Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defining pathways of loss and secretion of chemical messengers from astrocytes

It is becoming evident that glia, and astrocytes in particular, are intimately involved in neuronal signaling. Astrocytic modulation of signaling in neurons appears to be mediated by the release of neuroactive compounds such as the excitatory amino acid glutamate. Release of these transmitters appears to be driven by two different processes: (1) a volume regulatory response triggered by hypo‐osmotic conditions that leads to the release of osmotically active solutes from the cytoplasm into the extracellular space, and (2) intracellular calcium‐dependent vesicle‐mediated excytotic release. The regulatory volume decrease may be mediated by any of several different pathways that increase membrane permeability, thus allowing osmolytes to travel down their concentration gradient into the extracellular space. Such pathways include anion channels, hemichannels, P2X receptor channels, and transporters or multidrug resistance proteins. The excytotic release process may use calcium triggered synaptic like vesicle fusion or alterations in constitutive vesicle trafficking to the membrane. Determining the contribution of any of these release mechanisms requires agents that can be used to specifically block pathways of interest. Currently, many of the pharmacological compounds being used exhibit a great deal of cross‐reactivity between several of these pathways. For example, the popular anion channel inhibitor 5‐nitro‐2‐(3‐phenyl‐propylamino)benzoic acid (NPPB) is an efficient blocker of both hemichannels and vesicle loading. This demonstrates the need to more fully characterize the activities of the agents currently available and to choose pathway blockers carefully when designing experiments. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Qserv: A distributed shared-nothing database for the LSST catalog

The LSST project will provide public access to a database catalog that, in its final year, is estimated to include 26 billion stars and galaxies in dozens of trillion detections in multiple petabytes. Because we are not aware of an existing open-source database implementation that has been demonstrated to efficiently satisfy astronomers' spatial self-joining and cross-matching queries at this scale, we have implemented Qserv, a distributed shared-nothing SQL database query system. To speed development, Qserv relies on two successful open-source software packages: the MySQL RDBMS and the Xrootd distributed file system. We describe Qserv's design, architecture, and ability to scale to LSST's data requirements. We illustrate its potential with test results on a 150-node cluster using 55 billion rows and 30 terabytes of simulated data. These results demonstrate the soundness of Qserv's approach and the scale it achieves on today's hardware.
Dosimetric assessment of an exposure system for simulating GSM and WCDMA mobile phone usage

An exposure system for investigation of volunteers during simulated GSM and WCDMA mobile phone usage has been designed. The apparatus consists of a dual band antenna with enhanced carrying properties that enables exposure for at least 8 h a day. For GSM a 900 MHz pulse modulated carrier was used. The QPSK modulated WCDMA signal at 1966 MHz comprises a power control scheme, which was designed for investigations of biological effects. The dosimetry of the exposure system by measurements and calculations is described in detail within this paper. It is shown that the SAR distribution of the antenna shows similar characteristics to mobile phones with an integrated antenna. The 10 g averaged localized SAR, normalized to an antenna input power of 1 W and measured in the flat phantom area of the SAM phantom, amounts to 7.82 mW/g (900 MHz) and 10.98 mW/g (1966 MHz). The simulated SAR10g in the Visible Human head model agrees with measured values to within 20%. A variation of the antenna rotation angle results in an SAR10g change below 17%. The increase of the antenna distance by 2 mm with respect to the human head leads to an SAR10g change of 9%. Bioelectromagnetics 27:320–327, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Verification-Centric Realization of Electronic Vote Counting

Activist computer scientists, including some of the authors of this paper, have been working against the adoption by governments of commercial, proprietary, insecure, poorly designed and implemented voting systems the world-over. And, while we mainly work to accomplish our goals by educating citizens and communicating with the press, we also must propose solutions to the problems of trustworthy e-voting. If a computer-based voting system is to ever be adopted, that system must be demonstrably of extremely high quality. This paper discusses a methodology and a set of tools we have used to implement a vote counting plugin, for an experimental computer-based voting system using applied formal methods.
The Melting Pot Revisited: Hispanic Density and Economic Achievement in American Metropolitan Regions

Hispanics are poised to become the nation’s largest minority. Their growth is well documented, as are persistent inequalities that prevent their full integration into American society. Studies of Latinos tend to focus on metropolitan regions with high Hispanic density, creating the impression of a uniform profile for the group. That leaves open the question of whether the Latino experience is similar in other parts of the country. A close look at data from 100 midsized American metropolitan regions indicates that, as education and employment opportunities become available to a small segment of Hispanics, their economic achievement follows a different pattern. In areas of low Hispanic density, Latinos fare much better on a number of economic predictors. The price for their success, however, may be one of low cultural visibility and partial success. Despite higher levels of educational attainment and employment, they are still unable to reach parity with the majority in economic rewards.
The Music Contest Steps Off in a New Direction

