Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Agrammatic patterns in Alzheimer's disease: Evidence from tense, agreement, and aspect

Background: Little research has been conducted on functional categories in probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD). Furthermore, the findings are contradictory, since some studies report ceiling performance on tense and/or subject–verb agreement (Kaprinis & Stavrakaki, 2007; Kavé & Levy, 2003), whereas others report morphosyntactic deficits and agrammatic profiles (e.g., Altmann, Kempler, & Andersen, 2001). Aims: This study investigates the ability of Greek-speaking pAD individuals to produce and judge subject–verb agreement, tense, and aspect. Given pAD individuals have working memory limitations (e.g., Baddeley, 1996), and given the differential processing demands of agreement, tense and aspect (e.g., Fyndanis, Varlokosta, & Tsapkini, 2012a), pAD participants are expected to perform better on agreement than on tense/aspect. Based on the hypothesis that reference to the past is computationally more demanding than reference to the future/present (e.g., Bastiaanse et al., 2011), a within-tense dissociation is expected to emerge. Further, on the assumption that unmarked values of functional categories are less demanding than marked values (e.g., Lapointe, 1985), the imperfective (unmarked) aspect is expected to be better preserved than the perfective (marked) aspect. Methods & Procedures: Ten Greek-speaking mild pAD individuals and six healthy controls participated in a sentence completion task, a grammaticality judgement task, and a sentence–picture matching task. Non-parametric tests were used for analysis of results. Outcomes & Results: PAD participants were found to be significantly more impaired in aspect compared to tense and agreement, in both production and grammaticality judgement/comprehension. Agreement was found significantly better preserved than tense in production. Similar patterns of performance have been attested in agrammatism (e.g., Fyndanis et al., 2012a). Reference to the past and reference to the future did not dissociate, whereas the imperfective aspect was found to be significantly more impaired than the perfective aspect in production. Conclusions: PAD participants' better performance on producing agreement, compared to tense/aspect, is accounted for in terms of the differential demands these categories pose on the processing system. Agreement is computationally less demanding than tense/aspect, because the former involves processing of grammatical information only, whereas the latter involve processing and integration of grammatical and extralinguistic/conceptual information. The preponderance of tense over aspect is attributed to the subjectivity of the latter, which renders it either a category “difficult” to test, or a computationally more demanding condition. The results also show that reference to the past is as demanding as reference to the future. The hypothesis that unmarked values are easier than marked ones is not supported by our data.
The Theme of Educational Transfer in Comparative Education: A View over Time

This article analyses notions of ‘transfer’ in the literature of comparative education, searching for continuities and discontinuities in the way that the process of educational transfer has been construed. The analysis shows that the theme of transfer has been fundamental in comparative education from the early nineteenth century until the present day. Although some of the questions addressed in the field since its origins are still crucial today, it is suggested in the final part of the study that these problems should now be addressed in a world in which educational space has become more complex, as supra-national and sub-national actors become increasingly important in the production and reproduction of specialised knowledge about education.
The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Across OECD Countries

We show that the inability of a standardly calibrated labor search-and-matching model to account for observed levels of labor market volatility extends beyond the U.S. to a set of OECD countries. That is, the volatility puzzle is ubiquitous. We argue that cross-country data is helpful in scrutinizing between potential solutions to this puzzle. To illustrate this, we show that the solution proposed in Hagedorn and Manovskii (2008) is rather fragile and fails for some countries in our sample. It delivers counterfactually low volatility for economies where the elasticity of wages with respect to productivity is sufficiently high and where productivity persistence and/or vacancy-filling rates are sufficiently low.
Network-Based Distributed Mobility Control in Localized Mobile LISP Networks

In Locator-Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP), the existing mobility control scheme is based on a centralized approach, in which the Map Server is used as a mobility anchor. However, such a centralized scheme has some limitations, including traffic overhead at central server, service degradation by a single point of failure, and larger handover delay. In this Letter, we propose a network-based distributed mobility control in localized mobile LISP networks. From numerical analysis, it is shown that the proposed distributed scheme can provide better performance than the existing centralized scheme in terms of the signaling loads for binding update/query and the handover delay.
High fidelity universal set of quantum gates using non-adiabatic rapid passage

