Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Ethanol Exposure Produces Time- and Brain Region-Dependent Changes in Gene Coexpression Networks

Repeated ethanol exposure and withdrawal in mice increases voluntary drinking and represents an animal model of physical dependence. We examined time- and brain region-dependent changes in gene coexpression networks in amygdala (AMY), nucleus accumbens (NAC), prefrontal cortex (PFC), and liver after four weekly cycles of chronic intermittent ethanol (CIE) vapor exposure in C57BL/6J mice. Microarrays were used to compare gene expression profiles at 0-, 8-, and 120-hours following the last ethanol exposure. Each brain region exhibited a large number of differentially expressed genes (2,000-3,000) at the 0- and 8-hour time points, but fewer changes were detected at the 120-hour time point (400-600). Within each region, there was little gene overlap across time (~20%). All brain regions were significantly enriched with differentially expressed immune-related genes at the 8-hour time point. Weighted gene correlation network analysis identified modules that were highly enriched with differentially expressed genes at the 0- and 8-hour time points with virtually no enrichment at 120 hours. Modules enriched for both ethanol-responsive and cell-specific genes were identified in each brain region. These results indicate that chronic alcohol exposure causes global 'rewiring' of coexpression systems involving glial and immune signaling as well as neuronal genes.
Flocking factors' assessment in case of destructive impact on swarm robotic systems

This paper dwells on exposures' analysis of open-environment operated swarm robotic systems. Flocking algorithms for swarm robotics, which use alignment and averaging of direction in local communication radius (after C. Reynolds' model) are considered. The problem where a small group of informed robots has to guide the swarm along a desired direction is also considered. Couzin I. D. et al. (2005) showed that even a minority of informed individuals is able to move the group toward the target Hereafter great number of swarm robotics' flocking algorithms were developed in order to increase swarm system's handiness. Several implicit leadership algorithms for distributed robotic systems were proposed. The idea of this paper is to study and simulate the operation of such kind of above mentioned algorithms in the situation when there are saboteurs which destructively impact swarm system. Specially developed by authors simulation software allows to vary the parameters of system operation, which can be rather the number of agents or their interaction features or etc. On the basis of the experimental data the authors produce the analysis of features in order to determine their relevance to the algorithm.
Deep Learning For Smile Recognition

Inspired by recent successes of deep learning in computer vision, we propose a novel application of deep convolutional neural networks to facial expression recognition, in particular smile recognition. A smile recognition test accuracy of 99.45% is achieved for the Denver Intensity of Spontaneous Facial Action (DISFA) database, significantly outperforming existing approaches based on hand-crafted features with accuracies ranging from 65.55% to 79.67%. The novelty of this approach includes a comprehensive model selection of the architecture parameters, allowing to find an appropriate architecture for each expression such as smile. This is feasible because all experiments were run on a Tesla K40c GPU, allowing a speedup of factor 10 over traditional computations on a CPU.
Process and characteristics of modified Schottky barrier (MSB) p-channel FinFETs

A novel modified Schottky barrier p-channel FinFET (MSB FinFET) has been successfully demonstrated previously. In this paper, the detailed process conditions, especially the formation of MSB junctions, has been presented. Device characteristics as well as the geometry effect are also discussed extensively. In the MSB FinFETs fabricated by the two-step silicidation and implant-to-silicide techniques (ITS), an ultrashort and defect-free source/drain extension (SDE) could be formed at a temperature as low as 600/spl deg/C, resulting in excellent electrical characteristics. The ultrashort SDE could effectively thin out the SB width between source/channel during on-state or broaden and elevate it between drain/channel during off-state. A leakage mechanism of MSB FinFETs similar to the conventional ones was identified by the activation energy analysis. Strong fin width dependence of the electrical characteristics was also found in the proposed devices. When the fin width becomes larger than the silicide grain size, the multigrain structure results in a rough front edge of the MSB junction, which in turn degrades the short-channel device performance. This result indicates that the MSB device is suitable for use as FinFET. The low thermal budget of the MSB FinFET relaxes the thermal stability issue for metal gate/high-/spl kappa/ dielectric integration. It is considered that the proposed MSB FinFET is a very promising nanodevice.
Event-Related Potentials in Episodic and Semantic Memory : Distinguishing the N 400 from the f N 400

