Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organization of synaptic transmission in the mammalian solitary complex, studied in vitro.

1. Synaptic transmission and neuronal morphology were studied in the nucleus tractus solitarius and in the dorsal vagal motor nucleus (solitary complex), in coronal brain‐stem slices of rat or cat, superfused in vitro. 2. Electrical stimulation of afferent fibres of the solitary tract evoked two different types of post‐synaptic response recorded intracellularly in different solitary complex neurones. Labelling with horseradish peroxidase showed that these two sorts of orthodromically evoked responses were correlated with different post‐synaptic neuronal morphologies. 3. The majority of recorded neurones (n = 93) showed a prolonged reduction in excitability following the initial solitary‐tract‐evoked excitatory post‐synaptic potential (e.p.s.p.). A smaller number of neurones (n = 53) showed a prolonged increase in excitability following solitary tract stimulation. In no case did the solitary tract stimulation induce a burst of action potentials at high frequency. 4. The time‐to‐peak and the half‐width of the initial solitary‐tract‐evoked e.p.s.p. were shorter in neurones with prolonged increased excitability than in those with prolonged reduced excitability. In neurones with prolonged reduced excitability, this e.p.s.p. was followed by a hyperpolarization lasting 60‐100 ms. The latency of this inhibitory post‐synaptic potential (i.p.s.p.) was 3‐5 ms longer than that of the initial e.p.s.p. and its reversal potential was 10 mV more negative than the reversal potential of the response measured following application of gamma‐aminobutyric acid or glycine. In neurones with prolonged increased excitability, at a membrane potential of ‐40 to ‐50 mV, the initial solitary tract e.p.s.p. was followed by a prolonged depolarization lasting 100‐400 ms. 5. Background synaptic activity was high in neurones with prolonged increased excitability, consisting of unitary e.p.s.p.s with an amplitude of more than 0.8 mV. This activity was increased for a period of 300‐800 ms following solitary tract stimulation. Spontaneous excitatory potentials of more than 0.5 mV were not seen in neurones with prolonged reduced excitability. In these neurones, after intracellular injection of choride ions, reversed unitary i.p.s.p.s formed a background activity which was increased following stimulation of the solitary tract. 6. Neurones with prolonged reduced excitability were found in the medial, ventral and ventrolateral part of the nucleus tractus solitarius and in the dorsal vagal motor nucleus where they were identified by their antidromic response to stimulation ventral and lateral to the tractus solitarius. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
A hybrid range-free localization scheme in wireless sensor networks work in progress

The localization information of each node in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is of vital importance to most location-aware applications. In this paper, a hybrid range-free localization scheme is proposed by adopting DV-Hop and weighted Centroid localization schemes. The nodes in the sensor network are firstly grouped into clusters, and then Weighted Centroid localization scheme is employed to achieve the location of most sensor nodes in each cluster. Finally, location of "undetermined" nodes is computed by using DV-Hop. The proposed localization algorithm achieves a balance between cost and accuracy, while yielding an acceptable accuracy and obtaining the scalability of sensor networks. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm performs well under the condition that comparatively high density of anchor nodes are deployed.
The Use of Thymidylate Synthase Inhibitors in the Treatment of Advanced Colorectal Cancer: Current Status

The combination of 5‐fluorouracil (5‐FU) and leucovorin has been the unofficial “standard” therapy for patients with colorectal cancer for over a decade. Recently, however, a number of new agents targeted against the enzyme thymidylate synthase have been synthesized and are in various stages of development. The currently available thymidylate synthase inhibitors are discussed.
Does screening high school students for psychological distress, deliberate self-harm, or suicidal ideation cause distress--and is it acceptable? An Australian-based study.

BACKGROUND Programs designed to detect students at risk of depression and suicidality have shown success (Shaffer et al., 2004). AIMS The current study sought to examine whether or not such a program was acceptable to participants and whether or not it caused distress. METHODS Participants were boys aged 14 to 16. Participants were assessed using an on-line questionnaire; acceptability was measured via postal questionnaire. RESULTS Of 272 participants, 31 (11.4%) were considered at-risk; 13 required ongoing support, 8 of whom had not previously sought help. Overall screening did not appear to cause significant undue distress, although some differences were evident between at-risk and not at-risk students. All participants found the program acceptable. CONCLUSIONS When conducted carefully, early detection programs can be an effective and acceptable method of identifying at-risk adolescents.
Efficiency and cytotoxicity analysis of cationic lipids-mediated gene transfection into AGS gastric cancer cells

