Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modelling Activation and Connectivity in the Brain: An fMRI Study during Externally Triggered Finger Tapping Task

Brain activation within and effective connectivity between two significantly activated left and right primary motor regions (M1 left and M1 right ) were modelled using functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets of seven subjects obtained from an externally triggered unilateral and bilateral finger tapping experiment. Unilateral tapping exhibited contra lateral activation while bilateral tapping activated both the M1 left and M1 right regions. Unlike bilateral tapping that exhibited a relatively equal change of M1 left and M1 right signal at the coordinates of maximum intensity, the value is significantly lower in M1 left as compared to M1 right for unilateral tapping. The effective connectivity between M1 left and M1 right during bilateral tapping of hand fingers can be explained by a bilinear causal model, which is averagely preferred by five subjects (Dirichlet parameter estimate, αd ≈ 5). The regional connectivities are however not gated (influenced) by any of the two M1s, ruling out the possibility of the non-linear behavior of connections between both M1s. This study has been able to fit the effective connectivity between M1 left and M1 right with a bilinear model that has the lowest free energy ( F) of -644.70 and the largest likelihood (4.77 × 10 39 ), posterior ( ϕ = 1.00), expected ( r = 0.67) and exceedance ( ψ = 0.92) probabilities.
Decreased Fluidity of Polymorphonuclear Leukocyte Membrane in Streptozocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

Using flow cytometry with the excimer-forming lipid technique with pyrenedecanoic acid, we measured membrane fluidity of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) from 20 streptozocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Diabetes mellitus was induced in male Sprague-Dawley rats (body wt 243 ± 11 g) with an injection of 25 mg/kg i.v. STZ. Membrane fluidity of PMNs was significantly lower at 2 wk after the STZ injection when serum glucose reached the plateau (31.1 ± 5.8 mM), and after 3 wk, membrane fluidity remained unchanged. In 7 STZ-resistant rats for which serum glucose was <10 mM at 2 wk after the STZ injection, gradual normalization in membrane fluidity was observed. PMN membrane fluidity at each week correlated inversely with respective serum glucose levels 1 wk previously (r = −0.76) but not with serum lipid levels. Cross-incubation studies ascribed this observation to factors in the diabetic rat serum. Glycosylated protein, which was separated from diabetic rat serum, decreased membrane fluidity of control rat PMNs. Human diabetic subjects have an increased risk for infection, which may be due partly to altered membrane fluidity of their PMNs.
Reflections on Deaf Education: Perspectives of Deaf Senior Citizens

Parents with deaf children face many challenges in making educational choices, developing language and a sense of belonging. Other key aspects of life including concept development and social competency are also critical decision points faced by parents. Developing language, whether it is through spoken or signed modalities, is of utmost importance during the formative years and for many families with deaf children, there are no prior experiences with deafness, American Sign Language, Deaf culture, or the deaf community. This study aims to understand the educational and familial experiences of older deaf citizens by examining the meaning of being deaf and members of biological and cultural families, and the concern for education of young deaf children as constructed by deaf senior citizens from both deaf and hearing families. For the purpose of obtaining both childhood and educational experiences of older deaf citizens and examining what advice they would offer to families of today with deaf children, a qualitative design was implemented in which 13 participants participated in focus group and individual interviews. Themes that emerged from the data include, but are not limited to, community-based learning, the value of communication, involvement with other deaf individuals, importance of family communication and signing, sibling involvement and including deaf children as true members of a family. One recommendation made by the deaf senior adults was that families with deaf children engage with deaf seniors more frequently as a valuable resource.
Successive detection based minimum probability of error beamforming

