Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social cognition in borderline personality disorder

Many typical symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) occur within interpersonal contexts, suggesting that BPD is characterized by aberrant social cognition. While research consistently shows that BPD patients have biases in mental state attribution (e.g., evaluate others as malevolent), the research focusing on accuracy in inferring mental states (i.e., cognitive empathy) is less consistent. For complex and ecologically valid tasks in particular, emerging evidence suggests that individuals with BPD have impairments in the attribution of emotions, thoughts, and intentions of others (e.g., Preißler et al., 2010). A history of childhood trauma and co-morbid PTSD seem to be strong additional predictors for cognitive empathy deficits. Together with reduced emotional empathy and aberrant sending of social signals (e.g., expression of mixed and hard-to-read emotions), the deficits in mental state attribution might contribute to behavioral problems in BPD. Given the importance of social cognition on the part of both the sender and the recipient in maintaining interpersonal relationships and therapeutic alliance, these impairments deserve more attention.
Gap Junctional Coupling Underlies the Short-Latency Spike Synchrony of Retinal α Ganglion Cells

We examined whether coupling between neighboringα-type ganglion cells (α-GCs) in the rabbit retina underlies their synchronous spike activity. Simultaneous recordings were made from arrays of α-GCs to determine the synchrony of both spontaneous and light-evoked spike activity. One cell within each array was then injected with the biotinylated tracer Neurobiotin to determine which of the cells were coupled via gap junctions. Cross-correlation analyses indicated that neighboring off-center α-GCs maintain short-latency (∼2.5 msec) synchronous spiking, whereas the spontaneous spike activities of on-centerα-GC neighbors are not correlated. Without exception, those off-centerα-GCs showing synchronous spiking were found to be tracer coupled to both amacrine cells and neighboring off-centerα-GCs. In contrast, on-center α-GCs were never tracer coupled. Furthermore, whereas spikes initiated in an off-center α-GC with extrinsic current injection resulted in short-latency synchronized spiking in neighboring off-center α-GCs, this was never seen between on-center α-GCs. These results indicate that electrical coupling via gap junctions underlies the short-latency concerted spike activity of neighboring α-GCs.
Inactivation and Augmentation of the Primary 3-Ketosteroid-Δ1- Dehydrogenase in Mycobacterium neoaurum NwIB-01: Biotransformation of Soybean Phytosterols to 4-Androstene- 3,17-Dione or 1,4-Androstadiene-3,17-Dione

ABSTRACT 3-Ketosteroid-Δ1-dehydrogenase, KsdDM, was identified by targeted gene disruption and augmentation from Mycobacterium neoaurum NwIB-01, a newly isolated strain. The difficulty of separating 4-androstene-3,17-dione (AD) from 1,4-androstadiene-3,17-dione (ADD) is a key bottleneck to the microbial transformation of phytosterols in industry. This problem was tackled via genetic manipulation of the KsdD-encoding gene. Mutants in which KsdDM was inactivated or augmented proved to be good AD(D)-producing strains.
Induction of primordial germ cells from murine epiblasts by synergistic action of BMP4 and BMP8B signaling pathways

Extraembryonic ectoderm-derived factors instruct the pluripotent epiblast cells to develop toward a restricted primordial germ cell (PGC) fate during murine gastrulation. Genes encoding Bmp4 of the Dpp class and Bmp8b of the 60A class are expressed in the extraembryonic ectoderm and targeted mutation of either results in severe defects in PGC formation. It has been shown that heterodimers of DPP and 60A classes of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are more potent than each homodimers in bone and mesoderm induction in vitro, suggesting that BMP4 and BMP8B may form heterodimers to induce PGCs. To investigate how BMP4 and BMP8B interact and signal for PGC induction, we cocultured epiblasts of embryonic day 6.0–6.25 embryos with BMP4 and BMP8B proteins produced by COS cells. Our data show that BMP4 or BMP8B homodimers alone cannot induce PGCs whereas they can in combination, providing evidence that two BMP pathways are simultaneously required for the generation of a given cell type in mammals and also providing a prototype method for PGC induction in vitro. Furthermore, the PGC defects of Bmp8b mutants can be rescued by BMP8B homodimers whereas BMP4 homodimers cannot mitigate the PGC defects of Bmp4 null mutants, suggesting that BMP4 proteins are also required for epiblast cells to gain germ-line competency before the synergistic action of BMP4 and BMP8B.
RIC-3 Enhances Functional Expression of Multiple Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Subtypes in Mammalian Cells

