Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating the electrotonic structure of neurons with compartmental models.

1. A procedure based on compartmental modeling called the "constrained inverse computation" was developed for estimating the electrotonic structure of neurons. With the constrained inverse computation, a set of N electrotonic parameters are estimated iteratively with use of a Newton-Raphson algorithm given values of N parameters that can be measured or estimated from experimental data. 2. The constrained inverse computation is illustrated by several applications to the basic example of a neuron represented as one cylinder coupled to a soma. The number of unknown parameters estimated was different (ranging from 2 to 6) when different sets of constraints were chosen. The unknowns were chosen from the following: dendritic membrane resistivity Rmd, soma membrane resistivity Rms, intracellular resistivity Ri, membrane capacity Cm, dendritic membrane area AD, soma membrane area As, electrotonic length L, and resistivity-free length, rfl (rfl = 2l/d1/2 where l and d are length and diameter of the cylinder). The values of the unknown parameters were estimated from the values of an equal number of known parameters, which were chosen from the following: the time constants and coefficients of a voltage transient tau 0, tau 1, . , C0, C1, . , voltage-clamp time constants tau vc1, tau vc2, . , and input resistance RN. Note that initially, morphological data were treated as unknown, rather than known. 3. When complete morphology was not known, parameters from voltage and current transients, combined with the input resistance were not sufficient to completely specify the electrotonic structure of the neuron. For a neuron represented as a cylinder coupled to a soma, there were an infinite number of combinations of Rmd, Rms, Ri, Cm, AS, AD, and L that could be fitted to the same voltage and current transients and input resistance. 4. One reason for the nonuniqueness when complete morphology was not specified is that the Ri estimate is intrinsically bound to the morphology. Ri enters the inverse computation only in the calculation of the electrotonic length of a compartment. The electrotonic length of a compartment is l[4 Ri/(dRmd)]1/2, where l and d are the length and diameter of the compartment. Without complete morphology, the inverse computation cannot distinguish between a change in d or l and a change in Ri. Even when morphology is known, the accuracy of the Ri estimate obtained by any fitting procedure is affected by systematic errors in length and diameter measurements (i.e., tissue shrinkage); the Ri estimate is inversely proportional to the length measurement and proportional to the square root of the diameter measurement. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Visualization support for user-centered model selection in knowledge discovery in databases

The process of knowledge discovery in databases inherently consists of several steps that are necessarily iterative and interactive. In each application, to go through this process the user has to exploit different algorithms and their settings that usually yield different discovered models. The selection of appropriate discovered models or algorithms to achieve such models, referred to as model selection-requires meta-knowledge on algorithm/model and model performance metrics - is generally a difficult task for the user. Taking account of this difficulty, we consider that the ease of model selection is crucial in the success of real-life knowledge discovery activities. Different from most related work that aims to an automatic model selection, in our view model selection should be a semiautomatic work requiring an effective collaboration between the user and the discovery system. For such a collaboration, our solution is to give the user the ability to try easily various alternatives and to compare competing models quantitatively by performance metrics, and qualitatively by effective visualization. This paper presents our research on such model selection and visualization in the development of a knowledge discovery system called D2MS.
New developments on gill innervation: insights from a model vertebrate

SUMMARY The fish gill is a highly specialized and complex organ that performs a variety of important physiological functions. In this article, we briefly review the innervation of important structures of the branchial region, such as the gill filaments, respiratory lamellae and pseudobranch, and discuss the physiological significance of this innervation within the context of homeostatic functions of the gill, such as oxygen sensing and ion regulation. Studies in zebrafish utilizing techniques of confocal microscopy and immunolabelling, with specific antibodies against neuronal markers, have recently led to the characterization of innervation patterns in the gills not attained with traditional techniques of histochemistry and electron microscopy. We will discuss the association of putative sensory nerve fibres with O2-chemoreceptive neuroepithelial cells and the implications of dual sensory pathways for cardiorespiratory and vascular control. In addition, the idea of the neural control of ion regulation in the gill based on the apparent innervation of mitochondria-rich cells, and the role of innervation in the pseudobranch, will be presented.
DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTONOMOUS Y4 COPTER

