Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adult norms and test-retest reliability for the Months Backward test: Durational and response accuracy measures

Abstract The aim of this study was to present adult norms and to estimate the test-retest reliability for durational and response accuracy measures on the word sequence production test, Months Backward. A total of 216 neurologically intact adults (aged 18–88) stratified by sex, age, and education took the test at maximum speed. Errors and speech duration were recorded. A retest was conducted with 40 participants after 3 weeks. Altogether 94% of the participants completed the test without error. Errors were associated with slow performance. Duration was predicted by years of education (beta = −0.39) and self-reported dyslexia (beta = 0.19). The test-retest reliability was 0.82 for duration and 0.97 for errors. A regression formula for adjustment of logarithmically transformed duration scores is provided.
Special Issue: Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences: NBC's Optimization Systems Increase Revenues and Productivity

The NBC television network, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company (GE), uses optimization-based sales systems to improve its revenues and productivity. GE's corporate research and development center (CRD) developed these systems using operations research and management science techniques to improve NBC's sales processes. These systems remove bottlenecks caused by manual development of sales plans, helping NBC to respond quickly to client requests with sales plans that meet their requirements. These systems also enable NBC to make the most profitable use of its limited inventory of valuable advertising slots by estimating demands for airtime by show and by week and to schedule commercials. Between 1996 and 2000, the systems increased revenues by over $200 million, improved sales-force productivity, reduced rework by over 80 percent, and improved customer satisfaction. They have become an integral and essential part of NBC's sales process.
Primary prevention of ischemic stroke: a guideline from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Stroke Council: cosponsored by the Atherosclerotic Peripheral Vascular Disease Interdisciplinary Working Group; Cardiovascular Nursing Council; Clinical Cardiology Council; Nutrition, P

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This guideline provides an overview of the evidence on various established and potential stroke risk factors and provides recommendations for the reduction of stroke risk. METHODS Writing group members were nominated by the committee chair on the basis of each writer's previous work in relevant topic areas and were approved by the American Heart Association Stroke Council's Scientific Statement Oversight Committee. The writers used systematic literature reviews (covering the time period since the last review published in 2001 up to January 2005), reference to previously published guidelines, personal files, and expert opinion to summarize existing evidence, indicate gaps in current knowledge, and when appropriate, formulate recommendations based on standard American Heart Association criteria. All members of the writing group had numerous opportunities to comment in writing on the recommendations and approved the final version of this document. The guideline underwent extensive peer review before consideration and approval by the AHA Science Advisory and Coordinating Committee. RESULTS Schemes for assessing a person's risk of a first stroke were evaluated. Risk factors or risk markers for a first stroke were classified according to their potential for modification (nonmodifiable, modifiable, or potentially modifiable) and strength of evidence (well documented or less well documented). Nonmodifiable risk factors include age, sex, low birth weight, race/ethnicity, and genetic factors. Well-documented and modifiable risk factors include hypertension, exposure to cigarette smoke, diabetes, atrial fibrillation and certain other cardiac conditions, dyslipidemia, carotid artery stenosis, sickle cell disease, postmenopausal hormone therapy, poor diet, physical inactivity, and obesity and body fat distribution. Less well-documented or potentially modifiable risk factors include the metabolic syndrome, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, oral contraceptive use, sleep-disordered breathing, migraine headache, hyperhomocysteinemia, elevated lipoprotein(a), elevated lipoprotein-associated phospholipase, hypercoagulability, inflammation, and infection. Data on the use of aspirin for primary stroke prevention are reviewed. CONCLUSIONS Extensive evidence is available identifying a variety of specific factors that increase the risk of a first stroke and providing strategies for reducing that risk.
Bandelet Union Optimal Matrix Norms Constructing Lossless Watermarking

A multi-frequency lossless watermarking algorithm is proposed in this paper. Bandelet and optimal matrix norms are used to draw the geometric feature and the statistic feature. The bandelet transform is applied to the image, and the texture and edge traced by using the geometric flow via feature of the image to build the high frequency lossless watermarking. A low frequency watermarking scheme is also achieved, by selecting optimal matrix norm to process the low frequency part of wavelets coefficients. The experiments show the offered watermarking system is evaluated against standard watermarking attacks.
Network Lifetime of Application-Specific Randomly Deployed Wireless Sensor Networks in Arbitrary Sensor Density

In many cases, sensors are randomly deployed in wireless sensor networks (WSN), called sensor- randomly-deployed WSN (SRD WSN). Several cluster-based routing protocols are provided to maximize network lifetime of SRD WSN in different sensor densities. LEACH performs better than direct routing in the density of 0.01. BCDCP excels LEACH in the density of 0.05. DMSTRP outperforms LEACH and BCDCP in the density of. However, simulation results under one or two kinds of sensor densities are not strong enough to prove the optimum of the routing protocols. In this paper, we give the general formulas to compute the network lifetimes of the above three routing protocols, discuss their optimal number of clusters, and compare their optimal network lifetime in arbitrary sensor densities. These formulas can provide more general design guidelines applicable to SRD WSN than simulation results under only one or two kinds of sensor densities.
Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?

