Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functional Processing Aspects of Working Memory: Capacity Limitations and Mechanisms of Forgetting

Previous working memory literature has considered the occurrence of an increase in reaction time following an object-switch as evidence supporting a single-item focus of attention. Much literature has also identified interference from other information as the principle cause of forgetting. These hypotheses are here challenged by (1) postulating reaction time differences are indicative of a multiple-item focus of attention that preferentially orders items based upon task-relevance, rather than a single preferred item and (2) presenting evidence of a decay process concurrently causing forgetting alongside interference. In Experiment 1 participants completed a task in which multiple repetitions of a single item resulted in inconsistent reaction times indicating this item was afforded more resources within a pool of multiple items as it became more task-relevant rather than the object switch cost indicating a single item focus of attention. Experiment 2 measured both interference and decay in a task with differential cognitive load and trial time, respectively. Each of these conditions resulted in forgetting from memory independent of one another. This is interpreted such that decay results in forgetting even in the presence of varying degrees of interference and is not affected by said interference. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Lawrence Locker, whose challenges to my understanding of literature have guided my path to writing to a greater audience. I would also like to thank Dr. Rebecca Ryan for her helpful comments and support. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Bradley Sturz for his comments and suggestions on improving my experimental designs to increase their ability to circumvent confounds and better control the variables of interest.
ADHD Symptoms and Sex Moderate the Relation Between Protective Behavioral Strategies and Alcohol Use Among Treatment-Mandated College Students

Abstract College students with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are likely to engage in alcohol use and experience alcohol-related problems. Use of protective behavioral strategies is related to fewer alcohol-related consequences. However, this association has not been sufficiently examined in relation to attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, which could alter the likelihood of utilizing protective behavioral strategies. This study examined whether attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms moderate the relationship between protective behavioral strategies and alcohol use, and whether this differs by sex. Participants were 125 treatment-mandated college students (58.6% male; M age = 19.50 years) who completed measures of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, protective behavioral strategies, and past-2-week drinking. There was a significant 3-way interaction such that drinking was highest when protective behavioral strategy use was low and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms were high, but only for women. There was also a significant protective behavioral strategy by inattention interaction, as students with high inattention and low protective behavioral strategy use consumed the most drinks. Interventions to enhance use of protective behavioral strategies may effectively decrease alcohol use for college students with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, particularly women.
TCP Internals

TCP is the most used transport protocol today. TCP provides a congestion control mechanism that adapts the transfer speed to the available bandwidth. This works remarkably well for long running transfers, however it is not so good for smaller transfers. Short transfers never reach the maximum possible speed. Especially web pages are affected by this. Web pages consist of many small files for html, css, javascript and images. Google, a company highly dependent on fast web pages, is proposing ways to increase TCP performance. Among those are TCP Fast Open and an increased initial congestion window. Both techniques try to speed up the beginning of a TCP connection, so primarily short transfers profit from these changes. The page load time for an average website decreases by between 10% and 20% with each of the techniques, if both are combined, the page load time decreases by up to 35%. Both techniques are currently on their way of becoming an Internet Standard and are already implemented in the Linux Kernel.
Megabase Chromatin Domains Involved in DNA Double-Strand Breaks in Vivo

The loss of chromosomal integrity from DNA double-strand breaks introduced into mammalian cells by ionizing radiation results in the specific phosphorylation of histone H2AX on serine residue 139, yielding a specific modified form named γ-H2AX. An antibody prepared to the unique region of human γ-H2AX shows that H2AX homologues are phosphorylated not only in irradiated mammalian cells but also in irradiated cells from other species, including Xenopus laevis, Drosophila melanogaster, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The antibody reveals that γ-H2AX appears as discrete nuclear foci within 1 min after exposure of cells to ionizing radiation. The numbers of these foci are comparable to the numbers of induced DNA double-strand breaks. When DNA double-strand breaks are introduced into specific partial nuclear volumes of cells by means of a pulsed microbeam laser, γ-H2AX foci form at these sites. In mitotic cells from cultures exposed to nonlethal amounts of ionizing radiation, γ-H2AX foci form band-like structures on chromosome arms and on the end of broken arms. These results offer direct visual confirmation that γ-H2AX forms en masse at chromosomal sites of DNA double-strand breaks. The results further suggest the possible existence of units of higher order chromatin structure involved in monitoring DNA integrity.
Molecular Mechanisms of Nonphotochemical Quenching in the LHCSR3 Protein of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Photosynthetic organisms possess photoprotection mechanisms from excess light conditions. The fastest response consists in the pH-triggered activation of a dissipation channel of the energy absorbed by the chlorophylls into heat, called nonphotochemical quenching. In green algae, the pigment binding complex LHCSR3 acts both as a chlorophyll quencher and as a pH detector. In this work, we study the quenching of the LHCSR3 protein in vitro considering two different protein aggregation states and two pH conditions using a combination of picosecond time-resolved photoluminescence and femtosecond transient absorption in the visible and NIR spectral regions. We find that the mechanisms at the basis of LHCSR3 quenching activity are always active, even at pH 7.5 and low aggregation. However, quenching efficiency is strongly enhanced by pH and by aggregation conditions. In particular, we find that electron transfer from carotenoids to chlorophylls is enhanced at low pH, while quenching mediated by protein–protein interactions is increased by going to a high aggregation state. We also observe a weak pH-dependent energy transfer from the chlorophylls to the S1 state of carotenoids.
Dynamic Determinants of Left Ventricular Diastolic Pressure‐Volume Relations in Man

