Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Does Risk-Taking Peak During Adolescence?: Contribution of Neurochemical and Circuit-Level Function to Lower Serotonin-Mediated Behavioral Inhibition in Adolescents

Why Does Risk-Taking Peak During Adolescence? : Contribution of Neurochemical and Circuit-Level Function to Lower Serotonin-Mediated Behavioral Inhibition in Adolescents by Andrew Emmett Arrant Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Cynthia M. Kuhn, Supervisor ___________________________ Edward D. Levin ___________________________ J. Victor Nadler ___________________________ Theodore A. Slotkin ___________________________ Redford B. Williams ___________________________ Wilkie A. Wilson An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright by Andrew Emmett Arrant 2012 iv Abstract Adolescence is the period of transition between childhood and adulthood, and is characterized across mammalian species by changes in behavior that include increases in risk taking, novelty/sensation seeking, and social behavior. While it is a part of normal development, this increase in risk taking behavior contributes to the leading causes of adolescent injury and mortality. Earlier maturation of limbic brain regions relative to the cortex is thought to contribute to this increase in risk taking in adolescents, but not younger individuals. Immaturity of the central serotonergic system during adolescence could contribute to risk taking behavior by resulting in lower avoidance of aversive stimuli in adolescents than adults. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate whether immature serotonergic function could contribute to adolescent risk taking. We studied preand postsynaptic serotonergic function and circuit-level mechanisms relevant to risk taking behavior using behavioral and neurochemical approaches. Serotonergic modulation of behavior was assessed in adult (67-74 day old) and adolescent (28-34 day old) male rats in the novelty induced hypophagia (NIH), elevated plus maze, (EPM), and light/dark (LD) tests for anxiety-like behavior. Serotonin depletion with the synthesis inhibitor p-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA) produced anxiolytic effects only in adult rats in the NIH test and in both age groups in the EPM. These data showed that some serotonin-mediated behavioral inhibition is present
Multi-scale statistical process monitoring in machining

Most practical industrial process data contain contributions at multiple scales in time and frequency. Unfortunately, conventional statistical process control approaches often detect events at only one scale. This paper addresses a new method, called multiscale statistical process monitoring, for tool condition monitoring in a machining process, which integrates discrete wavelet transform (WT) and statistical process control. Firstly, discrete WT is applied to decompose the collected data from the manufacturing system into uncorrelated components. Next, the detection limits are formed for each decomposed component by using Shewhart control charts. A case study, i.e., tool condition monitoring in turning using an acoustic emission signal, demonstrates that the new method is able to detect abnormal events (serious tool wear or breakage) in the machining process.
Psychomotor Vigilance Performance: Neurocognitive Assay Sensitive to Sleep Loss

It is well established that sleep deprivation, both acute total and chronic partial sleep restriction, results in significant impairment of neurobehavioral functioning. To quantify the magnitude of such changes, as well as to track the temporal profile in neurobehavioral degradation as sleep loss accumulates, a wide array of neurocognitive assays have been used. However, many of these tests are not well suited for assessment of performance across multiple sleep-wake cycles owing to significant interand intrasubject variability. To provide an accurate and useful measure of performance during sleep loss, and the expression of waking neurobehavioral integrity as it changes dynamically over time, neurocognitive assessments must validly and reliably reflect fundamental aspects of waking functions that are altered by sleep deprivation. Since such neurobehavioral assays will need to be administered to persons of different aptitudes and repeatedly over time, they should be devoid of substantial intersubject and intrasubject (e.g., learning) variability. Such assays should also provide meaningful outcome variables that can be easily interpreted relative to neurobiological and cognitive constructs. In this chapter we review one neurobehavioral assay that has met these criteria—the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT).
OpenMP tasks: Asynchronous programming made easy