Recent studies have shown that RIC-3, originally identified in Caenorhabditis elegans as the protein encoded by the gene resistance to inhibitors of cholinesterase (ric-3), can enhance functional expression of α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). In the present study, the influence of C. elegans and human RIC-3 upon multiple homomeric (α7, α8, and α9) and heteromeric (α3β2, α3β4, α4β2, α4β4, and α9α10) nAChR subtypes has been examined in transfected mammalian cells by radioligand binding and functional characterization. Coexpression of RIC-3 facilitates a dramatic enhancement of the ability of α7 (and the closely related α8 subunit) to generate functional nAChRs in otherwise nonpermissive mammalian cells. In contrast, coexpression of RIC-3 did not facilitate functional expression of either homomeric α9 or heteromeric α9α10 nAChRs in mammalian cell lines. It is noteworthy that whereas RIC-3 has been reported to cause a marked functional inhibition of heteromeric nAChRs such as α3β4 and α4β2 expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes, RIC-3 significantly enhances levels of functional expression of these and other (α3β2 and α4β4) heteromeric nAChRs when expressed in mammalian cell lines. In addition, the interaction of multiple nAChR subunits (α3, α4, α7, β2, and β4) with RIC-3 has been demonstrated by coimmunoprecipitation from metabolically labeled transfected cells. It is significant that coimmunoprecipitation experiments have provided evidence that RIC-3 associates with unassembled nAChR subunits, a finding that is consistent with previous suggestions that RIC-3 may act by enhancing the maturation (subunit folding and assembly) of nAChRs. We conclude that RIC-3 is an nAChR-associated protein that can enhance functional expression of multiple nAChR subtypes in transfected mammalian cells.
Expression of delta F508 cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein and related chloride transport properties in the gallbladder epithelium from cystic fibrosis patients

Cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), the cystic fibrosis (CF) gene product, functions as an adenosine 3′,5′‐cyclic monophosphate (cAMP)‐regulated chloride channel in the apical membrane of biliary epithelial cells, including gallbladder epithelial cells. It has been shown that ▵F508, the most common CF mutation, impedes CFTR trafficking to the apical surface of epithelial cells. To elucidate the mechanisms of CF biliary disease, we examined structural features, CFTR expression, and chloride transport properties in gallbladder epithelial cells from nine ▵F508 homozygous liver transplant recipients. Three CF patients had microgallbladders, characterized by severe histological abnormalities. Microgallbladder epithelial cells displayed aberrant immunolocalization of CFTR and of other normally apical proteins in the lateral domain of their plasma membrane and in their cytoplasm. This pattern was mimicked by chronic cholecystitis in non‐CF patients. In the 6 remaining CF patients, CFTR was predominantly apical in the gallbladder epithelium, consistent with the detection of a fully glycosylated form by Western blot. In CF as compared with non‐CF gallbladder epithelial cells in primary culture, chloride efflux was lower in response to cAMP and tended to be higher in response to exogenous adenosine 5′‐triphosphate (ATP). The CF cells exhibited a residual cAMP‐dependent chloride secretion that was inversely correlated with ATP‐induced chloride secretion, and almost completely blunted in the cells derived from microgallbladders. Our results suggest that epithelial structural alterations aggravate ▵F508 CFTR mislocalization in the gallbladder epithelium. The associated decrease in residual cAMP‐dependent chloride secretion may contribute to biliary damage despite the up‐regulation of alternative chloride transport pathways.
Thread-based Expert Finding

