Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human Neuroscience

fire again. Thus, the period of the gamma rhythm is tightly tied to the decay time of the inhibition, though it is also affected by the level of excitatory drive to the pyramidal cells. There is another kind of gamma rhythm that is important in function: the persistent gamma rhythm (Traub et al., 2000), which can be obtained in vitro by exposing neuronal networks to the neuromodu-lators kainate or carbachol. In this version of the gamma rhythm, pyramidal cells fire sparsely, and the rhythm is maintained by the FS cells, which fire on almost every cycle. Persistent gamma requires noisy activation of the pyramidal cells, which is believed to be provided by ectopic spiking of pyramidal cells and amplification by an axonal plexus (Traub et al., 2000, 2003). Inhibition is critical in both kinds of in vitro gamma (Whittington et al., 2000). The role of the inhibition in gamma rhythms was discovered in vitro, but has been corroborated The physiology of PING provides an excellent setting for the creation and protection of cell assemblies. Increased tonic input to a subset of pyramidal cells (either not previously activated or participating in persistent gamma) can create (approximately) synchronous firing in that subset in a PING rhythm, while other pyramidal cells in the network are suppressed (Figure 1). Models suggest that the essential reason for this competition is that the stronger input defines the firing rate of the inhibitory cells and entrains the target network; the stronger input then arrives just before the next bout of inhibition, when the inhibition is lowest, while the weaker input, which excites its targets more slowly, arrives when inhibition is higher (Borgers et al., 2005, 2008). We think of the persistent gamma as a background state in which further inputs can create a PING rhythm (Borgers et al., 2005). The physiology underlying the PING rhythms has immediate implications for attention. It has been shown via modeling that the windowing of inhibition in the persistent gamma oscillation makes it easier for a weak input to create a cell assembly than if the same level of inhibition is more spread out in time (Borgers et al., 2005). Another connection to attention is the ability of a coherent oscillatory source with a gamma frequency to create and lock to a gamma oscillation
In-Situ Study Of Silicon Vapour Phase Epitaxy Using Laser Light Scattering

The use of the smooth surface approximation to analyse light scattering from the surface of silicon wafers during epitaxial growth is described. Expressions for the time-dependent power spectral density function for isotropic and anisotropic surface textures are derived and compared with the experimental data for various stages of the epitaxial process. Additional quantitative information on epitaxial surface topography is provided by in-situ ellipsometry measurements, and by angle-resolved light scattering from wafers after removal from the growth reactor.
Tensor-based software-defined internet of things

IoT exhibits characteristics of the presence of diverse physical sensing and actuating devices, complex wireless communication and networking technologies, as well as large-scale heterogeneous data generated in the physical and cyber worlds. The exponentially increasing volume of data places an unprecedent burden on the network infrastructure of IoT systems, where there are two key challenges: how to represent the heterogeneous IoT data as a concise and unified model, and extract the essential core data that are smaller for transmission but consist of the most valuable information; and how to globally and flexibly control the network devices, and dynamically reallocate the bandwidth to improve the communication link utilization ratio. To address the mentioned challenges, this article first transforms structured, semi-structured, and unstructured IoT data to a unified tensor model, and employs the HO-SVD approach for extraction of the high-quality core data. Then this article applies SDN technology to IoT for device management, and develops a transition tensor model for routing path recommendation. Finally, a smart home case study is investigated, which reveals that the proposed tensor-based software defined model is feasible and promising. It is strongly suggested that further study on combination of IoT with SDN technology and tensor algebra should be performed.
Novel electronic and magnetic properties in N or B doped silicene nanoribbons