The task technology is one of most promising to exploit node parallelism for next generation of HPC architectures, like those under development within the CORAL initiative in the US. In general, single FPU performance is not going to increase any longer in contrast to single node performance. As a consequence, nodes architecture will feature more and more FPUs (proportional to the peak power of the node itself) and determine the need for an efficient technology able to take advantage of intra-node parallelism, reducing synchronization among threads and improving data locality to meet the memory hierarchy. In this paper we present a case study of node parallelization using SHYFEM code, a software for coastal area studies. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first work that shows how to fully parallelize a software with OpenMP task technology. We present the comparison between tasks and threads OpenMP programming paradigms, showing the advantages of using the hierarchical and asynchronous programming paradigm made available by OpenMP tasks.
Impaired NMDA Receptor-Mediated Postsynaptic Function and Blunted NMDA Receptor-Dependent Persistent Pain in Mice Lacking Postsynaptic Density-93 Protein

Modification of synaptic NMDA receptor (NMDAR) expression influences NMDAR-mediated synaptic function and associated persistent pain. NMDARs directly bind to a family of membrane-associated guanylate kinases (MAGUKs) that regulate surface and synaptic NMDAR trafficking in the CNS. We report here that postsynaptic density-93 protein (PSD-93), a postsynaptic neuronal MAGUK, is expressed abundantly in spinal dorsal horn and forebrain, where it colocalizes and interacts with NMDAR subunits NR2A and NR2B. Targeted disruption of the PSD-93 gene reduces not only surface NR2A and NR2B expression but also NMDAR-mediated excitatory postsynaptic currents and potentials, without affecting surface AMPA receptor expression or its synaptic function, in the regions mentioned above. Furthermore, mice lacking PSD-93 exhibit blunted NMDAR-dependent persistent pain induced by peripheral nerve injury or injection of Complete Freund's Adjuvant, although they display intact nociceptive responsiveness to acute pain. PSD-93 appears to be important for NMDAR synaptic targeting and function and to be a potential biochemical target for the treatment of persistent pain.
Characterization of a Subgroup of Patients With Dermatitis Herpetiformis With Nonclassical Histologic Features.

Dermatitis herpetiformis (DH) is an autoimmune disease mediated by IgA antibodies. The diagnosis of DH is based on clinical presentation, biopsy for hematoxylin and eosin, and direct immunofluorescence. The chief hematoxylin and eosin finding is a subepithelial blister with neutrophils in dermal papillae. The direct immunofluorescence findings are deposition of IgA and sometimes C3 at the basement membrane with accentuation in dermal papillae. Immunofluorescence is thought to be a sensitive and specific assay in DH, and there are no other known diseases with this pattern of immunofluorescence. The aim of this project was to determine the prevalence of nonclassical histologic findings in DH. We studied 24 cases of DH received at our institution. All cases had clinical findings of DH as well as positive direct immunofluorescence with IgA. We found that 9 of 24 cases (37.5%) had nonspecific H&E findings of a lymphocytic infiltrate only with fibrosis in the dermal papillae and ectatic capillaries. The remaining 15 cases had classic findings of multilocular neutrophilic microabscesses in the dermal papillae. These findings were reproduced on step sectioning. These findings suggest that routine histology may be quite nonspecific in DH and direct immunofluorescence or other more specific immunologic assay is an essential adjunct to diagnosis.
Decomposition Method for Project Scheduling with Spatial Resources

Project scheduling problems are in practice often restricted by a limited availability of spatial resources. In this paper we develop a decomposition method for the Time-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (TCPSP) with Spatial Resources. Spatial resources are resources that are not required by single activities, but by activity groups. As soon as an activity of such a group starts, the spatial resource units are occupied, and they are not released before all activities of that group are completed. On top of that, the spatial resource units that are assigned to a group have to be adjacent. The developed decomposition method separates the spatial resource assignment from the rest of the scheduling problem. Test results demonstrate the applicability of the decomposition method. The presented decomposition forms a first promising approach for the TCPSP with spatial resources and may form a good basis to develop more elaborate methods.
Intratype variations of HPV 31 and 58 in Italian women with abnormal cervical cytology

