Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association between sympathetic nerve activity and cerebrovascular protection in young spontaneously hypertensive rats.

The purpose of this study was to determine resting and maximal superior cervical sympathetic nerve activity in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) at five and ten weeks of age as hypertension was developing. Basal cervical sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) of five week SHR was 58 +/− 3 muv which was significantly elevated over age-matched WKY (SNA = 30 +/− 4 muv, p less than 0.001) and ten week SHR (SNA = 30 +/− 4 muv, p less than 0.001) as well as ten week WKY (SNA = 24 +/− 4 muv, p less than 0.001). Thus, during basal conditions five week SHR nerve traffic was approximately two times that found in age-matched WKY as well as in ten week SHR and WKY. The peak sympathetic nerve activity in response to rapid hemorrhage in five week SHR (215 +/− 16 muv) was significantly elevated over the maximal response of WKY (140 +/− 23 muv) (p less than 0.02). Ten week SHR also reached a maximal sympathetic nerve activity (187 +/− 28 muv) that was significantly elevated over WKY (100 +/− 15 muv) (p less than 0.02). Thus, both five and ten week SHR had a greater capacity for elevated nerve activity following rapid hemorrhage than age-matched WKY. The elevation in resting cervical sympathetic activity in five week SHR, and the elevated capacity for sympathetic neural response in both five as well as ten week SHR, are consistent with a central nervous system abnormality in SHR that could relate to the previously described protective influence of sympathetic nerves on SHR cerebral blood vessels as hypertension is developing.
MiceAntibody Response upon Transfer into Naive Elicit a T Cell-Dependent pneumoniae Streptococcus Macrophages Pulsed with

Macrophages are less effective than DC at priming naive CD4 (cid:1) T cells, suggesting that DC are unique in initiating T cell-dependent Ab responses. We compared the ability of DC and macrophages, pulsed in vitro with Streptococcus pneumoniae , to elicit protein- and polysaccharide-speciﬁc Ig isotype production upon adoptive transfer into naive mice. S. pneumoniae -activated DC secreted more proinﬂammatory and anti-inﬂammatory cytokines, expressed higher levels of surface MHC class II and CD40, and presented S. pneumoniae or recombinant pneumococcal surface protein A (PspA) to a PspA-speciﬁc T hybridoma more efﬁciently than macrophages. However, upon adoptive transfer into naive mice, S. pneumoniae -pulsed macrophages elicited an IgM or IgG anti-PspA and anti-polysaccharide response comparable in serum titers and IgG isotype distribution to that induced by DC. The IgG anti-PspA response, in contrast to the IgG anti-polysaccharide, to S. pneumoniae -pulsed macrophages was T cell-dependent. S. pneumoniae -pulsed macrophages that were paraformaldehyde-ﬁxed before transfer or lacking expression of MHC class II or CD40 were highly defective in eliciting an anti-PspA response, although the antipolysaccharide response was largely unaffected. To our knowledge, these data are the ﬁrst to indicate that macrophages can play an active role in the induction of a T cell-dependent humoral immune response in a naive host. The Journal of Immunology, 2008, 181: 1787–1797.
Neural control of rhythmic, cyclical human arm movement: task dependency, nerve specificity and phase modulation of cutaneous reflexes

1 The organization and pattern of cutaneous reflex modulation during rhythmic cyclical movements of the human upper limbs has received much less attention than that afforded the lower limb. Our working hypothesis is that control mechanisms underlying the modulation of cutaneous reflex amplitude during rhythmic arm movement are similar to those that control reflex modulation in the leg. Thus, we hypothesized that cutaneous reflexes would show task dependency and nerve specificity in the upper limb during rhythmic cyclical arm movement as has been demonstrated in the human lower limb. 2 EMG was recorded from 10 muscles crossing the human shoulder, elbow and wrist joints while bilateral whole arm rhythmic cyclical movements were performed on a custom‐made, hydraulic apparatus. 3 Cutaneous reflexes were evoked with trains (5 × 1.0 ms pulses at 300 Hz) of electrical stimulation delivered at non‐noxious intensities (∼2 × threshold for radiating parasthesia) to the superficial radial, median and ulnar nerves innervating the hand. 4 Cutaneous reflexes were typically modulated with the movement cycle (i.e. phase dependency was observed). There was evidence for nerve specificity of cutaneous reflexes during rhythmic movement of the upper limbs. Task‐dependent modulation was also seen as cutaneous reflexes were of larger amplitude or inhibitory (reflex reversal) during arm cycling as compared to static contraction. 5 While there are some differences in the patterns of cutaneous reflex modulation seen between the arms and legs, it is concluded that cutaneous reflexes are modulated similarly in the upper and lower limbs implicating similar motor control mechanisms.
Impulsivity in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Summary In recent years focus has been increasingly placed on impulse control disorders (ICDs) in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). ICDs include pathological attraction to gambling, compulsive shopping, compulsive eating and compulsive sexual behaviour and are associated mostly with the intake of dopamine agonists. Another impulsive and compulsive behaviour in PD is the dopamine dysregulation syndrome, which is associated with compulsive intake of L-dopa, and short-acting dopamine agonists. Diagnostics and prevention of this group of disorders is essential, considering the difficulties related to their treatment and their negative impact on the patients themselves as well as on their relatives.
Detection and Estimation of Omni-Directional Pointing Gestures Using Multiple Cameras