A novel receiver optimization for spatial multiple access scenario is studied in this paper where each user uses single antenna and multiple antenna array is used at the base station. To achieve space division multiple access, the newly introduced minimum probability of error (MPE) beamforming method is used instead of the conventional minimum mean square error (MMSE) beamforming. To increase the number of admitted users to the system, a new set of beamforming weight vectors is obtained for non-admitted users by minimizing their error probability conditioning on the detection of the admitted users. Moreover, a heuristic algorithm is presented to utilize the proposed detection-based minimum probability of error beamforming in a successive manner. By numerical analysis it is shown that the proposed method is able to support more users than MPE and MMSE beamforming in addition to providing better performance in the sense of probability of error.
Long-term safety and efficacy of olanzapine long-acting injection in patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder: a 6-year, multinational, single-arm, open-label study

The objective of this study was to assess the long-term safety and efficacy of olanzapine long-acting injection (LAI). A 6-year, single-arm, open-label extension study of olanzapine LAI was conducted at 127 sites in 25 countries. Patients were 18–76 years of age, were diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (N=931), and had been previously enrolled in one of three clinical trials of olanzapine LAI. Patients received flexibly dosed (45-405 mg) olanzapine LAI every 2–4 weeks. The mean duration of exposure was ∼3 years. A total of 393 (42.2%) patients completed the study. The mean weight change was +2.1 kg (P<0.001), with 40.6% of patients experiencing 7% or higher weight gain. Treatment-emergent categorical changes occurred in fasting glucose, total cholesterol, and triglyceride levels. Pharmacokinetic analyses revealed no systemic accumulation of olanzapine after long-term treatment. There were 36 occurrences of post-injection delirium/sedation syndrome, all resolving within 72 h. The mean Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale total and subscale scores did not change significantly over the course of the study, indicating clinical stability. Olanzapine LAI appeared effective as a long-term maintenance treatment, with a safety profile generally consistent with the known profile of oral olanzapine, except for injection-related events (including post-injection delirium/sedation syndrome).
Optimal multi-objective allocation and scheduling of multiple battery energy storages for reducing daily marginal losses

Recently “Esstalion Technologies, Inc.” has been established by Hydro-Quebec and Sony Corporation. The new company will research and develop reliable, highly safe, olivine-type lithium-ion iron phosphate rechargeable batteries for use within power systems in a wide range of applications. The main focuses of this work is to show the existence of the optimal ESStalion management schedule to store energy when demand is low and release energy at peak hours to shave demand profile and to decrease the power loss. For this purpose, IEEE Reliability Test System (RTS 96) is chosen as pilot test system. Integer Speed-constraint Multi-objective Particle swarm optimization (Integer SMPSO) is then used to find best allocation solutions. Finally a solution has been taken and simulated within the test case over a year. Study results confirm the fact that energy storages would have significant effect on loss reduction, yet a precise adapted chain of decision for charge and discharge are essentially required.
The plane-wave spectrum approach for beam transmission through planar FSS structures

In this paper, the vector plane-wave spectrum (VPWS) approach is used, in evaluating beam transmission through planar frequency selective surfaces (FSS). This approach benefits from the fact that most of the FSS process linear responses to the incident, and can be accurate as long as the incident beam is concentrated. It consists of three procedures: mapping the incident beam onto the plane-wave spectrum, evaluations of FSS responses, and finally the near-field recomposition. The VPWS approach is proven to be an efficient tool for evaluations of the FSS deployment validations and adjustments, and yields accurate results, verified by supporting measurement.
Genome sequence and description of the heavy metal tolerant bacterium Lysinibacillus sphaericus strain OT4b.31

Lysinibacillus sphaericus strain OT4b.31 is a native Colombian strain having no larvicidal activity against Culex quinquefasciatus and is widely applied in the bioremediation of heavy-metal polluted environments. Strain OT4b.31 was placed between DNA homology groups III and IV. By gap-filling and alignment steps, we propose a 4,096,672 bp chromosomal scaffold. The whole genome (consisting of 4,856,302 bp long, 94 contigs and 4,846 predicted protein-coding sequences) revealed differences in comparison to the L. sphaericus C3-41 genome, such as syntenial relationships, prophages and putative mosquitocidal toxins. Sphaericolysin B354, the coleopteran toxin Sip1A and heavy metal resistance clusters from nik, ars, czc, cop, chr, czr and cad operons were identified. Lysinibacillus sphaericus OT4b.31 has applications not only in bioremediation efforts, but also in the biological control of agricultural pests.
Development of a National Offence Index for the ranking of offences 2003 AIC/ABS Conference - Evaluation in Crime and Justice : Trends and Methods