The developed y4 copter is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with autonomous subsystems which reports the fully automated y4 copter for the first time. Automation is implemented through maintaining the desired roll, pitch and yaw therefore the flight stability as well as in case of controlling elevation. An improved and efficient algorithm that uses Quaternion is implemented to determine Euler angles avoiding Gimbal lock in case of developing an inertial measurement unit. It has a self-stabilization system powered by Proportional Integral Derivative control system which is computationally affordable by an ordinary 8 bit microcontroller capable of performing only integer operations. A remote is designed to communicate with the y4 copter from the base station using XBee transceiver modules which come with secured communication with long range. The developed system demonstrates simple design offering lower cost and secured means of control.
A Student-centred Conceptual Model of Service Quality in Higher Education

This article considers the longitudinal service-quality experience of a sample of part-time postgraduate students over a 3-year period of study at a large UK business school. The qualitative research design is shaped by concepts in both the service quality and the educational quality literatures. The research identifies important aspects in students' evaluation of service quality and considers the role played by expectations in this process. The findings highlight three distinct stages in the educational service experience. First, the pre-course position, which is centred on service expectations. Second, the in-course experience and, third, post-course service value assessment. From these stages a conceptual model of service quality in higher education is developed. Finally, recommendations for further research are offered.
Unit-level fairness and quality within the health care industry: A justice–quality model

We test a justice–quality model in which peer justice and justice climate are related to the service quality provided by the work unit. Based on the effort–reward imbalance model, we propose that units perceiving fair treatment provide better delivery of the core service (functional service quality) and better relational service beyond the core service (relational service quality). We also test whether the cross-level relationship of high service quality delivered by work units translates into high customer ratings of the service quality they receive. Furthermore, we propose that high service quality increases the work unit’s influence on their customers’ quality of life (QoL). We test these hypotheses using hierarchical linear modelling with 724 employees and 1,137 customers nested in 89 health care organizations providing services to persons with intellectual disabilities (PID). Customers’ ratings were assessed by the legal guardians of the PID. Results showed that justice climate is related to functional service quality, whereas peer justice is related to relational service quality. Additionally, results showed that high service quality delivered by work units relates to high customer ratings, which, in turn, are associated with the perceived influence of work units on customers’ QoL. We discuss the implications for justice and service research.
Extending the ONESAF Testbed into a C4ISR Testbed

This article describes how the modeling and simulation environment of the OneSAF Testbed Baseline (OTB) v1.0 has been extended to enable the testing of heterogeneous algorithms that are being designed for real-world C4ISR applications. This has been accomplished by building an architecture that extends functional and logical components of the OTB system in the following ways: the use of the OTB Compact Terrain Database for terrain analysis and preliminary threat assessment, the addition of the RETSINA-OTB Bridge for the real-time query and control of OTB entities, and the addition of new DIS-based sensor entities for interoperation with Command and Control algorithms, to name a few. This article illustrates how to make a few small but general extensions to a modeling and simulation system to create a larger testbed system with minimum impact on the native system and with great potential for the range of applications that can exploit it.
Closest-Point-of-Approach Join for Moving Object Histories

In applications that produce a large amount of data describing the paths of moving objects, there is a need to ask questions about the interaction of objects over a long recorded history. In this paper, we consider the problem of computing joins over massive moving object histories. The particular join that we study is the "Closest-Point-Of- Approach" join, which asks: Given a massive moving object history, which objects approached within a distance ‘d’ of one another? We carefully consider several relatively obvious strategies for computing the answer to such a join, and then propose a novel, adaptive join algorithm which naturally alters the way in which it computes the join in response to the characteristics of the underlying data.
Computational analysis of LDDMM for brain mapping

One goal of computational anatomy (CA) is to develop tools to accurately segment brain structures in healthy and diseased subjects. In this paper, we examine the performance and complexity of such segmentation in the framework of the large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping (LDDMM) registration method with reference to atlases and parameters. First we report the application of a multi-atlas segmentation approach to define basal ganglia structures in healthy and diseased kids' brains. The segmentation accuracy of the multi-atlas approach is compared with the single atlas LDDMM implementation and two state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms—Freesurfer and FSL—by computing the overlap errors between automatic and manual segmentations of the six basal ganglia nuclei in healthy subjects as well as subjects with diseases including ADHD and Autism. The high accuracy of multi-atlas segmentation is obtained at the cost of increasing the computational complexity because of the calculations necessary between the atlases and a subject. Second, we examine the effect of parameters on total LDDMM computation time and segmentation accuracy for basal ganglia structures. Single atlas LDDMM method is used to automatically segment the structures in a population of 16 subjects using different sets of parameters. The results show that a cascade approach and using fewer time steps can reduce computational complexity as much as five times while maintaining reliable segmentations.
Exploring Motivation in an Online Context: A Case Study