In the present study, we conducted an event-related potentials (ERP) study to examine episodic and semantic memory. We focused on two well-known patterns: the semantic N400 and the old/new fN400. Some researchers have argued that they reflect the same neuropsychological response (Voss & Federmeier, 2011). Others have suggested that they have distinct spatial-temporal signatures and reflect different psychological processes (Bridger, Bader, Kriukova, Unger, & Mecklinger, 2012). In the present study, we analyzed data using the basic N400/fN400 paradigm. We expect to find similar results to Bridger et al. (2012) in that the N400 and fN400 to be reliably different in topography and function. INDEX WORDS: N400, fN400, Episodic Memory, Semantic Memory, ERP, Electroencephalography DISTINGUISHING THE N400 FROM THE fN400 EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS IN EPISODIC AND SEMANTIC MEMORY: DISTINGUISHING THE N400 FROM THE fN400 ONLY
Modelling and estimating pollen movement in oilseed rape (Brassica napus) at the landscape scale using genetic markers

Understanding patterns of pollen movement at the landscape scale is important for establishing management rules following the release of genetically modified (GM) crops. We use here a mating model adapted to cultivated species to estimate dispersal kernels from the genotypes of the progenies of male‐sterile plants positioned at different sampling sites within a 10 × 10‐km oilseed rape production area. Half of the pollen clouds sampled by the male‐sterile plants originated from uncharacterized pollen sources that could consist of both large volunteer and feral populations, and fields within and outside the study area. The geometric dispersal kernel was the most appropriate to predict pollen movement in the study area. It predicted a much larger proportion of long‐distance pollination than previously fitted dispersal kernels. This best‐fitting mating model underestimated the level of differentiation among pollen clouds but could predict its spatial structure. The estimation method was validated on simulated genotypic data, and proved to provide good estimates of both the shape of the dispersal kernel and the rate and composition of pollen issued from uncharacterized pollen sources. The best dispersal kernel fitted here, the geometric kernel, should now be integrated into models that aim at predicting gene flow at the landscape level, in particular between GM and non‐GM crops.
No Association Between Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism 56 (SNP56) in Phosphodiesterase 4D (PDE4D) Gene and Susceptibility to Ischemic Stroke: A Meta-Analysis of 15 Studies

Background Recent studies demonstrated that polymorphisms in the PDE4D gene were associated with several processes involved in the occurrence of ischemic stroke (IS). The association between specific PDE4D single-nucleotide polymorphism 56 (SNP56) and IS risk was initially identified via genome-wide association studies (GWAS), although the GWAS in different populations produced inconclusive results. Thus, we performed a meta-analysis to better explain the association between PDE4D SNP56 and IS risk. Material/Methods A literature search was conducted using PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science up to June 1, 2015. A fixed-effects or random-effects model was used to calculate the pooled odds ratios (ORs) based on the results from the heterogeneity tests. Results Finally, we performed a meta-analysis of 15 studies, involving 8731 IS patients and 10,756 controls. The results showed nonsignificant association between PDE4D SNP56 and IS risk (T vs. A: OR=1.01, 95%CI=0.88–1.15, P=0.90). Similarly, in the subgroup analysis by ethnicity, no significant association was observed in Asian (T vs. A: OR=1.08, 95%CI=0.80–1.44, P=0.62) or European (T vs. A: OR=0.96, 95%CI=0.86–1.08, P=0.54) population. Moreover, funnel plots and Egger regression testing showed no evidence of publication bias. Conclusions In summary, current evidence suggested that PDE4D SNP56 might not be associated with an increased susceptibility to IS. However, this conclusion needs further validation by well-designed studies with large sample sizes.
Non-photorealistic real-time rendering of characteristic faces

