Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Cognitive Models to Map Relations Between Neuropsychological Disorders and Human Decision-Making Deficits

Findings from a complex decision-making task (the Iowa gambling task) show that individuals with neuropsychological disorders are characterized by decision-making deficits that lead to maladaptive risk-taking behavior. This article describes a cognitive model that distills performance in this task into three different underlying psychological components: the relative impact of rewards and punishments on evaluations of options, the rate that the contingent payoffs are learned, and the consistency between learning and responding. Findings from 10 studies are organized by distilling the observed decision deficits into the three basic components and locating the neuropsychological disorders in this component space. The results reveal a cluster of populations characterized by making risky choices despite high attention to losses, perhaps because of difficulties in creating emotive representations. These findings demonstrate the potential contribution of cognitive models in building bridges between neuroscience and behavior.
Dynamic precipitation at elevated temperatures in a dual-phase AlCoCrFeNi high-entropy alloy: an in situ study

ABSTRACT The effect of a possible phase transformation or precipitation of the face-centred cubic (FCC) phase on intermediate-temperature deformation of a dual-phase AlCoCrFeNi high-entropy alloy has been studied using in situ tensile testing at 550°C. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) results showed localised precipitation of the FCC phase during the intermediate-temperature deformation. The overall fracture behaviour and crack propagation of the material was not altered much compared to the room-temperature behaviour, namely brittle trans-granular fracture. Deformation at higher temperatures (above 750°C) is suggested as a way to enhance the dynamic FCC phase precipitation, in order to improve the ductility or deformability of the alloy.
Modeling of planar dual-band microstrip patch antenna using Gaussian process regression

Gaussian process (GP) regression, a structured supervised learning alternative to neural networks for the fast modeling of antenna characteristics, is applied to modeling S11 and gain against frequency of a dual-band microstrip patch antenna with separate tuning strips on a three-layer substrate. Since the two frequency bands of the antenna are relatively narrow, the function underlying the variation of S11 with four geometry variables and frequency is challenging to map. Predictions using large test data sets yielded results of an accuracy comparable to the target moment-method-based full-wave simulations; highly favourable mean square errors were obtained. The GP methodology has various inherent advantages that include ease of implementation and the need to learn only a handful of (hyper) parameters.
Unique properties of Drosophila spermatocyte primary cilia

Summary The primary cilium is an essential organelle required for animal development and adult homeostasis that is found on most animal cells. The primary cilium contains a microtubule-based axoneme cytoskeleton that typically grows from the mother centriole in G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle as a membrane-bound compartment that protrudes from the cell surface. A unique system of bidirectional transport, intraflagellar transport (IFT), maintains the structure and function of cilia. While the axoneme is dynamic, growing and shrinking at its tip, at the same time it is very stable to the effects of microtubule-targeting drugs. The primary cilia found on Drosophila spermatocytes diverge from the general rules of primary cilium biology in several respects. Among these unique attributes, spermatocyte cilia assemble from all four centrioles in an IFT-independent manner in G2 phase, and persist continuously through two cell divisions. Here, we show that Drosophila spermatocyte primary cilia are extremely sensitive to microtubule-targeting drugs, unlike their mammalian counterparts. Spermatocyte cilia and their axonemes fail to assemble or be maintained upon nocodazole treatment, while centriole replication appears unperturbed. On the other hand, paclitaxel (Taxol), a microtubule-stabilizing drug, disrupted transition zone assembly and anchoring to the plasma membrane while causing spermatocyte primary cilia to grow extensively long during the assembly/elongation phase, but did not overtly affect the centrioles. However, once assembled to their mature length, spermatocyte cilia appeared unaffected by Taxol. The effects of these drugs on axoneme dynamics further demonstrate that spermatocyte primary cilia are endowed with unique assembly properties.
Recent patents on calcium channel blockers: emphasis on CNS diseases

