Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inbreeding variability and population structure in the invasive haplodiploid palm‐seed borer (Coccotrypes dactyliperda)

We investigated the mating system and population genetic structure of the invasive haplodiploid palm‐seed borer Coccotrypes dactyliperda in California. We focused on whether these primarily inbreeding beetles have a ‘mixed‐breeding’ system that includes occasional outbreeding, and whether local inbreeding coefficients (FIS) varied with dominant environmental factors. We also analysed the genetic structure of C. dactyliperda populations across local and regional scales. Based on the analysis of genetic variation at seven microsatellite loci in 1034 individual beetles from 59 populations, we found both high rates of inbreeding and plentiful evidence of mixed‐breeding. FIS ranged from −0.56 to 0.90, the highest variability reported within any animal species. There was a negative correlation between FIS and latitude, suggesting that some latitude‐associated factor affecting mating decisions influenced inbreeding rates. Multiple regressions suggested that precipitation, but not temperature, may be an important correlate. Finally, we found highly significant genetic differentiation among sites, even over short geographic distances (< 1000 m).
Computational Modelling in Behavioural Neuroscience : Closing the Gap Between Neurophysiology and Behaviour

Mavritsaki, Heinke, Preface. Graham, Cutsuridis, Dynamical Information Processing in the CA1 Microcircuit of the Hippocampus. Thorpe, Why Connectionist Models Need Spikes. Deco, Rolls, Stochastic Neuro-Dynamical Computation of Brain Functions. Humphreys, Mavritsaki, Allen, Heinke, Deco, Application of Neural Level Model to Human Visual Search: Modelling the Whole System Behaviour, Neuropsychological Break Down and Neural Signal Response. Heinke, Mavritsaki, Backhaus, Kreyling, The Selective Attention for Identification Model (SAIM): A Framework for Closing the Gap Between Behaviour and Neurological Level. Gurney, Computational Models in Neuroscience: From Membrane to Robots. Zhaoping, May, Koene, Some Finger Prints of V1 Mechanisms in the Bottom up Saliency for Visual Selection. Trappenberg, Decision Making and Population Decoding with Strongly Inhibitory Neural Field Models. Bullinaria, The Importance of Neurophysiological Constraints for Modelling the Emergence of Modularity. Ward, Ward, Selective Attention in Linked, Minimally Cognitive Agents. Kropff, Full Solution for the Storage of Correlated Memories in an Autoassociative Memory. Mozer, Wilder, A Unified Theory of Exogenous and Endogenous Attentional Control. Friston, Stephan, Kiebel, Free-Energy, Value and Neuronal Systems. Sloman, Architecture and Representation Requirements for Seeing Processes and Affordances. Heinke, Computational Modelling in Behavioural Neuroscience: Methodologies and Approaches - Minutes of Discussions at the Workshop in Birmingham, UK in May 2007
The Good Subject Motive and the Apprehensive Subject Motive: An Investigation of Their Relative Strengths

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The help and guidance of Drs. Marilynn Brewer and John Edwards in the preparation of this paper is deeply appreciated.
Further Experiments with Shallow Hybrid MT Systems

We describe our hybrid machine translation system which has been developed for and used in the WMT10 shared task. We compute translations from a rule-based MT system and combine the resulting translation "templates" with partial phrases from a state-of-the-art phrase-based, statistical MT engine. Phrase substitution is guided by several decision factors, a continuation of previous work within our group. For the shared task, we have computed translations for six language pairs including English, German, French and Spanish. Our experiments have shown that our shallow substitution approach can effectively improve the translation result from the RBMT system; however it has also become clear that a deeper integration is needed to further improve translation quality.
DS theory based fingerprint classifier fusion with update rule to minimize training time