As part of the quality improvement processes for the representation of offence information in crime and justice statistical collections, the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics (NCCJS) has developed a National Offence Index (NOI). The NOI is a ranking of offence categories of the Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC) according to their level of seriousness. Issues investigated for the development of the NOI included determining how offence seriousness should be defined and how it should be measured. The NOI developed by the NCCJS used the Western Australian Crime Research Centre (CRC) Offence Seriousness Index as a base Index. The CRC Index was developed using results from a survey of public perceptions of offence seriousness and statuted penalties. The NCCJS applied the CRC Index to defendants adjudicated in the Higher Criminal Courts during 2000-01 and compared with Principal Offence output from the same population based on actual sentences handed down. The results were fairly similar across the ASOC divisions using the two techniques, indicating that although different methods were used to produce a principal offence they were in fact measuring a similar concept. However, the CRC Index was not able to be applied to all offence data as it only ranked 4-digit ASOC groups (i.e. none of the broader ASOC codes at the division or subdivision level were mapped). In addition, as perceived seriousness of offences changes over time, some of the offences in the Index required re-ranking. These re-rankings were determined on the basis of actual sentences handed down in the Higher Criminal Courts for different offences in 2000-01, and with feedback from practitioner and advisory groups in the areas of police, courts and corrections. The result of this work was the NOI which can be applied to all crime and criminal justice statistical collections which include offence information.
A compressed sensing receiver for bursty communication with UWB Impulse Radio

We propose a novel receiver for Ultra-Wideband Impulse-Radio communication in bursty applications like Wireless Sensor Networks. It is based on the principle of Compressed Sensing, and exploits the sparsity of the transmitted signal to achieve reliable demodulation. Instead of a full-fledged high-rate A/D, a modest number of projections of the received signal are acquired using analog correlators, and a joint decoding of the time of arrival and the data bits is performed from these under-sampled measurements via an efficient quadratic program. The receiver does not use wideband analog delay lines, and is robust to large timing uncertainty, hence the transmitter need not waste power on explicit training headers for timing synchronization. Moreover, the receiver can operate in a regime of heavy inter-symbol interference (ISI), and allows a very high baud rate (close to the Nyquist rate). Its performance is shown to remain close to the maximum likelihood receiver under every scenario of under-sampling, timing uncertainty, ISI, and delay spread.
Similarity Retrieval of Video Database Based on 3D Z-string

Recently, the video retrieval processing is concerned with retrieving videos that are relevant to the users’ requests from a large collection of videos, referred to as a video database. We have proposed 3D Z-string to represent symbolic videos accompanying with the string generation and video reconstruction algorithms. In this paper, we proposed the spatial-temporal similarity retrieval approach of vides in 3D Z-string. Our approach defines a set of user assigned weights, based on the factors of spatial-temporal relations of object pairs in a video, in order to rank the retrieval videos. We use dynamic programming to calculate the similarity measures and propose the similarity retrieval algorithm. By providing various criterion of similarity between videos to match user requirement, our proposed similarity retrieval algorithm has discrimination power about different criteria.
PCA plus LDA on Wavelet Co-occurrence Histogram Features for Texture Classification and its Applications

