Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-Term Effects of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Markers for Neuroplasticity: Differential Outcomes in Anesthetized and Awake Animals

Long-term effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) have been associated with neuroplasticity, but most physiological studies have evaluated only the immediate effects of the stimulation on neurochemical markers. Furthermore, although it is known that baseline excitability state plays a major role in rTMS outcomes, the role of spontaneous neural activity in metaplasticity has not been investigated. The first aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the long-term effects of high- and low-frequency rTMS on the markers of neuroplasticity such as BDNF and GluR1 subunit of AMPA receptor. The second aim was to assess whether these effects depend on spontaneous neural activity, by comparing the neurochemical alterations induced by rTMS in anesthetized and awake rats. Ten daily sessions of high- or low-frequency rTMS were applied over the rat brain, and 3 d later, levels of BDNF, GluR1, and phosphorylated GluR1 were assessed in the hippocampus, prelimbic cortex, and striatum. We found that high-frequency stimulation induced a profound effect on neuroplasticity markers; increasing them in awake animals while decreasing them in anesthetized animals. In contrast, low-frequency stimulation did not induce significant long-term effects on these markers in either state. This study highlights the importance of spontaneous neural activity during rTMS and demonstrates that high-frequency rTMS can induce long-lasting effects on BDNF and GluR1 which may underlie the clinical benefits of this treatment in neuroplasticity-related disorders.
Implementing a Rational and Consistent Nomenclature for Serine/Arginine-Rich Protein Splicing Factors (SR Proteins) in Plants

Growing interest in alternative splicing in plants and the extensive sequencing of new plant genomes necessitate more precise definition and classification of genes coding for splicing factors. SR proteins are a family of RNA binding proteins, which function as essential factors for constitutive and alternative splicing. We propose a unified nomenclature for plant SR proteins, taking into account the newly revised nomenclature of the mammalian SR proteins and a number of plant-specific properties of the plant proteins. We identify six subfamilies of SR proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana and rice (Oryza sativa), three of which are plant specific. The proposed subdivision of plant SR proteins into different subfamilies will allow grouping of paralogous proteins and simple assignment of newly discovered SR orthologs from other plant species and will promote functional comparisons in diverse plant species.
Excitable Networks: nonequilibrium Criticality and Optimum Topology

Excitable media may be modeled as simple extensions of the Amari–Hopfield network with dynamic attractors. Some nodes chosen at random remain temporarily quiet, and some of the edges are switched off to adjust the network connectivity, while the weights of the other edges vary with activity. We conclude on the optimum wiring topology and describe nonequilibrium phases and criticality at the edge of irregular behavior.
Intermodel variability of the poleward shift of the austral jet stream in the CMIP3 integrations linked to biases in 20th century climatology

Future climate predictions by global circulation models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) archive indicate that the recent poleward shift of the eddy‐driven jet streams will continue throughout the 21st century. Here it is shown that differences in the projected magnitude of the trend in the Southern Hemisphere are well correlated with biases in the latitude of the jet in the simulation of 20th century climate. Furthermore, the latitude of the jet in the models' 20th century climatology is correlated with biases in the internal variability of the jet stream, as quantified by the time scale of the annular mode. Thus an equatorward bias in the position of the jet is associated with both enhanced persistence of the annular mode, and an increased poleward shift of the jet. These relationships appear to be robust throughout the year except in the austral summer, when differences in forcing, particularly stratospheric ozone, make it impossible to compare the response of one model with another. These results suggest that the fidelity of a model's simulation of the 20th century climate may be related to its fitness for climate prediction. The cause of this relationship is discussed, as well as the implications for climate change projections.
Endothelial cell junctions

In the course of a freeze-cleave study on intercellular junctions in the regenerating rat liver, we observed an unusual array of intramembranous particles located in regions of contact between endothelial cells lining the hepatic sinusoids. These arrays were characterized by an accumulation of particles which resembled a zonula occludens in their linear deployment but differed in that the contact regions were composed of individual particles which remained separated from each other by regular particle-free intervals.
Contact Heterogeneity and Phylodynamics: How Contact Networks Shape Parasite Evolutionary Trees

The inference of population dynamics from molecular sequence data is becoming an important new method for the surveillance of infectious diseases. Here, we examine how heterogeneity in contact shapes the genealogies of parasitic agents. Using extensive simulations, we find that contact heterogeneity can have a strong effect on how the structure of genealogies reflects epidemiologically relevant quantities such as the proportion of a population that is infected. Comparing the simulations to BEAST reconstructions, we also find that contact heterogeneity can increase the number of sequence isolates required to estimate these quantities over the course of an epidemic. Our results suggest that data about contact-network structure will be required in addition to sequence data for accurate estimation of a parasitic agent's genealogy. We conclude that network models will be important for progress in this area.
Decompositions of a Higher-Order Tensor in Block Terms - Part II: Definitions and Uniqueness