This paper presents a novel fingerprint classifier fusion algorithm using Dempster-Shafer theory concomitant with update rule. The proposed algorithm accurately matches fingerprint evidences and also efficiently adapts to dynamically evolving database size without compromising accuracy or speed. We experimentally validate our approach using three fingerprint recognition algorithms based on minutiae, ridges, and image pattern features. The performance of our proposed algorithm is compared with these individual fingerprint algorithms and commonly used fusion algorithms. In all cases, the proposed Dempster Shafer theory with update rule outperforms existing algorithms even with partial fingerprint image. We also show that as the database size increases, the proposed algorithm is designed to operate on only the augmented data instead of the entire database, thereby reducing the training time without compromising the verification accuracy.
Preconditioning on Element Interfaces for the p-Version Finite Element Method and Spectral Element Method

In the preconditioned iterative method based on nonoverlapping domain decompositions, the preconditioner is usually of block diagonal type. To calculate its action on a residual vector, it is required to solve a linear system of algebraic equations with the coefficient matrix being the Schur complement block corresponding to the interface. To reduce the computational cost, the Schur complement blocks in the preconditioners can be replaced with other simpler matrices, which are called the interface preconditioners. In this paper, we discuss various interface preconditioners for the p-version finite element method and spectral element method in R2 and R3. Emphases are placed on (1) the lower and upper bounds of the condition numbers for the preconditioned Schur complement blocks using the interface preconditioners, which characterize the enlargement of the overall condition numbers, and (2) the algorithms to efficiently implement the interface preconditioners. Numerical results are presented for the condition numbers using various interface preconditioners.
Bow Hunter's stroke caused by a nondominant vertebral artery occlusion: case report.

OBJECTIVE AND IMPORTANCE Bow hunter's stroke is a consequence of vertebrobasilar insufficiency as a result of mechanical occlusion or stenosis of the vertebral artery at the C1-C2 level by head rotation. In most cases, a dominant vertebral artery is involved. No case of bow hunter's stroke as a result of mechanical occlusion of a nondominant vertebral artery has ever been reported. CLINICAL PRESENTATION We describe a rare case of Wallenberg's syndrome caused by occlusion of a nondominant vertebral artery induced by head rotation. The patient complained of vertigo and paresthesia of the left face and the right extremities when he rotated his head 45 degrees or more to the right. INTERVENTION Dynamic angiography revealed that the left vertebral artery was smaller than the right, terminated in a branch of the posteroinferior cerebellar artery, and was stretched and completely occluded at the C1-C2 level with the head rotated 45 degrees to the right. The right vertebral artery was normal when the head was rotated to either the right or the left. Three-dimensional enhanced computed tomography with the head rotated 45 degrees to the right revealed that the left vertebral artery was stretched and occluded by dislodgment between C1 and C2. Cerebral blood flow scintigraphy with head rotation demonstrated that blood flow was decreased in the lower portion of the left cerebellar hemisphere. C1-C2 posterior fixation was performed to prevent life-threatening neurological accidents. CONCLUSION We emphasize that the diagnosis of bow hunter's stroke should be based not only on angiographic findings but also on hemodynamic studies with head rotation.
Computational modeling predicts the ionic mechanism of late-onset responses in unipolar brush cells

Unipolar Brush Cells (UBCs) have been suggested to play a critical role in cerebellar functioning, yet the corresponding cellular mechanisms remain poorly understood. UBCs have recently been reported to generate, in addition to early-onset glutamate receptor-dependent synaptic responses, a late-onset response (LOR) composed of a slow depolarizing ramp followed by a spike burst (Locatelli et al., 2013). The LOR activates as a consequence of synaptic activity and involves an intracellular cascade modulating H- and TRP-current gating. In order to assess the LOR mechanisms, we have developed a UBC multi-compartmental model (including soma, dendrite, initial segment, and axon) incorporating biologically realistic representations of ionic currents and a cytoplasmic coupling mechanism regulating TRP and H channel gating. The model finely reproduced UBC responses to current injection, including a burst triggered by a low-threshold spike (LTS) sustained by CaLVA currents, a persistent discharge sustained by CaHVA currents, and a rebound burst following hyperpolarization sustained by H- and CaLVA-currents. Moreover, the model predicted that H- and TRP-current regulation was necessary and sufficient to generate the LOR and its dependence on the intensity and duration of mossy fiber activity. Therefore, the model showed that, using a basic set of ionic channels, UBCs generate a rich repertoire of bursts, which could effectively implement tunable delay-lines in the local microcircuit.
Exploiting nonstationarity for performance prediction

