Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Provision of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor via Anterograde Transport from the Eye Preserves the Physiological Responses of Axotomized Geniculate Neurons

The neurotrophic factors of the nerve growth factor family (neurotrophins) have been shown to promote neuronal survival after brain injury and in various models of neurodegenerative conditions. However, it has not been determined whether neurotrophin treatment results in the maintenance of function of the rescued cells. Here we have used the retrograde degeneration of geniculate neurons as a model system to evaluate neuronal rescue and sparing of function after administration of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Death of geniculate neurons was induced by a visual cortex lesion in adult rats, and exogenous BDNF was delivered to the axotomized geniculate cells via anterograde transport after injection into the eye. By microelectrode recordings from the geniculate in vivo we have measured several physiological parameters such as contrast threshold, spatial resolution (visual acuity), signal-to-noise ratio, temporal resolution, and response latency. In control lesioned animals we found that geniculate cell dysfunction precedes the onset of neuronal death, indicating that an assessment of neuronal number per se is not predictive of functional performance. The administration of BDNF resulted in a highly significant cell-saving effect up to 2 weeks after the cortical damage and maintained nearly normal physiological responses in the geniculate. This preservation of function in adult axotomized neurons suggests possible therapeutic applications of BDNF.
Comment Marx se réfère-t-il au travail et à la domination ?

The interpretation of Marx’s references to work and to domination is a vexed question. Can we say that Marx criticises capitalism in terms of its effects on work ? Or does he criticise capitalism from the standpoint of those subject to domination, and with whom his position is one of solidarity ? Or does he elaborate a description of the unprecedented transformations brought about in the relations of power, which the category of domination is unable to apprehend effectively ? The article argues that these differences in interpretation are actually based on a series of false oppositions. Marx’s aim is in effect to articulate the question of the domination of work and the question of domination at work, insofar as he accords a position of political centrality to the connection between domination and work.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Common Cold: Data from Five Populations

This paper focuses on conceptualizations of the common cold among Latin Americans, as compared with middle-class Americans. Four geographically dispersed groups of Latin Americans were chosen for study: Guatemalans in Guatemala; Mexicans in Guadalajara, Mexico; persons of Mexican descent in Edinburg, Texas (on the Texas-Mexican border); and Puerto Ricans in Hartford, Connecticut. In addition, a comparison group of middle-income Americans living in Tampa, Florida, was also studied to see the extent to which folk concepts were seen in what is considered to be a "mainstream" population. The data suggest a great deal of both intra- and intercultural agreement as to causes, symptoms, and treatments of the common cold. The cold seems to be viewed as very much in the realm of a biomedical illness, with the exception of ascribing the hot/cold system of causality to the common cold, among all five populations. Finally, the cold is clearly differentiated from "the flu," which seems to exist as an illness only among.
An online support system for promotion of a behavior change for persons with metabolic syndrome

The World Health Organization reported that ischemic heart disease is the most common cause of death worldwide in 2008. The main causes of ischemic heart disease are obesity, hypertension, arteriosclerosis and other metabolic abnormalities. These conditions are related to lifestyle issues, such as diet and exercise. We developed a system to support the self-management of patients using a personal digital assistant (PDA). However, diet management becomes more difficult as patient condition worsens. Both self-management and behavior change by persons with metabolic syndrome are needed to prevent ischemic heart disease. In the present study, we have improved the system to support behavior change in persons with metabolic syndrome. The system has three functions of an entry of user's lifestyle information, a calculation of total amount of calorie intake and a reference to food model pictures of 80 kcal standard quantities for the behavior change. We focused on a self-review of user lifestyle as the first step of the behavior change. We conducted an experiment with the cooperation of 14 medical staff members to verify the operability of the system. No serious problems with the system were encountered. Additionally, we tested the system with health checkup examinees. The results of these tests suggested that our system will help physicians provide advice regarding total amount of calorie intake to health checkup examinees.
Efficient Multi-Stage Conjugate Gradient for Trust Region Step

The trust region step problem, by solving a sphere constrained quadratic programming, plays a critical role in the trust region Newton method. In this paper, we propose an efficient Multi-Stage Conjugate Gradient (MSCG) algorithm to compute the trust region step in a multi-stage manner. Specifically, when the iterative solution is in the interior of the sphere, we perform the conjugate gradient procedure. Otherwise, we perform a gradient descent procedure which points to the inner of the sphere and can make the next iterative solution be a interior point. Subsequently, we proceed with the conjugate gradient procedure again. We repeat the above procedures until convergence. We also present a theoretical analysis which shows that the MSCG algorithm converges. Moreover, the proposed MSCG algorithm can generate a solution in any prescribed precision controlled by a tolerance parameter which is the only parameter we need. Experimental results on large-scale text data sets demonstrate our proposed MSCG algorithm has a faster convergence speed compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms.
Extreme Response Style in Cross-Cultural Research