Identifying experts is an important part of search quality in online community sites such as forums. A number of wordbased and structure features have been used for the task of expert finding. In this paper, we focus on hierarchical structures in online community sites: posts, threads and thread structures. Through empirical comparisons on two collections, we show that thread structures can be helpful for expert finding.
Exploiting easy data in online optimization

We consider the problem of online optimization, where a learner chooses a decision from a given decision set and suffers some loss associated with the decision and the state of the environment. The learner's objective is to minimize its cumulative regret against the best fixed decision in hindsight. Over the past few decades numerous variants have been considered, with many algorithms designed to achieve sub-linear regret in the worst case. However, this level of robustness comes at a cost. Proposed algorithms are often over-conservative, failing to adapt to the actual complexity of the loss sequence which is often far from the worst case. In this paper we introduce a general algorithm that, provided with a "safe" learning algorithm and an opportunistic "benchmark", can effectively combine good worst-case guarantees with much improved performance on "easy" data. We derive general theoretical bounds on the regret of the proposed algorithm and discuss its implementation in a wide range of applications, notably in the problem of learning with shifting experts (a recent COLT open problem). Finally, we provide numerical simulations in the setting of prediction with expert advice with comparisons to the state of the art.
Graph modeling based video event detection

Video processing and analysis have been an interesting field in research and industry. Information detection or retrieval were a challenged task especially with the spread of multimedia applications and the increased number of the video acquisition devices such as the surveillance cameras, phones cameras. These have produced a large amount of video data which are also diversified and complex. This is what makes event detection in video a difficult task. Many video event detection methods were developed which are composed of two fundamental parts: video indexing and video classification. In this paper, we will introduce a new video event detection system based on graphs. Our system models the video frame as a graph in addition to a motion description. Thereafter, these models were classified and events are detected. Experimental results proved the effectiveness and the robustness of our system.
Elution of antimicrobials from a cross-linked dextran gel: In vivo quantification.

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY Use of a novel, biodegradable, antimicrobial-impregnated gel provides an alternative method of local treatment of infections in horses. OBJECTIVES To determine in vivo elution of antimicrobial medications from antimicrobial-impregnated cross-linked dextran gel and to evaluate the effect on wound healing when implanted subcutaneously in horses. METHODS Amikacin-, vancomycin- or amikacin/clindamycin-impregnated gel was placed subcutaneously in 11 horses' necks, using 6 replicates with a 3 month washout between experiments. Capillary ultrafiltration probes for collection of interstitial fluid were placed 0 cm and 1.5 cm from the gel-filled incisions. Samples were collected at 0, 4, 8 and 12 h, and on Days 1-10. Blood was collected on Days 0, 1 and 7. Amikacin and vancomycin samples were analysed via fluorescence polarisation immunoassay, and clindamycin samples via high-performance liquid chromatography. Histology of biopsy samples was performed at the completion of the study. Differences in mean histomorphological scores between groups were assessed using Wilcoxon's signed ranks test. RESULTS Maximum antimicrobial concentrations were detected at 4 h (amikacin), and 8 h (vancomycin, and amikacin and clindamycin from the combination gel). Mean ± s.d. peak concentrations for amikacin, vancomycin, amikacin (amikacin/clindamycin) and clindamycin were 6133 ± 1461, 7286 ± 2769, 3948 ± 317 and 985 ± 960, respectively. Median number of days for which antimicrobial concentration remained above minimum inhibitory concentration for target microorganisms at implantation was ≥10 days for vancomycin, 9 days (± 1) for amikacin and 8 days (± 1) for clindamycin. Mean plasma amikacin and vancomycin concentrations were lower than detectable limits; mean serum clindamycin concentrations were 0.52 µg/ml and 0.63 µg/ml at 24 h and 7 days, respectively. There were no significant differences in histomorphological scores between treatment and control incisions (P≥0.22). CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL RELEVANCE Cross-linked dextran gel is a safe, effective alternative local antimicrobial delivery method.
Designing specialized technology to aid assistance dogs