Real production applications ranging from enterprise applications to large e-commerce sites share a crucial but seldom-noted characteristic: The relative frequencies of transaction types in their workloads are nonstationary, i.e., the transaction mix changes over time. Accurately predicting application-level performance in business-critical production applications is an increasingly important problem. However, transaction mix nonstationarity casts doubt on the practical usefulness of prediction methods that ignore this phenomenon. This paper demonstrates that transaction mix nonstationarity enables a new approach to predicting application-level performance as a function of transaction mix. We exploit nonstationarity to circumvent the need for invasive instrumentation and controlled benchmarking during model calibration; our approach relies solely on lightweight passive measurements that are routinely collected in today's production environments. We evaluate predictive accuracy on two real business-critical production applications. The accuracy of our response time predictions ranges from 10% to 16% on these applications, and our models generalize well to workloads very different from those used for calibration. We apply our technique to the challenging problem of predicting the impact of application consolidation on transaction response times. We calibrate models of two testbed applications running on dedicated machines, then use the models to predict their performance when they run together on a shared machine and serve very different workloads. Our predictions are accurate to within 4% to 14%. Existing approaches to consolidation decision support predict post-consolidation resource utilizations. Our method allows application-level performance to guide consolidation decisions.
Unconventional Secretion of Tissue Transglutaminase Involves Phospholipid-Dependent Delivery into Recycling Endosomes

Although endosomal compartments have been suggested to play a role in unconventional protein secretion, there is scarce experimental evidence for such involvement. Here we report that recycling endosomes are essential for externalization of cytoplasmic secretory protein tissue transglutaminase (tTG). The de novo synthesized cytoplasmic tTG does not follow the classical ER/Golgi-dependent secretion pathway, but is targeted to perinuclear recycling endosomes, and is delivered inside these vesicles prior to externalization. On its route to the cell surface tTG interacts with internalized β1 integrins inside the recycling endosomes and is secreted as a complex with recycled β1 integrins. Inactivation of recycling endosomes, blocking endosome fusion with the plasma membrane, or downregulation of Rab11 GTPase that controls outbound trafficking of perinuclear recycling endosomes, all abrogate tTG secretion. The initial recruitment of cytoplasmic tTG to recycling endosomes and subsequent externalization depend on its binding to phosphoinositides on endosomal membranes. These findings begin to unravel the unconventional mechanism of tTG secretion which utilizes the long loop of endosomal recycling pathway and indicate involvement of endosomal trafficking in non-classical protein secretion.
Effects of Early Alcohol Exposure on Ocular Dominance Plasticity

EFFECTS OF EARLY ALCOHOL EXPOSURE ON OCULAR DOMINACNE PLASTICITY IN MICE By Crystal L. Lantz A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2012 Major Director: Alexandre E. Medina, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is the leading cause of mental retardation in the western world and is associated with numerous sensory processing deficits. Some of these deficits are a result of faulty neuronal plasticity. Previously our lab has used ferrets to demonstrate that alcohol exposure during the third trimester of human gestation results in impaired ocular dominance plasticity (ODP). Here we have extended this model to mice. Animals treated with 5 mg/kg of ethanol on postnatal days 5, 7 and 9, exhibit a lack of ODP plasticity after 10 days of monocular deprivation (MD) during the critical period of visual cortex plasticity, as seen by optical imaging of intrinsic signals. This deficit in ODP was rescued by a treatment with a phosphodiesterase type 1 inhibitor (PDEi1), vinpocetine. This rescue did not occur after treatment with a PDEi4 (rolipram) or a PDEi5 (vardenafil) inhibitor alone. Interestingly when these drugs were given concurrently, ODP was rescued. To further explore the effect of early alcohol exposure on ODP, we used Visually Evoked Potentials to examine the potentiation and depression components of ODP. Here we saw that although saline animals exhibited
Chemical and physical strategies in onychomycosis topical treatment: A review

