Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel compound, maltolyl p‐coumarate, attenuates cognitive deficits and shows neuroprotective effects in vitro and in vivo dementia models

To develop a novel and effective drug that could enhance cognitive function and neuroprotection, we newly synthesized maltolyl p‐coumarate by the esterification of maltol and p‐coumaric acid. In the present study, we investigated whether maltolyl p‐coumarate could improve cognitive decline in scopolamine‐injected rats and in amyloid beta peptide1–42‐infused rats. Maltolyl p‐coumarate was found to attenuate cognitive deficits in both rat models using passive avoidance test and to reduce apoptotic cell death observed in the hippocampus of the amyloid beta peptide1–42‐infused rats. We also examined the neuroprotective effects of maltolyl p‐coumarate in vitro using SH‐SY5Y cells. Cells were pretreated with maltolyl p‐coumarate, before exposed to amyloid beta peptide1–42, glutamate or H2O2. We found that maltolyl p‐coumarate significantly decreased apoptotic cell death and reduced reactive oxygen species, cytochrome c release, and caspase 3 activation. Taking these in vitro and in vivo results together, our study suggests that maltolyl p‐coumarate is a potentially effective candidate against Alzheimer's disease that is characterized by wide spread neuronal death and progressive decline of cognitive function. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Cognitive Interview: Improving Recall and Reducing Misinformation Among Arab Children

It is well documented that the cognitive interview (CI) is a method of improving children’s recall, thereby limiting misinformation. Despite the popularity of the CI in Western societies, it is yet to be tested with native Arab children. The purpose of this study is to examine the usefulness, among Arab children, of the CI compared to a control interview (structured interview [SI]). The study is based on 80 Arabic children, aged 9–12 years, and the sample was stratified based on age and gender. Children viewed a short video clip of a theft crime, followed by a narrative containing misinformation; interviews were conducted 2 to 16 days following the stimuli. The CI led to significantly more correct details, and was shown to limit misinformation compared to the SI. Moreover, the CI led to a higher number of incorrect and confabulated details. The results also showed significant effects of age and delay (interval between scene and interview) on memory recall. Overall, it was concluded that the CI is a transferable technique to Arab children. However, careful consideration should be given to the difficulty of the two CI instructions (Change Perspective and Change Order) as well as culture-related characteristics.
Faculty ethics logic of a religiously affiliated university

This work responds to calls for ethics reform in higher education by exploring faculty realities of ethics logic within a small, religiously affiliated university. Research questions sought to discover what ethics entities existed, how they were related to each other, and how faculty members operationalised them. Using grounded theory methods and graph theory based analysis, the resulting Faculty Ethics Logic Model operationalised participant realities of the primary forces that drive teaching or resolving ethics issues at this particular university. That is, when emerging needs arose, faculty members derived response strategies primarily from knowledge, resources/artefacts, goals and beliefs; set within a framework of teaching or resolving ethics related issues, their resulting course of action was shaped by work-related contexts of group influence and collective norms. While the model did not exclude formal institutional influence, it highlighted the importance of informal elements within faculty realities (such as professional experience and desire for continued learning). Research implications pose the possiblitiy of using model construction to facilitate collective ethics logic understanding, or serve as a vehicle for discussing reform strategies. Triangulation of methods for data collection, analysis, and findings provide research trustworthiness. This paper is based on an earlier version presented at The Center for Academic Integrity 2009 Annual International Conference.
Association of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease With Increased Confusion or Memory Loss and Functional Limitations Among Adults in 21 States, 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

Introduction Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with cognitive impairment, but consequences of this association on a person’s functional limitations are unclear. We examined the association between COPD and increased confusion and memory loss (ICML) and functional limitations among adults with COPD. Methods We studied adults aged 45 years or older in 21 states who participated in the 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (n = 102,739). Presence of COPD was based on self-reported physician diagnosis. ICML was based on self-report that confusion or memory loss occurred more often or worsened during the prior year. ICML-associated difficulties were defined as giving up household chores and former activities, decreased ability to work or engage in social activities, or needing help from family or friends during the prior year due to ICML. General limitations were defined as needing special equipment as a result of a health condition, having had activity limitations for 2 weeks or more in the prior month, or being unable to work. Multivariable models were adjusted for demographics, health behaviors or conditions, and frequent mental distress. Results COPD was reported by 9.3% of adults. ICML was greater among those with COPD than among those without COPD (25.8% vs 11%; adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR], 1.48; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.32%–1.66%). People with COPD, either with or without ICML, were more likely than those without COPD to report general functional limitations. Among people reporting ICML, those with COPD were more likely to report interference with work or social activities than those without COPD (aPR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.01%–1.36%). Conclusion Functional limitations were greater among those with COPD than among those without, and ICML may further affect these limitations. Results from our study can inform future studies of self- management and functional limitations for people with COPD.
Assisting bug report triage through recommendation