A booming quantitative literature on large-scale political violence has identified important economic and political determinants of civil war. That literature has treated civil war as an aggregate category and has not considered if identity (ethnic/religious) wars have different causes than nonidentity wars. The author argues that this is an important distinction and that identity wars are due predominantly to political grievance rather than lack of economic opportunity. Ethnic heterogeneity is also associated differently with identity than nonidentity wars. Some systemic variables are also important determinants of civil war, and these have been neglected in the existing literature. An important new result is that living in a bad neighborhood, with undemocratic neighbors or neighbors at war, significantly increases a country's risk of experiencing ethnic civil war.
Post-hoc Labeling of Arbitrary M/EEG Recordings for Data-Efficient Evaluation of Neural Decoding Methods

Many cognitive, sensory and motor processes have correlates in oscillatory neural source activity, which is embedded as a subspace in the recorded brain signals. Decoding such processes from noisy magnetoencephalogram/electroencephalogram (M/EEG) signals usually requires data-driven analysis methods. The objective evaluation of such decoding algorithms on experimental raw signals, however, is a challenge: the amount of available M/EEG data typically is limited, labels can be unreliable, and raw signals often are contaminated with artifacts. To overcome some of these problems, simulation frameworks have been introduced which support the development of data-driven decoding algorithms and their benchmarking. For generating artificial brain signals, however, most of the existing frameworks make strong and partially unrealistic assumptions about brain activity. This limits the generalization of results observed in the simulation to real-world scenarios. In the present contribution, we show how to overcome several shortcomings of existing simulation frameworks. We propose a versatile alternative, which allows for an objective evaluation and benchmarking of novel decoding algorithms using real neural signals. It allows to generate comparatively large datasets with labels being deterministically recoverable from the arbitrary M/EEG recordings. A novel idea to generate these labels is central to this framework: we determine a subspace of the true M/EEG recordings and utilize it to derive novel labels. These labels contain realistic information about the oscillatory activity of some underlying neural sources. For two categories of subspace-defining methods, we showcase how such labels can be obtained—either by an exclusively data-driven approach (independent component analysis—ICA), or by a method exploiting additional anatomical constraints (minimum norm estimates—MNE). We term our framework post-hoc labeling of M/EEG recordings. To support the adoption of the framework by practitioners, we have exemplified its use by benchmarking three standard decoding methods—i.e., common spatial patterns (CSP), source power-comodulation (SPoC), and convolutional neural networks (ConvNets)—wrt. Varied dataset sizes, label noise, and label variability. Source code and data are made available to the reader for facilitating the application of our post-hoc labeling framework.
Blind identification of instantaneous MIMO systems via a system to HOS based source extraction filter relation

Chi et al. proposed a fast kurtosis (a fourth-order statistic) maximization algorithm (FKMA) and a turbo source separation algorithm (TSSA) for the estimation of the multiple nonGaussian inputs and identification of an instantaneous multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with a given set of noisy output measurements. In this paper, a nonlinear relation between the instantaneous MIMO system and the source extraction filter for TSSA and that for FKMA are proved which hold true for finite signal-to-noise ratio. Based on these relations, two iterative blind system identification (BSI) algorithms for instantaneous MIMO systems are proposed, which are robust against additive Gaussian noise and perform better than FKMA and TSSA, respectively. Some simulation results are provided to support the efficacy of the proposed two BSI algorithms and their performance comparison with FKMA, TSSA and some existing second-order statistics based algorithms.
MISIÓN DE LA UNIVERSIDAD, ETHOS Y POLÍTICA UNIVERSITARIA

Este articulo pregunta por el sentido de la mision de la universidad, y por la manera como ella se hace eficaz, tanto en relacion con las facultades y unidades academicas que la integran, como en la relacion que ella establece con su mundo entorno. Esta pregunta lleva a intentar establecer el lugar que tiene la politica universitaria y su relacion con la mision de la institucion. Estas reflexiones llevaran a identificar el caracter dinamico y contextual de la mision de la universidad.
Topic Propagation Model Based on Diffusion Threshold in Blog Networks

On the basis of depth study of dynamic propagation process, a propagation model based on diffusion threshold is established by taking use of social networks and epidemic theory. The threshold function of nodes in blog networks is proposed. The quantitative relationship among the propagation result, initial state, diffusion rate of topics and popularity of initial diffusion nodes in blog network is obtained by computer simulation. The experiment results show that the proposed model can simulate well the information propagation process of blog network. This model has established a certain basis for public opinion monitoring and intervention, and provided a feasible means for accurate network marketing in companies.
Accurate and Fast Modelling of Planar Inductors in CMOS Technologies

