Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Effective Connectivity of Inter-Areal Brain Circuits

Anatomic connections between brain areas affect information flow between neuronal circuits and the synchronization of neuronal activity. However, such structural connectivity does not coincide with effective connectivity (or, more precisely, causal connectivity), related to the elusive question “Which areas cause the present activity of which others? ”. Effective connectivity is directed and depends flexibly on contexts and tasks. Here we show that dynamic effective connectivity can emerge from transitions in the collective organization of coherent neural activity. Integrating simulation and semi-analytic approaches, we study mesoscale network motifs of interacting cortical areas, modeled as large random networks of spiking neurons or as simple rate units. Through a causal analysis of time-series of model neural activity, we show that different dynamical states generated by a same structural connectivity motif correspond to distinct effective connectivity motifs. Such effective motifs can display a dominant directionality, due to spontaneous symmetry breaking and effective entrainment between local brain rhythms, although all connections in the considered structural motifs are reciprocal. We show then that transitions between effective connectivity configurations (like, for instance, reversal in the direction of inter-areal interactions) can be triggered reliably by brief perturbation inputs, properly timed with respect to an ongoing local oscillation, without the need for plastic synaptic changes. Finally, we analyze how the information encoded in spiking patterns of a local neuronal population is propagated across a fixed structural connectivity motif, demonstrating that changes in the active effective connectivity regulate both the efficiency and the directionality of information transfer. Previous studies stressed the role played by coherent oscillations in establishing efficient communication between distant areas. Going beyond these early proposals, we advance here that dynamic interactions between brain rhythms provide as well the basis for the self-organized control of this “communication-through-coherence”, making thus possible a fast “on-demand” reconfiguration of global information routing modalities.
Meta-analysis of genetic variants associated with human exceptional longevity

Despite evidence from family studies that there is a strong genetic influence upon exceptional longevity, relatively few genetic variants have been associated with this trait. One reason could be that many genes individually have such weak effects that they cannot meet standard thresholds of genome wide significance, but as a group in specific combinations of genetic variations, they can have a strong influence. Previously we reported that such genetic signatures of 281 genetic markers associated with about 130 genes can do a relatively good job of differentiating centenarians from non-centenarians particularly if the centenarians are 106 years and older. This would support our hypothesis that the genetic influence upon exceptional longevity increases with older and older (and rarer) ages. We investigated this list of markers using similar genetic data from 5 studies of centenarians from the USA, Europe and Japan. The results from the meta-analysis show that many of these variants are associated with survival to these extreme ages in other studies. Since many centenarians compress morbidity and disability towards the end of their lives, these results could point to biological pathways and therefore new therapeutics to increase years of healthy lives in the general population.
Influence of the G2 cell cycle block abrogator pentoxifylline on the expression and subcellular location of cyclin B1 and p34cdc2 in HeLa cervical carcinoma cells

The progression of cells from G2 into mitosis is mainly controlled by formation of the cyclin B1/p34cdc2 complex. The behaviour of this complex in the irradiation‐induced G2 cell cycle delay is still unclear. A prior study demonstrated that the expression of the cyclin B1 protein is reduced by irradiation, and restored to control levels by the methylxanthine drug pentoxifylline, which is a potent G2 block abrogator. The present study shows that irradiation, and 2 mM pentoxifylline affect the expression of the cyclin‐dependent kinase p34cdc2 in HeLa cells. Irradiation induces p34cdc2 levels to increase and cyclin B1 levels to decrease. Addition of pentoxifylline at the G2 maximum reverses these trends. This is also evident from the cyclin B1/p34cdc2 ratios which decline after irradiation and are rapidly restored to control levels upon addition of pentoxifylline. It is concluded that cyclin B1 and p34cdc2 protein expression are important events and act in concert to control the irradiation induced G2 block. Analysis of cyclin B1 expression in whole cells and in isolated nuclei furthermore show that cyclin B1 is translocated from the nucleus into the cytoplasm when the G2 block is abrogated by pentoxifylline.
Who's to Blame When a Business Fails? How Journalistic Death Metaphors Influence Responsibility Attributions

This study unites a textual analysis and an experimental audience study to document the use of death metaphor in business news and to assess the impact that death metaphor has on audiences' attributions of responsibility for corporate failure. The findings show that death metaphors are frequently used in financial press coverage and that the use of death metaphor influences audience members' responsibility attributions by intensifying overall levels of blame, while simultaneously deflecting blame away from the executives responsible for managing the firm and diffusing it to other factors, including the state of the economy, the government, and individual consumers.
Virological and immunological effects of antioxidant treatment in patients with HIV infection