Introduction: Altered homeostasis of cell calcium movement is a central stage in multiple diseases of CNS. This explains the great therapeutic interest in blockers for the various subtypes of voltage-activated calcium channels (VACCs) expressed in neurons. Mitigation of Ca2+ entry excess elicited by those blockers may restore the altered synaptic transmission, synaptic plasticity and gene expression to normal parameters, ending the enhanced neuronal vulnerability. Areas covered: This review summarize 23 patents on ligands for L-, N- or T-type channels, claimed to have potential therapeutic interest in epilepsy, pain, migraine and neurodegenerative diseases. Expert opinion: Collections of compounds are generally screened in cell lines expressing a given subtype of VACCs. IC50 to block such channels are often, but not always, provided. In few instances, compounds exhibiting the highest potency in in vitro experiments are also tested in animal models of pain, behavior, epilepsy or Alzheimer’s disease. Attempts to develop selectivity for a given VACC subtype with non-peptidic organic ligands have so far failed. Due to their wide tissue expression, such selectivity is crucial for minimizing possible side effects. However, the few data reported by patents does not allow prediction of selectivity of the new compounds in many cases.
Pattern reconfigurable printed Yagi-Uda antenna

This paper presents a pattern reconfigurable antenna which is based on Yagi-Uda dipole antenna. The antenna can operate at ISM band of 2.45 GHz. It consists of microstrip-to-coplanar stripline (CPS) transition, driven elements and parasitic elements. The switch of driven element can be controlled by using PIN diodes while parasitic element function can be either reflector or director with different PIN diode states. The maximum of radiation patterns are in azimuth plane with four directions around the antenna to the directions of Ø = 40°, 120°, 220° and 320°.
HBSP: A Lightweight Hardware Virtualization Based Framework for Transparent Software Protection in Commodity Operating Systems

Commodity operating systems are usually large and complex, leading host-based security tools often provide inadequate protection against malware because execution environment for software is untrusted. As a result, most software currently uses various ways to defend malware attacks. However, these approaches not only raise the complexity of the software but also fail to offer an engrained security solution. The focal point in the software protection battle is how to protect effectively versus how to conceal the protector from untrusted OSes. This paper describes a lightweight, transparent and flexible architecture framework called HBSP (Hypervisor Based Software Protector)for software protection. HBSP, which is based on hardware virtualization extension technology such as Intel VT, and by taking advantage of Memory-Hiding strategy, resides completely outside of the target OS environment. Our security analysis and the performance experiment results demonstrate that HBSP effectively protects applications running on unmodified Windows XP, while the total overhead is only 0.25% in average.
Nod1/Nod2-Mediated Recognition Plays a Critical Role in Induction of Adaptive Immunity to Anthrax after Aerosol Exposure

ABSTRACT Toll-like receptors and Nod-like receptors (NLR) play an important role in sensing invading microorganisms for pathogen clearance and eliciting adaptive immunity for protection against rechallenge. Nod1 and Nod2, members of the NLR family, are capable of detecting bacterial peptidoglycan motifs in the host cytosol for triggering proinflammatory cytokine production. In the current study, we sought to determine if Nod1/Nod2 are involved in sensing Bacillus anthracis infection and eliciting protective immune responses. Using mice deficient in both Nod1 and Nod2 proteins, we showed that Nod1/Nod2 are involved in detecting B. anthracis for production of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-1α (IL-1α), IL-1β, CCL5, IL-6, and KC. Proinflammatory responses were higher when cells were exposed to viable spores than when they were exposed to irradiated spores, indicating that recognition of vegetative bacilli through Nod1/Nod2 is significant. We also identify a critical role for Nod1/Nod2 in priming responses after B. anthracis aerosol exposure, as mice deficient in Nod1/Nod2 were impaired in their ability to mount an anamnestic antibody response and were more susceptible to secondary lethal challenge than wild-type mice.
Toward a full-band texture features for spectral images

