Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Axonal and synaptic pathology in Alzheimer’s disease

The cause of the initial synaptic disconnection and eventual widespread neuronal degeneration that underlies the onset and progressive development of dementia in sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains elusive. The pathognomonic features of AD, extracellular accumulations of soluble and fibrillar β-amyloid (Aβ) as well as intracellular neurofibrillary tangles comprised of hyperphosphorylated tau, that give rise to characteristic dystrophic neurites and neuropil threads, respectively, have been studied extensively in human AD cases and a variety of transgenic mouse models. Nonetheless, the degree to which these malformations affect different populations of neurons and their synaptic connections in the cortex remains to be defined. Furthermore, although white matter degeneration has previously been implicated in AD, not much is known about the extent of myelin loss in AD. This thesis, therefore, sought to address four aims analyzing the relationship between AD pathology and the mechanisms underlying AD. Firstly, to investigate the extent to which interneuron subpopulations are susceptible to Aβ plaque-mediated cytoskeletal alterations compared to a neurofilament-rich pyramidal neuron population. Secondly, to examine the relationship between Aβ plaque deposition and inhibitory and excitatory synaptic connections. Thirdly, to assess if the activity of glutamate decarboxylase, the enzyme catalysing the formation of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, is altered in a transgenic mouse model of AD. Finally, to determine if AD pathology is associated with cortical demyelination and oligodendrocyte cell loss in human and transgenic mice. The major conclusions drawn from these investigations were that inhibitory interneuron neurites were not as susceptible to Aβ plaque-mediated dystrophy as neurofilament-rich neurites. Moreover, GABAergic synaptic density was not significantly decreased in proximity to Aβ plaques unlike excitatory glutamatergic synapse density. These decreases were accompanied by potentially compensatory changes in presynaptic bouton size, perisomatic innervation, as well as increased gliotransmission of GABA in Aβ plaque-rich neuropil. Neuritic plaque deposition was also associated with focal demyelination and concomitant decreases in several integral myelin-associated proteins. Interestingly, although mature oligodendrocyte loss was also present, there were significant increases in the number of immature oligodendrocytes and precursor cells, indicative of a reactive remyelinating response. In summary, this thesis further clarified the pathological role of Aβ plaques in mediating cytoskeletal dystrophic changes and specific synaptic loss. It also identified the novel finding of focal demyelination associated with Aβ deposits. A better understanding of these early pathological alterations in the progression of AD is necessary for the development of effective therapeutic strategies. In particular, the compensatory changes in response to ongoing AD pathology could offer promising endogenous targets for slowing or repairing neuronal dysfunction.
Active Labour Market Policies around the World: Coping with the Consequences of Globalization

This book explores how to make globalization work better in the interest of the workers of the world. It discusses active labor market policies (ALMPs) that have to be put in place to combat some of the negative effects of globalization and introduce more security and decent work for workers. Comprising an array of measures, ALMPs can take the form of special support for job searching, training and education for the unemployed, and various other subsidies and job creation activities. While providing a valuable overview of the nature of ALMPs, the book examines some of the pitfalls and challenges countries face when evaluating these programs. It also provides a policy framework for designing policies that are a permanent, yet adaptable, instrument to cope with change linked to globalization and discusses different ways of financing these.
C-CLR: a tool for navigating highly configurable system software

In order to accommodate the spectrum of configuration options currently required for competitive system infrastructures, many systems leverage heavy usage of C preprocessor controlled conditional compilation. In herent costs associated with this heavy preprocessor usage include both the impaired readability of the base system, and the reduced reusability of the configuration code. Our proposed solution, C-CLR, allows developers to sift through views of a system based on configuration options. Configuration-specific views improve readability of the system as a whole by including only relevant code. They also support reusability by aiding aspect mining through easy navigation to relevant configuration options, and automated identification of equivalent blocks of code within conditionally compiled segments.
Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators

This paper describes an evolving computational model of the perception and production of simple rhythmic patterns. The model consists of a network of oscillators of different resting frequencies which couple with input patterns and with each other. Oscillators whose frequencies match periodicities in the input tend to become activated. Metrical structure is represented explicitly in the network in the form of clusters of oscillators whose frequencies and phase angles are constrained to maintain the harmonic relationships that characterize meter. Rests in rhythmic patterns are represented by explicit rest oscillators in the network, which become activated when an expected beat in the pattern fails to appear. The model makes predictions about the relative difficulty of patterns and the effect of deviations from periodicity in the input.
Question du logement et des equipements sociaux a abeokuta (nigeria) entre 1960 et 1982

Le probleme du logement et des equipements sociaux a abeokuta ne se pose plus uniquement en terme de qualite mais aussi en terme de quantite depuis 1976, la restructuration administrative et territoriale du nigeria a eleve abeokuta au rang de capitale d'un etat federe. Il en est resulte un enorme mouvement de migration de la population de l'etat d'ogun vers abeokuta. Le nombre de ses habitants est passe de 187. 292 en 1963 a 271. 092 en 1976 puis a 345. 980 en 1982. Cette explosion demographique a eu pour consequence une insuffisance de logement et une surutilisation des equipements sociaux, car le taux de production du logement et des equipements sociaux n'a pas suivi le taux d'accroissement demographique de cette ville. Depuis 1976, plusieurs formes de politiques du logement et des equipements sociaux ont vu le jour dans l'etat d'ogun. Malheureusement ces diverses reformes sont restees inefficaces. Une etude analytique nous a permis de cerner les raisons de cette inefficacite qui sont principalement la mauvaise gestion des pouvoirs publics, l'insuffisance des personnels qualifies et l'absence du pouvoir financier. Sous cet eclairage nouveau sont apparues des solutions d'avenir valable pour abeokuta, creant aussi un exemple pour les autres villes de l'etat d'ogun et du nigeria en general.
Outcomes of Photorefractive Keratectomy with Intraoperative Mitomycin-C