Oncogenic human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are the recognized etiological agents of cervical cancer. A number of epidemiological, etiological, and molecular data suggest that variants of the same HPV type are distinct biologically and may confer differential pathogenic risks. Therefore, investigation of genome variants of clinically important HPV types may be important for the identification of pathogenically important variants. In this study, the genomic regions of L1, E6, E7, and long control region (LCR) of HPV 31 and 58, identified in women with abnormal cervical smear, were investigated. Several mutations were identified in the regions examined. Of the mutations found in the L1 region of HPV 31 and 58, the novel mutations described in this study fall within a protein region which may play a critical role in the binding of neutralizing antibodies against different HPV types. No significant association was found between the E6 and E7 mutations of both HPV types and the cytological lesion found. Some mutations found in the LCR of HPV 31 and 58 encompassed known transcription binding sites with possible consequences on the transcription of the oncogenic genes. Intratype genetic characterization of HPV types may help to define the pathogenetic risk of HPV variants. J. Med. Virol. 83:1752–1761, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The highly prevalent BRCA2 mutation c.2808_2811del (3036delACAA) is located in a mutational hotspot and has multiple origins.

BRCA2-c. 2808_2811del (3036delACAA) is one of the most reported germ line mutations in non-Ashkenazi breast cancer patients. We investigated its genetic origin in 51 Spanish carrier families that were genotyped with 11 13q polymorphic markers. Three independent associated haplotypes were clearly distinguished accounting for 23 [west Castilla y León (WCL)], 20 [east Castilla y León (ECL)] and 6 (South of Spain) families. Mutation age was estimated with the Disequilibrium Mapping using Likelihood Estimation software in a range of 45-68 and 45-71 generations for WCL and ECL haplotypes, respectively. The most prevalent variants, c. 2808_2811del and c.2803G > A, were located in a double-hairpin loop structure (c.2794-c.2825) predicted by Quikfold that was proposed as a mutational hotspot. To check this hypothesis, random mutagenesis was performed over a 923 bp fragment of BRCA2, and 86 DNA variants were characterized. Interestingly, three mutations reported in the mutation databases (c.2680G > A, c.2944del and c.2957dup) were replicated and 20 affected the same position with different nucleotide changes. Moreover, five variants were placed in the same hairpin loop of c. 2808_2811del, and one affected the same position (c.2808A > G). In conclusion, our results support that at least three different mutational events occurred to generate c. 2808_2811del. Other highly prevalent DNA variants, such as BRCA1-c. 68_69delAG, BRCA2-c.5946delT and c.8537delAG, are concentrated in hairpin loops, suggesting that these structures may represent mutational hotspots.
Perforation of aluminium foam core sandwich panels under impact loading

This paper reports an original inverse perforation tests on foam core sandwich panels under impact loading. The key point is the use of an instrumented Hopkinson pressure bar as a perforator and at the same time a measuring device. It aims at a high quality piercing force record during the whole perforation process, which is a lack of common free-flying projectile - target testing schemes. This new testing arrangement allows for the measurement of piercing force-displacement curves under quasi-static and impact loadings of sandwich samples, which is made of 40 mm AlSi7Mg0.5 Cymat foam cores and 0.8 mm thick 2024 T3 aluminium sheet as top and bottom skins. Compared with quasi-static top skin peak loads (the maximal load before the perforation of top skins) obtained under same geometric and clamping conditions and even in the case that the used foam core (Cymat) and aluminium skin sheet are known and have been confirmed rate insensitive, a significant enhancement under impact loading (25%) of the top skin peak load is found.
A Cross-Domain Comparable Measurement Framework to Quantify Intrusion Detection Effectiveness

