Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The endocannabinoid system in anxiety, fear memory and habituation

Evidence for the involvement of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) in anxiety and fear has been accumulated, providing leads for novel therapeutic approaches. In anxiety, a bidirectional influence of the ECS has been reported, whereby anxiolytic and anxiogenic responses have been obtained after both increases and decreases of the endocannabinoid tone. The recently developed genetic tools have revealed different but complementary roles for the cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptor on GABAergic and glutamatergic neuronal populations. This dual functionality, together with the plasticity of CB1 receptor expression, particularly on GABAergic neurons, as induced by stressful and rewarding experiences, gives the ECS a unique regulatory capacity for maintaining emotional homeostasis. However, the promiscuity of the endogenous ligands of the CB1 receptor complicates the interpretation of experimental data concerning ECS and anxiety. In fear memory paradigms, the ECS is mostly involved in the two opposing processes of reconsolidation and extinction of the fear memory. Whereas ECS activation deteriorates reconsolidation, proper extinction depends on intact CB1 receptor signalling. Thus, both for anxiety and fear memory processing, endocannabinoid signalling may ensure an appropriate reaction to stressful events. Therefore, the ECS can be considered as a regulatory buffer system for emotional responses.
Subjects on objects in contexts: Using GICA method to quantify epistemological subjectivity

A substantial amount of subjectivity is involved in how people use language and conceptualize the world. Computational methods and formal representations of knowledge usually neglect this kind of individual variation. We have developed a novel method, Grounded Intersubjective Concept Analysis (GICA), for the analysis and visualization of individual differences in language use and conceptualization. The GICA method first employs a conceptual survey or a text mining step to elicit from varied groups of individuals the particular ways in which terms and associated concepts are used among the individuals. The subsequent analysis and visualization reveals potential underlying groupings of subjects, objects and contexts. One way of viewing the GICA method is to compare it with the traditional word space models. In the word space models, such as latent semantic analysis (LSA), statistical analysis of word-context matrices reveals latent information. A common approach is to analyze term-document matrices in the analysis. The GICA method extends the basic idea of the traditional term-document matrix analysis to include a third dimension of different individuals. This leads to a formation of a third-order tensor of size subjects × objects × contexts. Through flattening into a matrix, these subject-object-context (SOC) tensors can again be analyzed using various computational methods including principal component analysis (PCA), singular value decomposition (SVD), independent component analysis (ICA) or any existing or future method suitable for analyzing high-dimensional data sets. In order to demonstrate the use of the GICA method, we present the results of two case studies. In the first case, GICA of health-related concepts is conducted. In the second one, the State of the Union addresses by US presidents are analyzed. In these case studies, we apply multidimensional scaling (MDS), the self-organizing map (SOM) and Neighborhood Retrieval Visualizer (NeRV) as specific data analysis methods within the overall GICA method. The GICA method can be used, for instance, to support education of heterogeneous audiences, public planning processes and participatory design, conflict resolution, environmental problem solving, interprofessional and interdisciplinary communication, product development processes, mergers of organizations, and building enhanced knowledge representations in semantic web.
UWB thin film flexible antenna for microwave thermography for breast cancer detection

A novel low-cost flexible antenna for a non-invasive and highly sensitive method to detect malign tumors in the early stages, contributing to diminishing the mortality which appears in the cases where the breast cancer was detected in late incurable stages. Using thin film Kapton substrate the flexible antenna has been built and carried out by the use of CST Microwave Studio software. The proposed structure operate in S-band (with reflection coefficient (S11) below -10dB) and has an ultra-wide band (UWB) characteristic providing an important bandwidth of about 2,4 GHz with a center frequency around 3 GHz. In order to predict the effect of the human body on the S-parameter response of the developed antenna design, an inhomogeneous multi-layer model of the women breast is used. The simulated results indicate that the proposed antenna kept it UWB property. The overall size of the miniaturized antenna is 20mm×22mm which make it very suitable for a radar-based breast cancer detection system.
Tobacco smoking as a risk factor for major depressive disorder: population-based study

Background Smoking is disproportionately prevalent among people with psychiatric illness. Aims To investigate smoking as a risk factor for major depressive disorder. Method A population-based sample of women was studied using case–control and retrospective cohort study designs. Exposure to smoking was self-reported, and major depressive disorder diagnosed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM–IV–TR (SCID–I/NP). Results Among 165 people with major depressive disorder and 806 controls, smoking was associated with increased odds for major depressive disorder (age-adjusted odds ratio (OR)=1.46, 95% CI 1.03–2.07). Compared with non-smokers, odds for major depressive disorder more than doubled for heavy smokers (>20 cigarettes/day). Among 671 women with no history of major depressive disorder at baseline, 13 of 87 smokers and 38 of 584 non-smokers developed de novo major depressive disorder during a decade of follow-up. Smoking increased major depressive disorder risk by 93% (hazard ratio (HR)=1.93, 95% CI 1.02–3.69); this was not explained by physical activity or alcohol consumption. Conclusions Evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal data suggests that smoking increases the risk of major depressive disorder in women.
Further evidence for the efficacy of an evidence-based, small group, literacy intervention program for young struggling readers