In this paper we introduce a new class of tensor decompositions. Intuitively, we decompose a given tensor block into blocks of smaller size, where the size is characterized by a set of mode-$n$ ranks. We study different types of such decompositions. For each type we derive conditions under which essential uniqueness is guaranteed. The parallel factor decomposition and Tucker's decomposition can be considered as special cases in the new framework. The paper sheds new light on fundamental aspects of tensor algebra.
GameFlow experience model: understanding player enjoyment in pervasive adventure geocaching game

Game developers have identified, explored, and discussed many of the key issues that arise for players interacting in game worlds and the physical world. This study presents the GameFlow experience model, which is empirically tested by six case studies, with the focus on the interplay between player enjoyment and social context. Geocaching is technology-supported treasure hunt activity that uses a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or a smartphone with a geocaching application to find something hidden by other players (Geocaching.com). The results provide a deeper understanding of enjoyment in real-time gaming played in the physical world and other users could follow your experiences virtually, along with the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the GameFlow experience model as an evaluation tool. This study concluded that the GameFlow experience model could be used in its current form to evaluate pervasive adventure games. This study presents design guidelines for designing and evaluating enjoyment in adventure games.
Combating Anti-forensics of Jpeg Compression

This paper proposes a forensic method for identifying whether an image was previously compressed by JPEG. Though some methods have already been proposed for this purpose, Stamm and Liu’s anti-forensic method disables the detection capabilities of these methods. After analyzing the anti-forensics method, we propose to use the decimal histogram of the coefficients to distinguish the never-compressed images from the previously compressed; even the compressed image is anti-forensically processed. Experimental results show that this method has a good forensic capability.
A Short Chinese Text Incremental Clustering Algorithm Based on Weighted Semantics and Naive Bayes ⋆

More and more Chinese users express their views through Micro-blogging service during the rapid growth of the Internet today. Clustering these short Chinese texts to get knowledge automatically is an important field for many companies and governments. Because of 140 characters limit, users present any information with only a few words. Considering the view of the user is outstanding and the key words frequency is low, a Chinese short text incremental clustering algorithm based on weighted semantics and Naive Bayes is proposed in this paper. It employs novel weighted semantics and Naive Bayes to compute the similarity between the texts, which effectively addresses the problem of sparse feature vectors. Moreover, clustering the sample incrementally can also reduce the running time. Experimental results show that the algorithm is more accurate and efficient.
DEVELOPING ANTICIPATORY AND AFFECTIVE COMPETENCES IN MULTI AGENT SYSTEMS

In this work we embed some anticipatory mechanisms in an agent architecture, modeling affective behaviours as effects of surprise. We look at the advantages of becoming cautious, wary and careful. Through experiments discussion we show how this approach increases not only agent opportunism and reactivity but also anticipatory capabilities for planning and reasoning.
esticular phosphoproteome in perfluorododecanoic acid-exposed ats

Perfluorododecanoic acid (PFDoA) is a common environmental pollutant, which has been detected in human sera and has adverse effects on testicular function in animal models. Exploring phosphorylation events in testes helps elucidate the specific phosphorylation signals involved in testicular toxicity of PFDoA. Combining efficient prefractionation of tryptic peptide mixtures using self-packed reversed phase C18 columns with TiO2 and IMAC phosphopeptide enrichment techniques followed by 2D-LC–MS/MS, we identified 4077 unique phosphopeptides from 1777 proteins with a false discovery rate below 1.0% in the testes of rats exposed to PFDoA for 110 days. In addition, 937 novel phosphorylation sites were discovered in testicular proteins. Hundreds of phosphorylated proteins identified might be involved in spermatogenesis and sperm function. With increasing PFDoA dosage, the number of casein kinase 2
Path Integration Absent in Scent-Tracking Fimbria–Fornix Rats: Evidence for Hippocampal Involvement in “Sense of Direction” and “Sense of Distance” Using Self-Movement Cues