Joe Smith is a typical high school choral director. He works conscientiously to bring about the best possible singing by his students. Especially important to him are the ratings his groups earn each spring in the district and state contests and festivals. The ratings are valuable not primarily because of the comments the adjudicators write on the evaluation forms: h e is already aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his groups before they go to contest. What makes a contest rating significant to him is the fact that it is made public. Each year the state magazine for music teachers publishes everyone’s ratings, and the students tell parents, teachers, and other students what rating they received. Eventually the school board and the administrators hear about the rating. It is the only evaluation of Joe’s teaching that is made public, so it is only natural for him to do all he can to make sure the evaluation is favorable. Because he is eager to do well in the contests and festivals and because his organizations present several other public performances during the year, Joe spends practically all his rehearsals teaching pieces of music for performance. When he has time to think about it [which isn’t often), h e wishes h e could teach his students something in addition to singing-a little practical theory, basic ear training, some study of music styles,
The Use of a Noninvasive Hemoglobin Monitor for Volume Kinetic Analysis in an Emergency Room Setting

BACKGROUND:Distribution and clearance of an infused bolus can be studied by repetitive sampling of invasive total hemoglobin (tHb) using volume kinetic equations. Pulse CO-oximetry, a recent advancement in patient monitoring that allows for the continuous and noninvasive estimation of hemoglobin concentration (SpHb), would greatly facilitate the scientific and clinical use of the volume kinetic parameters. In the present study, we examined whether serial measurements of SpHb in an emergency room setting can be used to calculate distribution volume (V) and clearance (Cl) rate of an infused bolus. METHODS:This was a prospective, observational study of patients in 2 age groups admitted for various reasons to the emergency room of a tertiary care center. IV catheters were placed in both arms of the subjects to induce plasma volume expansion by infusion of a buffered crystalloid glucose solution and for withdrawing venous blood samples for analysis of tHb at 0, 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 minutes after start of infusion. During these interventions, subjects were simultaneously monitored by pulse CO-oximetry for measurement of SpHb (Masimo Radical-7, Rev E ReSposable Sensor). Bias, precision, and limits of agreement were calculated in Bland-Altman plots to compare the accuracy of SpHb with invasive tHb measurements. Using volume kinetic (pharmacokinetics for fluids) equations, V and Cl were determined. RESULTS:Thirty patients (14 from the young group with a mean age of 30 years, and 16 from the geriatric group with mean age of 84 years) were enrolled in the study. When all data were included, this yielded 242 data pairs with a bias of −0.47 (95% confidence interval, −0.62 to −0.32) between SpHb and tHb. However, 5 patients were omitted because of low quality signals, leaving 193 hemoglobin data pairs for further analysis. Bias was then −0.24 (95% confidence interval, −0.39 to −0.09). The biases show that the device on average slightly underestimates tHb values. The precision of SpHb decreases when the low signal quality indicator is present. For the 27 subjects for whom the V and Cl were calculated, there were no significant differences in the estimation of the distribution volumes using either tHb or SpHb values. Clearance constants were also estimated, but with less accuracy. CONCLUSIONS:Our data show that SpHb by pulse CO-oximetry may be used to calculate volume of distribution in an emergency room setting.
Relativity of Judgements about Sound Amplitude and the Asymmetry of the Same-Different ROC

The problem of deciding whether two things are the same or different in magnitude can be solved by judging one magnitude relative to the other, or by making absolute judgements about the magnitude of each. The shape of the resulting receiver operating characteristic depends on which solution is adopted. In order to obtain empirical receiver operating characteristics, we therefore had subjects rate their confidence that two tone amplitudes were the same or different. Four subjects each made 500 ratings of three differences in amplitude. The asymmetry in the obtained characteristics indicated that subjects made relative rather than absolute judgements of the amplitudes, despite the fact that making absolute judgements would lead to better performance on the task.
Emerging Problems in Digital Evidence

Evidence from computers has been used in legal proceedings as long as computers have been in service. Mostly, this appears to be a success story: many sorts of crimes, not just those with an obvious 'cyber' label, that have somehow during their commission left traces in digital form are routinely successfully prosecuted. Technicians and law enforcement officers have developed techniques and protocols for the preservation, analysis and presentation of certain forms of digital evidence. 'Computer forensics' has become an established set of disciplines. A community of vendors and consultants provide specialist products and services, sometimes of remarkable quality.
Evolutionary neural networks for anomaly detection based on the behavior of a program