Left ventricular (LV) diastolic pressure (P), volume (V), and rate of change of volume (dV/dt) were determined at 16.7 msec intervals in 17 patients (simultaneous micromanometer and single plane volume angiography). Four patients had mitral stenosis with atrial fibrillation and 13 patients (three normal, two congestive cardiomyopathy, three LV hypertrophy, and five coronary artery disease) were in normal sinus rhythm. Maximum early diastolic filling rates (max dV/dt) in the normal and cardiomyopathy patients were similar and ranged from 269 to 370 cc/m2/sec; in coronary artery disease and LV hypertrophy, max dV/dt ranged from 197 to 290 cc/m2/sec and 213 to 255 cc/m2/sec respectively; in mitral stenosis, max dV/dt ranged from 215 to 270 cc/m2/sec. The peak filling rate during atrial systole ranged from 60 to 240 cc/m2/sec in the 13 patients with sinus rhythm. The instantaneous diastolic P-V data were fit by an exponential equation (P = bekV) and the P-V relation throughout diastole was represented by the best fit line. The rate constant (k) in the equation was highest in the patient with IHSS and lowest in those with large dilated hearts. In mitral stenosis with atrial fibrillation the fit of the equation to the P-V data appeared better than in the patients with normal sinus rhythm. Peak ventricular filling rate during atrial systole varied directly with LV volume distensibility at the onset of atrial systole (r = 0.64). Data suggest that dynamic mechanical properties of the LV influence the diastolic P-V relations and that pressure "deviations" (&Dgr;P) from the best fit line during atrial systole may be related to viscous drag. In a given ventricle the velocity dependence of &Dgr;P appears to be modified by the volume distensibility of the ventricle. Variable rates of filling may preclude the assumption of an exponential relation between P and V throughout diastole and therefore may limit estimates of diastolic distensibility or compliance which rely on such an assumption.
Accelerating ant colony optimisation for the travelling salesman problem on the GPU

Recent graphics processing units (GPUs) can be used for general purpose parallel computation. Ant colony optimisation (ACO) approaches have been introduced as nature-inspired heuristics to find good solutions of the travelling salesman problem (TSP). In ACO approaches, a number of ants traverse the cities of the TSP to find better solutions of the TSP. The ants randomly select next visiting cities based on the probabilities determined by total amounts of their pheromone spread on routes. The main contribution of this paper is to present sophisticated and efficient implementation of one of the ACO approaches on the GPU. In our implementation, we have considered many programming issues of the GPU architecture including coalesced access of global memory and shared memory bank conflicts. In particular, we present a very efficient method for random selection of next cities by a number of ants. Our new method uses iterative random trial which can find next cities in few computational costs with high probability. This idea can be applied in not only GPU implementation but also CPU implementation. The experimental results on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 show that our implementation for 1002 cities runs in 8.71 s, while the CPU implementation runs in 190.05 s. Thus, our GPU implementation attains a speed-up factor of 22.11.
FOURTH MOMENTS OF MULTIVARIATE GARCH PROCESSES

