Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Involvement of cyclin‐dependent kinase‐5 in the kainic acid‐mediated degeneration of glutamatergic synapses in the rat hippocampus

Increased levels of glutamate causing excitotoxic damage accompany neurological disorders such as ischemia/stroke, epilepsy and some neurodegenerative diseases. Cyclin‐dependent kinase‐5 (Cdk5) is important for synaptic plasticity and is deregulated in neurodegenerative diseases. However, the mechanisms by which kainic acid (KA)‐induced excitotoxic damage involves Cdk5 in neuronal injury are not fully understood. In this work, we have thus studied involvement of Cdk5 in the KA‐mediated degeneration of glutamatergic synapses in the rat hippocampus. KA induced degeneration of mossy fiber synapses and decreased glutamate receptor (GluR)6/7 and post‐synaptic density protein 95 (PSD95) levels in rat hippocampus in vivo after intraventricular injection of KA. KA also increased the cleavage of Cdk5 regulatory protein p35, and Cdk5 phosphorylation in the hippocampus at 12 h after treatment. Studies with hippocampal neurons in vitro showed a rapid decline in GluR6/7 and PSD95 levels after KA treatment with the breakdown of p35 protein and phosphorylation of Cdk5. These changes depended on an increase in calcium as shown by the chelators 1,2‐bis(o‐aminophenoxy)ethane‐N,N,N ′,N′‐tetraacetic acid acetoxymethyl ester (BAPTA‐AM) and glycol‐bis (2‐aminoethylether)‐N,N,N ′,N ′‐tetra‐acetic acid. Inhibition of Cdk5 using roscovitine or employing dominant‐negative Cdk5 and Cdk5 silencing RNA constructs counteracted the decreases in GluR6/7 and PSD95 levels induced by KA in hippocampal neurons. The dominant‐negative Cdk5 was also able to decrease neuronal degeneration induced by KA in cultured neurons. The results show that Cdk5 is essentially involved in the KA‐mediated alterations in synaptic proteins and in cell degeneration in hippocampal neurons after an excitotoxic injury. Inhibition of pathways activated by Cdk5 may be beneficial for treatment of synaptic degeneration and excitotoxicity observed in various brain diseases.
Integrated expert system of decision making for estimating collector properties and oil-and-gas saturation of strata

This research deals with the problem of developing an integrated expert system for current decision making an adequate selection of field - geophysical parameters and revealing the most significant sub-set for oil and gas deposits of the Apsheron peninsula of Azerbaijan from a multitude of methods of determining collector properties and oil-and-gas saturation of strata. An integrated expert system (IES) is proposed for decision making and analysis of taken decisions as applied to strata of Kyorghyoz-Gyzyltepe-Shongar oil deposit of the Apsheron peninsula.
Ecoenzymatic Stoichiometry and Ecological Theory

The net primary production of the biosphere is consumed largely by microorganisms, whose metabolism creates the trophic base for detrital foodwebs, drives element cycles, and mediates atmospheric composition. Biogeochemical constraints on microbial catabolism, relative to primary production, create reserves of detrital organic carbon in soils and sediments that exceed the carbon content of the atmosphere and biomass. The production of organic matter is an intracellular process that generates thousands of compounds from a small number of precursors drawn from intermediary metabolism. Osmotrophs generate growth substrates from the products of biosynthesis and diagenesis by enzyme-catalyzed reactions that occur largely outside cells. These enzymes, which we define as ecoenzymes, enter the environment by secretion and lysis. Enzyme expression is regulated by environmental signals, but once released from the cell, ecoenzymatic activity is determined by environmental interactions, represented as a kinetic casca.
Arthroscopic Subacromial Decompression for Small and Medium Size Tears of Rotator Cuff without Tendon Repair

