Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selective Vulnerability of Late Oligodendrocyte Progenitors to Hypoxia–Ischemia

In the premature infant, hypoxic-ischemic damage to the cerebral white matter [periventricular leukomalacia (PVL)] is a common and leading cause of brain injury that often results in chronic neurologic disability from cerebral palsy. The cellular basis for the propensity of white matter injury to occur in the developing brain and the greater resistance of the adult white matter to similar injury remains unknown. By using a neonatal rat model of hypoxic-ischemic injury, we found that the mechanism of perinatal white matter injury involved maturation-dependent vulnerability in the oligodendroctye (OL) lineage. The timing of appearance of late OL progenitors was the major developmental factor that accounted for the susceptibility of the neonatal white matter to injury. Late OL progenitors were the major OL lineage stage killed by apoptosis, whereas early OL progenitors and more mature OLs were highly resistant. The density of pyknotic late OL progenitors was significantly increased in the ischemic hemisphere (67 ± 31 cells/mm2) versus the control hemisphere (2.2 ± 0.4 cells/mm2; mean ± SEM; p = 0.05), which resulted in the death of 72 ± 6% of this OL stage. Surviving late OL progenitors displayed a reactive response in which an increase in cell density was accompanied by accelerated maturation to a P27/kip1-positive oligodendrocyte. Because we showed recently that late OL progenitors populate human cerebral white matter during the high risk period for PVL (Back et al., 2001), maturation-dependent vulnerability of OL progenitors to hypoxia–ischemia may underlie the selective vulnerability to PVL of the white matter in the premature infant.
Physical approaches to the dynamics of genetic circuits: a tutorial

Cellular behaviour is governed by gene regulatory processes that are intrinsically dynamic and nonlinear, and are subject to non-negligible amounts of random fluctuations. Such conditions are ubiquitous in physical systems, where they have been studied for decades using the tools of statistical and nonlinear physics. The goal of this introductory tutorial is to show how approaches traditionally used in physics can help in reaching a systems-level understanding of living cells. To that end, we present an overview of the dynamical phenomena exhibited by genetic circuits and their functional significance. We also describe the theoretical and experimental approaches that are being used to unravel the relationship between circuit structure and function in dynamical cellular processes under the influence ofnoise. Studies are discussed both at the single-cell level and in cellular populations, where intercellular coupling plays an important role.
Differential Evolution Using Smaller Population

As one of the popular evolutionary algorithms, differential evolution (DE) shows outstanding convergence rate on continuous optimization problems. But prematurity probably still occurs in classical DE when using relatively small population, which is discussed in this paper. Considering that large population may significantly raise the computational effort, we propose a modified DE using smaller population (DESP) by introducing extra disturbance to its mutation operation. In addition, an adaptive adjustment scheme is designed to control the disturbance intensity according to the improvement during the evolution. To test the performance of DESP, two groups of experiments are conducted. The results show that DESP outperforms DE in terms of convergence rate and accuracy.
Military Mediation as Military Justice? Conjectures on Repairing Unit Cohesion in the Wake of Relational Misconduct

The use of a neutral party to intercede between two or more disputing parties with the goal of facilitating a mutually-acceptable resolution, settlement, or agreement — i.e., mediation — has never been critically evaluated as a possible procedure within the field of military criminal justice. This article explores whether mediation may march alongside orthodox criminal procedure — as it does in civilian jurisdictions — without undervaluing traditional philosophies that guide military justice, and without undermining traditional sources of prosecutorial authority: military commanders. Current military doctrine (both operational and legal) supports non-traditional problem-solving systems, of which mediation should be considered a part. Relation-based misconduct provides the most appropriate candidate of crime particularly ripe for mediation within military units, especially when framed against a genuine and historically-justifiable command interest in preserving or repairing “unit cohesion. ” While pragmatic and legal counter-arguments against mediation are reasonably sound, there is nothing intrinsic to the military scheme of justice that makes them any more persuasive. Rather, when translated into a military culture, these criticisms and concerns reflect the same underlying tensions between traditional prosecutorial authority, efficiency, victim rights, and preventive law. Ultimately, whether in the form of a system that directly employs mediation parallel to orthodox justice, or in the form of a new skill set for military leaders employed indirectly as part of their routine leadership functions, mediation need not be considered alien nor an anathema to current military justice as exercised by military commanders.
A Context-Aware Communication Link for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The impact of contextual events for the performance of high bandwidth communication UAV link is the theme of this paper. Applications in this field have some strict quality requirements, and the communication link performance is essential for the mission success. Several events in the flight or in the surroundings can interfere with the data stream. We describe a context-controlled system which could dynamically adapt the flight in order to cope with eventualities during a mission. The main constraints of the link are discussed, and we analyze the link budget for the link considering directional receiving and transmitting antennas.
Stylized Highlights for Cartoon Rendering and Animation