Motivated by experimental developments on silicene nanosheets, we performed first-principles calculations to study the geometric, electronic and magnetic properties of pristine, N or B doped, as well as N and B co-doped silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs). It is shown that the substitution of N or B for Si is preferentially at the ribbon edge sites. A singly substituted N or B atom at the edges results in a semiconductor–metal transition in armchair silicene nanoribbons (ASiNRs) because of the appearance of half-filled impurity band near the Fermi level. When the N/N or B/B atoms are doped into ASiNRs at two opposite edges, they preserve the metallic character due to a negligible impurity–impurity interaction, independent of the ribbon widths. However, the co-doped systems with N and B atoms exhibit semiconducting behavior with band gaps smaller than the corresponding pristine forms, due to effective charge compensation between N or B atoms. When Si is substituted by an N or B atom in zigzag silicene nanoribbons (ZSiNRs), the systems show ferromagnetic (FM) character, which is attributed to the perturbation of π and π* states localized at the doped edges. More importantly, the marvelous half-metal and spin gapless semiconductor with 100% spin polarized currents around the Fermi level has been found in N-doped ZSiNRs. Providing that the doping with two N/N or B/B atoms is made in ZSiNRs, the spin-polarization at both Si edges is found to be compressed, and thus they exhibit nonmagnetic behavior. However, when the N and B atoms are co-doped into ZSiNRs at the most stable edge positions, a transition from metallic to semiconducting state will appear. These predicted properties may lead to a new route for energy band engineering of SiNRs and benefit the design of silicene-based electronic devices in nanoelectronics.
Cellular Phospholipid and Cholesterol Efflux in High-Density Lipoprotein Deficiency

Background—Prospective studies have examined the relationship between coronary artery disease and low plasma levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). Methods and Results—We investigated the causes of hypoalphalipoproteinemia (HypoA; HDL-C <5th percentile) in 64 subjects (12 women and 52 men). Apolipoprotein AI–mediated cellular cholesterol and phospholipid efflux were measured in fibroblasts from HypoA subjects, 9 controls, 2 patients with Tangier disease, and 5 patients with hyperalphalipoproteinemia. A phospholipid efflux defect was defined as <70% of controls. Mean HDL-C was 0.49±0.21 mmol/L. Cholesterol and phospholipid efflux correlated strongly (r =0.72, P <0.001). Phospholipid efflux and HDL-C (r =0.64, P <0.001) correlated in HypoA subjects. However, phospholipid or cholesterol efflux was no longer a determinant of HDL-C levels at higher levels (>≈1.0 mmol/L) of HDL-C. In HypoA subjects, 4 cases of Tangier disease and 6 of familial HDL deficiency (heterozygous Tangier disease) were identified (10 of 64; 16%). In the remaining 54 subjects, mean lipid efflux was not significantly different from controls and subjects with hyperalphalipoproteinemia. A phospholipid efflux defect was identified in 7 additional HypoA subjects, and a cholesterol efflux defect was detected in 11 subjects. In 2 of these subjects, the ABCA1 gene was ruled out as the cause of the efflux defect, while in 3, the low HDL-C trait segregated with the ABCA1 gene locus. Conclusions—Lipidation of lipid-poor apolipoprotein AI may not be a major determinant of cholesterol accumulation within more mature HDL particles and increasing cholesterol or phospholipid efflux beyond normal levels may not lead to increase in plasma HDL-C levels. ABCA1 is essential in the initial steps of HDL formation but other plasma events are major modulators of HDL-C levels.
Information extraction for Thai documents

An increasing amount of electronically available information is stored in Asian language documents, which makes Information Retrieval (IR) and Information Extraction (IE) for these languages important for a large number of users. Analysis and extraction of information in these languages presents several interesting problems not seen in Western European languages; these are interesting in their own right and for the insights they can give into more general IR and IE techniques. We describe these problems and our system for Thai language IE One of the main concerns when working with Thai natural language is that the structure of the language itself is highly ambiguous. The analyser therefore requires more sophisticated techniques and large amounts of domain knowledge to cope with these ambiguities. We describe our approach to a natural language analysis system that performs preprocessing for the Thai language and the extraction module to retrieve specific information according to the predefined concept definitions.
A Genome Wide Association Study Identifies Common Variants Associated with Lipid Levels in the Chinese Population

