Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The excitability of lumbar motoneurones in the neonatal rat is increased by a hyperpolarization of their voltage threshold for activation by descending serotonergic fibres

Previous work has shown there is an increase in motoneurone excitability produced by hyperpolarization of the threshold potential at which an action potential is elicited (Vth) at the onset, and throughout brainstem‐induced fictive locomotion in the decerebrate cat. This represents a transient facilitation in the membrane potential for activation dependent on the presence of fictive locomotion. The present study tests the hypothesis that a similar neuromodulatory mechanism facilitating neuronal recruitment also exists in the neonatal rat, and the endogenous pathway mediating the Vth hyperpolarization can be activated by electrical stimulation of the neonatal brainstem. Isolated brainstem–spinal cord preparations from 1‐ to 5‐day‐old neonatal rats, and whole‐cell recording techniques were used to examine the patterns of ventral root (VR) activity produced, and the effect of electrical stimulation of the ventromedial medulla on lumbar spinal neurones. Hyperpolarization of Vth was seen in 10/11 (range –2 to –18 mV) neurones recorded during locomotor‐like VR activity, and appeared analogous to the locomotor‐dependent Vth hyperpolarization previously described in the cat. However, in the present study, Vth hyperpolarization was also seen during electrical brainstem stimulation that evoked alternating, rhythmic, or tonic VR activity, or failed to evoke VR activity. Thirty‐six of 71 neurones were antidromically identified as lumbar motoneurones and 33/36 showed a hyperpolarization of Vth (–2 to –14 mV) during electrical brainstem stimulation. Of the unidentified lumbar ventral horn neurones, 31/35 also showed hyperpolarization of Vth (–2 to –20 mV) during brainstem stimulation. The hyperpolarization of Vth and VR activity induced by brainstem stimulation was reversibly blocked by cooling of the cervical cord, indicating it is mediated by descending fibres, and application of the serotonergic antagonist ketanserin to the spinal cord was effectively able to block the brainstem‐evoked hyperpolarization of Vth. These results demonstrate a previously unknown action of the endogenous descending serotonergic system to facilitate spinal motoneuronal recruitment and firing by inducing a hyperpolarization of Vth. This modulatory process can be examined in the neonatal rat brainstem–spinal cord preparation without the requirement for ongoing locomotor activity.
Nipple detection for obscene pictures

This paper presents a research on object detection using image processing and neural network, entitled Nipple Detection for Obscene Pictures. Our research work is designed to enhance the effectiveness of pornography detection system by locating nipples in the picture to make sure that the given pictue really contains human nudity. Our nipple detection model composing of human skin detection which is used to remove non-skin area and nipple detection which is used to detect nipple on human skin area. Our approach is shown to be effective for a wide range of shades and colors of skin and human configurations. It is validated for locating nipple existence for obscene pictures. In terms of scalability, our approach can be modified to support distributed processing. The system presents excellent performance on a test set of 130 uncontrolled obscence pictures, and a test set of 500 assorted control benign pictures drawn from a wide variety of sources.
Current AI in Games: A Review

As the graphics race subsides and gamers grow weary of predictable and deterministic game characters, game developers must put aside their “old faithful” finite state machines and look to more advanced techniques that give the users the gaming experience they crave. The next industry breakthrough will be with characters that behave realistically and that can learn and adapt, rather than more polygons, higher resolution textures and more frames-per-second. This paper explores the various artificial intelligence techniques that are currently being used by game developers, as well as techniques that are new to the industry. The techniques covered in this paper are finite state machines, scripting, agents, flocking, fuzzy logic and fuzzy state machines decision trees, neural networks, genetic algorithms and extensible AI. This paper introduces each of these technique, explains how they can be applied to games and how commercial games are currently making use of them. Finally, the effectiveness of these techniques and their future role in the industry are evaluated.
Is the Canine Fossa Puncture Approach Really Necessary for the Severely Diseased Maxillary Sinus during Endoscopic Sinus Surgery?

Objectives: To evaluate the necessity of canine fossa puncture (CFP) by comparing the symptom scores and postoperative computed tomography (CT) findings between patients with severe maxillary sinus disease who underwent CFP and those who underwent maxillary sinus clearance through a middle meatal antrostomy (MMA).
Prevalence and Motives for Illicit Use of Prescription Stimulants in an Undergraduate Student Sample