We propose a new highlight shader for the 3D objects used in cel animation. Without using a texture-mapping technique, our shader makes highlight shapes and animations in a cartoon style. Our shader makes an initial highlight shape using Blinn's (1977) traditional specular model. It then interactively modifies the initial shape through geometric, stylistic, and Boolean transformations for the highlight until we get our final desired shape. Moreover, once these operations specify highlight shapes for each keyframe, our shader automatically generates the highlight animation. In other words, our shader offers a new definition of highlighting 3D objects for cel animation.
Concept-based Management of Technical Knowledge

Knowledge about technical systems deserves our attention for several reasons. It shapes industry’s core processes which depend on knowledge. It is an asset of great value because it is used by those who engineer, operate or maintain a system. This paper explains key characteristics of technical knowledge, the reason why it is difficult to manage and what we can do about it. Our experiences e.g. with documentation of complex communication systems and extensive use of SGML let us believe that management of technical information should rely more on conceptual structure and semantic markup. This will affect the way we design DTDs and use ontologies.
Fascia Iliaca Compartment Blockade for Acute Pain Control in Hip Fracture Patients: A Randomized, Placebo-controlled Trial

Background:Hip fracture patients are in severe pain upon arrival at the emergency department. Pain treatment is traditionally based on systemic opioids. No study has examined the effect of fascia iliaca compartment blockade (FICB) in acute hip fracture pain management within a double-blind, randomized setup. Methods:Forty-eight patients with suspected hip fracture were included immediately after arrival in the emergency department, before x-ray confirmation of their fracture. Included patients were randomly assigned to two groups of 24. In the FICB group, the patients received an FICB with 1.0% mepivacaine and a placebo intramuscular injection of isotonic saline. In the morphine group, the patients received a placebo FICB with 0.9% saline and an intramuscular injection of 0.1 mg/kg morphine. Patients received intravenous rescue morphine when necessary. Results:Maximum pain relief was superior in the FICB group both at rest (P < 0.01) and on movement (P = 0.02). The median total morphine consumption was 0 mg (interquartile range, 0–0 mg) in the FICB group and 6 mg (interquartile range, 5–7 mg) in the morphine group (P < 0.01). More patients (P = 0.05) were sedated in the morphine group at 180 min after block placement as compared with the FICB group. Conclusion:Pain relief was superior at all times and at all measurements in the FICB group. The study supports the use of FICB in acute management of hip fracture pain because it is an effective, easily learned procedure that also may reduce opioid side effects in this fragile, elderly group of patients.
Rationing health care: what it is, what it is not, and why we cannot avoid it.

The word "rationing" has come to play a central role in the national health policy debate. Alas, it is also one of the most misunderstood of words. Its injection into the debate has generated far more heat than light. This chapter reviews the definition of "rationing" preferred by the profession that takes as its task the study of how individuals and society respond to and deal with scarcity, namely, the economics profession. It will be shown that economists usually consider all limits on the distribution of a scarce good or services to be "rationing," whether that limit takes the form of a price barrier or some method of non-price allocation--for example, queues or allocation by lottery. To make a distinction between allocation through freely competitive markets and other forms of resource allocation, economists distinguish between "price rationing" and "non-price rationing. " This is a meaningful distinction. Adoption of the economist's definition of "rationing" would greatly clarify the national health policy debate. Next, the discussion turns to the controversial proposition, commonly made by most economists and a handful of their allies in the medical profession, that an economically efficient health care system will inevitably engage in the pervasive withholding of services that may be sought by patients and their physicians, and that it will do so to enhance the quality and efficiency of the health care system overall. If managed competition lives up to its current billing, it will entail rationing of precisely that sort. Unfortunately, the individualist tradition of the United States, as it expresses itself in the tort system, may seriously hinder managed competition from achieving its stated goal. Finally, this chapter offers some conjectures on the approach to rationing likely to be taken by the United States health care system in the twenty-first century. It is argued that, far from having been inconclusive, the most recent congressional debate on health care reform actually gave official sanction to a three-tiered health system, with fairly severe rationing in the bottom tier and virtually none in the top tier. While such tiering has always been present in the U.S. health care system, the phenomenon has hitherto been treated as a blemish to be removed by government--now it will probably remain a permanent fixture.
Cryptanalysis of four-rounded DES using binary particleswarm optimization

