection rate (FRR). This paper recommends a method for object identification using weighted distance to extract features. Experimental results and comparisons using real data demonstrate the pre-eminence of the proposed approach.
XML Stream Data Reduction by Shared KST Signatures

Within XML data streams, markup as defined e.g. in a DTD is not only being used for structuring large amounts of data, but also for efficiently searching, accessing, and processing the required parts of the data streams. However when huge amounts of XML data are involved, data reduction or compression techniques that still allow finding the required parts of the data fast may become crucial to handle data processing. We present a data reduction and compression technique for XML data streams that not only significantly reduces the amount of data, but also allows for efficient data processing without requiring a full data decompression. Our data reduction technique combines sub-tree sharing with removing structure that is known by a DTD. We have done extensive performance evaluations to compare our compression technique with other approaches to XML compression, and we show that we not only outperform the other techniques, but also outperform string compression techniques like gzip that do not support query processing on compressed data.
Inhibition of BMP Receptor Synthesis by Antisense Oligonucleotides Attenuates OP‐1 Action in Primary Cultures of Fetal Rat Calvaria Cells

Osteogenic protein‐1 (OP‐1 or bone morphogenetic protein‐7 [BMP‐7]) stimulates osteoblast differentiation in vitro and induces bone formation in vivo. BMPs exert their effects through complex formation with a heterodimeric receptor composed of a type I and a type II polypeptide. In the present study, mRNAs for three BMP subtype I receptors (ActR‐I, BMPR‐IA, and BMPR‐IB) and one BMPR‐II receptor were detected by Northern analysis in two human osteosarcoma cell lines (SaOS‐2 and TE85) and in the primary cultures of fetal rat calvaria (FRC) cells. OP‐1 affected the steady‐state mRNA levels of these receptors differently among these cell types. To study the role of each receptor type in OP‐1 action in FRC cells, receptor synthesis was inhibited by antisense oligonucleotides. Inhibition of receptor synthesis was confirmed by immunoprecipitation of radiolabeled cellular proteins with specific antibodies. The osteogenic action of OP‐1 was measured by alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and mineralized bone nodule formation in FRC cells. Results showed that inhibition of synthesis of a single subtype I receptor alone did not affect significantly the OP‐1–stimulated ALP activity. Inhibition of BMPR‐II synthesis reduced the OP‐1–stimulated ALP activity by about 50%. Inhibition of synthesis of any one of the type I receptor plus the BMPR‐II receptor did not reduce the OP‐1–stimulated ALP activity significantly beyond that observed by inhibition of BMPR‐II alone. Under these conditions, nodule formation was affected similarly, thus supporting the observations made with the ALP measurements. The present results suggest that the ActR‐I, BMPR‐IA, and BMPR‐IB receptors and the BMPR‐II receptor are expressed and functional for OP‐1 in FRC cells and that regulation of synthesis of these receptors may be a mechanism by which a specific cell type responds to OP‐1. The turnover rate of these receptor proteins might be relatively long and another type II receptor(s) for OP‐1 might be functional in FRC cells.
Designing Friends

Embodied Conversational Agents are virtual humans that can interact with humans using verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. In most cases, they have been designed for short interactions. This paper asks the question how one would start to design synthetic characters that can become your friends. We look at insights from social psychology and propose a methodology for designing friends. “The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn’t exist. ”
The Extraction of Enriched Protein-Protein Interactions from Biomedical Text

There has been much recent interest in the extraction of PPIs (protein-protein interactions) from biomedical texts, but in order to assist with curation efforts, the PPIs must be enriched with further information of biological interest. This paper describes the implementation of a system to extract and enrich PPIs, developed and tested using an annotated corpus of biomedical texts, and employing both machine-learning and rule-based techniques.
The sizes, masses and specific star formation rates of massive galaxies at 1.3 < z < 1.5: strong evidence in favour of evolution via minor mergers

We report the results of a comprehensive study of the relationship between galaxy size, stellar mass and specic star-formation rate (sSFR) at redshifts 1 :3 6 10 10 M ), spectroscopic sample from the UKIDSS Ultra- deep Survey (UDS), with accurate stellar-mass measurements derived from spectro- photometric tting, we nd no evidence that the o-set from the local size- mass relation is a function of stellar population age. In contrast, we nd that massive star-forming galaxies at this epoch lie closer to the local late-type size-mass relation and are only a factor fg = 1:6 0:2 smaller than observed locally. Based on a sub- sample with dynamical mass estimates, which consists of both passive and star-forming objects, we also derive an independent estimate of fg = 2:3 0:3 for the typical growth in half-light radius between z' 1:4 and the present day. Focusing on the passive sub- sample, we conclude that to produce the necessary evolution predominantly via major mergers would require an unfeasible number of merger events and over populate the high-mass end of the local stellar mass function. In contrast, we nd that a scenario in which mass accretion is dominated by minor mergers can comfortably produce the necessary evolution, whereby an increase in stellar mass of only a factor of' 2, accompanied by size growth of a factor of ' 3:5, is required to reconcile the size- mass relation at z' 1:4 with that observed locally. Finally, we note that a signicant fraction (44% 12%) of the passive galaxies in our sample have a disk-like morphology, providing additional evidence that separate physical processes are responsible for the quenching of star-formation and morphological transformation in massive galaxies.