paper, we propose a combined approach, namely, PCA plus LDA on Wavelet Co-occurrence Histogram Features (WCHF) for texture classification. The texture features are extracted using the Wavelet Co-occurrence Histogram (WCH) from wavelet decomposed images, which capture the information about relationships between each high frequency subband and that in low frequency subband of the wavelet transformed image at the corresponding level. The correlation between the subbands at the same resolution exhibits a strong relationship, indicating that this information is significant for characterizing a texture. Thus WCH features thus extracted form a feature vector of dimension 384 for gray scale image which is very high. A combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is applied on WCH feature vector for dimensionality reduction and enhancement of the class separability respectively. The vectors obtained from the LDA are representative of each image. The classification performance is tested on a set of 32 Brodatz textures. The results are compared with the method proposed in (Hiremath and Shivashankar, 2008). The effectiveness of proposed method is demonstrated for two different applications, i.e., CBIR and script identification (both printed and handwritten). The classification performance is analyzed using the k-NN classifier. It is evident from the experimental results that the proposed method exhibits superior performance in the reduced feature set. Keywordsclassification; PCA and LDA; Wavelet; CBIR; document image; script identification
Detection of Kras Mutations in Lung Carcinomas : Relationship to Prognosis 1

The K-ras mutation is one of the most common genetic alterations found in human lung cancer. To evaluate the prognostic value of ras gene alterations in lung cancer in a U.S. population, we have screened 173 human lung tumors, which included 127 adenocarcinomas, 37 squamous carcinomas, and 9 adenosquamous carcinomas, for mutations in the K-ras gene using the combination of the PCR and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. Forty-three tumors contained K-ras mutations. Of these, 41 were identified among the adenocarcinomas (32%), 1 among the squamous carcinomas (2.7 %), and 1 among the adenosquamous carcinomas (11%). Forty of these mutations were found in codon 12 and consisted of 24 G to T transversions, 12 G to A transitions, 2 G to C transversions, and 1 double GG to TT mutation. Two other G to T transversions were found in codon 13, and 1 A to C transversion was found in codon 61. The data showed that gender did not seem to affect the incidence and the types of the K r a s mutations or amino acid changes. Examination of the mutations in adenocarcinomas in relation to overall survival showed no difference in adenocarcinomas with K-ras mutations compared with K-ras -nega t i ve adenocarcinomas. However, the substitution of the wild-type GGT (glycine) at codon 12 with a GTT (valine) or a CGT (arginine) showed a strong trend (P = 0.07) toward a poorer prognosis compared with wild-type or other amino acid substitutions. Substitution of the wild-type glycine for aspartate (GAT) showed a strong trend (P = 0.06) for a better outcome than the valine or arginine substitution. Although these trends will require larger patient populations for verification, these data suggest that the prognostic significance Received 4/3/95; revised 8/23/95; accepted 10/10/95. This work was supported by National Cancer Institute Contract NO1CN-15393 from the Early Detection Research Network and by American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant IRG-58-32. 2 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Pittsburgh, 260 Kappa Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15238. Phone: (412) 967-6526; Fax: (412) 624-1020. of K-ras mutations may depend on the amino acid substitution in the p2 | ras protein.
Heuristic discretization method for Bayesian Networks

Bayesian Network (BN) is a classification technique widely used in Artificial Intelligence. Its struct ure is a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) used to model the association of categorical variables. However, in cases w here the variables are numerical, a previous discretizat ion is necessary. Discretization methods are usuall y based on a statistical approach using the data distribution, such as division by quartiles. In this article we present a discretization using a heuristic that identifies ev ents called peak and valley. Genetic Algorithm was used to identify these events having the minimization of th e error between the estimated average for BN and th e actual value of the numeric variable output as the objecti ve function. The BN has been modeled from a database of Bit’s Rate of Penetration of the Brazilian pre-salt layer with 5 numerical variables and one categoric al variable, using the proposed discretization and the division of the data by the quartiles. The results show that the proposed heuristic discretization has higher accura cy than the quartiles discretization.
A 3D-coil model for bearing current analysis of inverter-fed drives

In this paper a study of a 3D-coil model which is suitable for the analysis of bearing currents in converter-fed induction motors is presented. The coil model consists of one slot surrounded by a part of the stator yoke. The thin lamination of the yoke is scaled up spatially in the direction of current propagation in the slot for the simulations. The excitation is carried out by means of a sinusoidal current at different frequencies. In a second set of simulations, a voltage surge is considered as the excitation signal. The bearing current is evaluated in frequency domain as well as in time domain.
A New Upper Bound for a Binary Additive Noisy Multiple Access Channel with Feedback