Abstract In this effort, we provided comparative study on optimization of transfection conditions for AGS human gastric cancer cell line using two commercial non-liposomal cationic lipids. Using reporter vector pEGFP-N1, transfection efficiency of Attractene™ and X-tremeGENE HP™ transfection reagents in terms of cell densities and DNA/reagent ratios was determined in AGS cells by flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy. In addition, influence of transfection reagents on direct cytotoxicity and cell viability was respectively, measured using lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) leakage and MTT assays. Provided that the transfection rate of 29% and the mean fluorescence intensity of 437.5, the DNA/reagent ratio of 0.4/1.5 was selected as the optimal condition using Attractene™, whereas the optimum condition using X-tremeGENE HP™ was obtained by the ratio of 1/2 with a higher transfection rate of 36.9% and an MFI of 833. Very low direct cytotoxicity (<5% and 6–9% using Attractene™ and X-tremeGENE HP™, respectively) and high cell viability (74.5–95.5% versus 68–75%) showed the biodegradable attribute for both transfection reagents. Altogether, X-tremeGENE HP™ exhibited superiority over Attractene™ as a transfection reagent for AGS cells. In the present research, we have established the optimized protocols for efficient transfection of AGS cells with potential applications in gene function and expression studies as well as gene therapy.
PathRec: Visual Analysis of Travel Route Recommendations

We present an interactive visualisation tool for recommending travel trajectories. This system is based on new machine learning formulations and algorithms for the sequence recommendation problem. The system starts from a map-based overview, taking an interactive query as starting point. It then breaks down contributions from different geographical and user behavior features, and those from individual points-of-interest versus pairs of consecutive points on a route. The system also supports detailed quantitative interrogation by comparing a large number of features for multiple points. Effective trajectory visualisations can potentially benefit a large cohort of online map users and assist their decision-making. More broadly, the design of this system can inform visualisations of other structured prediction tasks, such as for sequences or trees.
Benchmark comparison of computing the Mandelbrot set in OpenCL

Computing the fractals can be time consuming if processed in sequential manner. Computing the fractals is iterative process so it can easily be transformed to run in parallel fashion. Since OpenCL supports parallel execution of code on both CPU and/or GPU, benchmarking and comparison the computation of Madelbrot by using OpenCL, can give insight on the speedup that modern parallel architectures have to offer. Results of these benchmarks and comparsions are given in this paper.
Errors in Conventional and Input‐Output—based Life—Cycle Inventories

Conventional process‐analysis‐type techniques for compiling life‐cycle inventories suffer from a truncation error, which is caused by the omission of resource requirements or pollutant releases of higher‐order upstream stages of the production process. The magnitude of this truncation error varies with the type of product or process considered, but can be on the order of 50%. One way to avoid such significant errors is to incorporate input‐output analysis into the assessment framework, resulting in a hybrid life‐cycle inventory method. Using Monte‐Carlo simulations, it can be shown that uncertainties of input‐output– based life‐cycle assessments are often lower than truncation errors in even extensive, third‐order process analyses.
Crystallization and preliminary analysis of enzyme‐substrate complexes of pyruvate kinase from rabbit muscle

Pyruvate kinase from rabbit muscle has been crystallized in a form suitable for high resolution X‐ray analysis. Complexes of the enzyme with Mn2+ and either pyruvate or oxalate crystallize from solutions of polyethyleneglycol 8000 at pH 6.0. Crystals obtained from solutions of the complexes with pyruvate or oxalate appear isomorphous and belong to the triclinic space group P1. The crystals have unit cell dimensions a = 83.3(4) Å, b = 109.4(6) Å, c = 145.7(7) Å, α = 94.9°, β = 93.6°, γ = 112.2°. These crystals diffract to better than 2.4 Å resolution and are stable in the X‐ray beam for at least 20 hr. Electron paramagnetic resonance measurements on a single crystal show that Mn2+ is bound to the crystalline protein.
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FOUR MACULAR INTRARETINAL LAYER THICKNESSES IN SYMPTOMATIC AND ASYMPTOMATIC CARRIERS OF G11778A MUTATION WITH LEBER'S HEREDITARY OPTIC NEUROPATHY