Facing the increasing number of multi and hyperspectral image acquisitions, in particular for medical and industrial applications, we need accurate features to analyse and assess the content complexity in a metrological way. In this paper, we explore an original way to compute texture features for spectral images in a full-band and vector process. To do it, we developed a dedicated approach for Mathematical Morphology using distance function. Thanks to this, we extend the classical mathematical morphology to spectral images. We show in this paper the scientific construction and preliminary results.
Nicotinamide Increases C‐peptide Secretion in Patients with Recent Onset Type 1 Diabetes

Nicotinamide, a poly‐(ADP‐ribose) synthetase inhibitor, has been shown in animal models to induce islet B‐cell regeneration. An open controlled trial was therefore carried out for 1 year in 36 patients with recent onset (<4 weeks symptoms) Type 1 diabetes. Twenty‐three patients were treated with nicotinamide (200 mg daily) in addition to insulin, and 13 control patients were treated with insulin alone. Metabolic and immunological variables at entry were similar in the two groups. A significant increase of stimulated plasma C‐peptide levels compared to diagnosis was observed only in the nicotinamide treated group (1.4±0.3 (±SE) μg I−1 at diagnosis vs 2.4±0.4 at 6 months, p < 0.04; and 3.0±0.5 at 1 year, p < 0.01). Patients receiving nicotinamide had lower glycosylated haemoglobin levels at 6 months and 1 year compared to the control group (p < 0.04 and p < 0.03, respectively) although insulin dose was lower. Small doses of nicotinamide may be successful in improving metabolic control in recent onset Type 1 diabetes, probably by increasing residual islet B‐cell function.
Ocean Acidification May Aggravate Social-Ecological Trade-Offs in Coastal Fisheries

Ocean Acidification (OA) will influence marine ecosystems by changing species abundance and composition. Major effects are described for calcifying organisms, which are significantly impacted by decreasing pH values. Direct effects on commercially important fish are less well studied. The early life stages of fish populations often lack internal regulatory mechanisms to withstand the effects of abnormal pH. Negative effects can be expected on growth, survival, and recruitment success. Here we study Norwegian coastal cod, one of the few stocks where such a negative effect was experimentally quantified, and develop a framework for coupling experimental data on OA effects to ecological-economic fisheries models. In this paper, we scale the observed physiological responses to the population level by using the experimentally determined mortality rates as part of the stock-recruitment relationship. We then use an ecological-economic optimization model, to explore the potential effect of rising CO2 concentration on ecological (stock size), economic (profits), consumer-related (harvest) and social (employment) indicators, with scenarios ranging from present day conditions up to extreme acidification. Under the assumptions of our model, yields and profits could largely be maintained under moderate OA by adapting future fishing mortality (and related effort) to changes owing to altered pH. This adaptation comes at the costs of reduced stock size and employment, however. Explicitly visualizing these ecological, economic and social tradeoffs will help in defining realistic future objectives. Our results can be generalized to any stressor (or stressor combination), which is decreasing recruitment success. The main findings of an aggravation of trade-offs will remain valid. This seems to be of special relevance for coastal stocks with limited options for migration to avoid unfavorable future conditions and subsequently for coastal fisheries, which are often small scale local fisheries with limited operational ranges.
E-health modelling for decision support: Can technology turn us all into experts?

Knowledge and the use of knowledge is increasingly important for business. As the world moves towards economies based on professional expertise and knowledge workers there is increasing pressure to make best use of available resources. Healthcare is no exception, and as new research becomes increasingly available healthcare professionals are reliant on their experience to identify robust evidence on which to base treatment decisions. This paper describes a research project carried out within a healthcare organization to identify professional knowledge and disseminate this throughout the organization. The paper describes the creation and testing of a conceptual model to locate and share knowledge and the development of an e-health system based on this model to support healthcare professionals.
VTEC enteropathogenicity