The process of learning the behavior of a given program by using machine-learning techniques (based on system-call audit data) is effective to detect intrusions. Rule learning, neural networks, statistics, and hidden Markov models (HMMs) are some of the kinds of representative methods for intrusion detection. Among them, neural networks are known for good performance in learning system-call sequences. In order to apply this knowledge to real-world problems successfully, it is important to determine the structures and weights of these call sequences. However, finding the appropriate structures requires very long time periods because there are no suitable analytical solutions. In this paper, a novel intrusion-detection technique based on evolutionary neural networks (ENNs) is proposed. One advantage of using ENNs is that it takes less time to obtain superior neural networks than when using conventional approaches. This is because they discover the structures and weights of the neural networks simultaneously. Experimental results with the 1999 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Intrusion Detection Evaluation (IDEVAL) data confirm that ENNs are promising tools for intrusion detection.
Rapid genetic and morphologic divergence between captive and wild populations of the endangered Leon Springs pupfish, Cyprinodon bovinus

The Leon Springs pupfish (Cyprinodon bovinus) is an endangered species currently restricted to a single desert spring and a separate captive habitat in southwestern North America. Following establishment of the captive population from wild stock in 1976, the wild population has undergone natural population size fluctuations, intentional culling to purge genetic contamination from an invasive congener (Cyprinodon variegatus) and augmentation/replacement of wild fish from the captive stock. A severe population decline following the most recent introduction of captive fish prompted us to examine whether the captive and wild populations have differentiated during the short time they have been isolated from one another. If so, the development of divergent genetic and/or morphologic traits between populations could contribute to a diminished ability of fish from one location to thrive in the other. Examination of genomewide single nucleotide polymorphisms and morphologic variation revealed no evidence of residual C. variegatus characteristics in contemporary C. bovinus samples. However, significant genetic and morphologic differentiation was detected between the wild and captive populations, some of which might reflect local adaptation. Our results indicate that genetic and physical characteristics can diverge rapidly between isolated subdivisions of managed populations, potentially compromising the value of captive stock for future supplementation efforts. In the case of C. bovinus, our findings underscore the need to periodically inoculate the captive population with wild genetic material to help mitigate genetic, and potentially morphologic, divergence between them and also highlight the utility of parallel morphologic and genomic evaluation to inform conservation management planning.
$L^p$ estimates for angular maximal functions associated with Stieltjes and Laplace transforms

Maximal angular operator sends a function defined in a sector of the complex plane to a Maximal angular operator sends a function defined in a sector of the complex plane with vertex at 0 to the function of modulus obtained by maximizing over argument. Compositions of the so defined maximal angular operator (in suitable sectors) with the Poisson, Stieltjes and Laplace transforms are shown to be bounded (nonlinear) operators from $L^p$ to $L^q$ for the same values of $p$ and $q$ as their standard counterparts.
Language-Model Assisted Brain Computer Interface for Typing: A Comparison of Matrix and Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

Noninvasive electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) popularly utilize event-related potential (ERP) for intent detection. Specifically, for EEG-based BCI typing systems, different symbol presentation paradigms have been utilized to induce ERPs. In this manuscript, through an experimental study, we assess the speed, recorded signal quality, and system accuracy of a language-model-assisted BCI typing system using three different presentation paradigms: a 4 × 7 matrix paradigm of a 28-character alphabet with row-column presentation (RCP) and single-character presentation (SCP), and rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of the same. Our analyses show that signal quality and classification accuracy are comparable between the two visual stimulus presentation paradigms. In addition, we observe that while the matrix-based paradigm can be generally employed with lower inter-trial-interval (ITI) values, the best presentation paradigm and ITI value configuration is user dependent. This potentially warrants offering both presentation paradigms and variable ITI options to users of BCI typing systems.
Perceptions of anti-smoking public health campaigns among people with psychotic disorders

Background. Among marginalised populations, such as people with psychotic disorders, smoking prevalence rates remain much higher than in the general population. Anti-smoking campaigns conducted in Australia have been found to be associated with change in smoking behaviour and attitudes in the general population. However, no previous research has examined the effectiveness of these campaigns among people with mental disorders, like psychotic disorders. Aims. This study aimed to gain an understanding of how people with psychotic disorders perceive anti-smoking campaigns by examining knowledge of tobacco, exposure, acceptability and attitudes regarding anti-smoking campaigns. Method. A mixed method design was employed in which both quantitative and qualitative data were elicited. Eighty-nine participants with a diagnosed psychotic disorder completed a self-report assessment battery; eight of whom also completed semi-structured telephone interviews which were then analysed via interpretative phenomenological .
Visyllable Based Speech Animation