In order to achieve fast and accurate modelling of RF planar inductors, we first present the analysis of a microstrip transmission line which represents one metallic segment. A spectral domain approach is used to compute the penetration of the electric field in the CMOS silicon substrate demonstrating the existence of a "skin-effect" in the substrate. The equivalent model including the complex loss mechanisms relevant to such a "skin­ effect mode" is computed and is successfully compared to experiments up to 12GHz. In the case of planar inductors, additional electric and magnetic coupling between segments of finite length have been considered to extract the fully scalable SPICE model of the device. Excellent agreement is observed between simulation results and S-parameters response of square spiral inductors.
The Complexity of  CaRet + Chop

We investigate the complexity of satisfiability and pushdown model-checking of the extension of the logic CaRet with the binary regular modality 'Chop'. We present automata-theoretic decision procedures based on a direct and compositional construction, which for finite (resp., infinite) words require time of exponential height equal to the nesting depth of chop modality plus one (resp., plus two). Moreover, we provide lower bounds which match the upper bounds for the case of finite words.
Serotonin suppresses subthreshold and suprathreshold oscillatory activity of rat inferior olivary neurones in vitro

1 The effect of serotonin on membrane potential oscillations of inferior olivary neurones was studied in brainstem slices from 10‐ to 19‐day‐old rats. 2 Serotonin at 50 and 5 μM induced a mean depolarization of 9.4 and 7.7 mV, respectively, that was preceded by a reversible suppression of subthreshold membrane potential oscillations. These effects were not changed by 1 μM tetrodotoxin and the suppression of subthreshold oscillations persisted after current‐mediated restoration of resting potential. 3 In spontaneously active neurones, serotonin abolished the rhythmicity of action potential firing without affecting spike frequency. 4 Serotonin reduced the slope of the calcium‐mediated rebound spike and both the duration and amplitude of the subsequent afterhyperpolarization. Serotonin also shifted the voltage dependence of the rebound spike to more negative values. 5 Hyperpolarizing current pulses (200 ms) revealed that serotonin increased the pre‐rectification and steady‐state components of membrane resistance by 37 and 38 %, respectively, in 66 % of neurones, but decreased these parameters by 14 and 20 % in the remaining cells. 6 The serotonin effects were antagonized by 5 μM methysergide or 1–5 μM ketanserin and were mimicked by 10–20 μM dimethoxy‐4‐iodoamphetamine but not 10 μM 8‐hydroxy‐2‐(di‐N‐propylamino)‐tetralin. 7 The data indicate that serotonin suppresses the rhythmic activity of olivary neurones via 5‐HT2 receptors by inhibition of the T‐type calcium current in combination with membrane depolarization due to activation of a cation current (Ih) and block of a resting K+ current (fast IK(ir)). This modulatory action of serotonin may account for the differential propensity of olivary neurones to fire rhythmically during different behavioural states in vivo.
The anti-corruption industry: from movement to institution

This article describes the concept of ‘industry’, often used pejoratively in critiques of international development, and applies it to the field of anti-corruption. The characteristics of the anti-corruption industry, including anti-corruptionist discourse, resemble that which has taken place in development aid, human rights, civil society and gender equality. The anti-corruption industry thus includes key global actors, secondary actors who look for ‘signals’ and an apparatus of understandings, knowledge, statistics and measures, all of which tend to prioritise anti-corruption institutions over anti-corruption activism. It is argued that the questionable impact of anti-corruption programmes enables the anti-corruption industry to coexist along with the corruption it ostensibly is combating. Instead of viewing anti-corruption as hegemonic, we need to critically examine the consequences of the global institutionalisation of anti-corruptionist discourse and anti-corruption practice.
Estratégia para amostragem da população e da paisagem em pesquisas sobre uso e cobertura da terra

This article describes the strategy used in a study carried out in Santarem, State of Para, Brazil, in 2003, to sample plots represented on maps produced by the Brazilian Government’s Land Reform Department (INCRA). The purpose of this sampling strategy is to describe demographic and environmental changes on the scale of the rural landholdings and on a regional scale. The sample was chosen according to the distribution of plots of land along four different roads that underwent different processes of occupation. Twenty cells of 9km2 each were chosen at random along each road and, in each direction, plots were chosen to be visited. In the field work, persons at all the domestic units existing in each of the plots selected were interviewed. Sampling carried out by successive segmentation of the area of study is described, as well as the way in which the resulting data can be used differently on the scales of domestic units, plots of land, and regions, according to the questions and variables of interest.
Valproic acid protects neurons and promotes neuronal regeneration after brachial plexus avulsion

