Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Efficient Method for Computing Synaptic Conductances Based on a Kinetic Model of Receptor Binding

where gsyn is the synaptic conductance and to is the time of transmitter release. This function peaks at a value of l / e at t = to + T , and decays exponentially with a time constant of T . When multiple events occur in succession at a single synapse, the total conductance at any time is a sum of such waveforms calculated over the individual event times. There are several drawbacks to this method. First, the relationship to actual synaptic conductances is based only on an approximate correspondence of the time-course of the waveform to physiological recordings of the postsynaptic response, rather than plausible biophysical mechanisms. Second, summation of multiple waveforms can be cumbersome, since each event time must be stored in a queue for the duration of the waveform and necessitates calculation of an additional exponential during this period (but see Srinivasan and Chiel 1993). Third, there is no natural provision for saturation of the conductance. An alternative to the use of stereotyped waveforms is to compute synaptic conductances directly using a kinetic model (Perkel eta! . 1981). This approach allows a more realistic biophysical representation and is consistent with the formalism used to describe the conductances of other ion channels. However, solution of the associated differential equations generally requires computationally expensive numerical integration. In this paper we show that reasonable biophysical assumptions about synaptic transmission allow the equations for a simple kinetic synapse model to be solved analytically. This yields a mechanism that preserves the advantages of kinetic models while being as fast to compute as a single tr-function. Moreover, this mechanism accounts implicitly for sat-
Role of recombinant human glicentin in the normal human jejunum: an in vitro study.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Glicentin (GL) is known as an inhibitory factor for alimentary tract movement and the possibility that GL may be a neuromodulator of the non-adrenergic non-cholinergic (NANC) inhibitory nerves has been reported from animal experiments. Since sufficient amounts of GL have not been available for the physiological studies, there is no report concerning the effects of GL on the enteric nervous system in the normal human small intestine. Recently synthesized recombinant human GL (rh-GL) has become available to study the physiological action of GL. To clarify the physiological significance of GL in the normal human small intestine, enteric nervous responses to GL in the normal small bowel were investigated. METHODOLOGY Normal jejunal muscle strips (thirty-two preparations) derived from patients who underwent jejunal resection for advanced gastric cancers (14 cases) were used. The subjects consisted of 10 men and 4 women, aged from 48 to 66 years with a mean age of 59.9 years. A mechanographic technique was used to evaluate the in vitro jejunal muscle responses to GL (recombinant human GL; rh-GL) of adrenergic and cholinergic nerves before and after treatment with various autonomic nerve blockers. All muscle strips used in this study reacted to the electrical field stimulation (EFS), which was thus suitable for stimulation of enteric nervous system. RESULTS In experiment I (the responses to rh-GL after blockade of the adrenergic and cholinergic nerves) the inhibition reaction ofjejunal contraction movement was concentration-dependent; 0% at 1 x 10(-9) g/mL, 6.3% at 1 x 10(-8) g/mL, 12.5% at 1 x 10(-7) g/mL, and 43.8% at 1 x 10(-6) g/mL. The remaining muscle strips demonstrated no reaction to rh-GL. In addition, significant differences were noted between 1 x 10(-9) and 1 x 10(-6) g/mL, between 1 x 10(-8) and 1 x 10(-6) g/mL, and between 1 x 10(-7) and 1 x 10(-6) g/mL (P=0.0005, P=0.0066, P=0.0359, respectively). Rh-GL concentration-dependently inhibited a contraction reaction after blockade of the adrenergic and cholinergic nerves. In experiment II (responses to rh-GL following administration of tetrodotoxin) tetrodotoxin did not block the inhibition of contraction reaction in response to rh-GL in the human jejunum. Inhibition reaction of contraction movement was seen in the jejunal muscle strips, as in experiment I. CONCLUSIONS GL plays an important role in the regulating inhibition of the contraction reaction in normal human jejunum via NANC nerves, and has a direct action on the jejunal muscle receptor.
Valvular heart disease in Parkinson's disease patients treated with dopamine agonists: A reader‐blinded monocenter echocardiography study