The neglect of the consequences of the Extreme Response Style (ERS) phenomenon in cross-cultural research is documented through a selective literature review. Consideration of ERS differences permitted derivation of three logical consequences that pertain to (a) differences in group means, (b) the internal consistency of measures and the correlation among measures, and (c) results of dimensional analyses. Comparison of U.S. and Korean student samples on a 1 30-item questionnaire revealed stronger ERS in the U.S. sample. Furthermore, the predictions derived from ERS differences were confirmed, thus demonstrating the credibility of the ERS argument. General implications of ERS for cross-cultural research are discussed.
The Comorbidities Accompanied by Restless Leg Syndrome : Anxiety and Depressive Disorders Rank First

Objectives: In this study we analyzed the effect of diseases such as anemia, renal failure, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and peripheral neuropathy to the restless leg syndrome (RLS). Patients and Methods: Four thousand five hundred patients, who have been seen in the general neurology clinic between January 2007 and December 2009 were evaluated retrospectively and 76 RLS cases were selected. Re-evaluation has been proposed to the patients with telephone calls. Fifty-five patients (36 females, mean age 55±14 years; 19 males, mean age 61±11 years) accepted the invitation and were re-evaluated. Neurological examinations and biochemical analysis has been made. Beck Depression and Anxiety scales were also applied to all patients. Results: Seventy-six patients (1.2%) admitted to the general neurology clinic had been diagnosed with RLS. Mild-moderate depression was noted in 29 patients (52.7%) and generalized anxiety disorder was found in 26 patients (47.3%). Other comorbid diseases were iron deficiency anemia (14.5%), type 2 diabetes mellitus (14.5%), idiopathic Parkinson disease (3.6%), lumbar disc herniation (27.3%), hypertension (49.1%), coronary artery disease (32.7%) and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (16.4%). Conclusion: Many physical and mental disorders can be associated with RLS. Our results mostly support that, there is a clear association with anxiety, depressive disorders and RLS. This association might be due to reciprocal interactions and common pathophysiologies. Further examinations including experimental models are needed.
Automatic title generation for Chinese spoken documents with a delicate scored Viterbi algorithm

Automatic title generation for spoken documents is believed to be an important key for browsing and navigation over huge quantities of multimedia content. A new framework of automatic title generation for Chinese spoken documents is proposed in this paper using a delicate scored Viterbi algorithm performed over automatically generated text summaries of the testing spoken documents. The Viterbi beam search is guided by a delicate score evaluated from three sets of models: term selection model tells the most suitable terms to be included in the title, term ordering model gives the best ordering of the terms to make the title readable, and title length model tells the reasonable length of the title. The models are trained from a training corpus which is not required to be matched with the testing spoken documents. Both objective evaluation based on F1 measure and subjective human evaluation for relevance and readability indicated the approach is very attractive.
Antiviral Perspectives for Chikungunya Virus

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-borne pathogen that has a major health impact in humans and causes acute febrile illness in humans accompanied by joint pains and, in many cases, persistent arthralgia lasting for weeks to years. CHIKV reemerged in 2005-2006 in several parts of the Indian Ocean islands and India after a gap of 32 years, causing millions of cases. The re-emergence of CHIKV has also resulted in numerous outbreaks in several countries in the eastern hemisphere, with a threat to further expand in the near future. However, there is no vaccine against CHIKV infection licensed for human use, and therapy for CHIKV infection is still mainly limited to supportive care as antiviral agents are yet in different stages of testing or development. In this review we explore the different perspectives for chikungunya treatment and the effectiveness of these treatment regimens and discuss the scope for future directions.
Immune pathways and defence mechanisms in honey bees Apis mellifera

Social insects are able to mount both group‐level and individual defences against pathogens. Here we focus on individual defences, by presenting a genome‐wide analysis of immunity in a social insect, the honey bee Apis mellifera. We present honey bee models for each of four signalling pathways associated with immunity, identifying plausible orthologues for nearly all predicted pathway members. When compared to the sequenced Drosophila and Anopheles genomes, honey bees possess roughly one‐third as many genes in 17 gene families implicated in insect immunity. We suggest that an implied reduction in immune flexibility in bees reflects either the strength of social barriers to disease, or a tendency for bees to be attacked by a limited set of highly coevolved pathogens.
Sticking It Out