Intracellular oxidative stress in CD4+ lymphocytes due to disturbed glutathione homeostasis may lead to impaired lymphocyte functions and enhanced HIV replication in patients with HIV infection, especially in those with advanced immunodeficiency. The aim of the present study was to assess whether short‐term, high‐dose antioxidant treatment might have effects on immunological and virological parameters in patients with HIV infection.
Genre-oriented Readability Assessment: a Case Study

Whether and to what extent readability assessment is genre–dependent is an issue which has important consequences also in the design and development of educational applications. In this paper, we address this issue from an applicative point of view by investigating whether general purpose readability assessment tools can reliably be used for dealing with texts belonging to different genres. Different experiments have been carried out showing that classification– based approaches to readability assessment can achieve reliable results only by using genre– specific models. Since the construction of genre–specific models is a time consuming task, we proposed a new ranking method for readability assessment based on the notion of distance: we also showed that this method can be usefully exploited for automatically building genre– specific training corpora, thus creating the prerequisites for overcoming the inherent problems of classification–based readability assessment. All reported experiments have been carried out on Italian, a less—resourced language as far as readability assessment is concerned. Valutazione della Leggibilita e Generi Testuali: un Caso di Studio Se e in che misura la valutazione della leggibilita sia influenzata dal genere testuale rappresenta una questione che ha importanti conseguenze anche al livello dello sviluppo di applicazioni in ambito didattico. In questo contributo, affrontiamo questo problema da una prospettiva applicativa, verificando se strumenti per il calcolo della leggibilita sviluppati per un uso generale siano affidabili quando applicati a testi appartenenti a diversi generi testuali. Sono stati condotti diversi esperimenti che hanno mostrato che approcci al calcolo della leggibilita basati sul metodo della classificazione possono restituire risultati affidabili solo se utilizzano modelli specifici per ogni genere. Dal momento che la costruzione di tali modelli specifici e un compito impegnativo, abbiamo proposto un nuovo metodo di ranking per il calcolo della leggibilita basato sulla nozione di distanza che puo essere utilizzato anche per la costruzione automatica di corpora di addestramento specifici di genere. Tutti gli esperimenti riportati sono stati condotti sull’italiano, lingua per la quale sono a disposizione poche risorse.
Resource aware programming

We introduce the Resource Aware Programming framework, which allows users to monitor the resources used by their programs and to programmatically express policies for the management of such resources. The framework is based on a notion of hierarchical groups, which act as resource containers for the computations they sponsor. Asynchronous notifications for resource exhaustion and for computation termination can be handled by arbitrary user code, which is also executed under the control of this hierarchical group structure. Resources are manipulated by the programmer using resource descriptors, whose operations are specified by a resource algebra. In this article, we overview the Resource Aware Programming framework and describe its semantics in the form of a language-independent abstract machine able to model both shared and distributed memory environments. Finally, we discuss a prototype implementation of the Resource Aware Programming framework in Java.
Variation in postfire organic layer thickness in a black spruce forest complex in interior Alaska and its effects on soil temperature and moisture

Cette etude porte sur la relation entre les caracteristiques du climat et du paysage et la consommation de combustibles de surface ainsi que sur les effets de la variation dans la profondeur de la couche organique surla temperature et la teneur en eau du sol apres un feu dans un ensemble de forets d'epinette noire (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP), situees dans la region interieure de l'Alaska,. Des mesures de temperature et teneur en eau du sol mineral a la fin de la saison de croissance et des mesures de profondeur de la couche organique et ont ete prises dans trois brulis survenus en 1987, 1994 et 1999 ainsi que dans des peuplements adjacents non brules. Dans les peuplements non brules, la profondeur moyenne de la couche organique et de la couche d'humus augmentait avec l'âge du peuplement. La teneur en eau et la temperature du sol mineral variaient en fonction de l'epaisseur de la couche organique en surface dans les peuplements non brules, ce qui indique que la teneur en eau de la couche profonde d'humus a sans doute aussi tendance a augmenter a mesure qu'un peuplement vieillit et devient plus mature. Les feux reduisent la profondeur des couches organiques de surface de 5 a 24 cm. Dans chaque brulis, nous avons observe que des variations importantes dans la consommation de combustibles etaient reliees a plusieurs facteurs, incluant la texture du sol mineral, la presence ou l'absence de permagel et le moment ou les feux sont survenus en relation avec le degel saisonnier du permagel. Tandis que les patrons saisonniers du climat contribuent aux variations dans la teneur en eau des combustibles et leur consommation lorsqu'il y a un feu, les interactions entre le regime thermique du sol, la profondeur de la couche organique et l'historique des feux precedents sont egalement importants pour determiner les patrons de consommation des combustibles de surface.
Stopping Rules in Information Acquisition at Varying Probabilities and Consequences: an EEG Study