Allothetic and idiothetic navigation strategies use very different cue constellations and computational processes. Allothetic navigation requires the use of the relationships between relatively stable external (visual, olfactory, auditory) cues, whereas idiothetic navigation requires the integration of cues generated by self-movement and/or efferent copy of movement commands. The flexibility with which animals can switch between these strategies and the neural structures that support these strategies are not well understood. By capitalizing on the proclivity of foraging rats to carry large food pellets back to a refuge for eating, the present study examined the contribution of the hippocampus to the use of allothetic versus idiothetic navigation strategies. Control rats and fimbria–fornix-ablated rats were trained to follow linear, polygonal, and octagonal scent trails that led to a piece of food. The ability of the rats to return to the refuge with the food via the shortest route using allothetic cues (visual cues and/or the odor trail available) or using ideothetic cues (the odor trail removed and the rats blindfolded or tested in infrared light) was examined. Control rats “closed the polygon” by returning directly home in all cue conditions. Fimbria–fornix rats successfully used allothetic cues (closed the polygon using visual cues or tracked back on the string) but were insensitive to the direction and distance of the refuge and were lost when restricted to idiothetic cues. The results support the hypothesis that the hippocampal formation is necessary for navigation requiring the integration of idiothetic cues.
Dynamic optical arbitrary waveform generation and measurement to increase the flexibility, fidelity and bandwidth of optical networks

We review spectral-slice dynamic optical arbitrary waveform generation and measurement (OAWG and OAWM) for bandwidth scalable and flexible bandwidth networking. OAWG and OAWM generate and measure wideband waveforms (terahertz) in many spectral slices that are less than 100 GHz wide with electronics. Within the system bandwidth, the OAWG transmitter and OAWM receiver can accommodate waveforms in a variety of modulation formats, variable channel spacings, and without any spectral guard bands. We demonstrate continuous generation of 60-GHz bandwidth optical waveforms using 5.5-GHz electronics and measurements of waveforms with 160 GHz of bandwidth using 20-GHz electronics.
Experimental Evaluation of Simple Thermal Storage Control Strategies in Low-Energy Solar Houses to Reduce Electricity Consumption during Grid On-Peak Periods

There is growing interest in zero-energy and low-energy buildings, which have a net energy consumption (on an annual basis) of almost zero. Because they can generate both electricity and thermal energy through the use of solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal collectors, and with the help of reduced building thermal demand, low-energy buildings can not only make a significant contribution to energy conservation on an annual basis, but also reduce energy consumption and peak demand. This study focused on electricity consumption during the on-peak period in a low-energy residential solar building and considers the use of a building’s thermal mass and thermal storage to reduce electricity consumption in summer and winter by modulation of temperature setpoints for heat pump and indoor thermostats in summer and additional use of a solar heating loop in winter. Experiments were performed at a low-energy solar demonstration house that has solar collectors, hot water storage, a ground-coupled heat pump, and a thermal storage tank. It was assumed that the on-peak periods were from 2 pm to 5 pm on hot summer days and from 5 pm to 8 pm on cold winter days. To evaluate the potential for utilizing the building’s thermal storage capacity in space cooling and heating, the use of simple control strategies on three test days in summer and two test days in the early spring were compared in terms of net electricity consumption and peak demand, which also considered the electricity generation from solar PV modules on the roof of the house.
OpenWSN: a standards‐based low‐power wireless development environment

The OpenWSN project is an open‐source implementation of a fully standards‐based protocol stack for capillary networks, rooted in the new IEEE802.15. 4e Time Synchronized Channel Hopping standard. IEEE802.15. 4e, coupled with Internet of Things standards, such as 6LoWPAN, RPL and CoAP, enables ultra‐low‐power and highly reliable mesh networks, which are fully integrated into the Internet. The resulting protocol stack will be cornerstone to the upcoming machine‐to‐machine revolution.
Model Checking a Decentralized Storage Deduplication Protocol

Deduplication of live storage volumes in a cloud computing environment is better done by post-processing: by delaying discovery and removal of duplicate data after I/O requests have been concluded, impact in latency can be minimized. When compared to traditional deduplication in backup systems, which can be done in-line and in a centralized fashion, distribution and concurrency lead to increased complexity. This paper outlines a deduplication algorithm for a typical cloud infrastructure with a common storage pool and summarizes how model-checking with the TLA+ toolset was used to uncover and correct some subtle concurrency issues.
Export Performance a Vital Indicator for Measuring Industry Competitiveness : Evidence from Pakistan Textile and Clothing Industry