Abstract An earlier series of pilot studies and small-scale experimental studies had previously provided some evidence for the efficacy of a small group early literacy intervention program for young struggling readers. The present paper provides further evidence for efficacy based on a much larger sample of young, socially disadvantaged, at-risk readers. The participants comprised 14 successive intakes of Year 1 and Year 2 students into small group remedial literacy intervention programs hosted by two charitably run tutorial centres. In each semester, over the years 2005–2011, eight students (on average) attended each centre for one hour, for four days per week, for 15 weeks. Pre- and post-test assessment data on eight measures of early literacy performance were available on up to 194 students who completed the program. Substantial and statistically significant gains were evident on all literacy measures with large effect sizes. These results provide further evidence for the efficacy of the small group literacy intervention program.
Channel combination strategies for acoustic communication with towed arrays

Acoustic communication experiments were carried out during multistatic submarine searches in a littoral area. The purpose of the communication is to send information from the active transmitter to bistatic receivers. After transmission with a low-frequency source, phase-shift keyed signals were recorded on various hydrophone arrays towed by remote platforms. Message recovery is complicated by ambient noise, a time-varying Doppler shift due to platform motion, and by severe intersymbol interference due to multipath propagation. The present paper considers several techniques to combine the hydrophone channels of the receive arrays: a conventional beamformer followed by a single channel receiver, an equalizer combiner applied to the hydrophone channels, and an equalizer combiner applied to a collection of beams. The best performance is obtained with the beams combiner, which allows a data rate of 1000 bit/s in a reverberant coastal area.
Investigating software measures to improve product reliability

Inevitably, faults are introduced whilst software is being developed. If we can catch the faults before the system goes live we can improve the quality of the system and reduce the cost of maintaining the system. In this paper we have calculated software metrics from the testing and maintenance phases of the development of a software system. We are going to analyse this data and suggest some improvements that can be made to the software process to reduce the number of faults that are getting into the maintenance phase.
Interaction of Antiparallel Microtubules in the Phragmoplast Is Mediated by the Microtubule-Associated Protein MAP65-3 in Arabidopsis[W]

This study identifies Arabidopsis MAP65-3 as a protein that links antiparallel microtubules together in the midline of the phragmoplast and presents a modular model for microtubule organization during cytokinesis. Furthermore, MAP65-3 is found to be essential for the binding of the motor proteins Kinesin-12 and PAKRP2 to MT plus ends in the phragmoplast. In plant cells, microtubules (MTs) in the cytokinetic apparatus phragmoplast exhibit an antiparallel array and transport Golgi-derived vesicles toward MT plus ends located at or near the division site. By transmission electron microscopy, we observed that certain antiparallel phragmoplast MTs overlapped and were bridged by electron-dense materials in Arabidopsis thaliana. Robust MT polymerization, reported by fluorescently tagged End Binding1c (EB1c), took place in the phragmoplast midline. The engagement of antiparallel MTs in the central spindle and phragmoplast was largely abolished in mutant cells lacking the MT-associated protein, MAP65-3. We found that endogenous MAP65-3 was selectively detected on the middle segments of the central spindle MTs at late anaphase. When MTs exhibited a bipolar appearance with their plus ends placed in the middle, MAP65-3 exclusively decorated the phragmoplast midline. A bacterially expressed MAP65-3 protein was able to establish the interdigitation of MTs in vitro. MAP65-3 interacted with antiparallel microtubules before motor Kinesin-12 did during the establishment of the phragmoplast MT array. Thus, MAP65-3 selectively cross-linked interdigitating MTs (IMTs) to allow antiparallel MTs to be closely engaged in the phragmoplast. Although the presence of IMTs was not essential for vesicle trafficking, they were required for the phragmoplast-specific motors Kinesin-12 and Phragmoplast-Associated Kinesin-Related Protein2 to interact with MT plus ends. In conclusion, we suggest that the phragmoplast contains IMTs and highly dynamic noninterdigitating MTs, which work in concert to bring about cytokinesis in plant cells.
Logical computation on a fractal neural substrate

Attempts to use neural networks to model recursive symbolic processes like logic have met with some success, but have faced serious hurdles caused by the limitations of standard connectionist coding schemes. As a contribution to this effort, this paper presents recent work in infinite recursive auto-associative memory, a new connectionist unification model based on a fusion of recurrent neural networks with fractal geometry. Using a logical programming language as our modeling domain, we show how this approach solves many of the problems faced by earlier connectionist models, supporting arbitrarily large sets of logical expressions.
Features-Pooling Blind JPEG Image Steganalysis