Numerical simulation results are presented which suggest that a class of non-adiabatic rapid passage sweeps first realized experimentally in 1991 should be capable of implementing a universal set of quantum gates G_{u} that operate with high fidelity. The gates constituting G_{u} are the Hadamard and NOT gates, together with variants of the phase, \pi /8, and controlled-phase gates. The universality of G_{u} is established by showing that it can construct the universal set consisting of Hadamard, phase, \pi /8, and controlled-NOT gates. Sweep parameter values are provided which simulations indicate will produce the different gates in G_{u}, and for which the gate error probability P_{e} satisfies: (i) P_{e} < 10^{-4} for the one-qubit gates; and (ii) P_{e} < 1.27x 10^{-3} for the modified controlled-phase gate. The sweeps in this class are non-composite and generate controllable quantum interference effects that allow the gates in G_{u} to operate non-adiabatically while maintaining high fidelity. These interference effects have been observed using NMR, and it has previously been shown how these rapid passage sweeps can be applied to atomic systems using electric fields. Here we show how these sweeps can be applied to both superconducting charge and flux qubit systems. The simulations suggest that the universal set of gates G_{u} produced by these rapid passage sweeps shows promise as possible elements of a fault-tolerant scheme for quantum computing.
Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Linkage Disequilibrium in U.S. Elite Winter Wheat

Information on genetic diversity and population structure of elite wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) breeding lines promotes effective use of genetic resources. We analyzed 205 elite wheat breeding lines from major winter wheat breeding programs in the USA using 245 markers across the wheat genomes. This collection showed a high level of genetic diversity as reflected by allele number per locus (7.2) and polymorphism information content (0.54). However, the diversity of U.S. modern wheat appeared to be lower than previously reported diversity levels in worldwide germplasm collections. As expected, this collection was highly structured according to geographic origin and market class with soft and hard wheat clearly separated from each other. Hard wheat accessions were further divided into three subpopulations. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) was primarily distributed around centromere regions. The mean genome‐wide LD decay estimate was 10 cM (r2 > 0.1), although the extent of LD was highly variable throughout the genome. Our results on genetic diversity of different gene pools and the distribution of LD facilitates the effective use of genetic resources for wheat breeding and the choice of marker density in gene mapping and marker‐assisted breeding.
PICTIOL: a case study in participatory design

Participatory design is an essential element of the skill set of professional interface developers and therefore is a significant component of HCI courses at universities. The PICTIVE technique is a 'low-fidelity' collaborative design technique that encourages participatory design. Significant challenges arise when attempting to introduce participatory design techniques such as PICTIVE to students who may not be studying on campus.This paper is a case-study in the design, evolution and refinement of an educational software tool designed to provide off-campus students with experience in collaborative user-centred software design.This paper investigates the origins and value of participatory design and its implementation using the PICTIVE technique. The paper describes the process of creating PICTIOL, a web-delivered solution to provide experience in problem-based learning, emulating the PICTIVE technique. Stages in development of the new software are described, including various HCI testing techniques and the iterative design/implementation/feedback loop. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential of the PICTIOL in education and industry.Whilst the focus of the project was on the development of the PICTIOL tool, the very process of creating PICTIOL is itself an example of collaborative user-centred software design.
TALP at GeoCLEF 2007: Using Terrier with Geographical Knowledge Filtering

This paper describes our experiments in Geographical Information Retrieval (GIR) in the context of our participation in the GeoCLEF 2007 Monolingual English task. Our system, called TALPGeoIR, follows a similar architecture of our previous system presented at GeoCLEF 2006 [2] with some changes in the Retrieval modes and the Geographical Knowledge Base. The system has four phases performed sequentially: i) a Linguistic and Geographical Analysis of the topics, ii) a thematic Document Retrieval search with Terrier, iii) a Geographical Document Retrieval with Geographical Knowledge Bases, iv) a Document Filtering phase. Our experiments show that Geographical Knowledge Bases can be used to improve the retrieval results of the Terrier state-of-the-art IR system by filtering out non geographically relevant documents.
Ras-activated RSK1 phosphorylates EBP50 to regulate its nuclear localization and promote cell proliferation

Differential subcellular localization of EBP50 leads to its controversial role in cancer biology either as a tumor suppressor when it resides at the membrane periphery, or a tumor facilitator at the nucleus. However, the mechanism behind nuclear localization of EBP50 remains unclear. A RNA interference screening identified the downstream effector of the Ras-ERK cascade, RSK1, as the molecule unique for nuclear transport of EBP50. RSK1 binds to EBP50 and phosphorylates it at a conserved threonine residue at position 156 (T156) under the regulation of growth factor. Mutagenesis experiments confirmed the significance of T156 residue in nuclear localization of EBP50, cellular proliferation, and oncogenic transformation. Our study sheds light on a possible therapeutic strategy targeting at this aberrant nuclear expression of EBP50 without affecting the normal physiological function of EBP50 at other subcellular localization.
The Adaptor Function of TRAPPC2 in Mammalian TRAPPs Explains TRAPPC2-Associated SEDT and TRAPPC9-Associated Congenital Intellectual Disability