Plasma lipid levels are important risk factors for cardiovascular disease and are influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Recent genome wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several lipid-associated loci, but these loci have been identified primarily in European populations. In order to identify genetic markers for lipid levels in a Chinese population and analyze the heterogeneity between Europeans and Asians, especially Chinese, we performed a meta-analysis of two genome wide association studies on four common lipid traits including total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) in a Han Chinese population totaling 3,451 healthy subjects. Replication was performed in an additional 8,830 subjects of Han Chinese ethnicity. We replicated eight loci associated with lipid levels previously reported in a European population. The loci genome wide significantly associated with TC were near DOCK7, HMGCR and ABO; those genome wide significantly associated with TG were near APOA1/C3/A4/A5 and LPL; those genome wide significantly associated with LDL were near HMGCR, ABO and TOMM40; and those genome wide significantly associated with HDL were near LPL, LIPC and CETP. In addition, an additive genotype score of eight SNPs representing the eight loci that were found to be associated with lipid levels was associated with higher TC, TG and LDL levels (P = 5.52×10-16, 1.38×10-6 and 5.59×10-9, respectively). These findings suggest the cumulative effects of multiple genetic loci on plasma lipid levels. Comparisons with previous GWAS of lipids highlight heterogeneity in allele frequency and in effect size for some loci between Chinese and European populations. The results from our GWAS provided comprehensive and convincing evidence of the genetic determinants of plasma lipid levels in a Chinese population.
Effect of Rare Earth Gadolinium Substitution on the Structural, Microstructure and Dielectric Properties of Lead Free BNT Ceramics

Piezoelectric materials have wide applications in today’s advanced technologies. However, most commercially used piezoelectric material PZT (PbZr1-xTixO3) is now strictly restricted worldwide due to hazardous nature of Pb. Research for the development of new lead free materials with properties comparable to that of PZT is in progress in recent years. In the present work, an effort has been made to synthesize low amount of rare earth gadolinium modified (Bi1-xGdx)0.5Na0. 5TiO3 (BGNT) with compositions (x) = 0, 0.02, 0.03 and 0.04 by a novel Semi–Wet Technique. The structural, microstructure, phase transition and dielectric properties have been investigated. The XRD patterns have shown single phase formation for all the samples with a rhombohedral symmetry at RT. Gd3+ doping has shown a significant effect on the grain growth. The dielectric measurement has been carried out over the temperature range from RT to 400 oC at 1, 10 and 100 kHz frequency. It has been observed from the εr vs T plots that two phase transitions (i) ferroelectric to anti-ferroelectric and (ii) anti ferroelectric to paraelectric occur in all the samples. The composition with x = 0.02 has shown significantly high value of dielectric constant (εr ~ 1567) and low value of dielectric loss (Tan δ ~ 0.043) at room temperature.
Antigenic heterogeneity of gonococcal pili

Pili were isolated from two different strains of gonococci (33 and 2686) and demonstrated to be pure by the criteria of electron microscopy and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in sodium dodecyl sulfate. Each purified pili preparation was studied for its ability to inhibit; (a) binding of 124-I-labeled purified 2686 pili by antibody to 2686 pili, and (b) binding of 125-I-labeled purified 33 pili by antibody to 33 pili. In each instance progressive inhibition of binding was produced by homologous pili type, but no significant inhibition was observed using comparable weights of the heterologous pili type. These results indicate that the pili of strains 2686 and 33 are antigenically different.
Bioinformatics Data Profiling Tools: A Prelude to Metabolic Profiling

The term metabolic profiling is often used to denote the systematic characterization of the unique biochemical trails or fingerprints left behind by cellular processes. Advances in computational biosciences are often invaluable in dealing with the huge amount of raw data generated from the countless biochemical intermediates that flood the cell at any given time. As a prelude to metabolic profiling, it is essential to completely profile and compile all related information about the genetic and proteomic data. Profiling tools in bioinformatics refer to all those software (web based and downloadable) that compile all related information in single user-interfaces. Generally, these interfaces take a query such as a DNA, RNA, or protein sequence or keyword; and search one or more databases for information related to that sequence. Summaries and aggregate results are provided in a single standardized format that would otherwise have required visits to many smaller sites or direct literature searches to compile. In other words they are software portals or gateways that simplify the process of finding information about a query in the large and growing number of bioinformatics databases.
C-banding and fluorescence in situ hybridization studies of the wheat-alien hybrid 'Agrotana'.

