Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The cross‐mammalian neurophenomenology of primal emotional affects: From animal feelings to human therapeutics

The neural correlates of human emotions are easy to harvest. In contrast, the neural constitution of emotional feelings in humans has resisted systematic scientific analysis. This review summarizes how preclinical affective neuroscience initiatives are making progress in decoding the neural nature of such feelings in animal brains. This has been achieved by studying the rewarding and punishing effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of subcortical emotional networks (labeled SEEING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC, and PLAY systems) that evoke distinct emotion action patterns, as well as rewarding and punishing effects in animals. The implications of this knowledge for development of new psychiatric interventions, especially depression, are discussed. Three new antidepressive therapeutics arising from this work are briefly noted: 1) DBS of the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) in humans, 2) reduction of psychological pain that may arise from excessive PANIC arousal, and 3) facilitation of social joy through the study of social play in rats The overall argument is that we may more readily develop new psychiatric interventions through preclinical models if we take animal emotional feelings seriously, as opposed to just behavioral changes, as targets for development of new treatments. J. Comp. Neurol. 524:1624–1635, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Mapping and Localization for Mobile Robots through Environment Appearance Update

The strength of appearance-based mapping models lies in their ability to represent the environment through high-level image features; and provide humanreadable information. However, developing localization and mapping methods with these models could be very challenging, especially if robots must deal with long-term mapping, localization, navigation, occlusions, and dynamic environments. This paper proposes an appearance-based mapping and localization method based on the human memory model, which is used to build a Feature Stability Histogram (FSH) at each node in the robot topological map, these FSH register local feature stability over time through a voting scheme, and most stable features are considered for mapping and Bayesian localization. Experimental results are presented using omnidirectional images acquired through long-term acquisition considering: illumination changes (day time and seasons), occlusions, random removal of features, and perceptual aliasing. This method is able to adapt the internal node's representation through time to achieve global and local robot localization.
Simulation of daylight in order to protect the sustainability of the old architectural structures cultural heritage in the environment

In present analyses of the architectural constructions, the important place belongs to algorithmic determination of their shapes in masonry structures cross-vaults, which often require expensive restoration. Particularly interesting is the way these buildings lighting by daylight. Daylight, besides the aesthetic and visual effect, has an important role in minimizing the consumption of energy. For the calculation of required light levels there are different simulation programs, used by architects and engineers. Experience shows that these simulations of daylight in the architecture obtain different results. In this paper, it is shown that the advanced architecture can be achieved by using Ecotect and Rhinoceros, an additional package for algorithmic determining the Grasshopper shape.
SCCA 2-like Serpins Mediate Genetic Predisposition to Skin Tumors 1

Reasons for early onset skin cancer are poorly understood. Microarray analysis revealed overexpression of the Scca2 gene in the 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate-treated skin of Car-S mice, or line phenotypically selected for high susceptibility to two-stage skin carcinogenesis, as compared with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate-treated skin of Car-R mice, which is resistant. A human skin squamous cell carcinoma cell line (NCI-H520) transfected with mouse Scca2 or a related gene, Scca2-rs1, both expressed in the skin, showed significantly increased tumor growth as compared with controls when injected in nude mice. Immunohistochemical analysis of samples from two independent series of Italian and Korean patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the skin indicated a significant association between SCCA2 protein expression and younger age at tumor onset. These findings provide evidence that SCCA2-like serpins mediate genetic predisposition to skin cancer in a mouse model and in humans.
On the value of soil moisture measurements in vadose zone hydrology: A review

We explore and review the value of soil moisture measurements in vadose zone hydrology with a focus on the field and catchment scales. This review is motivated by the increasing ability to measure soil moisture with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution across scales. We highlight and review the state of the art in using soil moisture measurements for (1) estimation of soil hydraulic properties, (2) quantification of water and energy fluxes, and (3) retrieval of spatial and temporal dynamics of soil moisture profiles. We argue for the urgent need to have access to field monitoring sites and databases that include detailed information about variability of hydrological fluxes and parameters, including their upscaled values. In addition, improved data assimilation methods are needed that fully exploit the information contained in soil moisture data. The development of novel upscaling methods for predicting effective moisture fluxes and disaggregation schemes toward integrating large‐scale soil moisture measurements in hydrological models will increase the value of soil moisture measurements. Finally, we recognize a need to develop strategies that combine hydrogeophysical measurement techniques with remote sensing methods.
Estimation-based run-time power profile flattening for RF-powered smart card systems

Power-constrained systems, such as RF-powered smart cards are gaining increased significance in the embedded system's domain. These systems are highly susceptible to supply voltage drops caused by power peak regions that impact on the system stability. Power profile flattening mechanisms have emerged as an effective power peak countermeasure to enhance system reliability. In this paper we present a hardware power profile flattening approach by employing system-level DVFS adaptions coupled with a hardware power estimation architecture. The exploitation of hardware-accelerated real-time power estimation techniques replaces costly analog on-chip power measurements and enables the dynamic control of the system's power consumption in a purely digital manner. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by conducting power profiling and voltage drop analysis of a deep-submicron RF-powered smart card system.
The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work?

