Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sex differences and laterality in astrocyte number and complexity in the adult rat medial amygdala

The posterodorsal portion of the medial amygdala (MePD) is sexually dimorphic in several rodent species. In several other brain nuclei, astrocytes change morphology in response to steroid hormones. We visualized MePD astrocytes using glial‐fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunocytochemistry. We compared the number and process complexity of MePD astrocytes in adult wildtype male and female rats and testicular feminized mutant (TFM) male rats that lack functional androgen receptors (ARs) to determine whether MePD astrocytes are sexually differentiated and whether ARs have a role. Unbiased stereological methods revealed laterality and sex differences in MePD astrocyte number and complexity. The right MePD contained more astrocytes than the left in all three genotypes, and the number of astrocytes was also sexually differentiated in the right MePD, with males having more astrocytes than females. In contrast, the left MePD contained more complex astrocytes than did the right MePD in all three genotypes, and males had more complex astrocytes than females in this hemisphere. TFM males were comparable to wildtype females, having fewer astrocytes on the right and simpler astrocytes on the left than do wildtype males. Taken together, these results demonstrate that astrocytes are sexually dimorphic in the adult MePD and that the nature of the sex difference is hemisphere‐dependent: a sex difference in astrocyte number in the right MePD and a sex difference in astrocyte complexity in the left MePD. Moreover, functional ARs appear to be critical in establishing these sex differences in MePD astrocyte morphology. J. Comp. Neurol. 511:599–609, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Reconstructing system state for intrusion analysis

The analysis of a compromised system is a time-consuming and error-prone task today because commodity operating systems provide limited auditing facilities. We have been developing an operating-system level auditing system called Forensix that captures a high-resolution image of all system activities so that detailed analysis can be performed after an attack is detected. The challenge with this approach is that the large amount of audit data generated can overwhelm analysis tools. In this paper, we describe a technique that helps generate a time-line of the state of the system. This technique, based on preprocessing the audit log, simplifies the implementation of the analysis queries and enables running the analysis tools interactively on large data sets.
Live Where You Thrive: Joint Evolution of Habitat Choice and Local Adaptation Facilitates Specialization and Promotes Diversity

We derive a comprehensive overview of specialization evolution based on analytical results and numerical illustrations. We study the separate and joint evolution of two critical facets of specialization—local adaptation and habitat choice—under different life cycles, modes of density regulation, variance‐covariance structures, and trade‐off strengths. A particular feature of our analysis is the investigation of arbitrary trade‐off functions. We find that local‐adaptation evolution qualitatively changes the outcome of habitat‐choice evolution under a wide range of conditions. In addition, habitat‐choice evolution qualitatively and invariably changes the outcomes of local‐adaptation evolution whenever trade‐offs are weak. Even weak trade‐offs, which favor generalists when habitat choice is fixed, select for specialists once local adaptation and habitat choice are both allowed to evolve. Unless trapped by maladaptive genetic constraints, joint evolution of local adaptation and habitat choice in the models analyzed here thus always leads to specialists, independent of life cycle, density regulation, and trade‐off strength, thus raising the bar for evolutionarily sound explanations of generalism. Whether a single specialist or two specialists evolve depends on the life cycle and the mode of density regulation. Finally, we explain why the gradual evolutionary emergence of coexisting specialists requires more restrictive conditions than does their evolutionarily stable maintenance.
A fast green's function interpolation method for solving PEC scattering problems

In this paper, the multilevel Green's function interpolation method (MLGFIM) is presented to solve integral equation for perfect electric conductor (PEC) problems, In MLGFIM, the problem domain is first divided into multilevel cubes. Next, the interpolation method is used to speed up the matrix-vector multiplications in the iterative solution in which a computational complexity of O(N) is achieved. Numerical examples show that the computational efficiency of the method both in memory storage and simulation speed. The method is kernel independent, so it is suitable for any integral-equation-based formulation. In addition, it is applicable to arbitrarily shaped structures.
Improving Spatial Support for Objects via Multiple Segmentations

Sliding window scanning is the dominant paradigm in object recognition research today. But while much success has been reported in detecting several rectangular-shaped object classes (i.e. faces, cars, pedestrians), results have been much less impressive for more general types of objects. Several researchers have advocated the use of image segmentation as a way to get a better spatial support for objects. In this paper, our aim is to address this issue by studying the following two questions: 1) how important is good spatial support for recognition? 2) can segmentation provide better spatial support for objects? To answer the first, we compare recognition performance using ground-truth segmentation vs. bounding boxes. To answer the second, we use the multiple segmentation approach to evaluate how close can real segments approach the ground-truth for real objects, and at what cost. Our results demonstrate the importance of finding the right spatial support for objects, and the feasibility of doing so without excessive computational burden.
Elevated State Anxiety Alters Cerebral Cortical Dynamics and Degrades Precision Cognitive-Motor Performance