As the frequency, severity, and sophistication of cyber attacks increase, along with our dependence on reliable computing infrastructure, the role of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) gaining importance. One of the challenges in deploying an IDS stems from selecting a combination of detectors that are relevant and accurate for the environment where security is being considered. In this work, we propose a new measurement approach to address two key obstacles: the base-rate fallacy, and the unit of analysis problem. Our key contribution is to utilize the notion of a `signal', an indicator of an event that is observable to an IDS, as the measurement target, and apply the multiple instance paradigm (from machine learning) to enable cross-comparable measures regardless of the unit of analysis. To support our approach, we present a detailed case study and provide empirical examples of the effectiveness of both the model and measure by demonstrating the automated construction, optimization, and correlation of signals from different domains of observation (e.g. network based, host based, application based) and using different IDS techniques (signature based, anomaly based).
Efficient algorithms for protein sequence design and the analysis of certain evolutionary fitness landscapes

Protein sequence design is a natural inverse problem to protein structure prediction: given a target structure in three dimensions, we wish to design an amino acid sequence that is likely fold to it. A model of Sun, Brem, Chan, and Dill casts this problem as an optimization on a space of sequences of hydrophobic (H) and polar (P) monomers; the goal is to find a sequence that achieves a dense hydrophobic core with few solvent-exposed hydrophobic residues. Sun et al. developed a heuristic method to search the space of sequences, without a guarantee of optimality or near-optimality; Hart subsequently raised the computational tractability of constructing an optimal sequence in this model as an open question. Here we resolve this question by providing an efficient algorithm to construct optimal sequences; our algorithm has a polynomial running time, and performs very efficiently in practice. We illustrate the implementation of our method on structures drawn from the Protein Data Bank. We also consider extensions of the model to larger amino acid alphabets, as a way to overcome the limitations of the binary H/P alphabet. We show that for a natural class of arbitrarily large alphabets, it remains possible to design optimal sequences efficiently. Finally, we analyze some of the consequences of this sequence design model for the study of evolutionary fitness landscapes. A given target structure may have many sequences that are optimal in the model of Sun et al.; following a notion raised by the work of J. Maynard Smith, we can ask whether these optimal sequences are "connected" by successive point mutations. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm to decide this connectedness property, relative to a given target structure. We develop the algorithm by first solving an analogous problem expressed in terms of submodular functions, a fundamental object of study in combinatorial optimization.
Extended Handover Keying and Modified IEEE 802.21 Resource Query Approach for Improving Vertical Handoff Performance

Inter-technology handoff is a complex process that involves several procedures including resource management, mobility management, and security functions. These procedures increase the handoff delay as the involved signaling occurs between different administrative domains. Hence, seamless handoff across different access technologies is conditioned on developing efficient architectures and mechanisms that reduce this delay. In this paper, we propose a broker-based architecture for integrated heterogeneous networks. The proposed architecture employs novel resource query mechanism for IEEE 802.21. Additionally, we propose an extended handover keying to reduce the user authentication delay. Furthermore, other techniques such as proactive configuration, data buffering and controlled forwarding are used to reduce the handoff delay and ensure seamless transitions. The overall architecture and proposed mechanisms show a significant reduction in both the average handoff delay and the the probability of handoff interruption.
Understanding Concurrency for Graph Workloads in Large Scale Multicores

Algorithms operating on a graph setting are known to be highly irregular and unstructured. This leads to workload imbalance and data locality challenge when these algorithms are parallelized and executed on the evolving multicore processors. Previous parallel benchmark suites for shared memory multicores have focused on various workload domains, such as scientific, graphics, and vision. However, these suites lack graph applications that must be evaluated in the context of architectural design space for futuristic multicores. This paper presents CRONO, a benchmark suite composed of multi-threaded graph algorithms for shared memory multicore processors. We analyze and characterize these benchmarks using a multicore simulator, as well as a real multicore machine setup. CRONO uses both synthetic and real world graphs. Our characterization shows that graph benchmarks are diverse and challenging in the context of scaling efficiency. They exhibit low locality due to unstructured memory access patterns, and incur fine-grain communication between threads. Our characterization also reveals that these challenges remain in state-of-the-art graph algorithms, and in this context CRONO can be used to identify develop novel architectural methods to mitigate efficiency bottlenecks in futuristic multicore processors. viii 0.1 The CRONO Graph Analytics Benchmark Suite for Future Multicores 0.1.
Input Space Bifurcation Manifolds of RNNs