We use the idea of dependence balance to obtain the first improvement over the cut-set bound for the discrete memoryless multiple access channel with noiseless feedback (MAC-FB). More specifically, we consider a binary additive noisy MAC-FB whose capacity does not coincide with the Cover-Leung achievable rate region. Evaluating the dependence balance bound is difficult due to an involved auxiliary random variable. We overcome this difficulty by using functional analysis to explicitly evaluate our upper bound for the binary additive noisy MAC-FB and show that it is strictly less than the cut-set bound for the symmetric-rate point on the capacity region.
Anti-hyperalgesic and anti-nociceptive potentials of standardized grape seed proanthocyanidin extract against CCI-induced neuropathic pain in rats

Abstract Background: Neuropathic pain is associated with severe chronic sensory disturbances characterized by spontaneous pain, increased responsiveness to painful stimuli (hyperalgesia) and pain perceived in response to non-noxious stimuli (allodynia). Morphine is effective treatment for neuropathic pain but produces tolerance on chronic use. The present study was designed to explore the anti-nociceptive and anti-hyperalgesic effect of grape seed extract using sciatic nerve ligation-induced neuropathic pain in rats. Methods: Chronic constructive injury (CCI) was performed under anesthesia, on one side leg exposed by making a skin incision, and chromic gut ligatures were tied loosely around the sciatic nerve at 1 mm intervals. The treatment with grape seed proanthocyanidin extract (GSPE) (100 and 200 mg/kg, p.o.) was initiated on 7th day post-surgery and continued for next 14 days. Morphine (10 mg/kg, s.c.) alone and morphine in combination with GSPE (100 mg/kg, p.o.) were administered in CCI rats for 5 days starting from 7th day. On 3rd, 7th, 14th and 21st day, behavioral parameters (mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia) were assessed. Then the animals were killed on 22nd day and biochemical parameters [reduced glutathione (GSH), lipid peroxidation (LPO), catalase, nitrite, superoxide dismutase (SOD)] were assessed. Results: Ligation of the sciatic nerve significantly induced mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia and induces oxidative stress (increase in LPO and nitrite) and decline of anti-oxidant enzyme levels (catalase, SOD, GSH) in sciatic nerve homogenate. GSPE (100 and 200 mg/kg, p.o.) attenuated all the behavioural and biochemical parameters. Morphine also significantly reversed the symptoms of neuropathic pain but produced tolerance after 5 days. Further, co-treatment of GSPE (100 mg/kg) with morphine (10 mg/kg, s.c.) in CCI rats significantly reversed the morphine tolerance and enhanced its anti-hyperalgesic effect as compared to the morphine-alone-treated group. Conclusions: In the present set of experiments, GSPE showed a significant anti-hyperalgesic and anti-nociceptive effect in rats.
Work Enforcement in Liberal Democracies

Abstract The paper aims to contribute to the normative debate concerning work enforcement in liberal democracies. In the late 1980s, OECD countries began to revert to the pre-welfare-state tradition of attributing unemployment to personal failure. The new welfare-to-work policies emphasised individual responsibility for securing employment. Stepping up job search requirements and sanctions for failure to meet them was presented as a public intervention that helps unemployed individuals return from dependency to autonomy. Jobseekers have been made to believe that success in obtaining employment depends on how doggedly they search for work and how adaptable they become to employer needs. These presumptions are challenged in the paper. Contracts that jobseekers are forced to sign with providers of employment services curtail their autonomy not only to the extent that they cannot avoid unproductive activity tests imposed on them, but also from a lifetime perspective in cases where they are forced into inferior jobs. In job-short economies, employers are also certain to discriminate against disadvantaged jobseekers notwithstanding the intensity of their effort or openness to occupational change.