Escherichia coli strains that produce a potent toxin cytotoxic for Vero (green monkey kidney) cells were first reported by Konowalchuk et al. (1977). The toxin was appropriately named Verotoxin (VT), and the group of E. coli that produce VT became known as the Verotoxin-producing E. coli (VTEC). In common, for example, with enterotoxigenic E. coli that produce heat-labile and/or heat-stable toxins, the VTEC group is characterized by a pathogenic marker. VTEC were unusual in that the genes that encode VT are carried by temperate bacteriophages (Scotland et al. 1983; Smith et al. 1983; O'Brien et al. 1984; Newland et al. 1985; Willshaw et al. 1985). Once these genes were identified, VT-specific gene probes were constructed (Willshaw et al. 1987; Scotland et al. 1988); these proved very useful for the detection of VTEC and they remain one of the most frequently used methods for the routine detection of VTEC. As the structure of VT and Shiga toxin, produced by Shigella dysenteriae-l, are similar, VT became known as Shiga-like toxin (SLT) (O'Brien and Holmes 1987). In common with Shiga toxin, VT is also cytotoxic for HeLa cells. More recently, some workers have considered VT merely to be a variant of Shiga toxin, and some workers use the term Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). Although VTl and Shiga toxin are structurally remarkably
Convergence, stability, and discrete approximation of Laplace spectra

Spectral methods have been widely used in a broad range of applications fields. One important object involved in such methods is the Laplace-Beltrami operator of a manifold. Indeed, a variety of work in graphics and geometric optimization uses the eigen-structures (i.e, the eigenvalues and eigen-functions) of the Laplace operator. Applications include mesh smoothing, compression, editing, shape segmentation, matching, parameterization, and so on. While the Laplace operator is defined (mathematically) for a smooth domain, these applications often approximate a smooth manifold by a discrete mesh. The spectral structure of the manifold Laplacian is estimated from some discrete Laplace operator constructed from this mesh. In this paper, we study the important question of how well the spectrum computed from the discrete mesh approximates the true spectrum of the manifold Laplacian. We exploit a recent result on mesh Laplacian and provide the first convergence result to relate the spectrum constructed from a general mesh (approximating an m-manifold embedded in IRd) with the true spectrum. We also study how stable these eigenvalues and their discrete approximations are when the underlying manifold is perturbed, and provide explicit bounds for the Laplacian spectra of two "close" manifolds, as well as a convergence result for their discrete approximations. Finally, we present various experimental results to demonstrate that these discrete spectra are both accurate and robust in practice.
Potential Prostate Cancer Drug Target: Bioactivation of Androstanediol by Conversion to Dihydrotestosterone

High-affinity binding of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) to the androgen receptor (AR) initiates androgen-dependent gene activation, required for normal male sex development in utero, and contributes to prostate cancer development and progression in men. Under normal physiologic conditions, DHT is synthesized predominantly by 5α-reduction of testosterone, the major circulating androgen produced by the testis. During androgen deprivation therapy, intratumoral androgen production is sufficient for AR activation and prostate cancer growth, even though circulating testicular androgen levels are low. Recent studies indicate that the metabolism of 5α-androstane-3α, 17β-diol by 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 6 in benign prostate and prostate cancer cells is a major biosynthetic pathway for intratumoral synthesis of DHT, which binds AR and initiates transactivation to promote prostate cancer growth during androgen deprivation therapy. Drugs that target the so-called backdoor pathway of DHT synthesis provide an opportunity to enhance clinical response to luteinizing-hormone–releasing hormone (LHRH) agonists or antagonists, AR antagonists, and inhibitors of 5α-reductase enzymes (finasteride or dutasteride), and other steroid metabolism enzyme inhibitors (ketoconazole or the recently available abiraterone acetate). Clin Cancer Res; 17(18); 5844–9. ©2011 AACR.
RNA Interference-Mediated Repression of Cell Wall Invertase Impairs Defense in Source Leaves of Tobacco[OA]