We propose a system for real-time sketching of human faces. On the basis of a three-dimensional description of a face model, characteristic line strokes are extracted and represented in an artistic way. In order to enrich the results with details that cannot be determined analytically from the model surface and anchor strokes are supplemented interactively and are maintained during animation. Because of the real-time ability of our rendering pipeline the system is suitable for interactive facial animation. Thus, interesting areas of application within the range of the virtual avatars are possible.
TRANSACTION LEVEL MODELING WITH UML AND SYSTEMC

This paper addresses the application of UML (Unified Modeling Language) in modeling digital systems based on the object oriented approach. The resulting UML diagrams are then used as the basis to generate a SystemC structure in transaction level, with automatic mapping of ports, channels and signals. Communication among modules are implemented through tokens, through blocking channels. Those techniques are discussed and exemplified through FFT polynomial multiplier. The proposed methodology is supported by a tool integrated in Rational Rose platform.
Prostaglandin I2 IP Receptor Agonist, Beraprost, Prevents Transient Global Cerebral Ischemia Induced Hippocampal CA1 Injury in Aging Mice

Beraprost sodium is a new stable, orally active Prostaglandin I2 analogue. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of beraprost on cognitive dysfunction and locomotor impairment induced by bilateral common carotid artery occlusion in mice. We investigated the ameliorating effect of beraprost through PGI2 IP receptor by studying neurologic deficit assessment and T-maze testing in young and old male C57Bl/6 wild-type (WT) and IP receptor knockout (IP KO) mice following a 12 min bilateral common carotid artery occlusion (BCCAo) and 7 days of reperfusion. Beraprost reversed BCCAo induced cognitive impairment and neurological deficit in a dose dependent manner. Immunohistochemical studies showed attenuation of neuronal cell death, astrogliosis, microglial invasion, and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity in both young and old WT mice after post treatment with beraprost. Moreover, after BCCAo, phosphorylated cAMP response element binding protein positive cell numbers were increased with beraprost treatment over vehicle treated controls. These results show that beraprost treatment attenuated cognitive dysfunction and neurological deficits induced by BCCAo, and suggest that this effect may be mediated by the neuroprotective effects of treatment.
The Association of Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease in a Population With Low Cholesterol Levels: A Study of 648 346 Men From the Korean National Health System Prospective Cohort Study

Background and Purpose— The association of smoking with cardiovascular diseases in populations with low cholesterol levels is unclear and this lack of clarity may have contributed to the very high prevalence of smoking in East Asian men. The effect of smoking on stroke subtypes is particularly unclear. Methods— We used data from a prospective cohort study of 648 346 Korean men aged 30 to 64 years at their baseline assessment in 1992. Results— Mean (SD) total cholesterol at baseline was 4.9 (1.0) mmol/L and 59% of the men were current smokers. Over the follow-up period of 10 years, 9475 men experienced any type of stroke, 4768 experienced an ischemic stroke, 2380 an intracerebral hemorrhage, 786 a subarachnoid hemorrhage, 3329 men experienced a myocardial infarction, and 269 an aortic aneurysm. Smoking at baseline was associated with marked increases in risk of ischemic stroke (hazard ratio comparing current smokers with never smokers 1.58 [95% CI: 1.49 to 1.68]), subarachnoid hemorrhage (1.91 [1.63 to 2.24]), myocardial infarction (2.01 [1.87 to 2.17]), and aortic aneurysm (1.47 [1.14 to 1.90]) with these effects remaining after adjustment for potential confounding factors and with the first 5 years of events excluded from the analyses. The effect of smoking on these outcomes was the same among men with cholesterol levels below the median value for this population as among those with higher levels. There was no association of smoking with intracerebral hemorrhage. Smoking accounted for 20% of all cardiovascular disease outcomes in this population. Conclusions— Smoking is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases in populations with low cholesterol levels and global interventions are required to halt the emerging tobacco epidemic in low- and middle-income countries.
Meeting extracts for discussion summarization based on multimodal nonverbal information