With the increasing ubiquity of new technologies, many claims are being made about their potential to transform tertiary education. In order for this transformation to be realized, however, a range of issues needs to be addressed. Research evidence suggests that motivation is an important consideration for online learners. This paper reports on one aspect of a case study situated within a larger study that investigates the nature of motivation to learn of preservice teachers in an online environment. Using self-determination theory as an analytical framework, the focus here is on the underlying concepts of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The ways in which certain social and contextual factors can foster perceptions of these needs being met are explored. These factors are known to have a supportive effect on learner motivation. Most prominent among these were the relevance of the learning activity, the provision of clear guidelines, and the ongoing support and feedback from the lecturer that was responsive to learners' needs. Supportive, caring relationships were also important.
Exploring the intentions and practices of principals regarding inclusive education: an application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

This study aimed at providing explanation and prediction of principals’ inclusive education intentions and practices under the framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). A sample of 209 principals from Hong Kong schools was surveyed using five scales that were developed to assess the five components of TPB: attitude, subjective norm, perceived behaviour control, intention, and behaviour. Rasch analysis was utilised to examine the psychometric quality of the scales and generate principals’ measures, which were subsequently subjected to path analysis to investigate the relationships among the five components. The results revealed a good model–data fit. Principals’ attitude and perceived subjective norm were strong and significant predictors of their intention to implement inclusive education. The predictive power of perceived behaviour control on intention was not significant. Intention and perceived behaviour control were found to have significant predictive power for principals’ reported inclusive practice. The implications of the findings are discussed.
Decreased Coherent Motion Discrimination in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Attentional Zoom-Out Deficit

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been associated with decreased coherent dot motion (CDM) performance, a task that measures magnocellular sensitivity as well as fronto-parietal attentional integration processing. In order to clarify the role of spatial attention in CDM tasks, we measured the perception of coherently moving dots displayed in the central or peripheral visual field in ASD and typically developing children. A dorsal-stream deficit in children with ASD should predict a generally poorer performance in both conditions. In our study, however, we show that in children with ASD, CDM perception was selectively impaired in the central condition. In addition, in the ASD group, CDM efficiency was correlated to the ability to zoom out the attentional focus. Importantly, autism symptoms severity was related to both the CDM and attentional zooming-out impairment. These findings suggest that a dysfunction in the attentional network might help to explain decreased CDM discrimination as well as the “core” social cognition deficits of ASD.
Mentoring relationships among managerial and professional women in Turkey: Potential benefits?

Purpose – Although qualified women are still underrepresented at ranks of senior management in all countries, considerable progress has been made in identifying work experiences associated with career success and advancement. The studies of mentor relationships in North America have shown that women receiving more functions from their mentors reported benefits such as greater job and career satisfaction, and female mentors provided more psychosocial functions than did male mentors. The present study examined antecedents and consequences of mentor relationships in a sample of managerial and professional women working for a large organization in Turkey. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 192 women managers and professionals using anonymously completed questionnaires. Findings – The following results were obtained: having a mentor relationship had little impact on work outcomes, female and male mentors generally provided the same mentor functions, a.
Geo-indistinguishability: differential privacy for location-based systems

The growing popularity of location-based systems, allowing unknown/untrusted servers to easily collect huge amounts of information regarding users' location, has recently started raising serious privacy concerns. In this paper we introduce geoind, a formal notion of privacy for location-based systems that protects the user's exact location, while allowing approximate information -- typically needed to obtain a certain desired service -- to be released. This privacy definition formalizes the intuitive notion of protecting the user's location within a radius $r$ with a level of privacy that depends on r, and corresponds to a generalized version of the well-known concept of differential privacy. Furthermore, we present a mechanism for achieving geoind by adding controlled random noise to the user's location. We describe how to use our mechanism to enhance LBS applications with geo-indistinguishability guarantees without compromising the quality of the application results. Finally, we compare state-of-the-art mechanisms from the literature with ours. It turns out that, among all mechanisms independent of the prior, our mechanism offers the best privacy guarantees.
Clustering by Minimum Cut Hyperplanes