The significance of cell wall invertase (cwINV) for plant defense was investigated by comparing wild-type tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) Samsun NN (SNN) with plants with RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated repression of cwINV (SNN∷cwINV). In source leaves of SNN∷cwINV, the activity of cwINV was repressed by about 90%. Sucrose export and apoplastic carbohydrate levels were significantly reduced, while photosynthesis and dark respiration exhibited little or no change. Activities of sucrose synthase and phosphofructokinase were depressed moderately, while ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase was diminished greatly. Yet, the content of cytosolic/vacuolar carbohydrates was not significantly lower, which correlated with the absence of phenotypic effects in SNN∷cwINV under normal growing conditions. By contrast, defense-related processes in primary metabolism and hypersensitive cell death were impaired and delayed in correlation with repression of cwINV. The increase in cwINV observed in source leaves of the resistant wild type following infection with Phytophthora nicotianae was absent in SNN∷cwINV. Also, defense-related callose deposition at cell-to-cell interfaces, the related decline in sugar export, and accumulation of apoplastic carbohydrates were reduced and delayed. Expression of pathogenesis-related proteins and increase in phenylalanine ammonia-lyase and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase activities were alleviated. Formation of hydrogen peroxide and development of hypersensitive lesions were weak and heterogeneous, and the pathogen was able to sporulate. We conclude that in photosynthetically active leaves of the apoplastic phloem loader, tobacco cwINV plays an essential role for acquisition of carbohydrates during plant-pathogen interactions and that the availability of these carbohydrates supports the onset of the hypersensitive reaction and ensures successful defense.
A biopsychosocial investigation of changes in self-concept on the Head Injury Semantic Differential Scale

ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate the influence of the “good-old-days” bias, neuropsychological functioning and cued recall of life events on self-concept change. Forty seven adults with TBI (70% male, 1–5 years post-injury) and 47 matched controls rated their past and present self-concept on the Head Injury Semantic Differential Scale (HISD) III. TBI participants also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests. The matched control group of 47 were from a sample of 78 uninjured participants who were randomised to complete either the Social Readjustment Rating Scale—Revised (cued recall) or HISD (non-cued recall) first. Consistent with the good-old-days bias, participants with TBI rated their pre-injury self-concept as more positive than their present self-concept and the present self-concept of controls (p < .05). More positive pre-injury self-concept ratings were related to lower estimated premorbid IQ and poorer verbal fluency and delayed memory (p < .05). For uninjured participants, cued recall, life events and event appraisals each accounted for unique variance in self-concept change (p < .01) after controlling for negative affect. The cued recall group rated their past self-concept as significantly more negative than the non-cued group (p < .01). Overall, the good-old-days bias, neuropsychological functioning and cued recall influenced reports of self-concept change by affecting retrospective ratings of past self-concept. Further research is needed to investigate the impact of contextual cues on self-concept change after TBI.
Abandonment of patients.

A nurse-patient relationship begins when responsibility for nursing care of a patient is accepted by the nurse. Failure to notify the employing agency that the nurse will not appear to work an assigned shift is not considered patient abandonment by the BRN, nor is refusal to accept an assignment considered patient abandonment. Once the nurse has accepted responsibility for nursing care of a patient, severing of the nurse-patient relationship without reasonable notice may lead to discipline of a nurse's license.
Multiple Partial Order Alignment as a Graph Problem

Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) is a fundamental tool of bioinformatics. Row-Column MSA (RC-MSA) methods such as CLUSTALW [12] produce tabular alignments that are now familiar. However, these methods have a number of shortcomings, including difficulty of understanding the result, high computational complexity, questionable assumptions, and other artifacts (such as poor handling of prefixand suffix-alignment). Partial Order Alignment was proposed recently as an alternative approach to MSA. Partial Order MSA (PO-MSA) methods produce a partial order — a labeled directed acyclic graph — that includes the input sequences as subgraphs. The approaches differ in their strengths and weaknesses as well as their assumptions. In this paper, we formalize PO-MSA as a graph problem, show that it corresponds to finding a Minimal Common Supergraph for a set of partial order graphs, and characterize how such a supergraph can be derived. This formalization offers some perspective on MSA generally, and also on particular tradeoffs between RC-MSA and PO-MSA.