We propose a multi-camera system that can detect omni-directional pointing gestures and estimate the direction of pointing. In general, when a human points at something, their target exists directly in front of the direction they are facing. Therefore, we regard the direction of pointing as the direction represented by the straight line that connects the face position with the hand position. First, the multiple cameras detect the face region by skin colors and estimate the face direction with the discrete face direction feature classes. Second, we estimate the precise direction that the subject is facing with the integrated information from multiple cameras and decide which camera captures the frontal view of the face the best. This camera is labeled the center camera. Third, we select a pair of cameras on both sides of the center camera as a stereo camera and detect the spatial positions of the face and hand. Finally, the target that the subject is pointing to is found on the straight line that connects the face position with the hand position. Experiments show that out system can achieve a mean error of 1.94" with a variance of 4.37 throughout the pointing direction.
Propagation malfunctions due to gap junction dysregulation

Gap junctions are membrane channels that connect the cytoplasm of adjacent cells allowing the cell-to-cell electrical coupling necessary for action potential propagation. Pathological conditions, such as malformations in connexins, mutations affecting phosphorylation of regulatory sites of connexins, alterations in gap junction organization, and type and quantity of connexin expression, can impede the normal electrical propagation. All these malfunctions can produce a dispersion of repolarization, implicated in ventricular arrhythmias. In fact, ventricular tachycardia and spontaneous ventricular arrhythmia occurred in more than twice as many connexin deficient hearts than wild-type hearts. We perform numerical simulations of a human ventricular model in order to mimic some of these pathological conditions. In particular, we consider a diminished Cx43 connexin expression, as well as altered connexin conductance dynamics, i.e., modified maximum and minimum conductances gmax and gmin, half-inactivation voltage V1/2 and decay kinetics. Physiologically these modifications can appear due to mutations or to different connexin configurations, i.e., forming heteromeric channels. Under these conditions we study the change in action potential duration (APD) and CV-restitution properties. We observe that, although CV diminishes with decreased connexin expression, the APD remains almost constant up to the point of conduction block. Also, propagation differs for constant or time-dependent voltage conductance, conduction block occurring earlier for the former. While mutations resulting in a stronger dependence of the delay time produced an appreciable change intercellular conductances, this effect was not so important when the mutations affected the overall delay time. Thus, our results suggest that a correct description
How to measure the diagnostic accuracy of noninvasive liver fibrosis indices: the area under the ROC curve revisited.

BACKGROUND The area under the ROC curve (AUC) is widely used to measure the diagnostic accuracy of noninvasive fibrosis indices. However, use of the AUC assumes a binary gold standard, whereas fibrosis staging is based on an ordinal scale and also depends on the distribution of fibrosis stages in the study sample. We explored other fibrosis staging accuracy measures designed for ordinal gold standards, the C-statistic and the Obuchowski measure. METHODS We performed a simulation study to assess the bias in estimating the accuracy measures when the distribution of fibrosis stages in the study sample do not fit the reference distribution in the population to which the indices are applied. We also estimated the type I error of the tests comparing these measures in 2 samples with different distributions of fibrosis stages. We illustrated the practical use of these measures by reanalyzing real data. RESULTS Compared with the AUC or the C-statistic, the Obuchowski measure showed limited bias when the distribution of fibrosis stages in the study sample differed from the reference distribution. The type I error was strongly inflated with the AUC or the C-statistic but was preserved in the Obuchowski measure. When we compared noninvasive indices on real data, AUC analysis led to discordant results depending on how the fibrosis stages were grouped together. One single conclusion was drawn from the analysis based on the Obuchowski measure. CONCLUSIONS We recommend using the Obuchowski measure for assessing the diagnostic accuracy of noninvasive indices of fibrosis.
Statistical and Semantic Feature Selection for Text Clustering