There is evidence that individual attributes play an important role in self-employment entrance decisions. Drawing on the personality, psychological well-being, and goal attainment literature, the authors ask, What individual attributes are associated with persistence in self-employment? First, they theoretically develop the concept of self-employment persistence and then empirically assess the effects of individual attributes on self-employment persistence, while including the baseline effects of these individual attributes on self-employment entrance. They use a semiparametric, reduced-form, multiple-state transition model and control for demographic and social determinants. Using employment history data of a cohort of 2,839 individuals from 1957 to 2004, the authors find that openness to experience, autonomy, and tenacious goal pursuit increase persistence in self-employment, whereas neuroticism reduces persistence in self-employment. They discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.
Concatenated LDPC-TCM coding for reliable storage in multi-level flash memories

In this paper, we present an efficient fault tolerant solution for multi-level per cell (MLC) flash memory that concatenates trellis coded modulation (TCM) with an outer low-density parity-check (LDPC) code. Traditional flash coding systems employ simple hard-decisions based codes, such as Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, that can correct a fixed, specified number of errors. Thanks to the Bahl, Cocke, Jelinek, and Raviv (BCJR) algorithm, the TCM decoder within the proposed design can provide soft decisions which make it possible to use the more powerful LDPC codes. Moreover, the error-correction performance is further improved since TCM can decrease the raw error rate of MLC and hence relieve the burden of outer LDPC code. The effectiveness of concatenated LDPC-TCM systems has been successfully demonstrated through computer simulations.
Nosocomial Central Venous Catheter Infections Among Patients With Different Types of Cancer

FIGURE. Hospital unit-specific rates of nosocomial catheter-related bloodstream infection during periods of surveillance from 1997 to 2001 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. *P < . 05 compared with breast; P = . 09 compared with breast. skin was approximately 5; most of the samples tested at 30 seconds contained no detectable CFU. CHG+IPA was safe and effective in reducing the number of CFU on the skin of the abdomen at 30 seconds and 10 minutes after application. In addition, the antimicrobial activity of CHG+IPA persisted for at least 6 hours.
Quality of experience-centric management in LTE-A mobile networks: The Device-to-Device communication paradigm

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications are planned to become an indispensable part of future mobile networks. A lot of attention has been paid to this new communication paradigm, due to the important benefits it brings for both cellular operators and end-users. Standardization efforts towards enabling D2D connections have started in Release 12 of the Long Term Evolution-Advanced standard and are expected to continue in next releases. Under this perspective, and realizing that the main asset of D2D is the enhancement of the user experience, we propose a Quality of Experience driven framework for the management of this new type of communications. Simulation results show that this framework is able to capture and enhance the overall experience of mobile users, and, thus, allow for proportionate financial benefits for operators.
Children and Household Economic Behavior

This paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas. For our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods. and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure.I shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children. [and] I restrict attention largely to Western societies. (EXCERPT)
Out of Sight and Out of Mind

With few exceptions, media literacy programs typically are aimed at children and youth in elementary and high schools, although the term media literacy, as defined generally, could apply to persons of any age. This article considers the range and scope of media literacy conceptually and operationally while suggesting there is a case for media literacy for adults. The expanding concept of literacy in relationship to media platforms and technologies is considered, as are college-level and postcollege approaches. Benefits to individuals and society are considered along with potential barriers. The locus of responsibility for media literacy, it is argued, ought to be with educators, media industries, and other institutional interests—as well as individuals themselves.
The deletion of YLR042c improves ethanolic xylose fermentation by recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae

In a recent study combining transcriptome analyses of a number of recombinant laboratory and industrial S. cerevisiae strains with improved xylose utilization and their respective control strains, the ORF YLR042c was identified as a downregulated gene and it was shown that the gene deletion improved aerobic growth on xylose in the tested strain background. In the present study, the influence of deleting YLR042c on xylose fermentation was investigated in two different xylose‐fermenting strains: TMB3001, which expresses genes from the initial xylose catabolizing pathway, including heterologous xylose reductase (XR) and xylitol dehydrogenase (XDH) and endogenous xylulokinase (XK); and TMB3057, which, in addition to the initial xylose catabolizing pathway, overexpresses the endogenous genes encoding the non‐oxidative pentose phosphate pathway enzymes. The deletion of YLR042c led to improved aerobic growth on xylose in both strain backgrounds. However, the effect was more significant in the strain with the poorer growth rate on xylose (TMB3001). Under anaerobic conditions, the deletion of YLR042c increased the specific xylose consumption rate and the ethanol and xylitol yields. In strain TMB3057, xylose consumption was also improved at low concentrations and during co‐fermentation of xylose and glucose. The effect of the gene deletion and overexpression was also tested for different carbon sources. Altogether, these results suggest that YLR042c influences xylose and the assimilation of carbon sources other than glucose, and that the effect could be at the level of sugar transport or sugar signalling. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A fuzzy SERVAQUL model for evaluating service quality of service industry