Cryptanalysis of feistel ciphers is difficult due to their high nonlinearity and autocorrelation. On the other hand, substitution ciphers are easily breakable due to their simpler encryption process. In this paper, a highly efficient Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based cryptanalysis approach for four-rounded Data Encryption Standard (DES) is presented. Several optimum keys are generated in different runs of the algorithm on the basis of their fitness value and finally, the real key is found by guessing every individual bit. The robustness of the proposed technique is also checked for eight-rounded DES. Our approach shows promising results when compared with the cryptanalysis of DES performed by other techniques such as Genetic Algorithm (GA).
Content based image retrieval: A past, present and new feature descriptor

A Technique used for automatic retrieval of images in a large database that perfectly matches the query image is called as Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system. Image querying refers to the predicament of finding objects that are pertinent to a user inquiry within image databases. The paper discusses the fundamental concept of image retrieval on the basis of features like color, texture, and shape. The system retrieves an image when the similarity between the query image and database images is observed. In the concluding section, we propose a new approach based on texture classification which helps to improve the accuracy and efficiency of CBIR system. The CBIR technology has been used in various applications such as military, industrial area, crime prevention, medical diagnosis, education system etc.
Three essays in financial economics

What is the fundamental value of a stock and do prices deviate from it? This paper answers these questions by using a Consumption-Capital Asset Pricing Model. I rst show how to express the fundamental price as a function of expected future dividends and consumption as well as of their future conditional variance and covariance. Secondly, I estimate the fundamental price for the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Switzerland from 1965 through to 2006. I focus in particular on the impact of the decreasing ination observed in this period, through structural changes in dividends and in risk premiums or through money illusion. Thirdly, I show that the gap between the price and its fundamental value decreases after a shock, which suggests a link between them. Finally, I show that forecasts using the fundamental price are more accurate than forecasts based on the observed price only or based on simpler fundamental models. Key words: Fundamental stock price, Consumption CAPM, Ination, Out-of-sample forecasts. JEL classi cation: D53, E44, G12. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reect the views of the Swiss National Bank.
This is the authors’ final peered reviewed (post print) version of the item published as

Purpose – This study aims to purport to investigate the relationship between firm size, profitability, board diversity (namely, director gender and nationality) and the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures within a developing nation context. Design/methodology/approach – The dataset comprises 116 listed Bangladeshi non ‐ financial companies for the period of 2005 ‐ 2009. A CSR disclosure checklist was used to measure the extent of CSR disclosures in the annual reports and a multiple regression analysis to examine its association with firm characteristics and two board diversity features – female and foreign directorship. Findings – Results indicate that large and more profitable firms provide more CSR disclosures. It was also found that female directorship has a negative association with CSR disclosures, while foreign directorship has a positive impact on such disclosures. This paper documents that CSR disclosures decrease further when family ownership is higher and there are more female directors on the board. Originality/value – This study extends empirical evidence on the association between firm characteristics, board diversity and CSR disclosure practices from a developing nation context. Furthermore, this study also reveals that female directors’ impact on firm disclosures may differ between developing and developed nations, and somewhat impeded in the latter. This paper also provides empirical evidence on the importance of appointment of foreign nationals on the boards of developing countries to influence CSR practices
Adherence in Internet-based interventions