Minimum normalised graph cuts are highly effective ways of partitioning unlabeled data, having been made popular by the success of spectral clustering. This work presents a novel method for learning hyperplane separators which minimise this graph cut objective, when data are embedded in Euclidean space. The optimisation problem associated with the proposed method can be formulated as a sequence of univariate subproblems, in which the optimal hyperplane orthogonal to a given vector is determined. These subproblems can be solved in log-linear time, by exploiting the trivial factorisation of the exponential function. Experimentation suggests that the empirical runtime of the overall algorithm is also log-linear in the number of data. Asymptotic properties of the minimum cut hyperplane, both for a finite sample, and for an increasing sample assumed to arise from an underlying probability distribution are discussed. In the finite sample case the minimum cut hyperplane converges to the maximum margin hyperplane as the scaling parameter is reduced to zero. Applying the proposed methodology, both for fixed scaling, and the large margin asymptotes, is shown to produce high quality clustering models in comparison with state-of-the-art clustering algorithms in experiments using a large collection of benchmark datasets.
Improved gaussian mixture model with background spotter for the extraction of moving objects

Extraction of moving objects is a key step in a visual surveillance area. Many background models have been proposed to resolve this problem, but Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) remains the most successful approach for background subtraction. However, the method suffers from Sensitivity (SE) to local variations; variations in the brightness and background complexity mislead the process to a false detection. In this paper, an efficient method is presented to deal with GMM problems through improvement on updating selected pixels by introducing a background spotter. First, the extracted frame is divided into several equal size regions. Each region is assigned to a spotter who will report significant environment changes based on histogram analysis. Only parts reported by spotters are considered and updated in the background model. Tests carried out on four video databases that take into account various factors, demonstrate the effectiveness of our system in real-world situations.
Dendrimers, a New Class of Candidate Topical Microbicides with Activity against Herpes Simplex Virus Infection

ABSTRACT Dendrimers are large highly branched macromolecules synthesized from a polyfunctional core. They have shown a variety of biological properties, including, in some instances, antiviral activity. In this study, five dendrimers were evaluated for in vitro activity against herpes simplex virus (HSV) types 1 and 2 by cytopathic effect (CPE) inhibition and plaque reduction (PR) assay in human foreskin fibroblast cells. All of the compounds were active against both virus types in the CPE inhibition assay, in which drug was added to the cells prior to the addition of virus. Antiviral activity was reduced or lost in the PR assays, in which the cells were incubated with the virus before the drug was added. The prophylactic efficacy suggested that the dendrimers might have potential as topical microbicides, products intended to be applied to the vaginal or rectal mucosa to protect against sexually transmitted infections. Three dendrimers were evaluated for this application against genital HSV infection in mice. Two of the compounds, BRI-2999 and BRI-6741, significantly reduced infection rates when 15 μl of a 100-mg/ml solution was administered immediately prior to intravaginal challenge, and the most effective compound, BRI-2999, provided significant protection even when applied 30 min before challenge. This is the first report of microbicidal activity by dendrimers in vivo.
Intracoronary Infusion of Skeletal Myoblasts Improves Cardiac Function in Doxorubicin-Induced Heart Failure

Background—Skeletal myoblast transplantation is promising for the treatment of end-stage heart failure. Direct intramyocardial injection is useful for local cell delivery but may not be effective in global dissemination of cells into the heart, which would be advantageous in treating generalized cardiac dysfunction as in dilated cardiomyopathy. We hypothesized that intracoronary infusion of myoblasts would disseminate cells more effectively, leading to functional improvement in global heart failure. Methods and Results—Heart failure was induced by the intraperitoneal administration of doxorubicin (total dose 15 mg/kg) in rat. One million primary skeletal myoblasts were then infused via the coronary arteries of an excised, failing doxorubicin-treated heart. After incubation under increased intracoronary pressure, the hearts were subsequently transplanted into syngeneic recipients. For the control group, doxorubicin-treated hearts were infused with medium only and transplanted. Four weeks after transplantation, Langendorff perfusion demonstrated that both maximum dP/dt (2797.6±103.3 versus 2326.9±133.1 mm Hg/s, P =0.01) and minimum dP/dt (−2067.4±88.1 versus −1718.8±91.3 mm Hg/s, P =0.02) were improved in myoblast-transplanted hearts compared with medium-infused hearts. This was associated with a sharper slope of the left ventricular developed pressure-volume curve and a reduced slope of the end-diastolic pressure-volume relation in the myoblast-transplanted hearts. Immunohistochemistry for skeletal myosin heavy chain showed that globally disseminated myoblasts had survived and differentiated into multinucleated myotubes that had aligned with the cardiac fiber axis within host myocardium. No significant myocardial infarction was observed. Conclusions—We demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of skeletal myoblast transplantation via the intracoronary route as a promising strategy for improving cardiac function in global heart failure.