A key collaborative hub for many software development projects is the issue tracking system, or bug repository. The use of a bug repository can improve the software development process in a number of ways including allowing developers who are geographically distributed to communicate about project development. However, reports added to the repository need to be triaged by a human, called the triager, to determine if reports are meaningful. If a report is meaningful, the triager decides how to organize the report for integration into the project's development process. Triagers can become overwhelmed by the number of reports added to the repository. Time spent triaging also typically diverts valuable resources away from the improvement of the product to the managing of the development process. To assist triagers, this talk presents a machine learning approach to create recommenders that assists with one common triager decision: the assignment of the report to a developer. The recommenders created with this approach are accurate: recommenders for which developer to assign a report have a precision of 70% to 98% over five open source projects. In addition, we present an approach to assist project members to specify the project-specific values for creating a developer recommender and show that such a recommender can be created with a subset of the repository data. Biography: Dr. John Anvik's research focuses on reducing the management overhead in software development. Currently he is looking at how to improve the management of bug reports. His career has spanned both academia and industry having been a researcher at several universities, taught undergraduate classes, worked as a software developer and as a training manager for a small web-GIS company. He currently lives in Victoria, BC, Canada. C O M P U T ER S C I E N C E D E P A R T M E N T C O L L O Q U I U M
Asymptotic spectral efficiency of MIMO multiple-access wireless systems exploring only channel spatial correlations

We use the replica method originally developed in statistical physics to investigate the asymptotic sum-rate of a Gaussian antenna-array-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiple-access wireless channel having spatial correlations at both the transmitters and the receiver. The asymptotic solution is not only rigorously valid for systems with large array sizes, hut it also produces highly accurate ergodic results for systems with only a few antenna elements at each transmitter and receiver. This otters the asymptotic solution important practical values in analyzing and designing a MIMO multiple access system that makes best use of the wireless channel structure. Furthermore, with the asymptotic solution, we provide an efficient iterative water-filling algorithm to determine the optimum transmit signal covariance matrices when only the slow-varying channel spatial covariance information is available.
DC voltage balancing control of large-scale modular multilevel cascade converter

The modular multilevel cascade converter is one of the most practical solutions for high-voltage, large-capacity utility applications. As the number of the series connected submodules increases, the DC voltage balancing control becomes difficult. Problems of the conventional balancing method, when used in those large-scale modular multilevel cascade converter, has been analyzed. A new balancing control strategy has been proposed. Comparative experiments have been carried out on a real 35kV/40MVA cascade multilevel converter to verify effectiveness of the presented balancing control scheme.
Nonlinear Mean Reversion in the Short-Term Interest Rate

Using a new Bayesian method for the analysis of diffusion processes, this article finds that the nonlinear drift in interest rates found in a number of previous studies can be confirmed only under prior distributions that are best described as informative. The assumption of stationarity, which is common in the literature, represents a nontrivial prior belief about the shape of the drift function. This belief and the use of "flat" priors contribute strongly to the finding of nonlinear mean reversion. Implementation of an approximate Jeffreys prior results in virtually no evidence for mean reversion in interest rates unless stationarity is assumed. Finally, the article documents that nonlinear drift is primarily a feature of daily rather than monthly data, and that these data contain a transitory element that is not reflected in the volatility of longer-maturity yields. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.
Immunohistochemical study of melanocytic nevus and malignant melanoma with monoclonal antibodies against s‐100 subunits

Immunohistochemical localization of S‐100 protein α and β subunits in the cells of melanocytic nevi and malignant melanomas was studied by using monoclonal antibodies directed against each subunit. Although polyclonal anti‐S‐100 reactivities have been demonstrated uniformly in all nevus cells and melanoma cells, monoclonal anti‐S‐100α and anti‐S‐100β reactivities were either absent or rarely found in ordinary junctional nevi or junctional nests of ordinary compound nevi. However, in the junctional nests of dysplastic junctional nevi and junctional components of dysplastic compound nevi, monoclonal anti‐S‐100α reactivity become more frequent, whereas monoclonal anti‐S‐100β reactivity remains negative. In the superficial variety of melanomas such as superficial spreading melanoma and lentigo maligna melanoma, monoclonal anti‐S‐100β is nonreactive until vertical growth or invasiveness begins. Most nodular melanomas are positively stained with both monoclonal anti‐S‐100α and anti‐S‐100β. It is suggested that monoclonal anti‐S‐100α can be an indicator of active junctional nevus of melanocytic nevi and the reactivity with monoclonal anti‐S‐100β may be related to vertical progression of superficial spreading melanomas and lentigo maligna melanomas.
Study on Predictions of Phenological Phases of Winter Wheat-comparison between Beta and Sine Models

