Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Homeostatic Regulation of Intrinsic Excitability and Synaptic Transmission in a Developing Visual Circuit

One of the major challenges faced by the developing visual system is how to stably process visual information, yet at the same time remain flexible enough to accommodate growth and plasticity induced by visual experience. We find that in the Xenopus retinotectal circuit, during a period in development when the retinotectal map undergoes activity-dependent refinement and visual inputs strengthen, tectal neurons adapt their intrinsic excitability such that a stable relationship between the total level of synaptic input and tectal neuron spike output is conserved. This homeostatic balance between synaptic and intrinsic properties is maintained, in part, via regulation of voltage-gated Na+ currents, resulting in a stable neuronal input–output function. We experimentally manipulated intrinsic excitability or synapse strengthening in developing tectal neurons in vivo by electroporation of a leak K+ channel gene or a peptide that interferes with normal AMPA receptor trafficking. Both manipulations resulted in a compensatory increase in voltage-gated Na+ currents. This suggests that intrinsic neuronal properties are actively regulated as a function of the total level of neuronal activity experienced during development. We conclude that the coordinated changes between synaptic and intrinsic properties allow developing optic tectal neurons to remain within a stable dynamic range, even as the pattern and strength of visual inputs changes over development, suggesting that homeostatic regulation of intrinsic properties plays a central role in the functional development of neural circuits.
Gallstones: new insights into an old story

Gallstones, particularly cholesterol gallstones, are common in Western populations and may cause symptoms such as biliary colic or complications such as acute cholecystitis or gallstone pancreatitis. Recent studies have allowed for a better understanding of the risk of symptoms or complications in patients with gallstones. In addition, newer data suggest an association of gallstones with overall mortality, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal cancers, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Knowledge of appropriate indications and timing of cholecystectomy, particularly for mild biliary pancreatitis, has gradually accumulated. Lastly, there are exciting possibilities for novel agents to treat or prevent cholesterol stone disease. This review covers new advances in our understanding of the natural history, clinical associations, and management of gallstone disease.
A back to back multilevel converter for driving low inductance brushless AC machines

Traditionally, multilevel converters are utilised in medium voltage applications, allowing the DC-link voltage to exceed the switch maximum blocking voltage. Here, their application to control high- efficiency brushless permanent magnet synchronous machines exhibiting low phase inductance is explored, the relative advantages being shown to include reduced current ripple and improved harmonic spectrum. A cost benefit analysis is included along with experimental results from a prototype 5-level back-to-back converter.
Effects of foregrounding on predictive inference generation by normally ageing adults

Foregrounding, a technique that highlights concepts in discourse, was investigated as a facilitator of predictive inferencing by normally ageing and young adults. Study participants listened to two versions of short discourse stimuli. In foregrounded versions, two consecutive sentences referred to concepts that led to an implied outcome. Control passages contained the same key lexical elements, but did not predict the outcome. Inference generation was evaluated implicitly, using a word recognition task with a response deadline. Target words reflected predictive inferences from the foregrounded passages. An influence of foregrounding was evident in recognition accuracy for both groups and in response times for the older subjects. Discussion centres on the partial age-group discrepancy in results, possible mechanisms for the foregrounding effect and potential future clinical implications.
Response of normal and osteoporotic human bone cells to mechanical stress in vitro

Sterck, Jozien G. H. , Jenneke Klein-Nulend, Paul Lips, and Elisabeth H. Burger. Response of normal and osteoporotic human bone cells to mechanical stress in vitro. Am. J. Physiol. 274 (Endocrinol. Metab. 37): E1113–E1120, 1998. —Bone adapts to mechanical stress, and bone cell cultures from animal origin have been shown to be highly sensitive to mechanical stress in vitro. In this study, we tested whether bone cell cultures from human bone biopsies respond to stress in a similar manner as animal bone cells and whether bone cells from osteoporotic patients respond similarly to nonosteoporotic donors. Bone cell cultures were obtained as outgrowth from collagenase-stripped trabecular bone fragments from 17 nonosteoporotic donors between 7 and 77 yr of age and from 6 osteoporotic donors between 42 and 72 yr of age. After passage, the cells were mechanically stressed by treatment with pulsating fluid flow (PFF; 0.7 6 0.03 Pa at 5 Hz for 1 h) to mimic the stress-driven flow of interstitial fluid through the bone canaliculi, which is likely the stimulus for mechanosensation in bone in vivo. Similar to earlier studies in rodent and chicken bone cells, the bone cells from nonosteoporotic donors responded to PFF with enhanced release of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and nitric oxide as well as a reduced release of transforming growth factor-b (TGF-b). The upregulation of PGE2 but not the other responses continued for 24 h after 1 h of PFF treatment. The bone cells from osteoporotic donors responded in a similar manner as the nonosteoporotic donors except for the longterm PGE2 release. The PFF-mediated upregulation of PGE2 release during 24 h of postincubation after 1 h of PFF was significantly reduced in osteoporotic patients compared with six age-matched controls as well as with the whole nonosteoporotic group. These results indicate that enhanced release of PGE2 and nitric oxide, as well as reduced release of TGF-b, is a characteristic response of human bone cells to fluid shear stress, similar to animal bone cells. The results also suggest that bone cells from osteoporotic patients may be impaired in their long-term response to mechanical stress.
Low-rank Feature Selection for Reinforcement Learning