An experiment aiming to assess the use of stopping rules in information acquisition was performed. Participants were requested to make a decision in 24 financial scenarios with the possibility of buying information pieces. Behavioral and EEG data were recorded for analysis. Results showed that participants followed Bayesian calculations in order to determine a stop on information acquisition and decide. Moreover, the information acquisition strategies were consistent with prospect theory, in which participants will weigh information pieces differently and seek more or less information given different manipulations in scenario probability and consequences. EEG data suggest Slow Cortical Potentials at fronto-central electrodes.
Modeling organic aerosol composition at the puy de Dôme mountain (France) for two contrasted air masses with the WRF-Chem model

Simulations with the chemistry-transport model WRF-Chem are compared to aerosol measurements performed at the puy de Dome station with a compact Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (cToF-AMS) for two episodes in autumn 2008 and in summer 2010. The WRF-Chem model is used with the Volatility Basis Set (VBS) approach dedicated to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA). The model systematically underestimates the observed concentrations of organic aerosol (OA), with significant differences observed for the summer case. For this event, where high OA concentrations were observed (12.5 μg m -3 in average), simulated OA mass concentration is 2.0 μg m -3 . For the autumn event, observed OA concentrations reached 2.6 μg m -3 . The simulated concentrations reached only 0.6 μg m -3 . During the summer event, several gas-phase volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were measured and were used to test the robustness of both emission/dry deposition and SOA formation processes. The concentrations of VOCs, and more specifically the anthropogenic ones, calculated by the model are estimated to be much lower than the observed ones. Hence, the emissions of all SOA precursors are multiplied by 2 in the model: this induces an increase of the mean OA mass concentration of 25% (+0.5 μg m -3 ) and 18% (+0.4 μg m -3 ), respectively for anthropogenic and biogenic VOCs. The dry deposition of gas-phase organic condensable vapours (OCVs) is also critical to predict the SOA mass concentrations: dividing the deposition factor by 2 leads to an increase of OA mass by an additional 12% (+0.2 μg m -3 ). However, these increases were not sufficient to explain the observed OA concentration, and the underestimation of the OA concentration levels seems to be principally related to a lack in the parameterization of SOA formation. Changing the oxidation rate of OCVs from 1.0 × 10 -11 to 4.0 × 10 -11 cm 3 molecule −1 s -1 , doubling the SOA yields for anthropogenic VOCs and finally doubling the SOA yields for biogenic VOCs results in an increase of the mean OA mass concentration by 56% (+1.1 μg m -3 ), 61% (+1.2 μg m -3 ) and 40% (+0.8 μg m -3 ), respectively. The consideration of both emission/dry deposition and SOA formation processes tests lead to a mean OA mass concentration of 10.7 μg m -3 for 2010, a value that is close to the observations. For 2008, modifying solely the oxidation rate of OCVs and the SOA yields is sufficient to reproduce the observed level of mean OA mass (a mass of 2.4 μg m -3 is obtained by the model whereas a mass of 2.6 μg m -3 was observed).
A SUITABLE CASE FOR TRANSPLANT?

Can the values of public service journalism be transplanted to a society emerging from dictatorship? This paper is the first detailed account of the BBC's engagement with journalism in Romania after the fall of communism, including a description and evaluation of the journalism training carried out by the BBC in the country in the 1990s. Drawing on interviews with a cohort of journalists who were trained at the BBC School in Bucharest, it describes the media landscape from which they came and charts their professional progress after attending the training course. Their disillusionment with the decline in journalistic standards in Romania in the late 1990s is put in the context of wider assessments of the state of Romanian media in the run-up to the country's joining the European Union in 2005. Initiatives to establish and support a model of public service broadcasting in Romania after the “revolution” of 1989 were seen as part of a wider effort to build an open society. While Romania's goals of joining NATO and the European Union were achieved by 2005, there is considerable evidence of its continuing failure to respect the norms of liberal democracy. This paper investigates the reasons why the journalistic values which the BBC taught to 500 young Romanian journalists did not take root in the country's media and asks what lessons can be learned for similar interventions 20 years on.
Economic model predictive control for energy dispatch of a smart micro-grid system

The problem of energy dispatch in heterogeneous complex systems such as smart grids cannot be efficiently solved using classical control or ad-hoc methods. This paper proposes the application of Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) for the management of a smart micro-grid system connected to an electrical power grid. The system comprises several subsystems, namely some photovoltaic (PV) panels, a wind generator, a hydroelectric generator, a diesel generator, and some storage devices (batteries). The batteries are charged with the energy from the PV panels, wind and hydroelectric generators, and they are discharged whenever the generators produce less energy than needed. The subsystems are interconnected via a DC Bus, from which load demands are satisfied. Assuming the load demand and the energy prices to be known, this study shows that EMPC is economically superior to other Model Predictive Control (MPC) based strategies (a standard tracking MPC, and their cascaded version in form of hierarchical two-layer approach).
A two-parameter generalized Poisson model to improve the analysis of RNA-seq data