&NA; Onychomycosis is a fungal infection of the fingernails or toenails caused by dermatophytes, nondermatophytes, moulds, and yeasts. This condition affects around 10‐30% people worldwide, negatively influencing patients' quality of life, with severe outcomes in some cases. Since the nail unit acts as a barrier to exogenous substances, its physiological features hampers drug penetration, turning the onychomycosis treatment a challenge. Currently, there are several oral and topical therapies available; nevertheless, cure rates are still low and relapse rates achieves 10‐53%. Also, serious side effects may be developed due to long‐term treatment. In light of these facts, researchers have focused on improving topical treatments, either by modifying the vehicle or by using some physical technique to improve drug delivery trough the nail plate, hence increasing therapy effectiveness. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explain these novel alternative approaches. First, the challenges for drug ungual penetration are presented. Then, the chemical and physical strategies developed for overcoming the barriers for drug penetration are discussed. We hope that the information gathered may be useful for the development of safer and more effective treatments for onychomycosis.
Possible Correlation between INR and Serum Calcium

Experimental and clinical studies have shown that long term anticoagulation therapy with warfarin can induce vascular calcification which is preventable by vitamin K. Osteoporosis has been shown to be associated with vascular calcification. In the present study, we wanted to see, whether INR (International Normalized Ratio), a measure of prothrombin time, and serum calcium (corrected by albumin) correlate in laboratory data of 94 anticoagulation patients on warfarin therapy. When adjusted on age and sex, there was an inverse correlation between the two variables. Clinical relevance of this observation and explanation of lowered calcium levels in blood parallel to increase in INR-values remain to be studied further.
Structural joins: a primitive for efficient XML query pattern matching

XML queries typically specify patterns of selection predicates on multiple elements that have some specified tree structured relationships. The primitive tree structured relationships are parent-child and ancestor-descendant, and finding all occurrences of these relationships in an XML database is a core operation for XML query processing. We develop two families of structural join algorithms for this task: tree-merge and stack-tree. The tree-merge algorithms are a natural extension of traditional merge joins and the multi-predicate merge joins, while the stack-tree algorithms have no counterpart in traditional relational join processing. We present experimental results on a range of data and queries using the TIMBER native XML query engine built on top of SHORE. We show that while, in some cases, tree-merge algorithms can have performance comparable to stack-tree algorithms, in many cases they are considerably worse. This behavior is explained by analytical results that demonstrate that, on sorted inputs, the stack-tree algorithms have worst-case I/O and CPU complexities linear in the sum of the sizes of inputs and output, while the tree-merge algorithms do not have the same guarantee.
Impact of Tourist Perceptions, Destination Image and Tourist Satisfaction on Destination Loyalty: A Conceptual Model

The objective this research paper is develops a destination loyalty theoretical model by using tourist perception, destination image and tourist satisfaction. These study analysis components, attributes, factor influencing the destination image and examine the tourist satisfaction and determinants of destination loyalty. This is a conceptual paper attempts at evaluating recent empirical on destination image, tourist satisfaction and loyalty. The conceptual framework model is developed on the basis of existing theoretical and empirical research in the field of destination marketing. The models include four constructs. Tourist Perception constructs has been influenced by factors like Historical and Cultural Attractions, Destination Affordability, Travel Environment, Natural Attractions, Entertainments and Infrastructure. Destination image construct has been influenced by factors like Infrastructure & Facilities, Heritage Attractions, Natural Made Attractions, Destination Safety & Cleanness, Friendly Local Community & Clam Atmosphere, Rejuvenation and Service Price and Affordability. The satisfaction construct has been influenced by factors like Entertainments, Destination Attractions and Atmosphere, Accommodation, Food, Transportation Services and Shopping. The destination loyalty construct has influenced by intentions to revisit, word of mouth promotion and recommending to others. The earlier study result reveals that tourist perception, destination image and tourist satisfaction directly influence destination loyalty. The outcomes of the study have significant managerial implications for destination marketing managers.
Loneliness in Childhood and Adolescence: Connections Among Loneliness, the Ability to Be Alone, and Peer Relationships in Young Children