According to our previous clinical impression, we hypothesized that patients who had symptomatic rotator cuff tendon tear in a diamemter below 3 cm would benefit from arthroscopic subacromial decompression only, without the need for the repair of the thorn tendon. From 1998 to 2003, 160 patients (168 shoulders) had arthroscopic subacromial decompression for impingement syndrome with a torn rotator cuff without repairing the tear of the cuffs (120 males and 40 females). The average patient age was 64 years and the average follow up was 30 months. At follow up, 96 patients (60%) had full recovery; 55 patients (35%) had residual low grade shoulder pain on effort and 7 patients (5%) had poor outcome. In the last group of patients with unsatisfactory outcome, the postoperative Constant score was only 64 points. In 95% of patients, the average Constant score values raised from average preoperative value of 62 to postoperative average score of 82. According to these results, there is an indication that in patients in the seventh decade of life or older with symptomatic rotator cuff tear, pain relief and good shoulder function can be achieved by more conservative approach of subacromial decompression alone, providing a clear diagnosis that the diameter of the tear in the supraspinatus and infraspinatus tendons is below 3 cm.
Arginine Vasotocin (AVT) Immunoreactivity Relates to Testosterone but Not Territorial Aggression in the Tree Lizard, Urosaurus ornatus

The neuropeptide arginine vasotocin (AVT) and its mammalian homologue arginine vasopressin (AVP) are neuromodulators known to be steroid sensitive and associated with social behaviors in a number of vertebrate taxa. However, the role of AVT/P in the regulation of aggression remains unclear and contrasting effects of this peptide on aggression are seen in differing species and contexts. In this study, we used immunohistochemistry to examine the effects of testosterone on the AVT system in male and female tree lizards, Urosaurus ornatus, and to determine whether AVT is related to territorial aggression in this species. Tree lizards are a free-living species that exhibit natural hormonal fluctuations across breeding seasons. We detected a male-biased sexual dimorphism in centrally projecting AVT fibers within the limbic system. Furthermore, changes with season, reproductive state, and hormonal treatment suggest that testosterone regulates AVT immunoreactivity in limbic brain regions, especially in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. Testosterone also affects AVT immunoreactivity in peripherally projecting cell clusters, as well as the size of AVT cell bodies in the paraventricular nucleus. Although higher testosterone levels alter AVT immunoreactivity, and are known to increase the frequency and intensity of male-male aggression in this species, no individual correlations between AVT immunoreactivity and aggression were detected.
How Can Comorbidity With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Aid Understanding of Language and Speech Disorders?

This article provides a background for the topic of comorbidity of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and spoken and written language and speech disorders that extends through this issue of Topics in Language Disorders. Comorbidity is common within developmental disorders and may be explained by many possible reasons. Some of these can be viewed as artifacts as simple as chance occurrence or because of the way that the research participants were sampled. If these artifacts are eliminated, then comorbidity can be informative with respect to possible causes of the disorders that are comorbid. Several possible etiologic models are presented along with a general framework for considering levels of causality in developmental disorders.
Computation of the Schroedinger Equation via the Discrete Derivatives Representation Method: Improvement of Solutions Using Particle Swarm Optimization

We develop the discrete derivatives representation method(DDR) to find the physical structures of the Schrodinger equation in which the interpolation polynomial of Bernstein has been used. In this paper the particle swarm optimization (PSO for short) has been suggested as a means to improve qualitatively the solutions. This approach is carefully handled and tested with a numerical example.
Staging laparoscopy in advanced gastric cancer: usefulness and issues requiring improvement.