Linear value function approximation is a common approach to solving large reinforcement learning problems. Because designing good approximation features is difﬁcult, automatic feature selection is an important research topic. We propose a new method for feature selection, which is based on a low-rank factorization of the transition matrix. Our approach derives features directly from high-dimensional raw inputs, such as image data. The method is easy to implement using SVD, and our experiments show that it is faster and more stable than alternative methods.
A Combined Color and Texture Features Based Methodology for Recognition of Crop Field Image

This paper presents a methodology to recognize certain crop fields’ images using texture, color and combination of both types of features. In this work, we have considered eight varieties of crop images, namely, Brinjal, Cotton, Groundnut, Paddy, Soyabean, Sugarcane and Sunflower. Texture features using GLCM and color features using HSV are deployed. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used for recognition. Considering only as feature, classification accuracies of 63.75%, 66.25% and 84.375% are obtained using texture, color and their combination respectively. The work is helpful in the area of agriculture for early detection and prevention of diseases.
HPCTOOLKIT: tools for performance analysis of optimized parallel programs

HPCTOOLKIT is an integrated suite of tools that supports measurement, analysis, attribution, and presentation of application performance for both sequential and parallel programs. HPCTOOLKIT can pinpoint and quantify scalability bottlenecks in fully optimized parallel programs with a measurement overhead of only a few percent. Recently, new capabilities were added to HPCTOOLKIT for collecting call path profiles for fully optimized codes without any compiler support, pinpointing and quantifying bottlenecks in multithreaded programs, exploring performance information and source code using a new user interface, and displaying hierarchical space–time diagrams based on traces of asynchronous call path samples. This paper provides an overview of HPCTOOLKIT and illustrates its utility for performance analysis of parallel applications. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Transport of an external Lys-Asp-Glu-Leu (KDEL) protein from the plasma membrane to the endoplasmic reticulum: studies with cholera toxin in Vero cells

The A2 chain of cholera toxin (CTX) contains a COOH-terminal Lys-Asp- Glu-Leu (KDEL) sequence. We have, therefore, analyzed by immunofluorescence and by subcellular fractionation in Vero cells whether CTX can used to demonstrate a retrograde transport of KDEL proteins from the Golgi to the ER. Immunofluorescence studies reveal that after a pulse treatment with CTX, the CTX-A and B subunits (CTX-A and CTX-B) reach Golgi-like structures after 15-20 min (maximum after 30 min). Between 30 and 90 min, CTX-A (but not CTX-B) appear in the intermediate compartment and in the ER, whereas the CTX-B are translocated to the lysosomes. Subcellular fractionation studies confirm these results: after CTX uptake for 15 min, CTX-A is associated only with endosomal and Golgi compartments. After 30 min, a small amount of CTX-A appears in the ER in a trypsin-resistant form, and after 60 min, a significant amount appears. CTX-A seems to be transported mainly in its oxidized form (CTX-A1-S-S-CTX-A2) from the Golgi to the ER, where it becomes slowly reduced to form free CTX A1 and CTX-A2, as indicated by experiments in which cells were homogenized 30 and 90 min after the onset of CTX uptake in the presence of N- ethylmaleimide. Nocodazol applied after accumulation of CTX in Golgi inhibits the appearance of CTX-A in the ER and delays the increase of 3',5'cAMP, indicating the participation of microtubules in the retrograde Golgi-ER transport.
On hybrid cooperation in underlay cognitive radio networks

In wireless systems where transmitters are subject to a strict received power constraint, such as in underlay cognitive radio networks, cooperative communication is a promising strategy to enhance network performance, as it helps to improve the coverage area and outage performance of a network. However, this comes at the expense of increased resource utilization. To balance the performance gain against the possible over-utilization of resources, we propose a hybrid-cooperation technique for underlay cognitive radio networks, where secondary users cooperate only when required. Various performance measures of the proposed hybrid-cooperation technique are analyzed in this paper, and are also further validated numerically.
Volatile Organic Compounds in Uremia