Interest is growing in studying canine and human relationships, especially working canines and their role in society. Interest is also growing in designing informed, user centered interactive technologies for animals. Combining these two themes, my doctoral research looks at creating user-centered, ethnographically informed designs for working animals (working dogs). The work examines existing design methodologies and posits new ones to contribute to a wider Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) framework to design for and with animal users. Here I review the initial findings of the on-going work to develop an emergency alert alarm for assistance dog use.
Iranian Women's Experiences with Intimate Partner Violence: A Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND Violence against women has been identified as a public health problem, which has fundamental consequences on women's physical, mental, and reproductive health. To understand abused women and provide support for them, it is necessary to enter the world in which the victims of intimate partner violence live. This study was designed to investigate experiences of abused Iranian women of intimate partner violence. METHODS Content analysis approach was used to design this qualitative study. Participants were 11 married women, selected from two health centers and one park located in the south of Tehran, Iran. Purposive sampling method was applied to recruit the study participants and continued until data saturation was reached. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data. RESULTS During the data analysis, 650 initial codes were clustered in six subcategories and two categories. "Neglect or covert violence" and "overt violence" were two categories emerged through data analysis, both having physical, sexual, and emotional dimensions. Emotional violence was the most prevalent in both cases and had more significance for the women. Neglect was much more common than overt violence. It was the precursor for overt violence. CONCLUSION Although participants had experienced both neglect and overt violence, the major part of experienced violence was neglect. This type of violence usually is not addressed or recognized and is difficult to identify, but it is damaging to women. Knowledge of women‟s experiences of intimate partner violence makes the health staff provide better care for abused women.
Examining the Causes of Autism

Editor’s Note: Autism is a broad, complex, and increasingly important brain disorder. New data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that one in sixty-eight children is born with some degree of autism. Autism is also more common in males by a four to one ratio. Making it especially difficult to discuss in finite, conclusive terms is the fact that there is no biological test for autism; diagnosis is based on behavior, and the only verified treatment is intensive behavior therapy. Our author, one of the nation’s foremost researchers on autism, examines the prenatal factors that contribute to the disorder.
Cheap and Available State Machine Replication

This paper presents that, by combining on-demand instantiation and lazy recovery, we can reduce the cost of asynchronous state machine replication protocols, such as Paxos and UpRight, while maintaining their high availability. To reduce cost, we incorporate on-demand instantiation, which activates a subset of replicas first and activates backup ones when active ones fail. To solve its key limitation--the system can be halted for long when activating a backup replica, we apply lazy recovery, allowing the system to proceed while recovering backup nodes in the background. The key contribution of this paper is to identify that, when agreement nodes and execution nodes are logically separated, they each presents a unique property that enables lazy recovery. We have applied this idea to Paxos and built ThriftyPaxos, which, as shown in the evaluation, can achieve higher throughput and similar availability comparing to standard Paxos, despite the fact that ThriftyPaxos activates fewer replicas.
Decoding visual dominance: Attributions of power based on relative percentages of looking while speaking and looking while listening.

Two experiments examined whether patterns of visual dominance behavior, defined by the ratio of the proportion of time spent looking while speaking to the proportion of looking while listening (Exline et al., 1975), could be reliably decoded. Participants viewed videotapes of a person, whose visual behavior was systematically varied, apparently conversing with another person of the same sex. In Experiment One, male and female stimulus persons displayed three different visual dominance ratios: 55%140%, 40%160%, 25%175%. As predicted, when stimulus persons exhibited the high look-speak to look-listen ratio they were rated as more powerful than when they exhibited the moderate ratio (p < .001); when they displayed the moderate ratio they were evaluated as more powerful than when they displayed the low visual dominance ratio (p < .001). Experiment Two factorially combined variations in the proportions of look-speak (25%, 50%, 75%o) and look-listen (25%, 50%, 75%). Attributions of power increased as the proportion of looking while speaking increased (p < .001) and decreased as the proportion of looking while listening increased (p < .001).
Cross-sectional analysis of the mandibular lingual concavity using cone beam computed tomography.