The evaluation of service quality is an important issue in the service industry. The aim of this paper is to construct a fuzzy SERVQUAL method for evaluating the service quality of service industry. This assessment model is tested by a numerical example. The results show that this assessment model proposed in this paper seems to be promising.
Reinforcement learning for the soccer dribbling task

We propose a reinforcement learning solution to the soccer dribbling task, a scenario in which a soccer agent has to go from the beginning to the end of a region keeping possession of the ball, as an adversary attempts to gain possession. While the adversary uses a stationary policy, the dribbler learns the best action to take at each decision point. After defining meaningful variables to represent the state space, and high-level macro-actions to incorporate domain knowledge, we describe our application of the reinforcement learning algorithm Sarsa with CMAC for function approximation. Our experiments show that, after the training period, the dribbler is able to accomplish its task against a strong adversary around 58% of the time.
A Mixed Integer Linear Program for Airport Departure Scheduling

A mixed integer linear program is presented for deterministically scheduling departure aircraft at runways. The method addresses different schemes of managing the departure queuing area by treating it as first -in-first-out queues or as a simple parking area, wher e any available aircraft can take-off irrespective of its relative sequence with others. The method explicitly considers separation criteria between successive departures and also incorporates an optional prioritization scheme using time windows. Multiple objectives pertaining to throughput, system delay and maximum individual delay are used. Results indicate minimizing system delay alone improves throughput over a basic first -come-first-serve rule. Modifications for computational efficiency are also presented in the form of re-formulating certain constraints and defining additional inequalities for better bounds.
Operant Self-Stimulation of Dopamine Neurons in the Substantia Nigra

We examined the contribution of the nigrostriatal DA system to instrumental learning and behavior using optogenetics in awake, behaving mice. Using Cre-inducible channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) in mice expressing Cre recombinase driven by the tyrosine hydroxylase promoter (Th-Cre), we tested whether selective stimulation of DA neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNC), in the absence of any natural rewards, was sufficient to promote instrumental learning in naive mice. Mice expressing ChR2 in SNC DA neurons readily learned to press a lever to receive laser stimulation, but unlike natural food rewards the lever pressing did not decline with satiation. When the number of presses required to receive a stimulation was altered, mice adjusted their rate of pressing accordingly, suggesting that the rate of stimulation was a controlled variable. Moreover, extinction, i.e. the cessation of action-contingent stimulation, and the complete reversal of the relationship between action and outcome by the imposition of an omission contingency, rapidly abolished lever pressing. Together these results suggest that selective activation of SNC DA neurons can be sufficient for acquisition and maintenance of a new instrumental action.
Structure and Magnetic Properties of Thin Permalloy Films Near the “Transcritical” State

Various series of permalloy thin films were grown by dc-sputtering on Si (100) and glass substrates at room temperature and different argon pressure values using a Fe20 Ni80 target. The increase of argon pressure leads to a decrease of the Fe concentration in the films from 17 at. % to 15 at. %, an increase of the root mean square roughness of film surfaces, and a decrease of the sharpness of the crystalline texture of the samples. The increase of the film thickness leads to an increase of the coercive field. The transition to the "transcritical" state was observed at a critical thickness that decreases from 220 to 50 nm as the argon pressure in the chamber increases. This state was confirmed by the characteristic shapes of hysteresis loops, rotatable magnetic anisotropy, and the appearance of stripe domains.
On Concealed Data Aggregation for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we discuss algorithms that allow the concealed data aggregation (CDA) in wireless sensor networks. We describe and evaluate three algorithms that were reported to suit to the WSN scenario. As result of the evaluation, where we emphasize the awareness to potential attack scenarios, we present a brief overview of strengths and weaknesses of the algorithms. Since no algorithm provides all desirable goals, we propose two approaches to cope with the problems. The first is the successive combination of two algorithms. It increases security, while the additional efforts can be minimized by carefully selected parameters. For the second approach we face specific weaknesses and engineer mechanisms that solve the particular issues. With the considered homomorphic message authentication code and a discussion of the id-issue we exemplary evaluate the two biggest issues of the very promising CMT algorithm.
Crime and economic activity: a panel data approach

We use aggregate data from 42 police force areas to examine the relationship between economic factors and property crime. The change in unemployment is seen to impact positively on four types of criminal activity examined. A widening of the distribution of weekly earnings of full-time manual men (a measure of wage inequality) and increases in cars per capita (a measure of the availability of thievable property) lead to increases in crime. We also find evidence that increases in the size of the police force reduce property crime.