Organizing textual documents by categorizing them is important and beneficial for information retrieval; but when it comes to clustering documents containing a huge number of terms, the task become challenged. Therefore, selecting effective features is essential for reducing the feature space dimensionality and improving the clustering performances. While numerous methods have been developed for this purpose, fewer techniques considered the semantic knowledge that can be incorporate into the clustering process. This paper proposes first a new semantic feature selection method SIM based on the mutual information metric, and second a novel two phase clustering mechanism. The statistical feature selection method CHIR integrates into the frequency clustering stage and then our technique SIM is used in the second stage to pilot the semantic categorization. The content based analysis allows enhancing the frequency clustering by taking the semantic relationships between the features into account. The successful evaluation of our approach demonstrates its relevancy in catching statistical and semantic pertinent features that enable better clustering accuracy in terms of F-measure and purity.
Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This Paper has three main aims. First, it reviews existing empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules, political representation and policy outcomes. It aims to place the literature into a broader context of theoretical and empirical work in the field of political economy. Second, it develops a parallel empirical analysis that updates studies in the literature and re-examines some of the claims made, in a setting unified both in terms of policy outcomes and the period under study. Third, the paper develops some new directions for research, presenting a small number of novel exploratory results.
Stratégie de Placement des Puits Mobiles dans les Réseaux de Capteurs sans Fil pour Bâtiments

Le besoin des reseaux de capteurs sans fil croit tres rapidement dans un large eventail d'applications industrielles. Parmi celles-ci se trouve l'observation, le suivi des donnees physiques et l'automatisation des bâtiments. Dans ces reseaux, un grand nombre de capteurs transmettent via multi sauts les donnees collectees vers le puits le plus proche. Les capteurs qui sont proches des puits epuisent leurs reserves d'energie beaucoup plus rapidement que les capteurs distants car ils ont une charge de trafic tres importante. Ceci est du au fait qu'ils transmettent leurs propres donnees ainsi que les donnees des capteurs eloignes provoquant ainsi prematurement la fin de la duree de vie du reseau. Le deplacement periodique des puits permet de resoudre ce probleme en distribuant la charge du trafic entre les capteurs et ameliorer ainsi la duree de vie du reseau. Dans ce travail, nous proposons un nouvel algorithme qui determine le positionnement de plusieurs puits mobiles dans un reseau large echelle afin d'augmenter la duree de vie du reseau. Son principe se base sur le deplacement regulier des puits vers les capteurs distants qui ont le plus grand nombre de sauts a faire pour atteindre le puits le plus proche. Nous avons evalue les performances de notre solution par des simulations et compare avec d'autres strategies. Les resultats montrent que notre solution ameliore considerablement la duree de vie du reseau et equilibre notablement la consommation d'energie entre les nœuds. Ces resultats sont tres utiles pour le deploiement reel de reseaux de capteurs sans fil au sein des bâtiments.
Volatile organic compounds of lung cancer and possible biochemical pathways.

Biochemical Pathways Meggie Hakim,† Yoav Y. Broza,† Orna Barash,† Nir Peled,‡ Michael Phillips, Anton Amann, and Hossam Haick*,† †The Department of Chemical Engineering and Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, TechnionIsrael Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel ‡The Thoracic Cancer Research and Detection Center, Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 52621, Israel Menssana Research, Inc., Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024, United States Breath Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 6850 Dornbirn, Austria University-Clinic for Anesthesia, Innsbruck Medical University, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
SparsePak: A Formatted Fiber Field Unit for The WIYN Telescope Bench Spectrograph. II. On-Sky Performance

We present a performance analysis of SparsePak and the WIYN Bench Spectrograph for precision studies of stellar and ionized gas kinematics of external galaxies. We focus on spectrograph configurations with echelle and low-order gratings yielding spectral resolutions of ∼10,000 between 500 and 900 nm. These configurations are of general relevance to the spectrograph performance. Benchmarks include spectral resolution, sampling, vignetting, scattered light, and an estimate of the system absolute throughput. Comparisons are made to other, existing, fiber feeds on the WIYN Bench Spectrograph. Vignetting and relative throughput are found to agree with a geometric model of the optical system. An aperture-correction protocol for spectrophotometric standard-star calibrations has been established using independent WIYN imaging data and the unique capabilities of the SparsePak fiber array. The WIYN point-spread function is well fitted by a Moffat profile with a constant power-law outer slope of index -4.4. We use SparsePak commissioning data to debunk a long-standing myth concerning sky-subtraction with fibers: by properly treating the multifiber data as a "long-slit" it is possible to achieve precision sky-subtraction with a signal-to-noise performance as good or better than conventional long-slit spectroscopy. No beam-switching is required, and hence the method is efficient. Finally, we give several examples of science measurements that SparsePak now makes routine. These include Hα velocity fields of low surface brightness disks, gas and stellar velocity-fields of nearly face-on disks, and stellar absorption-line profiles of galaxy disks at spectral resolutions of ∼24,000.
Effect of replacing oat fodder with fresh and chopped oak leaves on in vitro rumen fermentation, digestibility and metabolizable energy