Purpose: To characterize by spectral domain optical coherence tomography the three-dimensional thicknesses of four macular intraretinal layers in symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers of G11778A mutation with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy. Methods: Twenty-five eyes (7 symptomatic eyes and 18 asymptomatic eyes) of patients with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy from one Chinese family and 16 normal eyes were enrolled. Macular radial scans by spectral domain optical coherence tomography and custom software produced intraretinal three-dimensional thickness maps. The macula was divided into nine regions, and each region included four intraretinal layers: nerve fiber layer, ganglion cell layer and inner plexiform layer, inner nuclear layer and outer plexiform layer, and the outer retinal layer. Results: Nerve fiber layer in the symptomatic eyes was significantly thinner than in normal eyes for most of the macular regions; however in the asymptomatic eyes, it was increased in three regions. Ganglion cell layer and inner plexiform layers in all regions of symptomatic eyes were significant thinner than in asymptomatic eyes and controls. Inner nuclear layer and outer plexiform layers in six regions of symptomatic and asymptomatic eyes were significantly thicker than in controls. The outer retinal layer of asymptomatic eyes was thicker than in most control regions. Conclusion: Intraretinal thickness changes in asymptomatic patients could be prodromal events that indicate the imminent conversion to symptomatic patients with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy.
Information Leakage in Innovation Outsourcing

This paper studies an R&D outsourcing contract between a firm and a contractor, considering the possibility that in the interim stage, the contractor might sell the innovation to a rival firm. Our result points out that due to the competition in the interim stage, the reward needed to prevent leakage will be pushed up to the extent that a profitable leakage-free contract does not exist. This result will also apply to cases considering revenue-sharing schemes and a disclosure punishment for commercial theft. Then, we demonstrate that in a competitive mechanism where the R&D firm hires two contractors together with a relative performance scheme, the disclosure punishment might help and there exists a perfect Bayesian Nash equilibrium where the probability of information leakage is lower and the equilibrium reward is also cheaper than hiring one contractor.
Accounting Change in Central Government

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Royal Treasury, Portugal, on its establishment in 1761 and the factors contributing to this development. The Royal Treasury was the first central government organization in Portugal to adopt double entry bookkeeping and was a crucial first step in the institutionalisation of the technique in Portuguese public administration. Design/methodology/approach - Set firmly in the archive, this paper adopts new institutional sociology (NIS) to inform the findings of the local, time-specific accounting policy and practice at the Portuguese Royal Treasury. Findings - Embedded within the broader European context, this study identifies the key pressures exerted upon the Royal Treasury on its formation in 1761, which resulted in major accounting change within Portuguese central government from that date. The study provides further evidence of the importance of the state in the institutionalization of accounting practices by means of coercive pressures and highlights for Portugal the importance of individual actors who, as powerful change agents, made key decisions that influenced accounting change. Originality/value - This study examines a major instance of accounting change in European central government and broadens the application of NIS in accounting history research to a different country – Portugal – and to a different time – the eighteenth century. It also serves to illuminate the difficulties of collecting pertinent evidence pertaining to this long-dated time period in identifying certain forms of institutional pressures.
New implementation for the scalable LDPC-decoders

Trellis decoding of regular and irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes and the corresponding decoder architectures are considered. Moreover, we propose a new approach for computing reliability metrics based on the BCJR algorithm that reduces the message switching activity in the decoder compared to existing approaches. The trellis decoding schedule is employed to decode LDPC codes using constituent soft-input soft-output (SISO) decoders that communicate through interleavers. The proposed tunable schedule exhibits a faster convergence behavior (up to 50% fewer iterations), and hence lower decoding latency, than the commonly employed two-phase schedule, and the corresponding decoder architecture has a significantly reduced memory requirement. Improvement in decoding gain (up to an order of magnitude for moderate-to-high SNR and small number of iterations) is achieved and structural regularity features in the form of permutation matrices further reduce interconnect complexity and improve decoding throughput.
Antimicrobial Activity and Chemical Composition of Senecio Sandrasicus on Antibiotic Resistant Staphylococci

The antimicrobial activity of hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and ethanol extracts of the aerial parts of S. sandrasicus P.H. Davis (Asteraceae), endemic to Sandras mountain (Turkey), were determined. The antimicrobial activity of the extracts on microorganisms including multi-resistant staphylococci were evaluated using the disc diffusion method. The strains of multi-resistant staphylococci and the other standart bacteria were inhibited by some extracts. The volatile organic compouds of S. sandrasicus was determined by Gas Chromatography (GC) and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). The major compounds of hexane extract were aromadendrene oxide 2 (13.3%), spathulenol (12.5%) and β-caryophylene (11.8%), respectively.
Freemasonry and Business Networking During the Victorian Period

This article looks at the role of Freemasonry in socio-economic networking in Cornwall during the late nineteenth century. It demonstrates that, like many other fraternities, Masonry created efficient conduits for the exchange of business information and reinforced a pro-business culture. Particular attention is given to its role in facilitating the migration of Cornish miners and mine managers and in creating structures for national and international information flows. Masonry is shown to have the unusual potential to bridge wide occupational, social, and cultural divisions, and the sources for further, wider ranging research are indicated.
Contributions by Federal Trade Commission Economists to Consumer Protection: Research, Policy, and Law Enforcement