The examination of brain dynamics during cognitive-motor performance under conditions of mental stress provides insight into the influence of state anxiety and may guide interventions for performance enhancement. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to assess and compare cerebral cortical activity and connectivity between motor planning and nonmotor brain regions during a dart-throwing task executed under mentally stressful and nonstressful conditions. State anxiety was measured in 21 male participants, after they had practiced the task for a period of 3 months, via the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory 2, and cortical dynamics were assessed via electroencephalography to capture low- (8–10 Hz) and high-alpha (10–12 Hz) spectral power, as well as high-alpha coherence, over four consecutive 0.5-s time intervals immediately before the dart release. Participants exhibited higher cognitive and somatic anxiety, lower self-confidence, reduced throwing accuracy, and higher variability of performance in the stress condition. A series of 2 × 2 × 2 × 4 (Order of Conditions × Condition × Cerebral Hemisphere × Time) analysis of variance applied separately to the EEG spectral power and coherence measures derived from each of the frontal, temporal, central, parietal, and occipital regions revealed an increase in high-alpha power in the right occipital region during stress accompanied by an elevation in electroencephalography coherence between the motor planning (Fz) and verbal-analytic (T3) regions. The findings suggest a reduction in task-related visual attention and an elevation in explicit monitoring of task-related movements, respectively, during state anxiety, which translate as degradation in the accuracy of throwing performance.
On the sojourn time distribution in a finite capacity processor shared queue

We consider a processor shared M/M/1 queue that can accommodate atmost a finite number <inline-equation><f>K</f></inline-equation> of customers. Using singular perturbation techniques,we construct asymptotic approximations to the distribution of acustomer's sojourn time. We assume that <inline-equation><f>K</f></inline-equation> is large and treat several different cases of themodel parameters and also treat different time scales. Extensivenumerical comparisons are used to back up our asymptotic formulas. <abstrbyl>—<? Pub Fmt italic>Author's Abstract<? Pub Fmt /italic></abstrbyl>
A partial least squares-based stimulus frequency recognition model for steady-state visual evoked potentials detection

With shorter calibration times and higher information transfer rates, steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been studied most activity in recent years. Target identification is the ongoing core task in BCI researches, and plays a significant role in practical applications. In order to improve the performance of SSVEP-based BCI system, we proposed a partial least squares (PLS)-based stimulus frequency recognition model for SSVEP detection. Moreover, we compared the proposed method with canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) method, respectively. The experiment results showed that PLS can not only extract the SSVEP features effectively, but also can increase the classification accuracies of SSVEP-based BCI systems.
Burnout Among the Clinical Dental Students in the Jordanian Universities

Background The study aimed to evaluate the level of burnout among the clinical dental students in two Jordanian universities. Methods A total of 307 students from the two schools were surveyed using Maslach Burnout Inventory survey. Scores for the inventory’s subscales were calculated and the mean values for the students’ groups were computed separately. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests were carried out and the results were compared at 95% confidence level. Results The results showed that the dental students in both Jordanian universities suffered high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization compared to reported levels for dental students in other countries. The dental students of the University of Jordan demonstrated a significantly higher (p < 0.05) level of emotional exhaustion than their counterparts in the Jordan University of Science and Technology. Conclusions The findings indicated that dental students in the Jordanian universities presented considerable degrees of burnout manifested by high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Studies targeting students health and psychology should be carried out to determine the causes of burnout among dental students. The curricula of the dental schools in the two universities should be accordingly improved to minimize burnout among the students. Keywords Burnout; Emotional exhaustion; Depersonalization; Personal accomplishment; Maslach Burnout Inventory
Optimization of Quality of Service in Wireless Sensor Networks Powered by Solar Cells

Sensors equipped with solar cells and rechargeable batteries are useful in many outdoor, long-lasting applications. In these sensors the cycles of energy harvesting and battery recharge need to be managed appropriately in order to avoid sensor unavailability due to energy shortages. We suggest that adapting the sensor duty cycle (and specifically its environment sampling frequency) to the expected energy production and residual battery charge is very useful to avoid sensors unavailability. To this purpose we introduce a novel concept of QoS, which is measured in terms of sampling frequency, and we provide a mean to maximize the QoS, i.e. the extent of the period in which the sensor operates at the user's desired sampling frequency.
LOCALIZATION OF VEHICLE LICENSE PLATES IN IMAGES USING FUZZY LOGIC AND MORPHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS

Summary. The paper presents a method of localization of licence plates in a traffic scene image. It is assumed that the input data comes from a colour camera and the results are grey scale images of isolated license plates. The method was implemented and tested. Test results confirm that it can be incorporated in a system for traffic monitoring or parking supervision.
Preface to special section: Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program May 2003 Intensive Operations Period examining aerosol properties and radiative influences

[1] Atmospheric aerosols influence climate by scattering and absorbing radiation in clear air (direct effects) and by serving as cloud condensation nuclei, modifying the microphysical properties of clouds, influencing radiation and precipitation development (indirect effects). Much of present uncertainty in forcing of climate change is due to uncertainty in the relations between aerosol microphysical and optical properties and their radiative influences (direct effects) and between microphysical properties and their ability to serve as cloud condensation nuclei at given supersaturations (indirect effects). This paper introduces a special section that reports on a field campaign conducted at the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement site in north central Oklahoma in May 2003, examining these relations using in situ airborne measurements and surface-, airborne-, and space-based remote sensing.
A context adaptation model for the compression of images with a reduced number of colors

Recently, Chen et al. proposed a method for compressing color-quantized images that is based on a binary tree representation of colors and on context-based arithmetic coding with variable size templates. In this paper, we address the problem of context adaptation and we propose a model that provides improvements in the lossless compression capabilities of Chen's method.
Distributed Space-Time Code for Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Networks

Cooperative diversity using distributed space-time codes has been recently proposed to form virtual antennas in order to achieve diversity gain. In this paper, we propose a distributed space-time coding with amplify-and-forward relaying. Motivated by protocol (III) presented in [1], we propose a distributed space-time code for an arbitrary number of relay nodes. The pairwise error probability is derived and the theory analysis demonstrates that our protocol achieves a diversity of order where is the number of relay nodes. Quasi-orthogonal space-time codes are used as they give much better performance than random linear-dispersion codes. As the transmission power of the source node is a critical parameter in this protocol because it transmits in both phases, the optimal power allocation is derived using numerical and theoretical analysis. Simulation results demonstrate an improvement over the existing orthogonal protocols for different source-destination channel conditions.
Experiences in Resource Generation for Machine Translation through Crowdsourcing

The logistics of collecting resources for Machine Translation (MT) has always been a cause of concern for some of the resource deprived languages of the world. The recent advent of crowdsourcing platforms provides an opportunity to explore the large scale generation of resources for MT. However, before venturing into this mode of resource collection, it is important to understand the various factors such as, task design, crowd motivation, quality control, etc. which can influence the success of such a crowd sourcing venture. In this paper, we present our experiences based on a series of experiments performed. This is an attempt to provide a holistic view of the different facets of translation crowd sourcing and identifying key challenges which need to be addressed for building a practical crowdsourcing solution for MT.
Coevolutionary strategies in area-based stereo

A novel system for depth estimation is proposed with the use of Symbiotic Genetic Algorithms for the continuous problem of disparity surface approximation. The approach is based on the decomposition of the entire surface to very small non-overlapping patches described by low-order bivariate polynomials and the use of symbiotic optimisation to enforce smoothness at the boundaries of these patches, so that the entire surface can be approximated in a smooth piecewise fashion by functionals of local support. Such optimisation is amenable to a massive parallel implementation, since each patch is optimised by a different execution unit and each unit communicates through its cost function only with its four-connected neighbours. The method makes use of various existing crossover and mutation schemes for real-valued chromosome representations and a new problem-specific mechanism for generating and hybridising the initial populations. The proposed multi-objective cost function enforces photometric similarity and smoothness between the patch boundaries at a local scale, which in the long term give rise to a globally smooth disparity surface.
Social Scientists’ Data Reuse Principally Influenced by Disciplinary Norms, Attitude, and Perceived Effort