'Agrotana', a wheat-alien hybrid (2n = 56), is a potential source of resistance to common root rot, stem rust, wheat streak mosaic virus, and the wheat curl mite. However, the origin of 'Agrotana', reported to be durum wheat x Agropyron trichophorum (pubescent wheatgrass), is uncertain. The objective of this investigation was to determine the chromosome constitution of 'Agrotana' using C-banding and fluorescence in situ hybridization techniques. The F1 hybrid of 'Agrotana' x 'Chinese Spring' wheat showed 7 I + 21 II in 14.9% of the pollen mother cells, evidence of the presence of the A, B, and D genomes in 'Agrotana'. The hybrid had 16 heavily C-banded chromosomes, namely 4A, and 1-7B of wheat, and a translocation that probably involved wheat chromosomes 2A and 2D. In situ hybridization using biotinylated genomic DNA of Ag. trichophorum cv. Greenleaf blocked with CS DNA failed to identify the alien chromosomes in 'Agrotana', indicating that the alien chromosomes were not likely derived from pubescent wheatgrass. In situ hybridization using labelled wheat genomic DNA blocked with 'Agrotana' DNA revealed that 'Agrotana' had 40 wheat, 14 alien, and 2 (a pair) wheat-alien translocated chromosomes. There was no homology between wheat and the alien chromosomes or chromosome segments involved in the wheat-alien recombinant. Two of the seven pairs of alien chromosomes were homoeologous to each other. The ability to identify alien chromatin in wheat using labelled wheat DNA instead of labelled alien DNA will be particularly useful in chromosome engineering of wheat germplasms having alien chromatin of unknown origin.
Treatment patterns and costs associated with sessile colorectal polyps

OBJECTIVE:Because of the paucity of existing literature on treatment and costs associated with sessile lesions, the objectives of this study were to perform a retrospective analysis on patients with sessile polyps to identify patient and polyp characteristics, to determine treatment patterns, and to estimate the cost of treating these patients.METHODS:We conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study of 280 patients who presented to a large teaching hospital between 1997 and 2000 with at least one sessile or broad-based pedunculated colorectal polyp of any size or histology, not including adenocarcinoma greater than stage T1.RESULTS:Mean polyp size was 1.3 cm, and two thirds of polyps were removed in a single procedure. The number of repeat procedures increased with polyp size (Kendall τ-b = 0.47; 95% CI = 0.39–0.55). Patients with polyps ≥2 cm were 5.88 times more likely than patients with smaller polyps to undergo a surgical procedure. Surgical procedures required 88.01 min longer than nonsurgical procedures (95% CI = 74.43–102.42). Mean total cost of treatment was $2,038 (range $153 to $14,838). Open resection ($6,165) was the most costly surgical procedure, and piecemeal polypectomy ($892) was the most costly nonsurgical therapeutic procedure.CONCLUSIONS:One third of polyps required more than one procedure. Surgical procedures accounted for the majority of resource use in this sample. Finally, patients with polyps ≥2 cm incurred almost half the total costs while accounting for only 22% of the sample. The greatest economic gains could be made by improving efficiency of polyp removal for these patients.
Microscopic evaluation of femtosecond laser intrastromal surgery

Diode pumped Nd:glass all-solid-state femtosecond laser is promising for next generation refractive surgery, with the advantages of excellent surgical precision, minimal tissue damage and improved system stability and compactness. The microscopic evaluation of the outcome of femtosecond laser surgery is crucial before clinical applications. By two-photon laser scanning microscopy and non-invasive second harmonic imaging, the three dimensional ultrastructure of the porcine cornea is visualized without requiring slicing or staining. The minimal-invasive corneal flap cutting and non-invasive intrastromal surgery are investigated. Femtosecond laser intrastromal surgery demonstrated high ablation precision and mimimal side effects. However, there are elongated filaments/streaks observed in the cornea stroma, most likely due to the focusing optics and self-focusing.
Experimental Study on DynamJc Properties of Rubberized Concrete