Imust begin by thanking William (“Bill”) Wilkie for inviting me to share my perspective on the role of economists at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in advancing consumer protection policy. Professor Wilkie has long advocated for the preservation of FTC history, with the hope that future researchers will learn from and build on prior work. I share this goal; I know how easy it is for a generation of scholars to be unaware of what has preceded them because I was once like them. There is a significant potential for losing knowledge related to public policy—in part because much of the analy sis within government entities is nonpublic and in part because public reports do not always find homes in the aca demic literature. Moreover, even published research can be lost over time if it appears in a stream of research over looked by newer scholars from different disciplines. Indeed, a new PhD economist working in behavioral economics recently asked me if we at the FTC had ever considered that information disclosures may not work as intended. At that moment, I realized that I had failed because decades of work at the FTC on this issue had not made its way to the next generation of policy researchers. My goal in this essay is to provide readers with a rough road map of consumer protection economics at the FTC. After providing some insight into my perspective in con structing this road map, I describe the history of the Division of Consumer Protection (DCP) within the FTC’s Bureau of Economics (BE) and the current role of econo mists in the division. I then highlight some key contribu tions by FTC economists to the conceptual and empirical development of consumer protection economics, the advancement of consumer policy analysis, and support of
Assessing physical activity using wearable monitors: measures of physical activity.

BACKGROUND Physical activity may be defined broadly as "all bodily actions produced by the contraction of skeletal muscle that increase energy expenditure above basal level. " Physical activity is a complex construct that can be classified into major categories qualitatively, quantitatively, or contextually. The quantitative assessment of physical activity using wearable monitors is grounded in the measurement of energy expenditure. Six main categories of wearable monitors are currently available to investigators: pedometers, load transducers/foot-contact monitors, accelerometers, HR monitors, combined accelerometer and HR monitors, and multiple sensor systems. BEST PRACTICES Currently available monitors are capable of measuring total physical activity as well as components of physical activity that play important roles in human health. The selection of wearable monitors for measuring physical activity will depend on the physical activity component of interest, study objectives, characteristics of the target population, and study feasibility in terms of cost and logistics. FUTURE DIRECTIONS Future development of sensors and analytical techniques for assessing physical activity should focus on the dynamic ranges of sensors, comparability for sensor output across manufacturers, and the application of advanced modeling techniques to predict energy expenditure and classify physical activities. New approaches for qualitatively classifying physical activity should be validated using direct observation or recording. New sensors and methods for quantitatively assessing physical activity should be validated in laboratory and free-living populations using criterion methods of calorimetry or doubly labeled water.
Designing a cognitive radio with enhancement in throughput and improved spectrum sensing technique

An important advantage of cognitive radio is its ability to use the licensed frequency spectrum which is being utilized by the primary users. CR has two major roles viz. sensing and throughput optimization. In contrary to conventional methods of sensing viz. cyclostationarity, matched filter detection, maximum to minimum eigen value method etc., spectrum sensing has been improved by implementing Peak vs Average Power Ratio of the received signal in energy detection in the presentation. It has the additional advantages that prior information of the license user is not required and it is free from noise uncertainty. In this paper, the design of the frame for MAC layer has been based on Wireless spectrum Sensing network (WSSN). The access of the channel to the secondary users is done through Handshaking Algorithm. A hybrid frame structure based on CSA and DSA has been devised for the WSSN network and has been implemented which overcomes the drawback of Conventional frame format. The WSSN network removes the sensing time from the Secondary user's frame thereby increasing the transmission time of data and hence the throughput of the system. The cognitive radio frame structure, thus designed in the present paper, improves the throughput of the system and enhance the Spectrum sensing techniques. Finally, the simulation results shows that the proposed method performs better than the conventional method in throughput and provides efficient spectrum sensing technique.
Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990

This political analysis of unemployment in a socialist country argues that the Yugoslavian conflict stems not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds, as from the political and social divisons created by a failed socialist programme to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under communism, the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same consequences of economic reforms required to bring socialist states into the world economy. By 1895, Yugoslavia's unemployment rate had risen to 15 per cent. How was it that a labour-oriented government managed to tolerate so clear a violation of the socialist commitment to full employment? Proposing a politically-based model to explain this paradox, Woodward analyzes the ideology of economic growth and shows that international constraints, rather than organized political pressures, defined government policy. She argues that unemployment be