We derive analytical expressions of local codim-1-bifurcations for a fully connected, additive, discrete-time RNN, where we regard the external inputs as bifurcation parameters. The complexity of the bifurcation diagrams obtained increases exponentially with the number of neurons. We show that a three-neuron cascaded network can serve as a universal oscillator, whose amplitude and fre- quency can be completely controlled by input parameters.
Cache capacity allocation for BitTorrent-like systems to minimize inter-ISP traffic

Many Internet service providers (ISPs) have deployed peer-to-peer (P2P) caches in their networks in order to decrease costly inter-ISP traffic. A P2P cache stores parts of the most popular contents locally, and if possible serves the requests of local peers to decrease the inter-ISP traffic. Traditionally, P2P cache resource management focuses on managing the storage resource of the cache so as to maximize the inter-ISP traffic savings. In this paper we show that when there are many overlays competing for the upload bandwidth of a P2P cache then in order to maximize the inter-ISP traffic savings the cache's upload bandwidth should be actively allocated among the overlays. We formulate the problem of P2P cache bandwidth allocation as a Markov decision process, and describe two approximations to the optimal cache bandwidth allocation policy. Based on the insights obtained from the approximate policies we propose SRP, a priority-based allocation policy for BitTorrent-like P2P systems. We use extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed policies, and show that cache bandwidth allocation can improve the inter-ISP traffic savings by up to 30 to 60 percent. We validate the results via BitTorrent experiments on Planet-lab.
Fractionated feridex and positive contrast: In vivo MR imaging of atherosclerosis

Macrophages have been identified as a critical factor in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Ultrasmall iron oxide particles (USPIOs) have been used to passively target intraplaque macrophages. For dextran‐based USPIOs, uptake into macrophages may be modulated by particle size. The aim of the current study was to test the efficacy of fractionated Feridex with respect to macrophage uptake in atherosclerotic rabbits. Fractionation of Feridex resulted in a 15‐nm USPIO that exhibited a blood half‐life of 15.9 h and liver retention of 6.4%. Blood clearance and liver retention of Feridex was 0.46 h and 60%, following administration of 4.8 mg Fe/kg Feridex. Atherosclerotic rabbits were administered 0.5 or 4.8 mg Fe/kg dosages of either fractionated Feridex or Feridex. MRI was performed at 1.5T over a 24‐h time period postinjection. Perls and RAM‐11 staining was performed to identify iron deposition. MRI showed a dose‐dependent signal loss using conventional gradient echo (GRE) sequences following administration of fractionated Feridex. Even at low dose, significant signal loss was observed that correlated with histology. No signal attenuation or iron deposition was observed in the vessel wall of rabbits administered Feridex. Results of this study suggest that it may be possible to optimize USPIOs for intraplaque macrophage detection. Magn Reson Med 59:721–730, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Integration and exchange method of multi-source heterogeneous big data for intelligent power distribution and utilization

With the development of smart grid and big data technologies, the stability and economy of distribution network operation are enhanced effectively. Intelligent power distribution and utilization (IPDU) big data platform, which exchanges operation data with other related distribution network management systems, makes decisions for demand side management, power system and distributed energy operation strategies by analyzing the big data. In order to solve the data fusion and exchange problems among all information systems, we proposed a kind of general information model for multi-source heterogeneous big data. In addition, a data fusion and exchange mechanism is established based on circle buffer to ensure the data quality. Finally, this paper demonstrates the effective of the method of IPDU big data fusion method by the example of distribution network reconfiguration. The method proposed in this paper can satisfy the data exchanging demands of future smart grid and demand side management, and it also has good confluent and extensible feature.