The effects of the size and volume of rubber particles on the damping ratio and frequency of simply supported rubberized concrete beams were studied by free vibration test under small deformation condition. Elastic wave test was used to measure the dynamic modulus of rubberized concrete, and a comparison between the static modulus and the dynamic one was conducted. Rcsults show that the rubberized concrete has higher damping ratio and lower elastic modulus, and thus lower natural frequency for elements.
Quantitative fractography by means of a new digital image analysis system

A digital image analysis system has been developed that is capable of analyzing automatically stereo image pairs taken in the scanning electron microscope. The key part of the system is a matching algorithm which is able to find homologue points in the two images. The system generates a digital elevation model (DEM) of the depicted region consisting of about 15.000 to 20.000 points. An additional “Roughness Package” allows the direct evaluation of profile and surface roughness parameters. By a variation of the number of points in the DEM, the fractal dimensions can be computed. It is studied how the roughness parameters and the fractal dimensions vary depending on the number of points in the DEM and the magnification of the micrographs. The material is a 6061 aluminum alloy. Important additional capabilities of the automatic fracture surface analysis system are discussed, for instance the determination of local fracture toughness parameters, such as the critical crack tip opening displacement, CODi or the crack tip opening angle, COA. By this way, the fracture toughness parameters can be determined locally which is essential for studying the fracture properties of inhomogeneous materials, or for analyzing the constraint effects in homogeneous materials.
Error propagation aware timing relaxation for approximate near threshold computing

Near threshold computing (NTC) through aggressive supply voltage scaling has the potential to significantly improve energy-efficiency. However, the increase in variation-induced timing errors is a major challenge in NTC. This can be addressed in the scope of approximate computing by selectively embracing non-important variation-induced timing errors. In this paper, we propose a framework to leverage the error tolerance potential of approximate computing for energy-efficient NTC designs. In our framework, statistical timing error analysis as well as structural and functional error propagation analysis is performed to identify the approximable portion of a design. Then, a mixed-timing logic synthesis is employed to improve energy-efficiency by embracing errors in the approximable portion of the design. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can improve the energy-efficiency of NTC designs by more than 30%.
Stylised Facts and the Contribution of Simulation to the Economic Analysis of Budgeting

The application of computer simulation as a research method raises two important questions: (1) Does simulation really offer added value over established methods? (2) How can the danger of arbitrariness caused by the extended modelling possibilities be minimised? We present the concept of stylised facts as a methodological basis for approaching these questions systematically. In particular, stylised facts provide a point of reference for a comparative analysis of models intended to explain an observable phenomenon. This is shown with reference to a recent discussion in the "economic analysis of accounting" literature where established methods, i.e. game theory, as well as computer simulations are used: the susceptibility of the "Groves mechanism" to collusion. Initially, we identify six stylised facts on the stability of collusion in empirical studies. These facts serve as a basis for the subsequent comparison of four theoretical models with reference to the above questions: (1) We find that the simulation models of Krapp and Deliano offer added value in comparison to the game theoretical models. They can be related to more stylised facts, achieve a better reproduction and exhibit far greater potential for incorporating yet unaddressed stylised facts. (2) Considered in the light of the stylised facts to which the models can be related, Deliano's simulation model exhibits considerable arbitrariness in model design and lacks information on its robustness. In contrast, Krapp demonstrates that this problem is not inherent to the method. His simulation model methodically extends its game theoretical predecessors, leaving little room for arbitrary model design or questionable parameter calibration. All in all, the stylisedfactsconcept proved to be very useful in dealing with the questions simulation researchers are confronted with. Moreover, a "research landscape" emerges from the derived stylised facts pinpointing issues yet to be addressed.