Federal Bureau of Statistics Pakistan is regularly collecting and maintaining data for exports for industrial sectors (textile, food and other manufacturing commodities) and Service Sector. Export performance is a vital indicator for measuring any industry competitiveness. Pakistan Textile and Clothing Export data from 20052006 – 2009-2010 was explored for competitive performance analysis. Sector was further divided into three categories low, medium and high based on their share. Performance was anlaysed using SPSS.19 and Microsoft Excel. It was found that Cotton Yarn, Knit-Wear and Towel had positive compound annual growth rate (CAGR), whereas, Cotton Cloth, Bed-Wear and ReadyMade Garment comprising of 50-60% of the group had negative CAGR. Poor performance were found to be due to low quality, less value added products, weak competitive intelligence, low product mix, lack of skills, weak marketing, high production cost, out dated technology, old manufacturing techniques, electricity and gas shortage and severe competition from China after its integration into World Trade Organizations (WTO) Structures on termination of post quota regime. To achieve sustainable competitiveness, foreign investment should be encouraged through making strategic alliances with major players by exploiting competitive advantage of raw material and low wage labour potential. Moreover, industry should be strengthen upstream and downstream through advancement in biotechnology, development of energy availability strategies, investment in technology, institutionalising workers skills, exploiting low labour cost, improve marketing, and transforming small and medium units into well-organized high quality, high value added, low cost competitive large units. [Tahir Iqbal, Nawar Khan. Export performance a vital indicator for measuring industry competitiveness: Evidence from Pakistan Textile and Clothing Industry. Life Sci J 2012;9(4):3816-3822] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 568
Automatic Resolution of Policy Conflicts in IoT Environments Through Planning

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a highly agile and complex environment managed via the Internet. The management of such an environment requires robust automated mechanisms, since manual curation becomes a prohibitively expensive and near-impossible task. Motivated by this observation, we present a mechanism to resolve conflicts among the services provided by IoT devices in such environments, by reformulating conflict resolution as a planning problem. Specifically, we propose to use planning with soft constraints (preferences) to resolve conflicts that arise when fulfilling multiple goals using varied services in an IoT environment. We build on previous work on creating a semantic policy framework for detecting conflicts within an IoT environment, and present a proof-of-concept implementation of our approach to demonstrate its promise in the IoT space.
Scheduling and Routing in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks by Column Generation

Wireless multi-hop networks have attracted the attention of the research community in the last years. Two classes of wireless multi-hop networks are usually considered: mobile multi-hop networks, usually referred to as ad-hoc networks, and fixed multi-hop networks, usually referred to as wireless mesh networks (WMN). WMN are a promising solution to provide both indoor and outdoor broadband wireless connectivity in several environments without the need for expensive wired network infrastructures [1]. Since WMN are infrastructured networks, it is possible to plan the network resources assignment through a suitable optimization process. In this paper we address the problem of optimally exploiting the time resource in wireless multi-hop networks where the transmission time is shared among different packet transmissions. Although the proposed solution approach requires considerable computational time, WMN represent a practical scenario where high computational time can be tolerated within an almost static radio resource planning.
Investigation into characteristics of orthogonal nonseparable wavelet packets in three-dimensional space

In this paper, the notion of orthogonal nonseparable trivariate wavelet packets which is the generalization of orthogonal univariate wavelet packets, is introduced. A new procedure for constructing them is presented. Their orthogonality property is characterized by the filter bank theory and timefrequency analysis. Three orthogonality formulas concerning these wavelet packets are established.
Land policies for growth and poverty reduction

Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions. The report aims to strengthen the effectiveness of land policy in support of development, and poverty reduction, by setting out the results of recent research in a way that is accessible to a wide audience of policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, academics in the Bank's client countries, donor agency officials, and the broader development community. Its main message rests on three principles: 1) provision of secure tenure to land improves the welfare of the poor, particularly by enhancing the asset base of those whose land rights are often neglected, and, creates incentives needed for investment, paramount to sustainable economic growth; 2) facilitation of land exchange, and distribution, whether as an asset or for current services, at low cost, through markets, and non-market channels, will expedite land access by productive, but land-poor producers, so that once economic growth improves, financial markets would rely on the use of land as collateral; and, 3) governments' contribution to the promotion of socially desirable land allocation, and utilization. The report discusses mechanisms to promote tenure security, demonstrates the importance of rental market transactions, arguing the removal of impediments to these can generate equity advantages, and positive investments. It also illustrates mechanisms, ranging from taxation, to regulation and land use planning to address these issues.
Subspace Identification of Large-Scale 1D Homogeneous Networks

This paper considers the identification of large-scale 1D networks consisting of identical LTI dynamical systems. A new subspace identification method is developed that only uses local input-output information and does not rely on knowledge about the local state interaction. The identification of the local system matrices (up to a similarity transformation) is done via a low dimensional subspace retrieval step that enables the estimation of the Markov parameters of a locally lifted system. Using the estimated Markov parameters, the state-space realization of a single subsystem in the network is determined. The low dimensional subspace retrieval step exploits various key structural properties that are present in the data equation such as a low rank property and a {\em two-layer} Toeplitz structure in the data matrices constructed from products of the system matrices. For the estimation of the system matrices of a single subsystem, it is formulated as a structured low-rank matrix factorization problem. The effectiveness of the proposed identification method is demonstrated by a simulation example.