Fibrotic valvular heart disease (VHD) has been reported in association with ergot dopamine agonists (DAs), but the current database is insufficient regarding clinical relevance and comparison to data on non‐ergot DAs. We evaluated the effects of four DAs (pergolide, cabergoline, ropinirole, pramipexole) on morphology and function of heart valves in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) to determine the frequency and clinical relevance of DA‐induced VHD. A total of 85 patients treated with ergot or non‐ergot DAs and 38 age‐matched controls were evaluated by transthoracic echocardiography. Valvular pathology was assessed by established criteria of valvular regurgitation and a VHD scoring system. Both grading systems revealed increased frequency of VHD in ergot DA patients compared to both non‐ergot DA patients and controls with 22% of ergot DA patients having moderate VHD versus 3% of non‐ergot DA patients and none of controls (P = 0.001). We did not find correlations of echocardiographic findings with duration/cumulative dose of treatment, age, or vascular risk factors. Our data suggest that ergot DAs are associated with higher prevalence of VHD compared to non‐ergot DAs and controls. Standard echocardiography seems sufficient to detect VHD in PD patients treated with DAs. © 2006 Movement Disorder Society
Grey matter abnormalities in first-episode schizophrenia and affective psychosis.

BACKGROUND Grey matter and other structural brain abnormalities are consistently reported in first-onset schizophrenia, but less is known about the extent of neuroanatomical changes in first-onset affective psychosis. AIMS To determine which brain abnormalities are specific to (a) schizophrenia and (b) affective psychosis. METHOD We obtained dual-echo (proton density/T2-weighted) magnetic resonance images and carried out voxel-based analysis on the images of 73 patients with first-episode psychosis (schizophrenia n=44, affective psychosis n=29) and 58 healthy controls. RESULTS Both patients with schizophrenia and patients with affective psychosis had enlarged lateral and third ventricle volumes. Regional cortical grey matter reductions (including bilateral anterior cingulate gyrus, left insula and left fusiform gyrus) were evident in affective psychosis but not in schizophrenia, although patients with schizophrenia displayed decreased hippocampal grey matter and increased striatal grey matter at a more liberal statistical threshold. CONCLUSIONS Both schizophrenia and affective psychosis are associated with volumetric abnormalities at the onset of frank psychosis, with some of these evident in common brain areas.
A Computational Model of First Language Acquisition

In a recent survey of early language acquisition, Gleitman, Gleitman, Landau, and Wanner (1988) cite Leonard Bloomfield (1933, p. 29) as remarking that "language learning is doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform. " Given this, it is equally no small feat to attempt to build a computer model that does the same thing. Satake's book is one of but a handful of attempts in the computational linguistics tradition to take up this challengemsomewhat surprising given the vast range of linguistic and psychological literature on the subject. Perhaps it is because linguists and psychologists can try to digest just one piece of the acquisition puzzle, while a computational model must typically try to gobble a major chunk of language acquisition whole, or risk being called a mere toy. In this light, Satake should be congratulated for trying to present, in one brief volume, a computational model that attempts to handle facts about morpheme acquisition and intonation; varying word order across languages; verb subcategorization; and classic rule overgeneralization, while at the same time at least paying some attention to what psychologists know about child language. One then obviously runs the risk of stretching too thin, and in fact the volume under review runs far too short in large type. Readers looking for answers to these rich subjects mentioned just above will come away disappointed by a sketch that ultimately can only approximate what computer modeling did in this area more than ten years ago (work by Anderson 1977; Selfridge 1981; and Berwick 1979, 1985). The book exercises the model with a very limited range of sample sentences--just nine examples, with no recursion. More unfortunately, given the emphasis on free word order, no Japanese examples are included. The first quarter of the book is devoted to a rather thin outline of some of the basic psychological results on input available to the child and learnability theory, while the remainder is devoted to the three components of (sub)category generalization, a case analysis of the system working on the examples and a short study of over-regularization, and the use of teacher correction in a so-called "production mode" to repair mistakes. This last point is quite important, for Satake's intended novel contribution to this older literature is stated clearly at the outset: to build an empiricist model of acquisition that is cognitively faithful--that is, one where the structure of language is "out there" in the world and formed by inductive generalization, special properties of parental input (motherese), the order of examples (including negative examples), and the like rather than "in there"--the child's head. Satake means this of course as the polar opposite of "innate" acquisition procedures, which assume a richly structured knowledge of language to begin with. (Satake labels these as "passive" acquisition models
A fast method to compute the potential in the multisphere model (EEG application)

A series expansion is derived for the potential distribution, caused by a dipole source in a multilayered sphere with piecewise constant conductivity. When the radial coordinate of the source approaches the radial coordinate of the field point the spherical harmonics expansion converges only very slowly. It is shown how the convergence can be improved by first calculating an asymptotic approximation of the potential and using the so-called addition-subtraction method. Since the asymptotic solution is an approximation of the true solution, it gives some insight on the dependence of the potential on the conductivities. The formulas are given in Cartesian coordinates, so that difficulties with coordinate transformations are avoided. Attention is paid to the (fast) computation of the partial derivatives of the potential, which is useful for inverse algorithms. <<ETX>>
Genetic Counseling for Thalassemia in the Islamic Republic of Iran

The response of groups to pressing medical problems cannot be predicted on theoretical grounds. An example is the program for the control of β-thalassemia in Iran, a country with a tradition of inbreeding and a conservative religious culture, and in which thalassemia is common. Thalassemia is largely treatable, but the treatment is lifelong and onerous and creates a serious economic burden for the individual family and for the national health budget. The genetics are simple, and inexpensive screening tests are available to identify carriers. An Iranian program requiring mandatory premarital screening was started in 1997, and between 1998 and 2005 the laws of the country were modified to permit abortion of affected fetuses. The story of this effort indicates how a country with a social system very different from that of the United States responded to a medical problem with significant ethical overtones. The Iranian experience supports the optimistic view that societies can react to pressing problems with pragmatic rather than theoretical solutions.
Motor and Sensory Nerve Conduction Are Affected Differently by Ice Pack, Ice Massage, and Cold Water Immersion

Background It is well known that reducing tissue temperature changes sensory and motor nerve conduction. However, few studies have compared the effect of different cold modalities on nerve conduction parameters. Objective The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of ice pack, ice massage, and cold water immersion on the conduction parameters of the sural (sensorial) and tibial motor nerves. Design An experimental study was conducted in which the participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 intervention groups (n=12 per group). Independent variables were cold modality and pre- and post-cooling measurement time. Dependent variables were skin temperature and nerve conduction parameters. Methods Thirty-six people who were healthy, with a mean (SD) age of 20.5 (1.9) years, participated in the study. Each group received 1 of the 3 cold modalities, applied to the right calf region for 15 minutes. Skin temperature and nerve conduction parameters were measured before and immediately after cooling. Results All 3 modalities reduced skin temperature (mean=18.2°C). There also was a reduction in amplitude and an increase in latency and duration of the compound action potential. Ice massage, ice pack, and cold water immersion reduced sensory nerve conduction velocity (NCV) by 20.4, 16.7, and 22.6 m/s and motor NCV by 2.5, 2.1, and 8.3 m/s, respectively. Cold water immersion was the most effective modality in changing nerve conduction parameters. Limitations The cooling area of the ice massage and ice pack was smaller than that of the cold water immersion. The examiner was not blinded to the treatment group. The population included only participants who were healthy and young. Conclusions All 3 modalities were effective in reducing skin temperature and changing sensory conduction at a physiological level that is sufficient to induce a hypoalgesic effect. The results suggest that cold water immersion, as applied in this study, is the most indicated modality for inducing therapeutic effects associated with the reduction of motor nerve conduction.
Detection of abnormal profiles on group attacks in recommender systems

Recommender systems using Collaborative Filtering techniques are capable of make personalized predictions. However, these systems are highly vulnerable to profile injection attacks. Group attacks are attacks that target a group of items instead of one, and there are common attributes among these items. Such profiles will have a good probability of being similar to a large number of user profiles, making them hard to detect. We propose a novel technique for identifying group attack profiles which uses an improved metric based on Degree of Similarity with Top Neighbors (DegSim) and Rating Deviation from Mean Agreement (RDMA). We also extend our work with a detailed analysis of target item rating patterns. Experiments show that the combined methods can improve detection rates in user-based recommender systems.
Part II: Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Investigation of Methionine Containing Heterodipeptides Adsorbed on Colloidal Silver

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra of methionine (Met) containing dipeptides: Met-X and X-Met, where X is: L-glycine (Gly), L-leucine (Leu), L-proline (Pro), and L-phenylalanine (Phe) are reported. Using pre-aggregated Ag colloid we obtained high-quality SERS spectra of these compounds spontaneously adsorbed on colloidal silver. Additionally, we measured Raman spectra (RS) of these heterodipeptides in a solid state as well as in acidic and basic solutions. The RS and SERS spectra of Met-X and X-Met presented in this work appear to be different. One of the most prominent and common features in the SERS spectra of all these dipeptides is a band in the 660–690 cm−1 range that is due to the C–S stretching, v(CS), vibration of Met. This suggests that all the abovementioned compounds adsorb on the silver surface through a thioether atom. On the other hand, the SERS spectra of X-Met show clearly that not only the S atom but also the carboxylate group interact with the colloid surface as manifested by the enhancement of bands in the 920–930 and 1380–1396 cm−1 regions. These bands are ascribed to the v(C–COO−) and vsym(COO−) vibrations, respectively. Additionally, a SERS spectrum of Phe-Met indicates that the interaction of the thioether atom, amine group, and aromatic side chain with the silver surface is favorable and may dictate the orientation and conformation of adsorbed peptide.
An ubiquitous mobile multimedia system for events agenda

The current growth of mobile devices enabled with GPS receptors, cameras, accelerometers, and Internet access offers new opportunities for new mobile ubiquitous multimedia applications. Such applications help local communities to share resources using geo-location, interactive mapping, augmented reality, and several data representations. This paper presents CityEvents, a mobile solution that provides real time awareness-based information of local events and news. The presented ubiquitous system is a simple and easy to use event guide, providing location-awareness and content-awareness ordering data to the user. The proposal was evaluated and demonstrated in iPhone devices and it is ready for use.
Space Vector Pulse Density ModulationScheme For Multilevel Inverter With 18-sidedPolygonal Voltage Space Vector