This paper derives conditions for the existence of fourth moments of multivariate GARCH processes in the general vector specification and gives explicit results for the fourth moments and autocovariances of the squares and cross-products. Results are provided for the kurtosis and co-kurtosis between components. Applications of the results include the definition of impulse response functions for kurtosis and co-kurtosis, the derivation of the spectral density matrix of the squares and crossproducts, and a measure for causality in volatility. A bivariate exchange rate example illustrates the applications.
Information retrieval with semantic memory model Action

Psycholinguistic theories of semantic memory form the basis of understanding of natural language concepts. These theories are used here as an inspiration for implementing a computational model of semantic memory in the form of semantic network. Combining this network with a vector-based object-relation-feature value representation of concepts that includes also weights for confidence and support, allows for recognition of concepts by referring to their features, enabling a semantic search algorithm. This algorithm has been used for word games, in particular the 20-question game in which the program tries to guess a concept that a human player thinks about. The game facilitates lexical knowledge validation and acquisition through the interaction with humans via supervised dialog templates. The elementary linguistic competencies of the proposed model have been evaluated assessing how well it can represent the meaning of linguistic concepts. To study properties of information retrieval based on this type of semantic representation in contexts derived from on-going dialogs experiments in limited domains have been performed. Several similarity measures have been used to compare the completeness of knowledge retrieved automatically and corrected through active dialogs to a “golden standard”. Comparison of semantic search with human performance has been made in a series of 20-question games. On average results achieved by human players were better than those obtained by semantic search, but not by a wide margin. 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Compromise of Clathrin Function and Membrane Association by Clathrin Light Chain Deletion

While clathrin heavy chains from different species are highly conserved in amino acid sequence, clathrin light chains are much more divergent. Thus clathrin light chain may have different functions in different organisms. To investigate clathrin light chain function, we cloned the clathrin light chain, clcA, from Dictyostelium and examined clathrin function in clcA–mutants. Phenotypic deficiencies in development, cytokinesis, and osmoregulation showed that light chain was critical for clathrin function in Dictyostelium. In contrast with budding yeast, we found the light chain did not influence steady‐state levels of clathrin, triskelion formation, or contribute to clathrin over‐assembly on intracellular membranes. Imaging GFP‐CHC in clcA– mutants showed that the heavy chain formed dynamic punctate structures that were remarkably similar to those found in wild‐type cells. However, clathrin light chain knockouts showed a decreased association of clathrin with intracellular membranes. Unlike wild‐type cells, half of the clathrin in clcA– mutants was cytosolic, suggesting that the absence of light chain compromised the assembly of triskelions onto intracellular membranes. Taken together, these results suggest a role for the Dictyostelium clathrin light chain in regulating the self‐assembly of triskelions onto intracellular membranes, and demonstrate a crucial contribution of the light chain to clathrin function in vivo.
Plant Sterol-Fortified Orange Juice Effectively Lowers Cholesterol Levels in Mildly Hypercholesterolemic Healthy Individuals

Objective—Hypercholesterolemia is a major risk factor for coronary artery disease. Therapeutic lifestyle changes include dietary modifications such as inclusion of phytosterols, which effectively lowers low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in margarines and other fats. Their effectiveness in nonfat moieties is not yet established. The aim of this study was to examine if phytosterols alter the plasma lipoprotein profile when incorporated into nonfat orange juice. Methods and Results—After a 2-week run-in phase with orange juice, 72 mildly hypercholesterolemic healthy subjects were randomized to receive either placebo orange juice (placebo OJ) or plant sterol-fortified orange juice (sterol OJ) (2g/d) for 8 weeks. Fasting blood was obtained at baseline, after 2 weeks of OJ, and after 8 weeks of placebo/sterol-OJ supplementation. Sterol OJ supplementation significantly decreased total (7.2%), LDL (12.4%), and non-high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (7.8%) compared with baseline and compared with placebo OJ (P <0.01). Apolipoprotein B levels were significantly decreased (9.5%) with sterol OJ. There were no significant changes in HDL cholesterol or triglycerides with the sterol OJ. While folate and B12 levels significantly increased, homocysteine levels were unchanged. Conclusions—Orange juice fortified with plant sterols are effective in reducing LDL cholesterol and could easily be incorporated into the therapeutic lifestyle changes dietary regimen.
Members of the uncultured bacterial candidate division WWE1 are implicated in anaerobic digestion of cellulose