Background Although “uremic fetor” has long been felt to be diagnostic of renal failure, the compounds exhaled in uremia remain largely unknown so far. The present work investigates whether breath analysis by ion mobility spectrometry can be used for the identification of volatile organic compounds retained in uremia. Methods Breath analysis was performed in 28 adults with an eGFR ≥60 ml/min per 1.73 m2, 26 adults with chronic renal failure corresponding to an eGFR of 10–59 ml/min per 1.73 m2, and 28 adults with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) before and after a hemodialysis session. Breath analysis was performed by ion mobility spectrometryafter gas-chromatographic preseparation. Identification of the compounds of interest was performed by thermal desorption gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Results Breath analyses revealed significant differences in the spectra of patients with and without renal failure. Thirteen compounds were chosen for further evaluation. Some compounds including hydroxyacetone, 3-hydroxy-2-butanone and ammonia accumulated with decreasing renal function and were eliminated by dialysis. The concentrations of these compounds allowed a significant differentiation between healthy, chronic renal failure with an eGFR of 10–59 ml/min, and ESRD (p<0.05 each). Other compounds including 4-heptanal, 4-heptanone, and 2-heptanone preferentially or exclusively occurred in patients undergoing hemodialysis. Conclusion Impairment of renal function induces a characteristic fingerprint of volatile compounds in the breath. The technique of ion mobility spectrometry can be used for the identification of lipophilic uremic retention molecules.
The Impact of Brainstorming Techniques on Subsequent Group Processes

Previous research on brainstorming and nominal group techniques has focused primarily on theirability to generate ideas without examining the impact of these procedures on actual group decision making. This experimental study found no difference in the decision quality of untrained, brainstorming, and nominal groups. However, brainstorming and nominal group members were more satisfied, felt their groups used a more effective process, andfelt they communicated more effectively than untrained groups. Such results suggest that the impact of these techniques goes beyond their ability to generate ideas by affecting group process and communication in positive ways.
Coronary flow reserve, insulin resistance and blood pressure response to standing in patients with normoglycaemia: is there a relationship?

Aims To establish the relationships between coronary flow reserve, cardiovascular autonomic function, and insulin resistance characterized by the homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance score in patients with normal carbohydrate metabolism according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and American Diabetes Association (ADA) criteria, and with morphologically normal epicardial coronary arteries.
Allogeneic transplant following brentuximab vedotin in patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma and systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma

Abstract Brentuximab vedotin is an antibody drug conjugate that induces durable objective responses in patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma and systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma. Fifteen of 160 patients who participated in two pivotal phase 2 studies received a consolidative allogeneic stem cell transplant (allo-SCT) following brentuximab vedotin treatment. This case series describes their experience. The studies were approved by Institutional Review Boards prior to patient enrollment. Patients received 1.8 mg/kg brentuximab vedotin every 3 weeks for up to 16 cycles. The estimated 2-year progression-free survival (PFS) rate was 66%, and the median PFS has not yet been reached. Eleven of the 15 patients were alive and the estimated 2-year survival rate was 80%. The safety of brentuximab vedotin treatment in this series was consistent with the known safety profile in this setting. Brentuximab vedotin is a compelling option for reducing tumor burden to facilitate a consolidative allo-SCT.
SCORE : An E cient Technique to reduce Congestion in ParallelSystemsDavid

In massively parallel systems, the performance gains are often signiicantly diminished by the inherent communication overhead. This overhead is caused by the required message passing resulting from the task allocation scheme. This paper presents the SCORE technique which acts to reduce the overhead by both scheduling the communication and determining the message routing paths. The compile time determination of when nodes send their messages to other network nodes is termed communication scheduling. The recently developed Collision Graph is used to begin the study of compile-time analysis of run-time communication overhead. This NP-complete problem is formalized and heuristics are used in determining the SCORE algorithm which operates on a general case model of message traac. Experiments performed show that this new method outperforms baseline techniques.
Task Force on Sudden Cardiac Death of the European Society of Cardiology.

The members of the Task Force on Sudden Death dedicate this paper to the memory of our former friend and colleague, Professor Ronald W. F. Campbell. Ronnie spent his life working in the field of sudden cardiac death; he contributed much and helped many. But his own life fell victim to this very problem, sadly illustrating its unexpected nature. With Ronnie’s memory in mind the Task Force has worked diligently to describe the extent of our expanding knowledge in this field, hoping that our small contribution might help to appease his sad and sudden death.
A TDMA-based mechanism for real-time communication in IEEE 802.11e networks