Sustainability has been an often mentioned goal of businesses, nonprofits and governments in the past decade, yet measuring the degree to which an organization is being sustainable or pursuing sustainable growth can be difficult. John Elkington strove to measure sustainability during the mid-1990s by encompassing a new framework to measure performance in corporate America.1 This accounting framework, called the triple bottom line (TBL), went beyond the traditional measures of profits, return on investment, and shareholder value to include environmental and social dimensions. By focusing on comprehensive investment results— that is, with respect to performance along the interrelated dimensions of profits, people and the planet— triple bottom line reporting can be an important tool to support sustainability goals. Interest in triple bottom line accounting has been growing across for-profit, nonprofit and government sectors. Many businesses and nonprofit organizations have adopted the TBL sustainability framework to evaluate their performance, and a similar approach has gained currency with governments at the federal, state and local levels. This article reviews the TBL concept, explains how it can be useful for businesses, policy-makers and economic development practitioners and highlights some current examples of putting the TBL into practice.
Biventricular hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with lone obstruction to right ventricular outflow

A 45 year old man with a history of hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) was admitted to our hospital because of a syncope. The diagnosis of HOCM had initially been made at cardiac catheterisation in 1975. He had been given 120 mg propranolol daily and his subsequent clinical history was uneventful. Since 1981 he had been undergoing echocardiography every two …
A Profile of Urban In-home Shoppers

Who are in-home shoppers? Are they convenience oriented? Do they find store shopping particularly difficult or unpleasant ? Are they likely to be “locked in” at home? This article suggests some answers to these questions. Marketers are becoming increasingly interested in identifying the in-home shopper and her attitudes and motivations toward telephone and mail-order shopping because of the increasing share of general merchandise retail sales accounted for by telephone and mailorder selling.
Cyanobacterial LPS potentiates cadmium toxicity in zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos

Cyanobacteria are prevalent in the freshwater environment, reaching critical mass in harmful algal blooms. These organisms produce a variety of toxins including endotoxins such as lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which have been previously shown to decrease glutathione‐S‐transferase (GST) activity in zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos. GST plays a vital role in detoxification response during oxidative stress and provides a first line of defense after toxic heavy metal insult, before increased metallothionein expression. Although some attention has focused on cyanobacterial LPS, little research has focused on effects of concurrent exposures with other toxicants. Because cyanobacterial LPS can alter detoxification enzymes including GST, we hypothesized that cyanobacterial LPS could potentiate metal toxicity. This study investigated the effects of LPS from two cyanobacterial species, Lyngbya spp. and Microcystis aeruginosa, on cadmium toxicity in zebrafish embryos. Forty‐eight‐hour CdCl2 LC50 values showed that coexposure of cadmium and Lyngbya LPS or Microcystis LPS resulted in significantly increased cadmium toxicity in comparison with cadmium alone. However, increased cadmium toxicity was not due to decreased GST activity as initially hypothesized. In concurrent Microcystis LPS‐cadmium exposures, GST activity was significantly increased in comparison with control embryos at all time points and cadmium concentrations sampled. Concurrent Lyngbya LPS‐cadmium exposures also resulted in increased GST activity at most exposure concentrations. These results indicate that regardless of mechanism, cyanobacterial LPS can potentiate the toxic effects of heavy metals. This represents a significant risk for aquatic organisms exposed to combinations of LPS and metals in the environment. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol, 2010.
The L protein of Rift Valley fever virus can rescue viral ribonucleoproteins and transcribe synthetic genome-like RNA molecules

Overlapping cDNAs representing the complete L segment of Rift Valley fever virus were assembled, and the L protein was expressed via a recombinant vaccinia virus. The transcriptase activity of the L protein was assayed with two types of templates: natural ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) and artificial genome-like RNAs. RNPs purified in a CsCl gradient did not retain the RNA polymerase function, but the activity was restored when the L cDNA was expressed in mammalian cells via a recombinant vaccinia virus. Indeed, after transfection of transcriptase-depleted RNPs in cells infected with the recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the L protein, the mRNAs coding for the N and NSs proteins and to a lesser extent, those coding for the glycoproteins were synthesized as well as the corresponding proteins. The transcriptase activity of the recombinant L protein was then investigated by using synthetic templates containing the reporter chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene in the antisense orientation flanked by the 3' and 5' noncoding region of the S genomic segment. Our results indicate that after transfection of the RNA templates, transcription was achieved in cells coexpressing both the L and N proteins. Together, the experiments demonstrate that the two proteins N and L are absolutely required and sufficient to reconstitute the transcriptase activity.
Robust Weighted Low-Rank Matrix Approximation