Background The Internet is a promising channel for delivering health-promoting interventions. A common problem for Internet-based interventions is low adherence. The current paper reports adherence rates from three different Internet-based trials with potential covariates. Methods Data on adherence and baseline characteristics of users were collected from three different Internet-based trials: one supporting diabetes self-management, one supporting smoking cessation, and one offering an online personal health record. Logging of web use was used as the measure of adherence in two of the trials, while logging of authentication SMS messages was used in the third. Results In all three trials, users dropped out at a high rate early in the intervention. The baseline variables that were related to use were self-efficacy, having smoking friends, age, gender, and education. Tailored emails increased use for up to five months into a one-year intervention. Conclusion Dropout from Internet-based trials is substantial, and attrition curves can be a valuable tool for more accurate pretrial estimates of sample size power. Automated follow-up of users via email seems likely to increase adherence and should be included in Internet-based interventions. Tailoring on baseline covariates to adherence such as self-efficacy could make them even more effective.
A Computational Model of the Freud ' s " Pleasure Pump " , and its Functioning on Virtual Robots

The contribution sketches a reformulation of S. Freud’s concept of the so-called “pleasure pump” fo rmulated in his manuscript Project of Scientific Psychology from 1895, into the computationalistic conceptual framework of multiagent – or “resource”, as M. Minsky has proposed in his book The Emotion Machine (2006) – systems, and provides its demonstration within a programmed system of softwar e agents developed on the baser of the proposal. In this way we check Freud’s concept: generation of behavior similar to sexual act based just on individual mechanisms of the concept implies both its correctness and completeness.
Employing Contextual Information in Computer Vision

Contextual information is often essential for visual recognition , but the design of image-understanding systems that eeectively use context has remained elusive. We describe some of our experiences in attempting to employ contextual information in computer vision systems. By making explicit the built-in assumptions inherent in all computer vision algorithms, an architecture can be designed in which context can innuence the recognition process. This paper describes such an architecture for context-based vision (CBV).
A Conserved Potential Development Framework Applies to Shoots of Legume Species with Contrasting Morphogenetic Strategies

A great variety of legume species are used for forage production and grown in multi-species grasslands. Despite their close phylogenetic relationship, they display a broad range of morphologies that markedly affect their competitive abilities and persistence in mixtures. Little is yet known about the component traits that control the deployment of plant architecture in most of these species. During the present study, we compared the patterns of shoot organogenesis and shoot organ growth in contrasting forage species belonging to the four morphogenetic groups previously identified in herbaceous legumes (i.e., stolon-formers, rhizome-formers, crown-formers tolerant to defoliation and crown-formers intolerant to defoliation). To achieve this, three greenhouse experiments were carried out using plant species from each group (namely alfalfa, birdsfoot trefoil, sainfoin, kura clover, red clover, and white clover) which were grown at low density under non-limiting water and soil nutrient availability. The potential morphogenesis of shoots characterized under these conditions showed that all the species shared a number of common morphogenetic features. All complied with a generalized classification of shoot axes into three types (main axis, primary and secondary axes). A common quantitative framework for vegetative growth and development involved: (i) the regular development of all shoot axes in thermal time and a deterministic branching pattern in the absence of stress; (ii) a temporal coordination of organ growth at the phytomer level that was highly conserved irrespective of phytomer position, and (iii) an identical allometry determining the surface area of all the leaves. The species differed in their architecture as a consequence of the values taken by component traits of morphogenesis. Assessing the relationships between the traits studied showed that these species were distinct from each other along two main PCA axes which explained 68% of total variance: the first axis captured a trade-off between maximum leaf size and the ability to produce numerous phytomers, while the second distinguished morphogenetic strategies reliant on either petiole or internode expansion to achieve space colonization. The consequences of this quantitative framework are discussed, along with its possible applications regarding plant phenotyping and modeling.
Performance Variability Analysis of the OpenSPARC Architecture on FPGAs

As the trend towards increasing semiconductor miniaturization continues, maintaining uniform performance of integrated circuits in manufacturing becomes difficult. FPGA design software takes this variability along with other factors such as temperature into consideration when determining timing constraints. This paper explores the variability of the maximum achievable frequency of the OpenSPARC T1 architecture implemented on two Xilinx FPGA boards at multiple temperatures.