BACKGROUND/AIMS We performed staging laparoscopy (SL) for advanced gastric cancer with suspicion of positive peritoneal cytology (CY) or peritoneal metastasis (P). This study was designed to show SL's utility in advanced gastric cancer. METHODOLOGY This was a retrospective study of 124 patients with primary gastric cancer who underwent SL between October 2001 and March 2009. RESULTS There were no perioperative complications without a case of bleeding. The patient breakdown was P0CY0, 67; P0CY1, 19; P1CY0, 6; and P1CY1, 32. Chemotherapy was administered as the initial treatment in 33 patients and the period from SL to chemotherapy was 19.5 days. In 7 patients undergoing laparotomy as the initial treatment but later requiring exploratory laparotomy or palliative surgery followed by chemotherapy, the period from laparotomy to chemotherapy was 36.8 days. The difference was significant (p<0.0001). P1 was confirmed in 10 (14.5%) of 69 patients undergoing laparotomy as the initial treatment. CY was re-examined in 53 of these 69 patients and CY1 was confirmed in 6 (13.3%) of 45 patients who were CY0 according to SL. CONCLUSION With SL, early initiation of chemotherapy was possible for P1 patients. Although improved accuracy is required, SL, which can be carried out safely with minimal invasiveness, was suggested to be useful.
Globally Induced Forest: A Prepruning Compression Scheme

Tree-based ensemble models are heavy memorywise. An undesired state of affairs considering nowadays datasets, memory-constrained environment and fitting/prediction times. In this paper, we propose the Globally Induced Forest (GIF) to remedy this problem. GIF is a fast prepruning approach to build lightweight ensembles by iteratively deepening the current forest. It mixes local and global optimizations to produce accurate predictions under memory constraints in reasonable time. We show that the proposed method is more than competitive with standard tree-based ensembles under corresponding constraints, and can sometimes even surpass much larger models.
The Prevalence of Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder Among Persons With Albinism

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common diagnosis in children and adults. Human albinism is an uncommon genetic condition associated with visual impairment that may affect behavior. To determine if there is a relationship between albinism and ADHD, the prevalence of ADHD was examined among 78 children (age range, 4-18 years) and among 44 adults (age range, 19-79 years) with ocular or oculocutaneous albinism. ADHD was diagnosed in the pediatric population using a combination of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) criteria, Conners' Parent Rating Scale, and physician observation. Adults were diagnosed using the Utah criteria for ADHD as confirmed by physician history and interview. Seventeen children (22.7% [17 of 75]) (3 children with existing diagnoses of pervasive developmental disorder were identified but were not included in the data analysis) and 3 adults (6.8%) met the criteria for ADHD. The combined hyperactivity and impulsivity subtype of ADHD was most common, accounting for 50% of the diagnoses. Binocular best-corrected visual acuity and genetic type of albinism were not found to correlate with a diagnosis of ADHD. The prevalence of ADHD among children and adults with albinism is more frequent than that reported among the general population and is not related to binocular best-corrected visual acuity.
Notes on the outer-Oort-cloud formation efficiency in the simulation of Oort cloud formation

Aims. The formation efficiency of the outer Oort cloud, obtained in the simulation performed in our previous work, appeared to be very low in a comparison with the corresponding results of other authors. Performing three other simulations, we attempt to find if any of three possible reasons can account for the discrepancy. Methods. The dynamical evolution of the particles is followed by numerical integration of their orbits. We consider the perturbations by four giant planets on their current orbits and with their current masses, in addition to perturbations by the Galactic tide and passing stars. Results. The omission of stellar perturbations causes only a small increase (about ≈10%) in the population size, because the erosion by stellar perturbations prevails upon the enrichment due to the same perturbations. As a result, our different model of them cannot result in any huge erosion of the comet cloud. The relatively shorter border, up to which we followed the dynamics of the test particles in our previous simulation, causes a significant (about a factor of ≈2) underestimate of the outer-Oort-cloud population. Nevertheless, it by itself cannot fully account for an order-of-magnitude difference in the formation-efficiency values. It seems that the difference could mainly stem from a large stochasticity of the comet-cloud formation process. Our maximum efficiency can grow to more than three times the corresponding minimum value when using some subsets of test particles.
Inspection System Utilizing a Mobile Robot with a Laser Range Finder

The automated inspection is desired to detect the vehicle in large parking space, which is difficult to survey by fixed the vision-sensor. We purposed mobile robot surveillance in parking space for parking lot inspection. To obtain the parking lot information, vision sensor is wide useful for parking lot state checking which measurement is difficult to obtain the positioning of vehicle while achieved by the laser range finder (LRF). In this research aims a laser range finder is acquired the positioning with directly measure the object in range scanner, which is obtains the data in the parking place. This paper purposed on ability of a LRF sensor with including reflection intensity data for data measuring in the parking lot by using a mobile robot which performs patrolling on multiple times in parking place for a parking lot inspection. We present experimental results to evaluate the effectiveness of the occupancy state recognition.
[Comparability and conversion of Stimmstörungsindex (SSI) and Voice Handicap Index (VHI)].