In this research, we introduce a new blind steganalysis in detecting grayscale JPEG images. Features-pooling method is employed to extract the steganalytic features and the classification is done by using neural network. Three different steganographic models are tested and classification results are compared to the five state-of-the-art blind steganalysis.
Computer Vision Research at the Computational Vision Laboratory of the Universidad de Chile

The development of research in computer vision in a developing country is a challenging task. Factors such as low research funds, low trust from local companies and governments, and small number of qualified researchers complicates the development of strong, local research groups. In this article we present our research group in computer vision at the Universidad de Chile, as an example of how these difficulties can be overcome through international cooperation, focusing on global research projects with low requirements of expensive equipments, formation of qualified researchers, synergistic research with other research fields (e.g mobile robotics), and some necessary basic support from government research agencies. We show how we have been able to contribute in research areas such as face analysis for human-computer interfaces, robust object recognition, and robot vision, at an international level.
Monolithic Newton‐multigrid solution techniques for incompressible nonlinear flow models

We present special Newton‐multigrid techniques for stationary incompressible nonlinear flow models discretized by the high order LBB‐stable Q2P1 element pair. We treat the resulting nonlinear and the corresponding linear discrete systems by a fully coupled monolithic approach to maintain high accuracy and robustness, particularly with respect to different rheological behaviors and also regarding different problem sizes and types of nonlinearity. Here, local pressure Schur complement techniques are presented as a generalization of the classical Vanka smoother. The discussed methodology is implemented for the well‐known flow around cylinder benchmark configuration for generalized Newtonian as well as non‐Newtonian flows including non‐isothermal, shear/pressure dependent and viscoelastic effects.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Multi-basis adaptive neural network for rapid adaptation in speech recognition

Recent progress in acoustic modeling with deep neural network has significantly improved the performance of automatic speech recognition systems. However, it remains as an open problem how to rapidly adapt these networks with limited, unsupervised, data. Most existing methods to adapt a neural network involve modifying a large number of parameters thus rapid adaptation is not possible with these schemes. In this paper, the multi-basis adaptive neural network is proposed, a new neural network configuration which only requires very few parameters for adaptation. By modifying the topology of a single multi-layer perception, a set of sub-networks with restricted connectivity are introduced to collaboratively capture different acoustic properties. The outputs of those sub-networks are combined by speaker-dependent interpolation weights. In addition, the complete system can be optimized in an adaptive training fashion when non-homogeneous training data are used. The performance of unsupervised adaptation is evaluated on two datasets. It outperforms the speaker-independent hybrid DNN-HMM baseline both on the Broadcast News English and the AURORA-4 tasks.
A Rigorous Reanalysis of the IRAS Variable Population: Scale Lengths, Asymmetries, and Microlensing

Previous work reported a bar signature in color-selected IRAS variable stars. Here, we estimate the source density of these variables while consistently accounting for spatial incompleteness in the data using a likelihood approach. The existence of the bar is confirmed with a shoulder at a ≈ 3 kpc, an axis ratio of a:b = 2.2-2.7, and a position angle of 19° ± 1°. The ratio of nonaxisymmetric to axisymmetric components gives a similar estimate for the bar size of a = 3.3 ± 0.1 kpc and a position angle of ϕ0 = 24° ± 2°. We estimate a scale length of 4.00 ± 0.55 kpc for the IRAS variable population, suggesting that these stars represent the old disk population. We use this density reconstruction to estimate the optical depth to microlensing for the large-scale bar in the Galactic disk. We find an enhancement over an equivalent axisymmetric disk by up to 40%, but this still too small to account for the MACHO result. In addition, we note a possibility for a significant asymmetry at positive and negative longitudes with optical depths comparable to those in Baade's window. Independent of our reconstruction, an infrared microlensing survey may be a sensitive tool for detecting or constraining structural asymmetries. More generally, this is a pilot study for Bayesian star count analyses. The Bayesian approach allows the assessment of prior probabilities to the unknown parameters of the model; the resulting likelihood function is straightforwardly modified to incorporate all available data.
Young-in Old-out: a new evaluation

In this paper we examine the consequences of a decrease in exits of older workers on youth employment, allowing for job-to-job aows. We distinguish between young workers with no experience and experienced workers and we consider jobs with di§erent experience requirements. Using a theoretical matching model with heterogeneous jobs and workers, we point out that a fall in the exit rate of older workers increases job-to-job aows, which makes Orms more reluctant to open jobs for young workers. Then, we provide some empirical evidence for the Italian case.
On (ε,k)‐min‐wise independent permutations

A family of permutations of $\cal{F}$ [n] = {1,2,…,n} is (ε,k)‐min‐wise independent if for every nonempty subset X of at most k elements of [n], and for any x ∈ X, the probability that in a random element π of $\cal{F}$, π(x) is the minimum element of π(X), deviates from 1/∣X∣ by at most ε/∣X∣. This notion can be defined for the uniform case, when the elements of $\cal{F}$ are picked according to a uniform distribution, or for the more general, biased case, in which the elements of $\cal{F}$ are chosen according to a given distribution D. It is known that this notion is a useful tool for indexing replicated documents on the web.
Optimized Midterm Preventive Maintenance Outage Scheduling of Thermal Generating Units

This paper addresses the midterm preventive maintenance outage scheduling problem of thermal generating units which is becoming increasingly important due to the aging of power generation fleet. In this context, a novel midterm preventive maintenance outage scheduler is proposed based on decision tree and mixed integer linear formation which explicitly considers the thermal units aging momentum in terms of failure rate. This allows the system operators to determine the thermal units' maintenance outage window based on the cost/benefit analysis of preventive maintenance tasks while optimizing the time interval between consecutive maintenance tasks. Additionally, the division of the year-long midterm horizon into several time blocks in the proposed model provides a unique opportunity for parallel processing and computational saving. The proposed approach is tested on the IEEE Reliability Test System (IEEE-RTS). The results presented reveal the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach.
Pain management via Ultrasound-guided Nerve Block in Emergency Department; a Case Series Study

Introduction: Pain is the most common complaint of patients referring to emergency department (ED). Considering the importance of pain management in ED, this study aimed to investigate the efficacy and feasibility of ultrasound-guided nerve blocks in this setting. Methods: 46 patients who came to the ED with injured extremities were enrolled in the study and received either femoral, axillary or sciatic nerve block depending on their site of injury (1.5 mg Bupivacaine per kg of patient’s weight). Patients were asked about their level of pain before and after receiving the nerve block based on numerical rating scale. The difference between pre and post block pain severity was measured. Both patients and physicians were asked about their satisfaction with the nerve block in 5 tiered Likert scale. Results: 46 patients with the mean age of 37.5 ± 12.5 years (8-82 years) received ultrasound-guided nerve block (84.8% male). 6 Sciatic, 25 axillary, and 15 femoral nerve blocks were performed. Mean pain severity on NRS score at the time of admission was 8.1 ± 1.4, which reduced to 2.04 ± 2.06 after block. 25 (54.3%) patients were highly satisfied (Likert scale 5), 15 (32.6%) were satisfied (Likert scale 4), 3 (6.5%) were neutral and had no opinion (Likert scale 3), 1 (2.1%) was not satisfied (Likert scale 2), and 2 (4.3%) were highly unsatisfied (Likert scale 1). There was no significant difference among the satisfaction scores within the three block locations (p = 0.8). There was no significant difference in physicians’ level of satisfaction between the three block locations either (p = 0.9). 1 (2.1%) case of agitation and tachycardia and 1 (2.1%) case of vomiting were observed after the procedure. Conclusion: Ultrasound-guided nerve block of extremities is a safe and effective method that can be used for pain management in the ED. It results in high levels of satisfaction among both patients and physicians.
The genetic control of avascular area in mouse oxygen-induced retinopathy

Purpose The C57BL/6ByJ and BALB/cByJ inbred strains of mice are, respectively, susceptible and resistant to oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR). The purpose of this work was to investigate the genetic control of the retinal avascular area in mouse OIR using a mapping cross. Methods The central retinal avascular area was measured on postnatal day 16 (P16) in C57BL/6ByJ, BALB/cByJ, 101 (C57BL/6ByJ x BALB/cByJ)F2, and 116 (BALB/cByJ x C57BL/6ByJ)F2 mice that had been subjected to the OIR protocol. A genome-wide scan was performed of selected albino and non-albino mice to determine quantitative trait loci associated with weight and avascular area. Results C57BL/6ByJ mice had significantly larger avascular areas than BALB/cByJ ones. Albino mice of the F2 generation had smaller avascular areas than the non-albino mice. Genotyping was performed at 856 informative single nucleotide polymorphisms approximately evenly distributed across the genome from each of 85 selected F2 mice. Weight, sex, and the paternal grandmother were found to act as additive covariates associated with the avascular area on P16; mapping analyses that used a model incorporating these covariates found a quantitative trait locus on chromosome 7 related to avascular area. Mapping analyses that used a model that did not incorporate covariates found a quantitative trait locus on chromosome 9 related to avascular area. A quantitative trait locus for bodyweight on P16 was mapped to chromosome 5. Conclusions The retinal avascular area in the mouse OIR model is under genetic control. Revascularization in OIR is related to the weight, strain of paternal grandmother, sex, and albinism. Our data support the existence of a quantitative trait locus on chromosome 5 that influences weight after exposure to hyperoxia, as well as quantitative trait loci on chromosomes 7 and 9 that modify susceptibility to OIR.