To assess the prevalence and motives for illicit use of prescription stimulants and alcohol and other drugs (AODs), associated with these motives, the authors distributed a self-administered Web survey TO a random sample of 9,161 undergraduate college students. Of the study participants, 8.1% reported iifetime and 5.4% reported past-year illicit use of prescription stimulants. The most prevalent motives given for illicit use of prescription stimulants were to (1) help with concentration, (2) increase alertness, and (3) provide a high. Although men were more likely than women were to report illicit use of prescription stimulants, the authors found no gender differences in motives. Regardless of motive, illicit use of prescription stimulants was associated with elevated rates of AOD use, and number of motives endorsed and AOD use were positively related. Students appear to be using these prescription drugs non-medically, mainly to enhance performance or get high.
A linearized inverse scattering problem for the polarized waves and anisotropic targets

We analyze the scattering of a plane transverse linearly polarized electromagnetic wave off a plane interface between the vacuum and a given material. For a variety of predominantly dielectric materials, from isotropic to anisotropic and weakly conductive, we show that when the scattering is weak, the first Born approximation predicts the correct scattered field in the vacuum region. We also formulate and solve the corresponding linearized inverse scattering problem. Specifically, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which interpreting the target material as a weakly conductive uniaxial crystal allows one to reconstruct all the degrees of freedom contained in the complex 2 × 2 Sinclair scattering matrix. This development can help construct a full-fledged radar ambiguity theory for polarimetric imaging by means of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which is in contrast to the approach that currently dominates the SAR literature and exploits a fully phenomenological scattering matrix. Moreover, the linearized scattering off a material half-space naturally gives rise to the ground reflectivity function in the form of a single layer (i.e. a δ-layer) at the interface. A ground reflectivity function of this type is often introduced in the SAR literature without a rigorous justification. Besides the conventional SAR analysis, we expect that the proposed approach may appear useful for the material identification SAR (miSAR) purposes.
Structural, kinetic and cytotoxicity aspects of 12–28 β‐amyloid protein fragment: a reappraisal

A chemical, structural and biological study on the β‐amyloid peptide β12–28 is reported which was carried out in order to assess the feasibility using this peptide fragment as a model of the natural β‐amyloid protein. The aggregation properties of β12–28 have been investigated by pulse field‐gradient NMR spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The results obtained suggest that β12–28 behaviour is comparable to that of the natural β‐amyloid protein although kinetically slower. Translational diffusion coefficients obtained by NMR on an aged β12–28 solution suggest that the soluble peptide fraction is composed of oligomeric intermediates adopting an extended ellipsoidal assembly rather than a spherical one. The β12–28 peptide proved to be cytotoxic in PC12 cell cultures as monitored by the MTT assay, although a lack of reproducibility was observed in the dose‐response experiments. Copyright © 2002 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Designing a multi-layered security algorithms for network intrusion detection systems on virtual machines in the cloudcomputing

With the emergence of new generation networks and providing new types of services, as cloud computing networks, the need to provide security that are compatible with the performance of these networks lead us to offer an algorithm for using the context of security available in prior networks. In this algorithm, intrusion detection systems(IDS) are activated depending on the service which selected by the user. The packages of each user is related to the network layer and standard protocols and will be selected considering that intrusion detection system. The techniques used in this paper are based on the parallel use of intrusion detection systems on network virtual machines. As objectives of this algorithm, we can point to reducing the computational load in contrast to large number of users and applications. Considering that internet is the context of using these networks, we need to reduce the response time to the user as short as possible.
Novel Care Pathway for Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department With Atrial Fibrillation

The annual cost of care for atrial fibrillation (AF) is estimated to be $6.65 billion, with nearly three fourth of costs because of hospitalizations1 and 70% of admissions present through the emergency department (ED). 2 In an international survey of routine ED AF management from Canada, United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, there were striking differences in ED use of rate control or rhythm control interventions and the likelihood of discharge.3 For example, in Canada, the vast majority of patients with AF in the ED are pharmacologically or electrically cardioverted without cardiology supervision. In the United States, the majority of patients are admitted for further management. Several small US studies have evaluated the use of an ED observation unit with a protocol for pharmacological or direct current cardioversion in selected patients.4 However, these studies often rely on specialist consultation in the ED and do not rely heavily on outpatient care coordination, which are critical for improving quality of care. In 2011, the Center for Innovation in Complex Care assessed gaps in care for patients presenting to the health system with AF; identified gaps included a lack of standardization, integration, and information access across the various providers—including ED centers, cardiologists, primary care specialists, nurses, and pharmacists—who comanage AF patients.5 To address some of these problems in AF management, the goal of this innovation was to introduce a structured process for AF care, linking the expertise of ED and cardiology practices with the introduction of clinical pharmacists to bridge the gap and coordinate treatment, to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions while improving access to comprehensive AF care. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in 2012, hospitalizations associated with the diagnosis of AF in North Carolina accounted for >110 000 patient discharges, and ≈15 000 encounters in which AF …
Satisfaction Guaranteed