BACKGROUND The Voice Handicap Index (VHI) has been established internationally as a reliable tool for describing voice-dependent quality of life. Nawka developed a new score by using 12 questions out of the VHI, called SSI (Stimmstörungsindex) . The SSI has proven its role in daily clinical routine, main problem remains a lack of comparability of the SSI (range: 0 - 48) to the internationally established VHI (Voice Handicap Index) (range: 0 - 120). Aim of our study was to demonstrate that by a simple multiplication of SSI scores a statistically significant correlation with scores of the VHI can be achieved. METHODS 210 consecutive patients of the ENT University Hospital Graz were evaluated by the German version of VHI. We calculated total score of VHI as well as the score of the SSI. By multiplication of the SSI scores by 2.5 we calculated a new score, called "VHI-korr". This score was compared with the VHI. RESULTS We can demonstrate that by simple multiplication of the SSI scores by 2.5 a statistically significant correlation to the VHI can be achieved (r = 0.98; p < 0.01). CONCLUSION The SSI- based "VHI-korr" provides good international comparability of voice disorders with VHI and allows to maintain the common use of SSI in daily clinical routine.
Children's judgements about intentionally and unintentionally broken promises

Astington (1988) found that seven- to nine-year-olds often fail to distinguish between promises and predictions when judging the utterances of characters in simple stories. Instead, these children attend only to the outcome of the story (i.e. whether the promised event occurred) when deciding whether a promise has been made and, to a lesser extent, when deciding whether the speaker is responsible for the outcome. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether seven- to nine-year-olds (a) vary their judgements of responsibility according to the reason that the promised action was not completed, and (b) recognize that an unfulfilled promise is a promise regardless of whether the speaker's failure is unavoidable or intentional. Seven-year-olds, nine-year-olds, and adults were asked to make promise and responsibility judgements for two story types: stories in which the promiser intentionally failed to fulfil his or her promise and stories in which an unforeseen event prevented the promiser from fulfilling the promise. Participants at all ages assigned responsibility correctly across both story types. In making promise judgements, however, the seven-year-olds' decisions about promises reflected a misguided attention to the outcome of a promise or the obstacle to its fulfilment. The nine-year-olds recognized that an unfulfilled promise is a promise but only when there was a clear reason for the speaker's failure to fulfil his or her obligation. We suggest that children consider only sincere promises to be instances of promising and make inferences about speaker sincerity by looking to external factors in the communicative context.
SPA: Web-based Platform for easy Access to Speech Processing Modules

This paper presents SPA, a web-based Speech Analytics platform that integrates several speech processing modules and that makes it possible to use them through the web. It was developed with the aim of facilitating the usage of the modules, without the need to know about software dependencies and specific configurations. Apart from being accessed by a web-browser, the platform also provides a REST API for easy integration with other applications. The platform is flexible, scalable, provides authentication for access restrictions, and was developed taking into consideration the time and effort of providing new services. The platform is still being improved, but it already integrates a considerable number of audio and text processing modules, including: Automatic transcription, speech disfluency classification, emotion detection, dialog act recognition, age and gender classification, non-nativeness detection, hyper-articulation detection, dialog act recognition, and two external modules for feature extraction and DTMF detection. This paper describes the SPA architecture, presents the already integrated modules, and provides a detailed description for the ones most recently integrated.
Electrophysiological steady-state responses in flight simulator trainings