Clones of the WWE1 (Waste Water of Evry 1) candidate division were retrieved during the exploration of the bacterial diversity of an anaerobic mesophilic (35 ± 0.5°C) digester. In order to investigate the metabolic function of WWE1 members, a 16S rRNA gene ‐based stable isotope probing (SIP) method was used. Eighty‐seven percent of 16S r rRNA gene sequences affiliated to WWE1 candidate division were retrieved in a clone library obtained after polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of enriched DNA fraction from anaerobic municipal solid waste samples incubated with 13C‐cellulose, at the end of the incubation (day 63) using a Pla46F‐1390R primer pair. The design of a specific WWE1 probe associated with the fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technique corroborated the abundant representation of WWE1 members in our 13C‐cellulose incubations. Secondary ion mass spectrometry–in situ hybridization (SIMSISH) using an iodine‐labeled oligonucleotide probe combined with high‐resolution nanometer‐scale SIMS (NanoSIMS) observation confirmed the isotopic enrichment of members of WWE1 candidate division. The 13C apparent isotopic composition of hybridized WWE1 cells reached the value of about 40% early during the cellulose degradation process, suggesting that these bacteria play a role either in an extracellular cellulose hydrolysis process and/or in the uptake fermentation products.
Path planning for a formation of autonomous robots in an unknown environment using artificial force fields

A novel approach to path planning for the formation of a swarm of autonomous robots in an unknown environment is presented in this paper. This approach is designed based on the traditional potential fields combined with the rotational vector field. Under the action of this blended vector field, autonomous robots can easily avoid obstacles in order to reach the target position. Furthermore, in this approach, the neighboring robots in a swarm will be linked to each other by the attractive and the repulsive vector field between them in order to generate a stable formation. Information about obstacles, which each member robot detects from the environment, will be sent to all other member robots in the swarm. Hence, while these autonomous robots move towards the target position, the formation of them is maintained and there are no collisions between them. Simulation results and experiments have verified the success of this approach.
Online Survey Data Quality and its Implication for Willingness-to-Pay: A Cross-Country Comparison

type="main" xml:lang="fr"> Le recours aux enquetes en ligne pour caracteriser les preferences des consommateurs gagne en popularite en raison de ses nombreux avantages. Les recherches anterieures se sont principalement limitees a comparer les enquetes en ligne et les autres types d'enquetes. Peu se sont penchees sur l'utilisation d'outils susceptibles d'ameliorer la qualite des donnees recueillies lors d'enquetes en ligne destinees a evaluer le consentement a payer des consommateurs. Dans le present article, nous analysons l'impact lie a l'utilisation d'une methode comprenant une question de validation dans laquelle on demandait aux repondants de choisir une reponse en particulier pour ameliorer la qualite des donnees d'enquete en ligne dans six pays. Les resultats de notre etude montrent que la qualite des donnees d'enquete est un probleme courant dans les pays a l'etude et que la gravite du probleme varie considerablement d'un pays a l'autre. Le fait d'inclure des questions de validation permettrait de deceler les repondants qui sont moins consciencieux lorsqu'ils repondent a des questions d'enquete et qui, par consequent, fournissent des reponses plus ou moins fiables. Selon notre etude, les modeles econometriques qui utilisent les donnees de repondants qui ont repondu correctement aux questions de validation donnent de meilleurs resultats que les modeles qui utilisent les donnees de repondants qui n'y ont pas repondu correctement; l'ecart entre les estimations du consentement a payer des deux groupes de repondants varie considerablement. En regle generale, les estimations du consentement a payer des repondants qui ont repondu correctement aux questions de validation presentent de plus faibles variances que celles pour l'ensemble des repondants et pour ceux qui n'ont pas repondu correctement aux questions de validation. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Alternative Speech Communication System for Persons with Severe Speech Disorders

Assistive speech-enabled systems are proposed to help both French and English speaking persons with various speech disorders. The proposed assistive systems use automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech synthesis in order to enhance the quality of communication. These systems aim at improving the intelligibility of pathologic speech making it as natural as possible and close to the original voice of the speaker. The resynthesized utterances use new basic units, a new concatenating algorithm and a grafting technique to correct the poorly pronounced phonemes. The ASR responses are uttered by the new speech synthesis system in order to convey an intelligible message to listeners. Experiments involving four American speakers with severe dysarthria and two Acadian French speakers with sound substitution disorders (SSDs) are carried out to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methods. An improvement of the Perceptual Evaluation of the Speech Quality (PESQ) value of 5% and more than 20% is achieved by the speech synthesis systems that deal with SSD and dysarthria, respectively.