Valproic acid has been shown to exert neuroprotective effects and promote neurite outgrowth in several peripheral nerve injury models. However, whether valproic acid can exert its beneficial effect on neurons after brachial plexus avulsion injury is currently unknown. In this study, brachial plexus root avulsion models, established in Wistar rats, were administered daily with valproic acid dissolved in drinking water (300 mg/kg) or normal water. On days 1, 2, 3, 7, 14 and 28 after avulsion injury, tissues of the C5-T1 spinal cord segments of the avulsion injured side were harvested to investigate the expression of Bcl-2, c-Jun and growth associated protein 43 by real-time PCR and western blot assay. Results showed that valproic acid significantly increased the expression of Bcl-2 and growth associated protein 43, and reduced the c-Jun expression after brachial plexus avulsion. Our findings indicate that valproic acid can protect neurons in the spinal cord and enhance neuronal regeneration following brachial plexus root avulsion.
Psychosemantic approach to studying gender role attitudes

This article concerns studies devoted to the analysis of stereotypes of women’s be-havior using a method of plural identification. This method has developed within the general psychosemantic approach and allows to study not only well realized social and mental representations, but those deep and implicit, too. The article de-scribes three experiments. All of them are cross-cultural. In the first and the second experiments attitudes of Russian and Azerbaijan respondents were compared. The third experiment is focused on comparing the feedback received from Rus-sian and US samples. It has been shown that cultural influence is more important than gender influence when we deal with attitudes towards female behavior and life scenarios. That means that positions of men and women of the same culture have more in common than responses pf women or men from different cultures. The method permits to conduct cross-cultural researches into different (sub)cul-tures both in one country or in different countries.
Predicting Agenesis of the Mandibular Second Premolar from Adjacent Teeth

Early diagnosis of agenesis of the mandibular second premolar (P2) enhances management of the dental arch in the growing child. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship in the development of the mandibular first molar (M1) and first premolar (P1) at early stages of P2 (second premolar). Specifically, we ask if the likelihood of P2 agenesis can be predicted from adjacent developing teeth. We selected archived dental panoramic radiographs with P2 at crown formation stages (N = 212) and calculated the likelihood of P2 at initial mineralisation stage ‘Ci’ given the tooth stage of adjacent teeth. Our results show that the probability of observing mandibular P2 at initial mineralisation stage ‘Ci’ decreased as both the adjacent P1 and M1 matured. The modal stage at P2 ‘Ci’ was P1 ‘Coc’ (cusp outline complete) and M1 ‘Crc’ (crown complete). Initial mineralisation of P2 was observed up to P1 ‘Crc’ and M1 stage ‘R½’ (root half). The chance of observing P2 at least ‘Coc’ (coalescence of cusps) was considerably greater prior to these threshold stages compared to later stages of P1 and M1. These findings suggest that P2 is highly unlikely to develop if P1 is beyond ‘Crc’ and M1 is beyond ‘R½’.
Acceleration of read alignment with coherent attached FPGA coprocessors

With the advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), the cost of sequencing human DNA has decreased significantly over the past decade. This decrease in cost has attracted a great deal of attention from medical research and is now transitioning to clinical practice. Precision medicine, tailored to a persons's genetic profile, is becoming a viable option in the battle against cancer and rare genetic diseases. NGS sequencers produce millions of small fragments of DNA called reads. Mapping those reads to a reference genome proves to be a tremendous computational task and forms the bottleneck in current DNA analysis flows. BWA-MEM, a state-of-the-art alignment tool, applies the seed and extend paradigm to rapidly align the reads with a reference genome. The Smith-Waterman (S-W) algorithm is widely adopted by these state-of-the-art aligners. We have identified the S-W algorithm to be the main computational bottleneck on IBM's POWER8 processor. This recently released processor includes a new Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI), that provides cache coherent access to shared memory for heterogeneous processors. We present a highly parallel FPGA-based accelerator that offloads the Smith-Waterman task. We have integrated the accelerator with software, relying on CAPI, in a tightly coupled fashion. This integrated heterogeneous system is able to achieve a speedup of 1.6X over purely software-based multithreaded execution of BWA-MEM. Furthermore, we propose a more general framework for dividing workload between the processor and accelerator in a fine-grained manner. We expect to achieve the maximum obtainable speedup (bounded by Amdahl's law) of 2X with the proposed framework.
New Resiliency in Truly Combinatorial Auctions (and Implementation in Surviving Strategies)

Following Micali and Valiant [MV07.a], a mechanism is resilient if it achieves its objective without any problem of (1) equilibrium selection and (2) player collusion. To advance resilient mechanism design, • We put forward a new meaningful benchmark for the combined social welfare-revenue performance of any mechanism in truly combinatorial auctions. • We put forward a new notion of implementation, much more general than the ones used so far, which we believe to be of independent interest. • We put forward a new resilient mechanism that, by leveraging the knowledge that the players have about each other, guarantees at least one half of our benchmark under a very general collusion model.