This presentation introduces two experiments of steady-state responses utilization for the flight simulator trainings. In the first experiment, changes of auditory steady state response (ASSR) during a series of flight simulator training were assessed. In the on-going second experiment, we are now trying to capture the course of visual abnormality in high-g training via steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP).
A contribution to the identification of switched dynamical systems over finite fields

In this paper, we address specific issues related to the problem of parameter identification for switched linear systems over finite fields. Peculiarities related to the consideration of finite fields are pointed out. In particular, one of the main contributions of the paper is the reconsideration of the usual Persistently Exciting conditions. Indeed they are important in that they guarantee unicity in the solution of the identification procedure but they actually do no longer make sense on finite fields. In this paper, we provide alternative conditions. Such an issue has a cryptographic interest since identification amounts to an attack in cryptography, that is a way of recovering the secret key played by the parameters of the dynamical system.
Temporal dynamics of carbon flow through the microbial plankton community in a coastal upwelling system off northern Baja California, Mexico

We investigated the temporal dynamics of carbon flow through the microbial food web of a coastal upwelling system (ENSENADA station) off northern Baja California during 6 cruises (September 2007 to November 2008). Carbon biomass assessments for major autotrophic size groups (pico- to micro-sized cells) and their microzooplankton grazers were based on analyses using flow cytometry, HPLC pigments and epifluorescence microscopy. Taxon-specific phytoplankton growth and microzooplankton grazing rates were determined from 24 h in situ incubations in the euphotic zone using an abbreviated 3-treatment dilution technique. Carbon biomass and instantaneous growth and grazing rate determinations were used to estimate daily rates of taxon- specific production and losses due to microzooplankton grazing. Overall, microbial biomass showed a close balance between autotrophic and heterotrophic components, except during a period of very strong upwelling (April 2008), which favored large phytoplankters and high primary production. Through- out a wide range of environmental conditions, the community primary production (PP) attributed both to small (mostly picophytoplankton and prasinophytes) and large (mostly diatoms and au- totrophic dinoflagellates) autotrophs was significantly grazed (78 ± 9% of PP) by small ( 20 µm) ciliates and flagellates (including mixotrophic dinoflagellates), respectively, showing complementary temporal shifts in protistan grazer types that matched the dominant phytoplankton. While large diatoms were strongly consumed by large ciliates during the 2 most productive periods (September 2007 and April 2008), pico- and nano-sized phytoplankton were grazed most by nanofla- gellates and small ciliates from November 2007 to January 2008. Consequently, biogenic carbon pro- duction in this ecosystem is transferred through a multivorous food web.
Demand Specification for Municipal Water Management: Evaluation of the Stone-Geary Form

To specify demand in most water allocation problems, researchers face a tradeoff between flexibility and parsimony. Flexible forms are less constraining on elasticity estimates, but require large parameter sets that tend to cause poor out-of-sample forecasts and computational difficulties. Using a five-year panel of Texas municipalities, the parsimonious Stone-Geary form yields estimated demand functions that are comparable to flexible form results. The Stone-Geary specification also provides an estimate of the portion of water use that may not be responsive to price, and is useful in analysing price structures and designing conservation policies. (JEL Q25, C23)
How can covariance in pragmatical class methods be made statically type-safe?

Binary class methods are often more suitable for modelling binary operations than binary instance methods. Allowing covariant parameter type adaptations in class methods can make them even more attractive. We discuss the implications of covariant class methods on type safety. We discuss two examples, one type-safe at run-time and the other not, and formulate type rules that make it possible to identify the difference at compile-time.
Surface Plasmonic E ff ects of Metallic Nanoparticles on the Performance of Polymer Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells

Jyh-Lih Wu, Fang-Chung Chen,‡* Yu-Sheng Hsiao, Fan-Ching Chien, Peilin Chen, Chun-Hong Kuo, Michael H. Huang, and Chain-Shu Hsu ) Department of Photonics and Institute of Electro-optical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan, Department of Photonics and Display Institute, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan, Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan, Department of Chemistry, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 3001, Taiwan, and Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan