Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors: neuroplastic changes underlying alcohol and nicotine addictions

Addictive drugs can activate systems involved in normal reward-related learning, creating long-lasting memories of the drug's reinforcing effects and the environmental cues surrounding the experience. These memories significantly contribute to the maintenance of compulsive drug use as well as cue-induced relapse which can occur even after long periods of abstinence. Synaptic plasticity is thought to be a prominent molecular mechanism underlying drug-induced learning and memories. Ethanol and nicotine are both widely abused drugs that share a common molecular target in the brain, the neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). The nAChRs are ligand-gated ion channels that are vastly distributed throughout the brain and play a key role in synaptic neurotransmission. In this review, we will delineate the role of nAChRs in the development of ethanol and nicotine addiction. We will characterize both ethanol and nicotine's effects on nAChR-mediated synaptic transmission and plasticity in several key brain areas that are important for addiction. Finally, we will discuss some of the behavioral outcomes of drug-induced synaptic plasticity in animal models. An understanding of the molecular and cellular changes that occur following administration of ethanol and nicotine will lead to better therapeutic strategies.
JoBimViz: A Web-based Visualization for Graph-based Distributional Semantic Models

This paper introduces a web-based visualization framework for graph-based distributional semantic models. The visualization supports a wide range of data structures, including term similarities, similarities of contexts, support of multiword expressions, sense clusters for terms and sense labels. In contrast to other browsers of semantic resources, our visualization accepts input sentences, which are subsequently processed with languageindependent or language-dependent ways to compute term-context representations. Our web demonstrator currently contains models for multiple languages, based on different preprocessing such as dependency parsing and n-gram context representations. These models can be accessed from a database, the web interface and via a RESTful API. The latter facilitates the quick integration of such models in research prototypes.
Time Asymptotics for a Critical Case in Fragmentation and Growth-Fragmentation Equations

Fragmentation and growth-fragmentation equations is a family of problems with varied and wide applications. This paper is devoted to description of the long time time asymptotics of two critical cases of these equations, when the division rate is constant and the growth rate is linear or zero. The study of these cases may be reduced to the study of the following fragmentation equation:$$\frac{\partial}{\partial t} u(t,x) + u(t,x)=\int\limits\_x^\infty k\_0(\frac{x}{y}) u(t,y) dy. $$Using the Mellin transform of the equation, we determine the long time behavior of the solutions. Our results show in particular the strong dependence of this asymptotic behavior with respect to the initial data.
Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Fiction, Film and Social Change, Andrew Nestingen (2008)

Andrew Nestingen’s Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia is a timely contribution to Nordic cinema and literature studies. Many influential works have tackled the topic, providing comprehensive overviews of this multifaceted field (Tytti Soila et al. Nordic National Cinemas, London: Routledge, 1998), or taken a more case-specific approach to charting the complexities of Nordic culture (Andrew Nestingen and Trevor Elkington, eds, Transnational Cinema In a Global North, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005). Nestingen’s new intervention has something more precise in mind – namely, the transformation of the Nordic welfare state structure and the role of popular culture in debating and contesting these substantial changes. The book’s argument, constructed through a number of illuminating case studies, suggests that popular culture functions as a forum for emergent cultural-political debates. Nestingen, following Cornelius Castoriadis, understands hegemonic norms of national society as ‘instituted’ forms of collective social production. In contrast, popular culture comes to form ‘spaces of display’, that is, spaces where alternative, contesting forms of opinion can be expressed. As these discussions take place in the public sphere, new critical forms of civil society (or social collectivity) may form around popular culture to debate, for example, the effects of the synergism of the welfare state and neo-liberalist ideologies. One of the primary strengths of the book lies in its excellent categorizations of a set of Nordic films as the ‘middle-concept’ (a hybridization of art
Naming without picture comprehension? Apropos the oral naming and semantic comprehension of pictures by patients with Alzheimer's disease

Abstract There is overwhelming clinical and experimental evidence that patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) suffer from impairment in the ability to name pictures. In spite of some studies which underline the importance of perceptual factors in picture naming by dementing patients (see, for example, Huff et al. 1986, Kirshner et al. 1987, Martin and Fedio 1983) there is general agreement that DAT's naming impairment mainly reflects impaired processing of semantic information (see, for example, Chertkow at nf. 1989, Huff et af. 1986, Margolin et al. 1990). However, recently it was observed that naming impairment can occur post-semantically; that is in the presence of accurate identification of semantic features (Miller Sommers and Pierce 1990). Also, in one (so far exceptional) case description spared naming without comprehension was reported in a patient with degenerating illness (Kremin 1986).
The First‐Episode Psychosis Outcome Study: premorbid and baseline characteristics of an epidemiological cohort of 661 first‐episode psychosis patients

Aims: Studies conducted in first‐episode psychosis (FEP) samples avoid many biases. However, very few studies are based on epidemiological cohorts treated in specialized FEP services. The aim of this file audit study was to examine premorbid and baseline characteristics of a large epidemiological sample of FEP.
Intracellular protein glycosylation modulates insulin mediated lifespan in C. elegans

O-linked-β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification is a regulatory, nuclear and cytoplasmic post-translational glycosylation of proteins associated with age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and type II diabetes. Global elevation of O-GlcNAc levels on intracellular proteins can induce insulin resistance, the hallmark of type II diabetes, in mammalian systems. In C. elegans, attenuation of the insulin-like signal transduction pathway increases adult lifespan of the nematode. We demonstrate that the O-GlcNAc cycling enzymes OGT and OGA, which add and remove O-GlcNAc respectively, modulate lifespan in C. elegans. Median adult lifespan is increased in an oga-1 deletion strain while median adult life span is decreased upon ogt-1 deletion. The O-GlcNAc-mediated effect on nematode lifespan is dependent on the FoxO transcription factor DAF-16. DAF-16 is a key factor in the insulin-like signal transduction pathway to regulate reproductive development, lifespan, stress tolerance, and dauer formation in C. elegans. Our data indicates that O-GlcNAc cycling selectively influences only a subset of DAF-16 mediated phenotypes, including lifespan and oxidative stress resistance. We performed an affinity purification of O-GlcNAc-modified proteins and observed that a high percentage of these proteins are regulated by insulin signaling and/or impact insulin pathway functional outcomes, suggesting that the O-GlcNAc modification may control downstream effectors to modulate insulin pathway mediated cellular processes.
Working alliance, attachment memories, and social competencies of women in brief therapy.

Current social competencies and memories of attachment bonds with each parent were examined as they related to influences on formation of the working alliance. Female clients (N = 76) at 4 university and community agencies completed surveys containing the Parental Bonding Instrument, the Self-Efficacy Scale, the Adult Attachment Scale, and the Working Alliance Inventory. Results indicated that parental bonds, especially with fathers, were significantly associated with social competencies. Multiple regression analyses indicated that social competencies (self-efficacy and adult attachment) accounted for 14% of the variance in client working alliance ratings, whereas recalled parental bonds accounted for 23% of the variance. Working alliance was negatively associated with father bonds, positively associated with mother bonds, and-among social competencies-significantly associated with capacity for adult attachment
A Developmental Study of Intelligent Retrieval.

KENISTON, ALLEN H. , and FLAVELL, JOHN H. A Developmental Study of Intelligent Retrieval. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 1144-1152. Subjects of grades 1, 3, 7, and college were given incidental memory problem. The experimenter named a letter of the alphabet, the subject wrote it on a small card, the experimenter removed the card and named another letter, and so on until 20 letters had been written. Intelligent retrieval methods for subsequently recalling these letters consisted either of mentally proceeding through the alphabet from the outset and writing down each previously written letter as encountered and recognized, or else first rote recalling some and then switching to the alphabetical strategy. The younger subjects could use the former method skillfully and effectively (i.e., it improved their recall) when merely instructed to do so. There were, however, significant increases with age in the spontaneous use of these methods, in the ability to think of and propose the alphabetical strategy prior to any retrieval experience, and in the apparent ease, completeness, and accuracy with which subjects could report the retrieval methods they had used. It was concluded that the retrieval knowledge, strategies, and skills assessed in this study have important counterparts in everyday, extralaboratory remembering.
Focus : Induced Pluripotency & Cellular Reprogramming Programming and reprogramming a human heart cell

The latest discoveries and advanced knowledge in the fields of stem cell biology and developmental cardiology hold great promise for cardiac regenerative medicine, enabling researchers to design novel therapeutic tools and approaches to regenerate cardiac muscle for diseased hearts. However, progress in this arena has been hampered by a lack of reproducible and convincing evidence, which at best has yielded modest outcomes and is still far from clinical practice. To address current controversies and move cardiac regenerative therapeutics forward, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding of the key cellular and molecular programs involved in human cardiogenesis and cardiac regeneration. In this review, we consider the fundamental principles that govern the “programming” and “reprogramming” of a human heart cell and discuss updated therapeutic strategies to regenerate a damaged heart.
The effects of foreign accents on employment‐related decisions

Purpose – Although statistical evidence clearly demonstrates discrimination against foreign‐accented individuals in the workplace, surprisingly little research attention has been paid to how such individuals are evaluated when they apply for jobs. Thus, the aim of this paper is to examine the effects of applicant accent on access‐related employment decisions across four jobs that differed on job status and communication demands.Design/methodology/approach – The study used a 3 (applicant accent: Standard American English, French, and Japanese) × 2 (job status: low vs high)×2 (communication demands: low vs high) mixed‐factorial design, and data from 286 college students at two different locations.Findings – Results show that in comparison with French‐accented applicants, Japanese‐accented applicants fared worse on employment‐related decisions, especially for jobs that had high communication demands, even after controlling for applicant understandability and location. French‐accented applicants were viewed a.
Recognizing Textual Entailment with a Semantic Edit Distance Metric

We present a Recognizing Textual Entailment(RTE) system based on different similarity metrics. The metrics used are string-based metrics and the Semantic Edit Distance Metric, which is proposed in this paper to address limitations of known semantic-based metrics and to support the decisions made by a simple method based on lexical similarity metrics.We add the scores of the metrics as features for a machine learning algorithm. The performance of our system is comparable with the average performance of the Recognizing Textual Entailment Challenges, though lower than that of the state-of-the-art methods.
An adaptive, high performance mac for long-distance multihop wireless networks

We consider the problem of efficientMAC design for long-distance WiFi-based mesh networks. In such networks it is common to find long propagation delays, the use of directional antennas, and the presence of inter-link interference. Prior work has shown that these characteristics make traditional CSMA-based MACs a poor choice for long-distance mesh networks and this finding has led to several recent research efforts exploring the use of TDMA-based approaches to media access. In this paper we first identify, and then address, several shortcomings of current TDMA-based proposals. First, because they use fixed-length transmission slots, current TDMA-based solutions do not adapt to dynamic variations in traffic load leading to inefficiencies in both throughput and delay. As we show in this paper, the throughput achieved by existing solutions falls far short of the optimal achievable network throughput. Finally, due to the scheduling constraints imposed by inter-link interference, current TDMA-based solutions only apply to bipartite network topologies. In this paper, we present JazzyMac, a simple, practical and efficient MAC protocol that addresses the above limitations. JazzyMac achieves efficiency by allowing variable-length link transmissions slots and then defining a distributed protocol by which nodes adapt the length of their transmission slots to changing traffic demands. JazzyMac is practical in that the adaptation at each node uses purely local information and that our protocol applies to arbitrary network topologies. Finally, the use of dynamic slot sizes allows JazzyMac to achieve better tradeoffs between throughput and delay. We evaluate JazzyMac using detailed simulation over a range of traffic patterns and realistic topologies. Our results show that JazzyMac improves throughput in all considered scenarios. This improvement is often substantial (e.g.,in 50% of our scenarios, throughput improves by over 40%) and is particularly pronounced for the common case of asymmetric traffic (e.g.,leading to almost 100% improvements). Furthermore, compared to current solutions, JazzyMac can achieve much better average delay for the same throughput.
On-demand Multipath Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks: A Comparative Survey

A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is an infrastructure-less, self-organized and multi-hop network with a rapidly changing topology causing the wireless links to be broken at any time. Routing in such a network is challenging due to the mobility of its nodes and the challenge becomes more difficult when the network size increases. Due to the limited capacity of a multi-hop path and the high dynamics of wireless links, the single-path routing approach is unable to provide efficient high data rate transmission in MANETs. The multipath routing is the routing technique of using multiple alternative paths through a network. Furthermore, whenever a link failure is detected on a primary route, the source node can select the optimal route among multiple available routes. Therefore, the multipath routing approach is broadly utilized as one of the possible solutions to overcome the single-path limitation. Most of the multipath routing protocols are based on Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV). The objective of this paper is to provide a survey and compare sets of multipath routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks. This survey will motivate the design of new multipath routing protocols, which overcome the weaknesses identified in this paper.
On Mechanical Modeling of Cantilevered Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvesters

Cantilevered beams with piezoceramic (PZT) layers are the most commonly investigated type of vibration energy harvesters. A frequently used modeling approach is the single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) modeling of the harvester beam as it allows simple expressions for the electrical outputs. In the literature, since the base excitation on the harvester beam is assumed to be harmonic, the well known SDOF relation is employed for mathematical modeling. In this study, it is shown that the commonly accepted SDOF harmonic base excitation relation may yield highly inaccurate results for predicting the motion of cantilevered beams and bars. First, the response of a cantilevered Euler—Bernoulli beam to general base excitation given in terms of translation and small rotation is reviewed where more sophisticated damping models are considered. Then, the error in the SDOF model is shown and correction factors are derived for improving the SDOF harmonic base excitation model both for transverse and longitudinal vibrations. The formal way of treating the components of mechanical damping is also discussed. After deriving simple expressions for the electrical outputs of the PZT in open-circuit conditions, relevance of the electrical outputs to vibration mode shapes and the electrode locations is investigated and the issue of strain nodes is addressed.
Stroke incidence, prevalence and mortality in women worldwide

Background The study of sex differences on stroke incidence, prevalence and mortality is an emerging field of stroke epidemiology and care. Aims This study sought to determine the information available on stroke epidemiology in women worldwide and possible sex differences in stroke epidemiology, and, if so, describe the nature of these differences and whether they are consistent across countries/groups of countries. Summary We searched the available literature in English published between 1 January 2008 and 5 May 2015. Out of 17.789 papers only 56 peer-reviewed papers (29 community-based studies, 17 retrospective studies, 6 reviews, and 4 cross-sectional studies) have been included in the study. This review adopted the epidemiologic transition theory, which classifies countries into four stages according to their levels of industrialization and economy. For the first and second stages, reliable registries and health certification are lacking, and therefore our sought after data were very limited. In the third stage, specifically for Eastern Europe (post-socialist countries), the burden from stroke in women was on the rise, while in the fourth stage, despite an aging population, decreases in stroke incidence, prevalence and mortality have been observed, even in subjects older than 80 years for both sexes. However, regarding studies of US populations, these trends for women were less pronounced for African Americans, and Hispanics as well as Indians. This suggests a “gender-gap” regarding access to treatment and care. In conclusion, identifying the presence of differing global burden between the sexes will allow us to better understand how to prevent, treat, and manage both men and women.
Mining Software Repositories for Software Change Impact Analysis: A Case Study

Data mining algorithms have been recently applied to software repositories to help on the maintenance of evolving software systems. In the past, information about what classes changed together, obtained by mining software repositories, were used to guide future changes. We use this information to measure the possible impacts of a proposed change. In this paper we propose and compare two approaches for sorting impact analysis results that use two different data mining algorithms: Apriori and DAR. Even though Apriori is a classic and largely used algorithm, the case study shows that the approach with DAR is less complex and more suitable for measuring the impacts of a change.
ROBUST COLOUR IMAGE WATERMARKING SCHEME BASED ON FEATURE POINTS AND IMAGE NORMALIZATION IN DCT D OMAIN

Geometric attacks can desynchronize the location of the watermark and hence cause incorrect watermark detection. This paper presents a robust colour image watermarking scheme based on visually significant feature points and image normalization technique. The feature points are used as synchronization marks between watermark embedding and detection. The watermark is embedded into the non overlapped normalized circular regions in the luminance component or the blue component of a color image. The embedding of the watermark is carried out by modifying the DCT coefficients values in selected blocks. The original unmarked image is not required for watermark extraction Experimental results show that the proposed scheme successfully makes the watermark perceptually invisible as well as robust to common signal processing and geometric attacks.
Long-Term Benefits of Percutaneous Anatomical Restoration of Vertebral Compression Fractures Linked to Malignancy.

AIM To evaluate the efficacy, feasibility and safety of a percutaneous anatomical vertebral body reduction for the treatment of VCF (vertebral compression fracture) linked to malignancy. Vertebroplasty and percutaneous kyphoplasty have played essential roles in the treatment of painful vertebral metastasis, although there are few reports with long survival that have evaluated the long-term efficacy, adjacent fractures and vertebral body (VB) re-collapse associated with these procedures. We aimed to evaluate the longterm efficacy and the complications associated with malignancy and changes in spinal biomechanics. MATERIAL AND METHODS The retrospective study examined 32 patients with osteolytic VCF due to malignant infiltration of the vertebral body. A visual analogue scale, the EQ5 and radiological analysis (i.e., X-ray and CT scan) were used to assess back pain, quality of life and complications. RESULTS Statistically significant reductions in anterior and central vertebral body heights (6.2 mm-19.6 ± 4.2 mm- and 5.8 mm- 16.7 ± 7.8 mm-, respectively) that resulted in reductions of the regional Cobb angles exceeding 30% were observed. There was also a statistically significant improvement in quality of life. The average survival was longer than those reported in most published articles, and the average follow-up period was 30.9 months. CONCLUSION Anatomical restoration (i.e., cortical ring reduction with endplate rebalancing) is potentially beneficial for a wellselected group of patients with spine metastases and long life expectancies because this procedure avoids the complications typical of these types of treatments (e.g., leakage, adjacent fractures and re-collapse).