Visemes are visual counterpart of phonemes. Traditionally, the speech animation of 3D synthetic faces involvesextraction of visemes from input speech followed by the application of co‐articulation rules to generate realisticanimation. In this paper, we take a novel approach for speech animation — using visyllables, the visual counterpartof syllables. The approach results into a concatenative visyllable based speech animation system. The key contributionof this paper lies in two main areas. Firstly, we define a set of visyllable units for spoken English along withthe associated phonological rules for valid syllables. Based on these rules, we have implemented a syllabificationalgorithm that allows segmentation of a given phoneme stream into syllables and subsequently visyllables. Secondly,we have recorded the database of visyllables using a facial motion capture system. The recorded visyllableunits are post‐processed semi‐automatically to ensure continuity at the vowel boundaries of the visyllables. We defineeach visyllable in terms of the Facial Movement Parameters (FMP). The FMPs are obtained as a result of thestatistical analysis of the facial motion capture data. The FMPs allow a compact representation of the visyllables.Further, the FMPs also facilitate the formulation of rules for boundary matching and smoothing after concatenatingthe visyllables units. Ours is the first visyllable based speech animation system. The proposed technique iseasy to implement, effective for real‐time as well as non real‐time applications and results into realistic speechanimation.
Delay-throughput performance in mobile ad-hoc networks with heterogeneous nodes

In this paper, we analyze asymptotic delay-throughput performance of mobile ad-hoc networks comprising heterogeneous nodes with restricted mobility. In particular, we consider a scenario in which each node moves around one or more home-points (in a finite number) randomly placed over the area. For such restricted mobility model, we propose a new class of scheduling and routing schemes, which significantly outperforms all delay-throughput results previously obtained.
Towards Automated Component Compatibility Assessment ∗

With the increasing use of software components, the methods for safe replacement of currently used components by newer versions will become of greater importance. While component specification and application composition issues have been researched, working approaches to assess compatibility of different components are hard to find. In this paper we define compatibility at two levels, of which contextual compatibility takes into account the actual usage of the component as bound in an assembled application. The presented method for determining compatibility of two components uses analysis of differences in their specifications structured into traits of related declarations.
Global Workspace Dynamics: Cortical “Binding and Propagation” Enables Conscious Contents

A global workspace (GW) is a functional hub of binding and propagation in a population of loosely coupled signaling elements. In computational applications, GW architectures recruit many distributed, specialized agents to cooperate in resolving focal ambiguities. In the brain, conscious experiences may reflect a GW function. For animals, the natural world is full of unpredictable dangers and opportunities, suggesting a general adaptive pressure for brains to resolve focal ambiguities quickly and accurately. GW theory aims to understand the differences between conscious and unconscious brain events. In humans and related species the cortico-thalamic (C-T) core is believed to underlie conscious aspects of perception, thinking, learning, feelings of knowing (FOK), felt emotions, visual imagery, working memory, and executive control. Alternative theoretical perspectives are also discussed. The C-T core has many anatomical hubs, but conscious percepts are unitary and internally consistent at any given moment. Over time, conscious contents constitute a very large, open set. This suggests that a brain-based GW capacity cannot be localized in a single anatomical hub. Rather, it should be sought in a functional hub – a dynamic capacity for binding and propagation of neural signals over multiple task-related networks, a kind of neuronal cloud computing. In this view, conscious contents can arise in any region of the C-T core when multiple input streams settle on a winner-take-all equilibrium. The resulting conscious gestalt may ignite an any-to-many broadcast, lasting ∼100–200 ms, and trigger widespread adaptation in previously established networks. To account for the great range of conscious contents over time, the theory suggests an open repertoire of binding1 coalitions that can broadcast via theta/gamma or alpha/gamma phase coupling, like radio channels competing for a narrow frequency band. Conscious moments are thought to hold only 1–4 unrelated items; this small focal capacity may be the biological price to pay for global access. Visuotopic maps in cortex specialize in features like color, retinal size, motion, object identity, and egocentric/allocentric framing, so that a binding coalition for the sight of a rolling billiard ball in nearby space may resonate among activity maps of LGN, V1-V4, MT, IT, as well as the dorsal stream. Spatiotopic activity maps can bind into coherent gestalts using adaptive resonance (reentry). Single neurons can join a dominant coalition by phase tuning to regional oscillations in the 4–12 Hz range. Sensory percepts may bind and broadcast from posterior cortex, while non-sensory FOKs may involve prefrontal and frontotemporal areas. The anatomy and physiology of the hippocampal complex suggest a GW architecture as well. In the intact brain the hippocampal complex may support conscious event organization as well as episodic memory storage.