OBJECTIVES To study the prevalence and the degree of lingual concavity in the edentulous first molar region from cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans of the mandibles. MATERIAL AND METHODS Qualified cross-sectional images in mandibular first molar edentulous region taken from CBCT were selected. The mandible morphology 2 mm above the inferior alveolar canal (IAC) was classified into the convex (C), parallel (P) and undercut (U) type, based on the presence of lingual concavity and the shape of alveolar ridge. The prevalence of each group was determined. Subsequently, the lingual concavity characters, including the depth, the angulation and the vertical location were determined by the measurements of selected anatomic landmarks. RESULTS One hundred and three subjects (mean age 51 with a range of 23.7-70.4 years) were studied. The U type was the most prevalent, accounting for 66% of the study population. The mean undercut depth and angulation at the level 2 mm above IAC were on average 2.4 mm and 57.7°. The mean vertical distances from the most prominent point (P) of the lingual concavity to the cemento-enamel junction of second premolar and the inferior border of the mandible were 11.7 and 14.9 mm, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The anatomic location and the degree of the lingual concavity presented in this article add more information in implant treatment planning in the mandibular first molar edentulous region.
Some Immunologie Aspects of Canine Neoplasms1

Summary At least 1 unique soluble antigen has been demonstrated in approximately 20% of canine neoplasms. Similar material was not demonstrated in a variety of nonmalignant adult canine tissues. The antigen is apparently similar to, but not identical with, the G antigen found in some human neoplasms. The presence of the unique canine tumor antigen bore no relation to the pathologic diagnosis of the tumor, a finding that is analogous to that derived from studies on the G antigen. Circulating antibodies to venereal sarcoma were found by conglutinating complement adsorption tests in the sera of dogs carrying the tumor. Some of the implications of these findings are discussed in the light of a possible viral alteration of the tumor cells inducing tumor-specific antigens.
The Use of a Diagnostic Profile in Assessing the Art Understandings of Taiwanese ESL Students

This study uses Stavropoulos’ (1992) ＂A Diagnostic Profile of Art Understandings Based on Verbal Responses to Works of Art (DP)＂ to evaluate ESL students’ understandings of Western and Asian art during a one-semester interdisciplinary course. Stavropoulos’ DP uses four dimensions to assess student’s verbal and written responses to imagery: descriptive, formal, interpretative, and historical. The findings reveal that the students gave multiple lower-order descriptive art understandings. Within the formal dimension, many students successfully developed their formal art knowledge-base as many analyzed artworks in terms of elements and principles of design. Within the interpretative dimension, many students employed knowledge-seeking strategies in their search for understanding. Most students’ responses did not score highly within the historical dimension. There is evidence of students giving incorrect appraisals, illogical findings, immature judgment, and nebulous or unclear statements within each dimension. It is also palpable that there is a scarcity of responses which provide supported judgment or aesthetic reasoning, descriptive questioning, extending or challenging the art historian’s or the art critic’s description of the work through convincing argument. Several of the students’ drawings demonstrate Howard Gardner’s (1983) notion of spatial intelligence. Overall, the findings suggest that the interdisciplinary course provided students with a useful knowledge-base for developing their art education.
The Relationship of Sex Hormones and Cortisol with Cognitive functioning in Schizophrenia

Gonadal as well as stress hormones have recently been implicated in pathophysiology and sex differences in onset, prognosis and treatment of schizophrenia. The present study investigated the effects of serum levels of oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone and cortisol on neuropsychological functioning and psychopathology in a group of 37 patients (17 women, 20 men) with schizophrenia. Neuropsychological measures included tests of attention, verbal abilities, language, memory, executive functioning, motor and speed of information processing. The results showed that oestrogen and age was associated with low positive symptom scores, and within gender, cortisol predicted poor performance on the information processing domain in men. These findingsdemonstrate that cortisol, in addition to the commonly reported effects of oestrogen, influences neuropsychological functioning in schizophrenia with differential effects on specific domains of cognitive functioning and underscore the need for further investigation of the modulating role of hormones on neuropsychological functioning in schizophrenia.