Until recently, psychologists have neglected the issue of childhood loneliness, perhaps because, in part, of early theorists' assertions that loneliness does not become a viable experience until adolescence. Sullivan (1953), for example, described loneliness as a “phenomenon ordinarily encountered in preadolescence and afterward” (p. 261) when the need for intimacy in the context of a close friendship or “chumship” develops. Likewise, Weiss (1973) argued, “Loneliness proper becomes a possible experience only when, in adolescence, parents are relinquished as attachment figures” and the individual can identify “unsatisfactory friendly acquaintances” (p. 90). Recent investigations of children's understanding of loneliness, however, clearly challenge these ideas (Hymel et al., this volume), as children as young as 5 have been identified who are lonely (Cassidy & Asher, 1992; 1993). In fact, all but 7% of a sample of kindergarten and first-grade children studied by Cassidy and Asher (1992) were able to define loneliness as a basically negative state and could produce relevant responses when asked about the meaning of loneliness. Moreover, this ability varied as a function of sociometric status, as more popular children evinced greater complexity in their understanding of loneliness (Cassidy & Asher, 1993). Similar findings regarding children's basic understanding of loneliness have also emerged from studies involving third- through eighth-grade children (Hymel et al., this volume) and third- through sixth-grade children with and without mild mental retardation (Williams & Asher, 1992). These investigations document the existence of loneliness considerably earlier than Sullivan (1953) and Weiss (1973) originally claimed (see also Burgess et al., this volume).
Do Studies on Cortical Plasticity Provide a Rationale for Using Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation as a Treatment for Parkinson’s Disease Patients?

Animal models of Parkinson’s disease (PD) have shown that key mechanisms of cortical plasticity such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) can be impaired by the PD pathology. In humans protocols of non-invasive brain stimulation, such as paired associative stimulation (PAS) and theta-burst stimulation (TBS), can be used to investigate cortical plasticity of the primary motor cortex. Through the amplitude of the motor evoked potential these transcranial magnetic stimulation methods allow to measure both LTP-like and LTD-like mechanisms of cortical plasticity. So far these protocols have reported some controversial findings when tested in PD patients. While various studies described evidence for reduced LTP- and LTD-like plasticity, others showed different results, demonstrating increased LTP-like and normal LTD-like plasticity. Recent evidence provided support to the hypothesis that these different patterns of cortical plasticity likely depend on the stage of the disease and on the concomitant administration of l-DOPA. However, it is still unclear how and if these altered mechanisms of cortical plasticity can be taken as a reliable model to build appropriate protocols aimed at treating PD symptoms by applying repetitive sessions of repetitive TMS (rTMS) or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The current article will provide an up-to-date overview of these issues together with some reflections on future studies in the field.
Decentralized Optimization for Energy Saving of HVAC Systems

Improving the control strategy of building HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) systems can lead to significant energy savings while preserving human comfort requirements. This paper formulates the optimization problem to obtain the setpoints of control variables with the lowest HVAC system energy consumption. The optimization problem is nonlinear, strongly coupled, and has both discrete and continuous control variables. This paper proposes a decentralized optimization method to divide the HVAC system into multiple subsystems and then solve the subproblems based on the local information. Numerical results demonstrate that with limited knowledge of its neighbouring subsystems, each subsystem can achieve the local/global optimal solution of the original optimization problem. The method proposed in this paper has a broad application potential since it does not demand the global system knowledge.