Background The TRAPP (Transport protein particle) complex is a conserved protein complex functioning at various steps in vesicle transport. Although yeast has three functionally and structurally distinct forms, TRAPPI, II and III, emerging evidence suggests that mammalian TRAPP complex may be different. Mutations in the TRAPP complex subunit 2 (TRAPPC2) cause X-linked spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia tarda, while mutations in the TRAPP complex subunit 9 (TRAPPC9) cause postnatal mental retardation with microcephaly. The structural interplay between these subunits found in mammalian equivalent of TRAPPI and those specific to TRAPPII and TRAPPIII remains largely unknown and we undertook the present study to examine the interaction between these subunits. Here, we reveal that the mammalian equivalent of the TRAPPII complex is structurally distinct from the yeast counterpart thus leading to insight into mechanism of disease. Principal Findings We analyzed how TRAPPII- or TRAPPIII- specific subunits interact with the six-subunit core complex of TRAPP by co-immunoprecipitation in mammalian cells. TRAPPC2 binds to TRAPPII-specific subunit TRAPPC9, which in turn binds to TRAPPC10. Unexpectedly, TRAPPC2 can also bind to the putative TRAPPIII-specific subunit, TRAPPC8. Endogenous TRAPPC9-positive TRAPPII complex does not contain TRAPPC8, suggesting that TRAPPC2 binds to either TRAPPC9 or TRAPPC8 during the formation of the mammalian equivalents of TRAPPII or TRAPPIII, respectively. Therefore, TRAPPC2 serves as an adaptor for the formation of these complexes. A disease-causing mutation of TRAPPC2, D47Y, failed to interact with either TRAPPC9 or TRAPPC8, suggesting that aspartate 47 in TRAPPC2 is at or near the site of interaction with TRAPPC9 or TRAPPC8, mediating the formation of TRAPPII and/or TRAPPIII. Furthermore, disease-causing deletional mutants of TRAPPC9 all failed to interact with TRAPPC2 and TRAPPC10. Conclusions TRAPPC2 serves as an adaptor for the formation of TRAPPII or TRAPPIII in mammalian cells. The mammalian equivalent of TRAPPII is likely different from the yeast TRAPPII structurally.
Low Level In Vivo Gene Transfer Into the Arterial Wall Through a Perforated Balloon Catheter

BackgroundGene transfer into the arterial wall may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of coronary artery restenosis. Previously described methods for gene transfer into the arterial wall require total vessel occlusion for 30 minutes. We sought to develop a protocol for gene transfer within a more clinically relevant time frame. Methods and ResultsWe used a perforated balloon (Wolinsky) catheter to inject retroviral vector-containing virions into rabbit aortas in vivo. The virions were injected within 1 minute. Aortas were removed 5–14 days after injection and analyzed for evidence of gene transfer. In initial studies, nine rabbits were injected with a vector expressing the β-galactosidase gene, and nine rabbits were injected with either non-β-galactosidase-containing vectors or with a vehicle control. Histochemical staining of aortic tissues revealed blue (positive) cells in eight of nine experimental rabbits and six of nine controls. Because of the lack of specificity of the β-galactosidase detection system, we adopted a polymerase chain reaction-based protocol in which oligonucleotide primers were used to amplify specific vector-related sequences from aortic tissue extracts. The polymerase chain reaction protocol, calibrated with standards containing known numbers of transduced cells, revealed low amounts of vector-related sequences in six of 12 vector-injected rabbits and in one of 13 controls (p<0.03). Comparison with standards indicated that fewer than 100 transduced cells were present in a 2-cm length of the injected aortic tissue. ConclusionsAlthough in vivo gene transfer through an infusion balloon catheter can be accomplished within 1 minute, the therapeutic use of this protocol is limited by the small number of cells that are transduced.
Application of transcranial magnetic stimulation in treatment of drug‐resistant major depression—a report of two cases

We report the cases of two drug‐resistant major depressed psychotic patients, who were treated with 10 sessions of transcranial magnetic stimulations (TMS) and afterwards with 10 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) without changing the concomitant neuroleptic and antidepressive medication. TMS did not exert a therapeutic effect in one patient and only a slight one in the other. However, there was a clear beneficial effect for ECT in the patient not responding to TMS and a slight therapeutic effect in the other. In summary, there was no clear‐cut evidence for effectiveness of TMS as a treatment for patients with psychotic, therapy resistant depression. However, since there was a slight therapeutic effect of TMS in one patient it seems worthwhile to explore its therapeutic efficacy in a larger group of depressed patients.
Bilingualism and cognition

The relation between bilingualism and cognition is informative about the connection between language and mind. From the perspective of language, the question is how bilingualism might help or hinder cognition – narrowly interpreted here as executive function. From the perspective of higher cognition, the question is what kinds of experiences improve executive function. Reported cognitive benefits from bilingualism range from none to substantial as a function of age, type of bilingualism (e.g., life-long balanced vs later-onset or infrequent use of the other language), syntactic relation between the two languages, socio-economic and immigrant status, task, and laboratory. To understand the variability and inconsistencies in results with bilingualism, I analyze concepts of executive function and cognitive reserve and examine the range of factors (such as active video game playing, education, musical training, and aerobic exercise) that are known to correlate with or to improve executive function. I suggest that a) “executive function” is a complex set of cognitive processes, the components of which are sometimes minimally correlated with each other, depending on the task; b) bilingualism is inconsistently correlated with superior executive function and delayed onset of dementia; c) all speakers (mono- or bilingual) have non-linguistic ways of improving executive function; and d) benefits from bilingualism – and all cognitively challenging activities – are inconsistent because individuals vary in the number and kinds of experiences they have that promote superior executive function.
Myosin and why hearts fail.