Space Vector Based Pulse Density Modulated scheme for multilevel inverter is proposed in this paper. A two level and three level inverters with three different DC input voltages are used to produce 18 stepped output sinusoidal voltage. First order sigma delta modulator is used to obtain Pulse Density Modulation. The vector space is divided into 18 segments for spatial quantization. Sixty degree co-ordinate system is used to avoid fractional arithmetic. The proposed scheme uses only switching vectors which lie on the vertices of 18 sided polygon. The scheme uses only sector identification for selecting the switching vectors without using lookup table and timer. The proposed scheme with 18 sided polygonal multilevel inverter results in elimination of 5th, 7th, 11th and 13th order harmonics when compared to two level inverter schemes. Simulation results of the proposed scheme are compared with that of two level inverter schemes. From the results, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage of SVPDM based 2-level inverter is 31.13% and the 18-sided multilevel inverter with SVPDM is 10.11%. From the results, the validity of the SVPDM based 18-sided multilevel inverter has been confirmed. Zero voltage switching can be incorporated in future for achieving high efficiency
Effects of peritoneal macrophage autophagy on the immune function of sepsis mice.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of peritoneal macrophage autophagy on immune function in sepsis mice. METHODS Seventy-two male BALB/C mice were intraperitoneally injected with LPS to induce sepsis. The mice were randomly divided into six groups: LPS+2 h, LPS+6 h, LPS+12 h, LPS+24 h and LPS+36 h. LPS with a dose of 10 mg/kg was intraperitoneally injected into the abdominal cavity of the sepsis mice, and the control group was injected with the same dose of saline. ELISA was used to detect the concentrations of inflammatory factors IL-2, IL-10 and TNF-α in the peripheral blood, and the CD4+T/CD8+T ratio in the peripheral blood was detected by flow cytometry. The expression levels of LC3II and Beclin-1/beta-action in the mouse macrophages were measured using Western blot to determine the level of autophagy. RESULTS The expression levels of LC3II and Beclin-1 were significantly higher in the peritoneal macrophages of the mice from the LPS+2 h group than in those of the mice from the normal group (P<0.05). Meanwhile, these levels continuously declined in the LPS+6 h, LPS+12 h, LPS+24 h and LPS+36 h groups (P<0.05). The peripheral blood CD4+T/CD8+T cell ratio was significantly higher in the LPS+2 h and LPS+6 h groups than in the normal group (P<0.05). The ratio peaked at 6 h and then continuously declined (P<0.05). Furthermore, the concentrations of IL-2 and Tnf-α were significantly higher in the peripheral blood serum of the LPS+2 h, LPS+6 h and LPS+12 h groups than in those of the normal group (P<0.05). The peak was observed at 12 h followed by a continuous decline in the LPS+24 h and 3 LPS+6 h groups (P<0.05). The peripheral serum IL-10 concentration was significantly higher in the LPS+2 h, LPS+6 h, LPS+12 h, LPS+24 h and LPS+36 h groups than in the normal group (P<0.05). In the LPS+6 h, LPS+12 h, LPS+24 h and LPS+36 h groups, the peritoneal macrophages LC3II, Beclin-1 and peripheral serum CD+4T/CD+8T ratio correlation index R2=0.716 (P=0.043), R2=0.954 (P=0.023). CONCLUSION Autophagy in peritoneal macrophages plays an important role in the immune function of sepsis mice. In addition, the autophagy of peritoneal macrophages and the immune function of sepsis mice are strongly correlated. Furthermore, macrophage autophagy plays an important role in the immune function changes in sepsis mice, and the underlying mechanism may be involved in inflammation and macrophage antigen presentation by regulating the secretion of inflammatory cytokines and lymphocyte apoptosis antagonism.
Article Title: a Computational Study on Altered Theta-gamma Coupling during Learning and Phase Coding a Computational Study on Altered Theta-gamma Coupling during Learning and Phase Coding

This paper is made available online in accordance with publisher policies. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item and our policy information available from the repository home page for further information. To see the final version of this paper please visit the publisher's website. Access to the published version may require a subscription. distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract There is considerable interest in the role of coupling between theta and gamma oscillations in the brain in the context of learning and memory. Here we have used a neural network model which is capable of producing coupling of theta phase to gamma amplitude firstly to explore its ability to reproduce reported learning changes and secondly to memory-span and phase coding effects. The spiking neural network incorporates two kinetically different GABA A receptor-mediated currents to generate both theta and gamma rhythms and we have found that by selective alteration of both NMDA receptors and GABA A,slow receptors it can reproduce learning-related changes in the strength of coupling between theta and gamma either with or without coincident changes in theta amplitude. When the model was used to explore the relationship between theta and gamma oscillations, working memory capacity and phase coding it showed that the potential storage capacity of short term memories, in terms of nested gamma-subcycles, coincides with the maximal theta power. Increasing theta power is also related to the precision of theta phase which functions as a potential timing clock for neuronal firing in the cortex or hippocampus. Copyright: ß 2012 Zhang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No additional external funding received for this study.