Group discussions are used for various purposes, such as creating new ideas and making a group decision. It is desirable to archive the results and processes of the discussion as useful resources for the group. Therefore, a key technology would be a way to extract meaningful resources from a group discussion. To accomplish this goal, we propose classification models that select meeting extracts to be included in the discussion summary based on nonverbal behavior such as attention, head motion, prosodic features, and co-occurrence patterns of these behaviors. We create different prediction models depending on the degree of extract-worthiness, which is assessed by the agreement ratio among human judgments. Our best model achieves 0.707 in F-measure and 0.75 in recall rate, and can compress a discussion into 45% of its original duration. The proposed models reveal that nonverbal information is indispensable for selecting meeting extracts of a group discussion. One of the future directions is to implement the models as an automatic meeting summarization system.
Bottom-Gate Zinc Oxide Thin-Film Transistors (ZnO TFTs) for AM-LCDs

In this paper, high-performance bottom-gate thin-film transistors (TFTs) with transparent zinc oxide (ZnO) channels have been developed. The ZnO film for active channels was deposited by RF magnetron sputtering. The crystallinity of the ZnO film drastically improved when it was deposited on a doublelayer SiOx/SiNx gate insulator. In order to achieve a ZnO TFT back-plane for liquid-crystal display (LCD) with the required pattern accuracy, dry etching of the ZnO film in an Ar and CH4 chemistry has been developed. The etching rate and tapered profile of the ZnO film could be controlled by the Ar content in the etching gases of Ar and CH4. The saturation mobility (musat) of the ZnO TFT strongly depended on a gate voltage. A musat of 5.2 & cm2 . (V .s)-1 at VGS = 40 V and VDS = 10 V, and an on/off-current ratio of 2.7 x 107 were obtained. A drain-current uniformity of plusmn7% was achieved within a radius of 20 mm from the substrate center. A 1.46 -in diagonal LCD with 61 600 pixels has been driven by the ZnO-TFT back-plane. A moving picture image was available on fabricated LCD driven by the ZnO TFTs.
Psychostimulants in the therapy of treatment-resistant depression Review of the literature and findings from a retrospective study in 65 depressed patients

The use of psychostimulants as an adjuvant therapy in treatment-resistant depression is not very common nowadays and has been the subject of much criticism. This article gives a brief review of the literature and reports on the findings from a retrospective study carried out in 65 depressed patients treated with psychostimulants (amphetamine and methylphenidate) in addition to conventional antidepressants. Thirty-eight out of 65 patients showed significant improvement, in particular with respect to energy mood, and psychomotor activity. The best response to psychostimulants was seen in inhibited types of depression and in combination with a tricyclic antidepressant. None of the patients developed drug dependency. The incidence of side effects was low, and agitation and restlessness improved with an additional short-term treatment with benzodiazepines. It is concluded that the rapid onset of action (2-3 hours) after administration may help cover the therapeutic latency period of conventional antidepressants and probably potentiates their effect. In view of their potential benefits in treatment-resistant depressive states, psychostimulants should be tried more often.
Modified low‐salt CTAB extraction of high‐quality DNA from contaminant‐rich tissues

The increasing use of high‐throughput sequencing platforms has made the isolation of pure, high molecular weight DNA a primary concern for studies of a diverse range of organisms. Purification of DNA remains a significant challenge in many tissue and sample types due to various organic and inorganic molecules that coprecipitate with nucleic acids. Molluscs, for example, contain high concentrations of polysaccharides which often coprecipitate with DNA and can inhibit downstream enzymatic reactions. We modified a low‐salt CTAB (MoLSC) extraction protocol to accommodate contaminant‐rich animal tissues and compared this method to a standard CTAB extraction protocol and two commercially available animal tissue DNA extraction kits using oyster adductor muscle. Comparisons of purity and molecular integrity showed that our in‐house protocol yielded genomic DNA generally free of contaminants and shearing, whereas the traditional CTAB method and some of the commercial kits yielded DNA unsuitable for some applications of massively parallel sequencing. Our open‐source MoLSC protocol provides a cost‐effective, scalable, alternative DNA extraction method that can be easily optimized and adapted for sequencing applications in other contaminant‐rich samples.
Dichlorido(2,3-di-2-pyridylpyrazine-κ2 N 2,N 3)palladium(II)