Aim: A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of replacing oat fodder (OF) with fresh oak leaves (FOL) or chopped oak leaves (COL) on rumen fermentation and digestibility through in vitro gas production technique (IVGPT). Materials and Methods: Nine different diets were prepared by mixing OF with oak leaves (either FOL or COL) in different ratios (100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, and 0:100). The rations were evaluated through Hohenheim IVGPT with 200 mg substrate and 30 ml of buffered rumen liquor. All the syringes were incubated at 39°C for 24 h in buffered rumen liquor of cattle. After 24 h, the total gas production was recorded, and the contents were analyzed for in vitro methane production, protozoa no. and ammonia-N. Results: Chopping (p<0.01) reduced the tannin fractions as well as non-tannin phenol. Increase in levels of oak decreased total gas production, methane, organic matter (OM) digestibility, and metabolizable energy (ME) values. The polyphenol content of the substrate did not show any significant difference on the protozoal count. Conclusion: In vitro studies revealed that the addition of oak leaves reduced the methane production and ammonia nitrogen levels; however, it also decreased the OM digestibility and ME values linearly as the level of the oak leaves increased in the diet. Chopping was effective only at lower inclusion levels. Further studies, especially in vivo studies, are needed to explore the safe inclusion levels of oak leaves in the diet of ruminants.
Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) success factors in a public higher education institution context

The DeLone and McLean information systems success model [1, 2] has been investigated in many past researches [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. However, its use in human resource (HR) field of study is not quite apparent. Based on literature, and recognising that trust is a significant component in managing human resources and in successful implementation of information systems, this research posits the integration of trust with the DeLone and McLean model. Hence, the paper sets out to determine the validity and reliability of human resource information systems success factors in a higher education context. The results and implications are discussed herein.
Phase transition between disordered and ordered foraging in Pharaoh's ants

The complex collective behavior seen in many insect societies strongly suggests that a minimum number of workers are required for these societies to function effectively. Here we investigated the transition between disordered and ordered foraging in the Pharaoh's ant. We show that small colonies forage in a disorganized manner, with a transition to organized pheromone-based foraging in larger colonies. We also show that when food sources are difficult to locate through independent searching, this transition is first-order and exhibits hysteresis, comparable to a first-order phase transition found in many physical systems. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence of a behavioral phase transition between a maladaptive (disorganized) and an adaptive (organized) state.
Efectos del conocimiento compartido y la seguridad psicológica en la eficacia de los equipos de trabajo

This research focuses on establishing the relationship that sharing knowledge behaviors and psychological safety have in the effectiveness inside the team. It is used a quantitative methodology with a descriptive-correlational design. It was worked with a sample group chosen intentionally, and integrated by 200 participants who belong to 39 working teams that made part of twenty organizations from Bogota City. The instrument to measure the variables had 29 items and it was validated by four judges and gave a high internal consistency (.939). The results show positive correlations and significant results among sharing knowledge, psychological safety and team effectiveness.
Towards An Understanding of Mobile Touch Navigation in a Stereoscopic Viewing Environment for 3D Data Exploration

We discuss touch-based navigation of 3D visualizations in a combined monoscopic and stereoscopic viewing environment. We identify a set of interaction modes, and a workflow that helps users transition between these modes to improve their interaction experience. In our discussion we analyze, in particular, the control-display space mapping between the different reference frames of the stereoscopic and monoscopic displays. We show how this mapping supports interactive data exploration, but may also lead to conflicts between the stereoscopic and monoscopic views due to users' movement in space; we resolve these problems through synchronization. To support our discussion, we present results from an exploratory observational evaluation with domain experts in fluid mechanics and structural biology. These experts explored domain-specific datasets using variations of a system that embodies the interaction modes and workflows; we report on their interactions and qualitative feedback on the system and its workflow.
New Types of Alert Correlation for Security Information and Event Management Systems

Current Security Information and Event Management systems (SIEMs) constitute the central platform of modern security operations centers. They gather events from multiple sensors (intrusion detection systems, anti-virus, firewalls, etc.), correlate these events, and deliver synthetic views of the alerts for threat handling and security reporting. However, as the number of security incidents, and thus the diversity of alerts received by SIEMs increases, the need for appropriate treatment of these alerts has become essential. Alert correlation has been proposed in order to alleviate this problem. Current alert correlation techniques provide a better description of the detected incident and a concise view of the generated alerts, reducing their volume and thus their processing time. Although such techniques support administrators in processing a huge number of alerts, they remain limited, since these solutions do not provide information about the attacker's behavior and the defender's capability in reacting to detected attacks. In this paper, we propose two novel alert correlation approaches. The first is based on policy enforcement and defender capability models; and the second is based on information security indicators. We therefore enrich the current state of the art in alert correlation techniques with complementary approaches.