In this paper, we propose a TDMA-based communication approach to be used upon the EDCA communication mechanism defined in the IEEE 802.11e standard. This approach allows the coexistence of real-time (RT) traffic together with uncontrolled (external) traffic sources. In the context of this paper, RT traffic means small sized packets generated in periodic intervals, which must be delivered before the end of the message stream period. The target of this paper is to highlight some limitations of the EDCA mechanism when supporting RT communication and to compare these results with those obtained with the proposed TDMA approach. We have assessed these two mechanisms considering an open communication environment, where there are RT and non-RT stations operating in the same frequency band. Furthermore, a realistic error-prone model channel was used to measure the impact of interferences against an error-free channel. We show that the proposed TDMA approach offers an almost constant access delay and it also improves the EDCA behavior in what concerns the average functional throughput and the average deadline losses.
Synthetic associations in the context of genome-wide association scan signals

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified a large number of genetic variants associated with complex traits, but these only explain a small proportion of the total heritability. It has been recently proposed that rare variants can create ‘synthetic association' signals in GWAS, by occurring more often in association with one of the alleles of a common tag single nucleotide polymorphism. While the ultimate evaluation of this hypothesis will require the completion of large-scale sequencing studies, it is informative to place it in the broader context of what is known about the genetic architecture of complex disease. In this review, we draw from empirical and theoretical data to summarize evidence showing that synthetic associations do not underlie many reported GWAS associations.
Assessing dyslexia in Finnish high-school students: a pilot study

A pilot study concerning Finnish dyslexics at senior high school (lukio), for 16–19-year-olds, is reported. The phonological processing deficit was assumed to underlie dyslexia in these late teenage subjects. The regular nature of Finnish orthography was taken into consideration. Four tasks were introduced to a total of 32 students, of whom 15 were dyslexics and 17 were controls. The controls outperformed the dyslexics on three tasks: text recoding, pseudoword recoding and pseudoword spelling. On the text spelling task, both groups performed equally well. In the correlational analysis of all subjects, both recoding tasks showed high correlations with selfestimated school achievement in language-related subjects. The recoding time appeared to be more important than the number of reading errors. These preliminary results suggest that the three tasks, capable of discriminating dyslexics, might be useful in the development of an adult dyslexia test in Finnish.
Zero degrees of empathy

When I first read Simon Baron-Cohen’s Zero Degrees of Empathy, with my popular science hat on, I really enjoyed this brief (132 pages, excluding appendices and references! ) and thought-provoking introduction to the science of empathy. It’s well-written, engaging, readable, and ambitiously broad, combining historical examples with psychiatric case studies and cutting-edge neuroscience research. Baron-Cohen touches base with all the classics of psychology; Zimbardo, Damasio, Phineas Gage, Bowlby, Harlow, and Zimmerman all get a mention. Upon rereading Zero Degrees of Empathy with my cognitive neuroscientist hat on, however, I came to engage more critically with the content, albeit without losing this initial appreciation of its strengths. Baron-Cohen’s aim is not trivial: He wishes to ‘‘understand human cruelty’’. He’s not the first psychologist to seek better explanations for the dark side of the human condition*Stanley Milgram springs to mind. Milgram’s experiments investigating obedience and authority are mentioned in Chapter 1, along with a good helping of stomach-churning examples of human cruelty, exemplifying the ways in which we’re capable of objectifying or dehumanising other people. Famously, Milgram was motivated to conduct his experiments by the events of the Nazi Holocaust; for his part, Baron-Cohen recounts how ‘‘the Nazis turned Jews into bars of soap’’ and ‘‘lampshades’’. The starting position is simple enough: ‘‘empathy [erosion] is the final common pathway to cruelty’’. This provides strong explanatory power not afforded by the unscientific notion of ‘‘evil’’. The rest of the book concerns what empathy is and the routes to its erosion. The definition of empathy offered is multifaceted; it is the ability to keep in mind someone else’s mind (a ‘‘dual-focus’’ of attention), which affords the ability to recognise (cognitive empathy) and respond (affective empathy) appropriately to the emotions, thoughts, and feelings of others. ‘‘We all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum,’’ says Baron-Cohen. At one tail of the normal distribution lies ‘‘zero degrees of empathy’’, where people become capable of dehumanising others, leading to acts of cruelty. A significant portion of the book is devoted to introducing the reader to what Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2013 Vol. 18, No. 3, 252 256, http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/13546805.2012. 741789
Geometric Affordances from a Single Example via the Interaction Tensor

This paper develops and evaluates a new tensor field representation to express the geometric affordance of one object over another. We expand the well known bisector surface representation to one that is weight-driven and that retains the provenance of surface points with directional vectors. We also incorporate the notion of affordance keypoints which allow for faster decisions at a point of query and with a compact and straightforward descriptor. Using a single interaction example, we are able to generalize to previously-unseen scenarios; both synthetic and also real scenes captured with RGBD sensors. We show how our interaction tensor allows for significantly better performance over alternative formulations. Evaluations also include crowdsourcing comparisons that confirm the validity of our affordance proposals, which agree on average 84% of the time with human judgments, and which is 20-40% better than the baseline methods.