The PdII ion in the title complex, [PdCl2(C14H10N4)], has a slightly distorted square-planar environment defined by the two pyridine N atoms of the chelating 2,3-di-2-pyridylpyrazine ligand and two chloride anions. The pyridine rings are considerably inclined to the least-squares plane of the PdCl2N2 unit [maximum deviation = 0.073 (1) Å], with dihedral angles of 64.19 (9) and 66.55 (9)°. The pyrazine ring is almost perpendicular to this plane and the dihedral angle is 88.2 (1)°. Two independent intermolecular C—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds, both involving the same Cl atom as a hydrogen-bond acceptor, give rise to chains running along the a and b axes, generating a layer structure extending parallel to (001). Molecules are stacked in columns along the a axis. Along the b axis, successive molecules stack in opposite directions.
Hierarchical strategy for dynamic coverage

This paper is focused on dynamic coverage control with a team of robots. In this framework, decentralized control algorithms have been investigated to deal with the efficient coordination of the resources. The main contribution is a novel global strategy based on a hierarchical grid decomposition of the domain. This decomposition allows an ordered coverage of the domain that combined with a gradient based control law of the local error, achieves a better performance than previous approaches of dynamic coverage. The total coverage of the domain is proven, and the good performance of the approach is supported with simulations.
Phased array antenna metamaterial based design operating in millimeter wave for 5G mobile networks

In the following couple of years, an alternative for the 4G and its derivatives like the LTE-A is inventible. The demands and challenges must be envisaged and addressed to meet the desired objectives of the upcoming 5G mobile networks which are resembled by significant increasing in capacity, improved data rate, low latency, and better quality of service. To achieve these objectives, radical enhancements and improvements have to be made in cellular network architecture and the antenna configuration that is used for this purpose. This paper presents the results of a 5G cellular network phased array antenna with millimeter wave beamforming at 28Hz. A microstrip structured antenna on a metamaterial substrate that performs as a leaky wave, in which, it has a composite cascaded right left handed transmission line configuration 32 unit cells. The main beam is tuned via varicaps with gain changing between 5dB to 6dB during scanning.
Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology

1. The analytical tradition in sociology 2. Social mechanisms and explanatory theory 3. Action and interaction 4. Social interaction and social change 5. On causal modelling 6. Quantitative research, agent-based modelling, and theories of the social (with Yvonne Aberg) 7. Coda References.
On the Achievable Spectral Efficiency of Spatial Modulation Aided Downlink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

In this letter, a novel spatial modulation aided non-orthogonal multiple access (SM-NOMA) system is proposed. We use mutual information (MI) to characterize the achievable spectral efficiency (SE) of the proposed SM-NOMA system. Due to the finite-alphabet space-domain inputs employed by SM, the expression of the corresponding MI lacks a closed-form formulation. Hence, a lower bound is proposed to quantify the MI of the SM-NOMA system. Furthermore, its asymptotic property is also theoretically investigated in both low and high signal-to-noise ratio regions. The SE performance and its analysis of our proposed SM-NOMA system are confirmed by simulation results.
A new formulation of slight compressibility for arterial tissue and its Finite Element implementation

In order to avoid the numerical difficulties in locally enforcing the incompressibility constraint using the displacement formulation of the Finite Element Method, slight compressibility is typically assumed when simulating the mechanical response of arterial tissue. The current standard method of accounting for slight compressibility of hyperelastic soft tissue assumes an additive decomposition of the strain-energy function into a volumetric and a deviatoric part. This has been shown, however, to be inconsistent with the linear theory and results in cubes retaining their cuboid shape under hydrostatic tension and compression, which seems at variance with the reinforcement of arterial tissue with two families of collagen fibres. A remedy for these defects is proposed here, a solution which generalises the current standard model of slight compressibility to include two additional terms, one of which is quadratic in the invariants and the other quadratic in . Experimental data are used to motivate typical values for the associated material constants of these additional terms. Some simulations are performed to allow contrasts and comparisons to be made between the current standard model of slight compressibility and its generalisation proposed here.