Temperature is one of the most important elements that determine plant growth, development and yield. Accurate temperature response is thus a prerequisite to successful crop system modeling and proper managerial decisions. Results from many previous studies showed that the predictions of developmental stages were better with non-linear temperature response function compared to linear ones. In this study, three non-linear models including two versions of Beta models and a Sine model using only three cardinal temperatures, namely the minimum, the optimum and the maximum temperatures were commonly introduced which were derived from a series of long-term field experiments on winter wheat conducted in thirty sites in Henan Province, China. Model evaluation for winter wheat was based on a set of four-year independent data. The simulated results showed that no significant improvement in the prediction of the developmental stages using the Sine model was found as compared to two Beta models and the Sine model generally produced a more reasonable set of cardinal temperatures than the two Beta models. In general, there was no much difference among the three models and it just mean that the three cardinal temperatures used in simulating the developmental stages must agree with the corresponding model.
Multi-graph similarity reinforcement for image annotation refinement

In image annotation refinement, word correlations among candidate annotations are used to reserve high relevant words and remove irrelevant words. Existing methods build word correlations on textual annotations of images. In this paper, visual contents of images are utilized to explore better word correlations by using multi-graph similarity reinforcement method. Firstly, image visual similarity graph and word correlations graph are built respectively. Secondly, the two graphs are iteratively reinforced by each other through image-word transfer matrix. Once the two graphs converge to steady states, the new word correlations graph is used to refine the candidate annotations. The experiments show that our method performs better than method not considering visual content of images.
Liposomal Cholesterol Delivery Activates the Macrophage Innate Immune Arm To Facilitate Intracellular Leishmania donovani Killing

ABSTRACT Leishmania donovani causes visceral leishmaniasis (VL) by infecting the monocyte/macrophage lineage and residing inside specialized structures known as parasitophorous vacuoles. The protozoan parasite has adopted several means of escaping the host immune response, with one of the major methods being deactivation of host macrophages. Previous reports highlight dampened macrophage signaling, defective antigen presentation due to increased membrane fluidity, and the downregulation of several genes associated with L. donovani infection. We have reported previously that the defective antigen presentation in infected hamsters could be corrected by a single injection of a cholesterol-containing liposome. Here we show that cholesterol in the form of a liposomal formulation can stimulate the innate immune arm and reactivate macrophage function. Augmented levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen intermediates (RNI), along with proinflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin 6 (IL-6), corroborate intracellular parasite killing. Cholesterol incorporation kinetics is favored in infected macrophages more than in normal macrophages. Such an enhanced cholesterol uptake is associated with preferential apoptosis of infected macrophages in an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-dependent manner. All these events are coupled with mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase activation, while inhibition of such pathways resulted in increased parasite loads. Hence, liposomal cholesterol is a potential facilitator of the macrophage effector function in favor of the host, independently of the T-cell arm.
A 32-bit execution unit in an advanced NMOS technology

The circuit and design of an experimental 32-bit execution unit are described. It is fabricated in a scaled NMOS single-layer poly-technology with 2-/spl mu/m minimum gate length and low-ohmic polycide for gates and interconnections. The chip (25000 transistors, 16 mm/SUP 2/, 61 pins) is designed with a high degree of regularity and modularity. The circuit performs logic and arithmetic operations and has an on-chip control ROM for instruction decoding. It operates with a single 5-V supply voltage. Measurements resulted in a typical power dissipation of 750 mW and a maximum operation frequency of 6.5 MHz. At this frequency a 32/spl times/32 bit multiplication is performed in less than 5.5 /spl mu/s.
Computable Bounds for Geometric Convergence Rates of Markov Chains

Recent results for geometrically ergodic Markov chains show that there exist constants R < 1; < 1 such that sup jfjjV j Z P n (x; dy)f (y) Z (dy)f (y)j RV (x) n where is the invariant probability measure and V is any solution of the drift inequalities Z P (x; dy)V (y) V (x) + b1l C (x) which are known to guarantee geometric convergence for < 1; b < 1 and a suitable small set C. In this paper we identify for the rst time computable bounds on R and in terms of ; b and the minorizing constants which guarantee the smallness of C.
Dengue epidemic in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1990–1: co-circulation of dengue 1 and dengue 2 serotypes