The calculation of a low-rank approximation to a matrix is fundamental to many algorithms in computer vision and other fields. One of the primary tools used for calculating such low-rank approximations is the Singular Value Decomposition, but this method is not applicable in the case where there are outliers or missing elements in the data. Unfortunately this is often the case in practice. We present a method for low-rank matrix approximation which is a generalisation of the Wiberg algorithm. Our method calculates the rank-constrained factorization which minimizes the L1 norm, and does so in the presence of missing data. This is achieved by exploiting the differentiability of linear programs, and results in an algorithm can be efficiently implemented using existing optimization software. We show the results of experiments on synthetic and real data.
Powerful Blockholders and CEO Turnover

We identify the power of institutional blockholders to influence management using previous occurrences of forced CEO turnover at other firms in the blockholders’ overall portfolio. We create a “powerful blockholder linkage” measure that strongly predicts future forced CEO turnover. These effects are larger when “powerful” blockholders are more motivated to monitor and when they have had valuable monitoring experience. Moreover, firms with powerful blockholders display higher CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, pursue more value-increasing mergers, and have higher firm value. Overall, our results suggest that an identifiable group of powerful blockholders play an important role in corporate governance.
Novel Technologies for percutaneous treatment of tricuspid valve regurgitation

Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is mostly secondary to annular dilatation and/or leaflet tethering, in the absence of organic valve lesions or, as a result of left-sided heart valve disease, atrial fibrillation, or pulmonary hypertension, [functional TR (FTR)]. Isolated tricuspid surgery is usually carried out with a very high morbidity and mortality, resulting in a large number of untreated patients. Percutaneous procedures have been emerging as an attractive alternative to surgery. Although feasibility has been shown with several devices, clinical experience is still very preliminary and only limited data are available to support any evidence of clinical efficacy. This review will summarize the specific challenges of transcatheter tricuspid valve interventions (TTVI) and the available technologies which are currently under evaluation.
Inhibition of the Ca2+-Dependent K+ Channel, KCNN4/KCa3.1, Improves Tissue Protection and Locomotor Recovery after Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers inflammatory responses that involve neutrophils, macrophages/microglia and astrocytes and molecules that potentially cause secondary tissue damage and functional impairment. Here, we assessed the contribution of the calcium-dependent K+ channel KCNN4 (KCa3.1, IK1, SK4) to secondary damage after moderate contusion lesions in the lower thoracic spinal cord of adult mice. Changes in KCNN4 mRNA levels (RT-PCR), KCa3.1 protein expression (Western blots), and cellular expression (immunofluorescence) in the mouse spinal cord were monitored between 1 and 28 d after SCI. KCNN4 mRNA and KCa3.1 protein rapidly increased after SCI; double labeling identified astrocytes as the main cellular source accounting for this upregulation. Locomotor function after SCI, evaluated for 28 d in an open-field test using the Basso Mouse Scale, was improved in a dose-dependent manner by treating mice with a selective inhibitor of KCa3.1 channels, TRAM-34 (triarylmethane-34). Improved locomotor function was accompanied by reduced tissue loss at 28 d and increased neuron and axon sparing. The rescue of tissue by TRAM-34 treatment was preceded by reduced expression of the proinflammatory mediators, tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-1β in spinal cord tissue at 12 h after injury, and reduced expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase at 7 d after SCI. In astrocytes in vitro, TRAM-34 inhibited Ca2+ signaling in response to metabotropic purinergic receptor stimulation. These results suggest that blocking the KCa3.1 channel could be a potential therapeutic approach for treating secondary damage after spinal cord injury.
F175S Change and a Novel Polymorphism in Presenilin-1 Gene in Late-Onset Familial Alzheimer’s Disease

We analyzed at the molecular level with presenilin-1 (PS-1) and apolipoprotein E (apoE) genotyping the affected subjects and asymptomatic relatives of an Italian family with several members affected by late-onset familial Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The screen for PS-1 gene mutations revealed a novel missense substitution phenylalanine 175 to serine in 1 of the affected individuals and 2 asymptomatic sons of the patient. This change was not found in other relatives of this family, as well as in 60 individuals with sporadic late-onset AD and 40 normal controls. Furthermore, a GG/TT substitution in the 3′ end of intron 6 at the boundary with exon 7 was found in all relatives of the second and third generations of this family. All the affected relatives were female homo- or heterozygotes for apoE Ε4 allele. This study provides evidence that a PS-1 gene missense change does not necessarily associate with early-onset disease, and can occur in single cases affected by late-onset disease.
Willingness‐to‐pay and quality of life in patients with vitiligo