Deep sequencing of RNAs (RNA-seq) has been a useful tool to characterize and quantify transcriptomes. However, there are significant challenges in the analysis of RNA-seq data, such as how to separate signals from sequencing bias and how to perform reasonable normalization. Here, we focus on a fundamental question in RNA-seq analysis: the distribution of the position-level read counts. Specifically, we propose a two-parameter generalized Poisson (GP) model to the position-level read counts. We show that the GP model fits the data much better than the traditional Poisson model. Based on the GP model, we can better estimate gene or exon expression, perform a more reasonable normalization across different samples, and improve the identification of differentially expressed genes and the identification of differentially spliced exons. The usefulness of the GP model is demonstrated by applications to multiple RNA-seq data sets.
Cognitive task analysis: A cognitive approach to evaluate evidence-based nursing websites

Purpose – To introduce a cognitive approach – cognitive task analysis (CTA) – for the usability evaluation of evidence‐based nursing (EBN) websites.Design/methodology/approach – With the justification of the need for new evaluation methodologies for the usability of EBN websites and the provision of the theoretical framework and implications of CTA, the author proposes detailed steps for the usability evaluation of EBN websites.Findings – CTA is a new approach that can be used for the evaluation of the usability of EBN websites. It has the advantages that conventional evaluation methods lack in characterizing the aspects of websites useful to nurses in carrying out evidence‐based practices.Originality/value – This paper, with the introduction of a new cognitive approach, helps ensure the effective evaluation of the EBN websites, which can then be improved to adequately meet the requirements and information processing needs of the nurses practising evidence‐based nursing.
Morphological heterogeneity of layer VI neurons in mouse barrel cortex

Understanding the basic neuronal building blocks of the neocortex is a necessary first step toward comprehending the composition of cortical circuits. Neocortical layer VI is the most morphologically diverse layer and plays a pivotal role in gating information to the cortex via its feedback connection to the thalamus and other ipsilateral and callosal corticocortical connections. The heterogeneity of function within this layer is presumably linked to its varied morphological composition. However, so far, very few studies have attempted to define cell classes in this layer using unbiased quantitative methodologies. Utilizing the Golgi staining technique along with the Neurolucida software, we recontructed 222 cortical neurons from layer VI of mouse barrel cortex. Morphological analyses were performed by quantifying somatic and dendritic parameters, and, by using principal component and cluster analyses, we quantitatively categorized neurons into six distinct morphological groups. Additional systematic replication on a separate population of neurons yielded similar results, demonstrating the consistency and reliability of our categorization methodology. Subsequent post hoc analyses of dendritic parameters supported our neuronal classification scheme. Characterizing neuronal elements with unbiased quantitative techniques provides a framework for better understanding structure–function relationships within neocortical circuits in general. J. Comp. Neurol. 512:726–746, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Bacterial periplasmic transport systems: structure, mechanism, and evolution.

RAHAL J1. Effect of combined therapy with ansamycin, clofazimine, ethambutol, and isoniazid for Mycobacterium avium infection in patients with AIDS. Characterization of the drug-stimulatable A TP hydrolysis. ANDERSON R, ZEIS BM, ANDERSON IF. Clofazimine-mediated enhancement of reactive oxidant production by human phagocytes as a possible therapeutic mechanism. ANDERSON R, SMIT M1. Clofazimine and B669 inhibit the proliferative responses and Na+,K+ adenosine triphosphatase activity of human lymphocytes by a lysophospholipid­ dependent mechanism.
What if the Irresponsible Teachers Are Dominating?

As the Internet-based crowdsourcing services become more and more popular, learning from multiple teachers or sources has received more attention of the researchers in the machine learning area. In this setting, the learning system is dealing with samples and labels provided by multiple teachers, who in common cases, are non-expert. Their labeling styles and behaviors are usually diverse, some of which are even detrimental to the learning system. Thus, simply putting them together and utilizing the algorithms designed for single-teacher scenario would be not only improper, but also damaging. The problem calls for more specific methods. Our work focuses on a case where the teachers are composed of good ones and irresponsible ones. By irresponsible, we mean the teacher who takes the labeling task not seriously and label the sample at random without inspecting the sample itself. This behavior is quite common when the task is not attractive enough and the teacher just wants to finish it as soon as possible. Sometimes, the irresponsible teachers could take a considerable part among all the teachers. If we do not take out their effects, our learning system would be ruined with no doubt. In this paper, we propose a method for picking out the good teachers with promising experimental results. It works even when the irresponsible teachers are dominating in numbers.