Surveys play a pivotal role in research and decision making. Opinions are commonly assessed by having participants respond using a linear Likert scale (e.g., 1 to 5). Surveys containing Likert scales employ a number of techniques to increase their construct validity, such as including occasional reversed items to maintain attention. One factor that is almost never controlled, however, is the direction in which the scale runs. Thus, for all questions within a given survey, the scale runs in the same direction from left to right. Such a design may be vulnerable to the effects of pseudoneglect—a phenomena well known to behavioral neuroscience. Pseudoneglect is an attentional bias in normal individuals that makes the left-sided features of a stimulus more salient than those on the right (McCourt & Jewell, 1999). As a result, when bisecting horizontal lines, participants typically make the bisection slightly to the left of true center. Pseudoneglect has also been observed for luminance discrimination (Nicholls, Bradshaw, & Mattingley, 1999), enumeration (Nicholls et al., 1999), and mental-number-line bisection (Oliveri et al., 2004). One model of pseudoneglect suggests that the bias stems from right-hemisphere specialization for spatial attention, which brings about a contralateral attentional bias. Pseudoneglect may therefore have cognitive and neural mechanisms in common with hemispatial neglect caused by right parietal damage (Nicholls & Roberts, 2002). Other models, however, suggest that pseudoneglect stems from left-to-right scanning due to reading habits (Chokron, Bartolomeo, Perenin, Helft, & Imbert, 1998). When people respond to Likert scales, pseudoneglect may increase the salience of categories on the left relative to those on the right, causing a deviation to the left to balance the left and right sides of the scale. We investigated the effect of perceptual asymmetries on responses to Likert scales using the National Student Satisfaction Scale, recently given to 250,000 university graduates by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The original questionnaire had a descending scale with favorable responses located on the left. To test whether the descending format inflated satisfaction scores, we devised an ascending scale with favorable responses located on the right. We also measured handedness, to investigate whether simple mechanical biases might affect responses.
The effect of telemedicine on the duration of treatment in dementia patients

We studied 442 patients who met the DSM-IV-TR criteria for dementia and whose treatment was initiated at the Kangwon National University Hospital (KNUH) in Chuncheon. Over a five-year period, there were 259 patients who regularly visited the KNUH dementia clinic in person, and 168 patients who received medical services from the dementia clinic via telemedicine. The telemedicine patients attended a public health centre in Hongcheon, a facility located in a rural area about 50 km south east of the KNUH. The mean treatment duration was significantly longer for the telemedicine group than for the clinical visit group (P < 0.001), with durations of 26.6 and 14.6 months, respectively. Low Clinical Dementia Rating scores (hazard ratio = 1.47, 95% confidence interval = 1.26–1.71) and use of telemedicine (hazard ratio = 0.55, 95% confidence interval = 0.42–0.72) were found to be independent predictive factors of increased treatment duration. These findings suggest that telemedicine may be useful in slowing disease progression in dementia patients in rural areas.
On "Strong control, conservative point estimation and simultaneous conservative consistency of false discovery rates": Does a large number of tests obviate confidence intervals of the FDR?

A previously proved theorem gives sufficient conditions for an estimator of the false discovery rate (FDR) to conservatively converge to the FDR with probability 1 as the number of hypothesis tests increases, even for small sample sizes. It does not follow that several thousand tests ensure that the estimator has moderate variance under those conditions. In fact, they can hold even if the test statistics have long-range correlations, which yield unacceptably wide confidence intervals, as observed in genomic data when there are 8 or 16 individuals (microarrays) per group. Thus, informative FDR estimation will include some measure of its reliability.
Effective workfunction control in TmSiO/HfO2 high-k/metal gate stacks

Integration of high-k interfacial layers in CMOS technology has been proposed to overcome the scaling limitations of the SiOx/HfO2 dielectric stack. Candidate high-k interfacial layers have to be compatible with strict requirements in terms of EOT, inversion layer mobility, threshold voltage control and device reliability. We have previously demonstrated a CMOS-compatible process for integration of thulium silicate (TmSiO) as interfacial layer, providing advantages in terms of EOT and channel mobility. This work demonstrates the compatibility of the TmSiO/HfO2 stack with the threshold voltage control techniques commonly employed in gate-last and gate-first integration schemes, namely the use of a dual-metal process and the integration of dielectric capping layers. We show that the flatband voltage can be set from -1V to +0.5V by proper choice of gate metal, while a shift of 150-400 mV is achievable by means of integration of Al2O3 or La2O3 capping layers.
Health Status of a Low‐income Vulnerable Population in a Community Health Center