Summary During 1990 and 1991, dengue fever was detected in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It occurred in two epidemic waves; one, from January to August 1990, caused predominantly by dengue virus type 1 (DEN-1) the other from October 1990 to May 1991 caused by type 2 virus (DEN-2). Dengue was confirmed by virus isolation and/or IgM capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (MAC-ELISA) in 2109/5964 (35·4%) of the cases. DEN-2 virus was isolated from 180 patients. HAI tests indicated that of these previous infection with DEN-1 had occurred in 130 (72%). The epidemic was classified as dengue fever, but severe and even fatal cases occurred in association with secondary infection.
Ultra-short pulse generation in the hybridly mode-locked erbium-doped all-fiber ring laser with a distributed polarizer

We report for the first time to the best of our knowledge on the ultra-short pulse (USP) generation in the dispersion-managed erbium-doped all-fiber ring laser hybridly mode-locked with boron nitride-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes in the co-action with a nonlinear polarization evolution in the ring cavity with a distributed polarizer. Stable 92.6 fs dechirped pulses were obtained via precise polarization state adjustment at a central wavelength of 1560 nm with 11.2 mW average output power, corresponding to the 2.9 kW maximum peak power. We have also observed the laser switching from a USP generation regime to a chirped pulse one with a corresponding pulse-width of 7.1 ps at the same intracavity dispersion.
Syntactic Sentence Simplification for French

This paper presents a method for the syntactic simplification of French texts. Syntactic simplification aims at making texts easier to understand by simplifying complex syntactic structures that hinder reading. Our approach is based on the study of two parallel corpora (encyclopaedia articles and tales). It aims to identify the linguistic phenomena involved in the manual simplification of French texts and organise them within a typology. We then propose a syntactic simplification system that relies on this typology to generate simplified sentences. The module starts by generating all possible variants before selecting the best subset. The evaluation shows that about 80% of the simplified sentences produced by our system are accurate.
Improved antenna mounting method for UWB BAN channel measurements

In this paper, a mounting method is proposed for antennas used in ultra wideband (UWB) body area network (BAN) channel sounding, which reduces the antenna’s electromagnetic coupling to the human body. Coupling with the body is shown to distort the free space characteristics of the antenna. An antenna mount modification is proposed to reduce this distortion, and decrease the variation in antenna characteristics when mounted. The antennas reflection coefficient from 4 to 9 GHz is used to assess the coupling of two UWB BAN antennas when they are mounted at different distances from the skin and at several locations on the body. The free space characteristics of the modified antennas are also tested, showing a reduction of up to 4.7 dB of radiated power into the body. The modified antennas are tested in BAN measurement campaigns showing the fading depth and coherency time of the channels.
An Algorithm Study for Speech Emotion Recognition Based Speech Feature Analysis

Based on the studies of the emotional feature, a new method based on the emotional feature analysis for emotion recognition in speech signal characteristics is proposed. Collected from 10 speakers with joy, anger, surprise and sad emotion statement, a total of 3000 sentences, 10 emotion characteristics extracted from these speech data. According to the experiments in speech emotion corpus using different classifiers, the proposed method can both achieve relatively better performance than the state-of-the-art dimensionality reduction methods and 92.5% of the average emotional recognition rate is obtained. The future work will be focused on searching for more effective emotional characteristic parameter and recognition method.
Perception of moral atmosphere in school and norm transgressive behaviour in adolescents: An intervention study

How students perceive the moral atmosphere in their school may affect their behaviour in and around school. The perception of the moral atmosphere in school demands an assessment of the majority perspective among students, and is influenced by several individual and group-related characteristics. Can students learn to perceive the moral atmosphere in their school more accurately, and would an increase in perception accuracy reduce students’ norm transgressive behaviour in and around the school? To answer these questions an intervention programme, based on Galperin’s educational theory, was implemented class-wide and evaluated in a field study with a pre-test–post-test control group design with an added delayed post-test. Participants were 752 students from 40 Grade 8 and Grade 10 classes from 9 secondary schools. In hierarchical multiple regression analyses students’ perception of a school’s moral atmosphere, moral self-complexity, and moral judgment contributed to the prediction of norm transgressive behaviour and/or prosocial behaviour. As expected, the intervention produced a more unanimous perception of moral atmosphere (i.e., less variation within a class), particularly among boys. A more unanimous perception of moral atmosphere was negatively related to frequency of self-reported norm transgressive behaviour and positively to pro-social behaviour. The intervention effects on behaviour depended on the school. The significance of these results for the programme is discussed.