A Review of: Yoon, A. & Kim, Y. (2017). Social scientists’ data reuse behaviors: Exploring the roles of attitudinal beliefs, attitudes, norms, and data repositories. Library & Information Science Research, 39(3), 224–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr. 2017.07. 008 Abstract Objective – To propose and test a model grounded in constructs from psychology and information systems to explain data reuse behaviours and practices in the social sciences. Design – Electronic survey. Setting – ProQuest’s Community of Science Scholars database. Subjects – Included 2,193 randomly selected social scientists associated with U.S. academic institutions. Methods – An electronic survey was distributed to a random sample of U.S.-based social science scholars from ProQuest’s Community of Science Scholars database. The survey adapted 21 measurement items for constructs taken from the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and the technology acceptance model (TAM), including perceived usefulness, perceived effort, and the subjective norm surrounding data reuse. Main Results – There were 292 valid responses received, giving a response rate of 14.91%. Survey data largely validated the authors’ theoretical model. Attitudinal, normative, and resource factors all influence social scientists’ intended data reuse. In particular, perceived usefulness of reusing data and subjective norms surrounding data reuse in one’s discipline positively correlate with intentions to reuse data, and perceived concern of reusing data negatively correlate with intentions to reuse data. Conclusion – Data reuse in the social sciences is influenced by the perceptions and beliefs held by social scientists. Social scientists reuse others’ data when they perceive that doing so would improve their research productivity and when their discipline has strong norms of data reuse. They avoid reusing others’ data when they believe that doing so is problematic (e.g., if they believe reusing infringes on copyright). Supporters of data sharing, including librarians, are encouraged to apply these findings by proactively educating researchers on the benefits, potential obstacles, and methods of data reuse.
Development of Reduced-Order Models for Aeroelastic Analysis and Flutter Prediction Using the CFL3Dv6.0 Code

A reduced-order model (ROM) is developed for aeroelasfiic analysis using the CFL3D version 6.0 computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, recently developed at the NASA Langley Research Center. This latest version of the flow solver includes a deforming mesh capability, a modal structural definition for nonlinear aeroelastic analyses, and a parallelization capability that provides a significant increase in computational efficiency. Flutter results for the ACIARD 445.6 Wing computed using CFL3D v6.0 are presented, including discussion of associated computational costs. Modal impulse responses of the unsteady aerodynamic system are then computed using the CFL3Dv6 code and transformed into state-space form. Important numerical issues associated with the computation of the impulse responses are presented. The unsteady aerodynamic state-space ROM is then combined with a state-space model of the structure to create an aeroelastic simulation using the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. The MATLAB/SIMULINK ROM is used to rapidly compute aeroelastic transients including flutter. The ROM shows excellent agreement with the aeroelastic analyses computed using the CFL3Dv6.0 code directly.
Does telephone follow-up improve blood pressure after minor stroke or TIA?

BACKGROUND hypertension is a common risk factor for stroke/transient ischaemic attack (TIA) and there is good evidence that blood pressure (BP) control prevents recurrent stroke. We investigated whether telephone follow-up (TFU) improved risk factor management in hypertensive patients after stroke/TIA. METHODS we conducted a randomised controlled trial and assigned hypertensive patients within 1 month of stroke or TIA to receive usual care (n = 27) or usual care plus regular TFU (n = 29). Primary outcome was the difference in 12 h ambulatory systolic BP change from baseline to 6 months (DeltaSBP) in both groups. TFU at 7 days, 1, 2 and 4 months included patient-focussed education and goal setting. RESULTS mean baseline BP was 145/83 mm Hg (standard deviation (SD) 21/14). There was no significant difference in DeltaSBP over 6 months with TFU. Median DeltaSBP was 0 mm Hg (interquartile range 19.5) in the TFU group and 3.0 mm Hg (20) fall in the usual care group (P = 0.29). Post hoc analysis showed that statin use increased from baseline to 6 months (P = 0.02) and cholesterol was significantly lower at 6 months in all patients (mean reduction 0.95 mmol/l; P < 0.001). CONCLUSION our study found TFU that promoted patient-led management of risk factors did not improve BP control over 6-month follow-up in primary care after stroke/TIA.
Segmentation of the mouse fourth deep lumbrical muscle connectome reveals concentric organisation of motor units

• An accelerated image segmentation algorithm was developed and applied to analysis of motor unit arborisation and connectivity (the ‘connectome’) in fourth deep lumbrical muscles (4DL) of mice expressing fluorescent proteins as morphological reporters. • Mouse 4DL muscles contain between 4 and 9 motor units and motor unit size in these muscles ranged from 3 to 111 muscle fibres. • Small motor units were restricted in their arbors to the vicinity of the nerve entry point. Larger motor units concentrically occupied muscle fibres located progressively further from the nerve entry point. • Motor unit size was weakly correlated with motor endplate size, suggesting a hierarchy of motor unit sizes based on synaptic strength. • The data suggest a segregated organisation of motor units in cylindrical muscles that has not previously been appreciated and indicate the direction of future studies required to establish possible relationships between the strengths of synaptic connections and motor unit size.