Healthcare safety net providers are under increasing pressure to meet the physical and mental health—as well as the range of social service—needs of traditionally vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations. The extent to which health center patients are less well and in poorer health than is the rest of society, thus requiring greater depth and breadth of service, has not generally been the focus of systematic assessment. This case study uses the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) and selected years of healthy life questions from the National Health Interview Survey to assess the self-perceived health status of patients at one Section 330 community health center in central Massachusetts. Five hundred thirteen patients completed all questions on the SF-12; 619 completed each of the years of healthy life questions. Respondents' physical and mental component summary scores were significantly lower than national norms for all age groups (P < .001). Respondents were also significantly more likely than the civilian noninstitutionalized population to be unable to perform major activities (P < .0001) and to be in fair or poor health (P < .0001). Analyses give an indication of the magnitude of difference in self-perceived health status between this poor, vulnerable population and the citizenry at large and suggest implications for policy related to safety net healthcare facilities.
Atomic disorder and the transition temperature of cuprate superconductors.

Particle-induced shifts in the transition temperature T c of cuprate superconductors are much larger than expected for the number of defects expected to be produced, and suggest that oxygen displacements in CuO 2 planes are about an order of magnitude more effective in reducing T c than oxygen displacements in the intercalating layers
Anxiety and Depression in a Village in Lesotho, Africa: A Comparison with the United States

Adults in a village in Lesotho, Africa, were interviewed to determine the community prevalence of major depression, panic disorder, and generalised anxiety disorder. The prevalence data were compared with data from a large epidemiological study in the United States utilising the same research instrument. There was a significantly higher prevalence of all three diagnoses in Lesotho as compared with the United States. As in the United States, women were at an increased risk for these disorders, although statistical significance was not demonstrated for depression. The majority of people (77%) who had experienced panic attacks said they had sought help for their symptoms, with the majority attending Western-trained doctors. The relationship between explanatory models and help-seeking behaviour was explored in people who had had panic attacks. Less than 40% of those with generalised anxiety disorder said they sought help.
Improved coding of atoms in matching pursuits

An improved method is presented for coding the atoms found by the matching pursuits algorithm used in compressing displaced frame difference (DFD) images in motion compensated video coding. A list of atoms is collected, which are then communicated in the order of their most significant bit plane, rather than being communicated as they are found. The atom positions are run length coded, with the sign, extra bits of magnitude and code-book entry sent as side information. The magnitudes are represented by the most significant bit plus a specified number of additional bits. The distortion is never worse than the standard coding method, and can be up to 1dB better. The magnitude precision for best PSNR is found to be 2 at low bit rates and 1 at high bit rates in the examples considered.
The School-Based Lived Experiences of Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes

Background: School plays a critical role in influencing the health, safety, development, and well-being of adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). However, scant research has been conducted to understand the lived experiences of these adolescents in school settings. Purpose: This study investigates the school-based lived experiences of Taiwanese adolescents with T1DM. Method: A Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used, and 14 Taiwanese adolescents with T1DM were enrolled through purposive snowball sampling until data saturation was reached. Data were collected using audio-recorded, semistructured interviews and analyzed using the hermeneutic circle supported by qualitative analysis software NVivo 9.0. Reflective journaling, peer debriefing, memo writing, and member checking were performed to enhance the trustworthiness of the findings. Results: Six interrelated themes were identified: (a) the same yet different, (b) covert and overt, (c) limitations and freedom, (d) independent and dependent, (e) derailing and being on track, and (f) disease identity and denial. Multiple factors, including disease identity, social anxiety and pressure, ignorance of school personnel and classmates, and transition to independent self-management threatened the at-school health and well-being of participants. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: Much work remains to be done to adequately improve the school-life experiences of adolescents with T1DM. Interventions to facilitate their autonomy, self-efficacy, diabetes knowledge, disease identity, and handling of situational obstacles are suggested as well as improving the understanding of T1DM for teachers and classmates and facilitating more proactive care by school nurses.
Enterprise IT Application Systems Agility and Organizational Agility

Enterprise information technology (IT) application systems are conceived and implemented to help organizations to reduce costs and improve efficiency. However, the continuously changing environment, competitive market, and emerging technology require IT application systems to be more agile to accommodate the changes. In this paper, we link the enterprise IT application technical agility (Byrd and turner, 2000) with organizational agility (Sambamurthy, Bharadwaj and Grover, 2003). We propose that IT application modularity, IT connectivity, and IT compatibility (IT application technical agility) affect customer agility, partnering agility and operational and decision making agility (organizational agility). Measurements for IT application technical agility and organizational agility, an empirical study design as well as data analysis method are discussed. This study extends our knowledge of agile enterprise IT applications and organizational agility. This study will also benefit practitioners by identifying how technical enterprise IT agility affects organizational agility.