Background Vitiligo is a chronic pigmentary disorder of the skin, affecting 1–2% of the general population. Although not life threatening, vitiligo may considerably influence patients’ health‐related quality of life (QoL) and psychological well‐being. Willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) is a construct reflecting disease burden and QoL reduction which has not yet been used in vitiligo.
Time to Clean Your Test Objectives

Testing is the primary approach for detecting software defects. A major challenge faced by testers lies in crafting efficient test suites, able to detect a maximum number of bugs with manageable effort. To do so, they rely on coverage criteria, which define some precise test objectives to be covered. However, many common criteria specify a significant number of objectives that occur to be infeasible or redundant in practice, like covering dead code or semantically equal mutants. Such objectives are well-known to be harmful to the design of test suites, impacting both the efficiency and precision of the tester's effort. This work introduces a sound and scalable technique to prune out a significant part of the infeasible and redundant objectives produced by a panel of white-box criteria. In a nutshell, we reduce this task to proving the validity of logical assertions in the code under test. The technique is implemented in a tool that relies on weakest-precondition calculus and SMT solving for proving the assertions. The tool is built on top of the Frama-C verification platform, which we carefully tune for our specific scalability needs. The experiments reveal that the pruning capabilities of the tool can reduce the number of targeted test objectives in a program by up to 27% and scale to real programs of 200K lines, making it possible to automate a painstaking part of their current testing process.
Eeva Hookana CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTIMS OF NON-ISCHEMIC SUDDEN CARDIAC DEATH

A non-ischemic etiology of sudden cardiac death (SCD), mostly due to various cardiomyopathies (CMP), accounts for about 20% of all SCDs. Most of the major studies of risk factors for SCD have focused on coronary artery disease (CAD). The aim of the present study was to clarify the characteristics of non-ischemic SCD in Northern Finland. In this study, consecutive victims of SCD (n=2661) were prospectively collected, and among whom post-mortem examinations were performed between 1998 and 2007. Information about the SCD victims was obtained from a combination of available medical records, postmortem examination reports, medication used at the time of SCD, and standardized questionnaire filled out by the closest family members of the victims of SCD. We also screened the candidate genes from a Finnish family in which fatal arrhythmias was first manifestation of a cardiac disease. The collagen content of the myocardium from histological samples in victims of SCD due to idiopathic myocardial fibrosis (IMF) was also evaluated. CAD was the most common cause of death (2082 victims, 78.2%). The prevalence of nonischemic SCDs was 21.8% of all the SCDs. After sub-grouping the non-ischemic SCDs into various categories, the most common cause of death was CMP related to obesity (23.7%), followed by alcoholic CMP (19.0%), hypertensive CMP (15.5%) and IMF (13.6%). The association of SCD with IMF is notably frequent among victims <40 years old (28.3%). The prevalence of family history of SCD was significantly higher in the victims of ischemic (34.2%) than non-ischemic SCD (13.4%, P<0.001) or controls (17.6%, P<0.001). Lamin A/C gene mutation R541C was found from Finnish SCD family, in which the IMF was predominant pathologic-anatomic finding. Myocardial type I collagen synthesis was increased in victims of SCD due to IMF. In conclusion, the characteristics of non-ischemic SCD in Finland differ from those reported previously. Higher prevalences of CMP-associated SCDs related to obesity, IMF and alcoholic CMP were observed as clinical and/or pathologic bases for non-ischemic SCD. The family history of SCD is not significantly increased in victims of non-ischemic SCD, suggesting a larger role of sporadic occurrence than inherited traits as the cause of non-ischemic SCD. Replacement of cardiac myocytes by fibrosis can be responsible for fatal cardiac arrhythmias in subjects with the lamin A/C gene mutation. The victims of SCD due to IMF have increased myocardial type I collagen synthesis.
Being human today: A digital storytelling pedagogy for transcontinental border crossing

This article reports the findings of a collaborative digital storytelling project titled 'Being Human Today,' a multimodal curricular initiative that was implemented simultaneously in both a South African and an American university classroom in 2015. By facilitating dialogue and the sharing of digital stories by means of a closed Facebook group, instructors were able to investigate students' critical awareness and social consciousness regarding notions of 'self' and 'other' across continents. Case study methodology was applied as a research framework to collect, code, and triangulate data gathered from student-driven texts, Facebook entries, and student-produced digital stories. Framed by Giroux's border pedagogy and set within social justice education, findings provide evidence of our students' desire to be connected to each other, both locally and abroad, which we found to be the heart of what it means to be human today. Further, data revealed how sharing stories as cultural and personal artifacts worked to demystify notions of otherness in both local and global contexts. In particular, the comparison of personal stories shared in this space allowed for critique and a raised awareness of how students are impacted by global hegemonic discourses. Implications of practice for this study include breaking down the barriers-both real and imagined-as they relate to how educators conceive the use of technology in classroom spaces and student engagement across continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]