T he search for the answer to why hearts fail offers some exciting new leads. The genetic defect in one inherited form of heart disease, familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC), has been localized to a region of chromosome 14 encoding for myosin heavy chains.1'2 Point mutations in the ,3-isoform of the heavy chain2 and mutant hybrid forms of the aand 83-heavy chains1 have been identified. Compared with controls, however, myofilaments from hearts of patients with FHC show no clearly evident changes in functional properties. Moreover, how the mutant myosins could instigate the manifestations and course of the disease is not yet clear. In idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC), there are clear changes in the functional properties of the myofilaments, but exactly what the cause might be has eluded researchers. A promising idea was that IDC is associated with a change in transcriptional activity of members of the multigene myosin heavy chain family. This has not proven to be the case; instead, IDC is associated with a decrease in levels of message for phospholamban, a regulatory protein associated with the Ca2+-ATPase of the sarcoplasmic reticulum.3 An article in this issue of Circulation by Margossian et a14 offers another lead concerning why hearts fail: this time at the posttranslational level of regulation. Their
Corazón de Aztlan: Culturally Competent Substance Abuse Prevention

Family interactional theory, primary socialization theory, the social developmental model, and differential acculturation theory inform a conceptual framework explaining Latina/o adolescent substance use. Structural equation modeling is used to empirically test structural relationships constituting risk and protective factors, as well as the influence of participation in Corazón de Aztlan (“Heart of My People”), a culturally competent substance use prevention program developed for Latina/o adolescents. Youth reporting higher conflict with family reported higher peer conflict, which was positively associated with greater youth substance use. Greater family substance use was associated with greater peer substance use, which was associated with greater youth substance use. Youth reported less substance use after participating in Corazón de Aztlan.
Visitor combination and traversal control

The Visitor design pattern allows the encapsulation of polymorphic behavior outside the class hierarchy on which it operates. A common application of Visitor is the encapsulation of tree traversals. A clean separation can be made between the generic parts of the combinator set and the parts that are specific to a particular class hierarchy. The generic parts form a reusable framework. The generic parts form a reusable framework. The specific parts can be generated from a (tree) grammar. Due to this separation, programming with visitor combinators becomes a form of generic programming with significant reuse of (visitor) code.
The myth of sexual compulsivity

This paper analyzes critically the newly discovered “conditions” of sexual addiction and sexual compulsion from the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism. We begin by describing the concepts of sexual addiction and sexual compulsion and by providing case studies of each “condition. ” We then discuss the cultural relativity of sexual conduct, and identify features of the late 1970s' and 1980s' sociosexual landscape that encouraged a perception of nonrelational sex as pathological. We conclude by critically analyzing the concepts of sexual addiction and sexual compulsion. We demonstrate that the definitions are conceptually flawed and that the criteria for these “conditions” are subjective and value laden. There is nothing inherently pathological in the conduct that is labeled sexually compulsive or addictive. Rather than referring to actual clinical entities, sexual addiction and compulsion refer to learned patterns of behavior that are stigmatized by dominant institutions.
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND IMMUNITY OF THE SKIN

One might imagine that the central nervous system (CNS) could play an important role in the defence of the skin. The skin and the underlying dermis are densely innervated by afferent and efferent neurons. The CNS can detect and map a site of injury on the skin surface through its afferent circuits, and deliver a neutrally mediated response to that site through its efferent arms. Furthermore, once an injury is perceived by the CNS anywhere on the skin surface, the nervous system could activate defensive signals throughout the body, including uninjured skin in anticipation of potential downstream consequences of microbial spread from the site of injury. Finally, the nervous system can act within seconds, faster than a microbe can propagate. I believe the role played by the nervous system in the immunity of the skin can be appreciated through a careful analysis of two human diseases, infected ulcers on the feet of the diabetic, and erysipelas, superficial skin infection caused by Group A Streptococcus. In diabetes, the nervous system fails to protect the skin, while in erysipelas, the nervous system is being put on high alert. Here, I will tease out the role of the nervous system in the pathophysiology of each of these conditions, highlighting unappreciated immune functions of the nervous system, some of which are amenable to therapeutic intervention in these and other human diseases.