Purpose To report the efficacy, safety, predictability and complications of photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) with intraoperative application of mitomycin-C (MMC). Methods This historical cohort study was performed on 1,250 eyes of 625 patients who underwent PRK using the Technolas 217 excimer laser machine by a single surgeon with intraoperative use of MMC 0.02% up to 2 minutes, depending on depth of ablation. A complete ophthalmologic examination was performed which included refraction uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and slitlamp biomicroscopy. Outcomes were analyzed after one year of follow-up. Results The mean preoperative spherical equivalent refractive error was −4.85±2.27 (range, −2.50 to −13.5) diopters (D). Mean depth of ablation was 89±22 microns and mean time to reepithelialization was 4.5±1.7 days. At final follow-up, UCVA of 20/20 and 20/40 or more was achieved in 92.1% and 99.2% of eyes, respectively. One year postoperatively, 69.4% and 91% of eyes were within ±0.50 D and ±1.00 D of emmetropia.Overall, 62 eyes (4.9%) developed one or two lines of decrease in BCVA, and 50 eyes (4%) developed corneal haze which was grade 1 or 2 in most cases; grade 3 and 4 corneal haze was found in 4 and 2 eyes, respectively. No other adverse event was noted during the study period. Conclusion PRK with intraoperative application of MMC provides excellent visual outcomes with acceptable safety and predictability, and entails minimal side effects.
Insulin-like growth factor-I receptor signaling and resistance to trastuzumab (Herceptin).

BACKGROUND Trastuzumab (Herceptin), an anti-HER2/neu receptor monoclonal antibody that inhibits growth of ErbB2-overexpressing breast cancer, is used to treat such cancers. Development of resistance to trastuzumab, however, is common. We investigated whether insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), which activates cell survival signals, interferes with the growth-inhibitory action of trastuzumab. METHODS MCF-7/HER2-18 and SKBR3 human breast cancer models were used to assess cell proliferation, colony formation in soft agar, and cell cycle parameters. Throughout, we used trastuzumab at a dose of 10 microg/mL and IGF-I at a dose of 40 ng/mL. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Trastuzumab inhibited the growth of MCF-7/HER2-18 cells, which overexpress HER2/neu receptors and express IGF-I receptors (IGF-IRs), only when IGF-IR signaling was minimized. For example, in 1% fetal bovine serum (FBS), trastuzumab reduced cell proliferation by 42% (P =.002); however, in 10% FBS or IGF-I, trastuzumab had no effect on proliferation. In SKBR3 cells, which overexpress HER2/neu receptor but express few IGF-IRs, trastuzumab reduced proliferation by 42% (P =.008) regardless of IGF-I concentration. When SKBR3 cells were genetically altered to overexpress IGF-IRs and cultured with IGF-I, trastuzumab had no effect on proliferation. However, the addition of IGF-binding protein-3, which decreased IGF-IR signaling, restored trastuzumab-induced growth inhibition. CONCLUSIONS In breast cancer cell models that overexpress HER2/neu, an increased level of IGF-IR signaling appears to interfere with the action of trastuzumab. Thus, strategies that target IGF-IR signaling may prevent or delay development of resistance to trastuzumab.
ILP-basierte Klassifikation von Web-Dokumenten

In dieser Arbeit wird ein semi-automatisches Verfahren zur Erkennung und Extraktion relationaler Regularitäten in Web-Dokumenten präsentiert und für die Klassifikation im wissensbasierten Content-Management, basierend auf Spectacle, eingesetzt. Exemplarisch wurde das Verfahren auf Umweltinformationssysteme angewendet und die Ergebnisse evaluiert.
A Secure Hypercube based Team Multicast Routing Protocois (S-HTMRP)

Security remains as a concern in MANET. In case of multicast MANET it is even more challenging as most of the routing protocols have been proposed assuming that the nodes in MANET behave in a secure manner. In this paper we are outlining a secure novel multicast routing protocol named Secure Hypercube Based Team Multicast Routing Protocol (S-HTMRP) that deals with both multicast routing and packet forwarding. Significant attention has been recently devoted to develop secure on-demand routing protocols that defend against a variety of possible attacks on routing. This paper develops and proposes a trust model to secure the network from the rushing attack, a variety of denial of services attack that may exist in the MANET. An alternative idea of implementing distributive security mechanism by computing trust levels from the inherent knowledge of the network has been proposed here, along with randomized packet forwarding mechanism and combining it with a scalable routing architecture to get a resulting routing protocol for multicast MANET that is more secure. The routes calculated through this mechanism may not be optimal but certainly have an accurate measure of reliability in them. The routing protocol namely S-HTMRP that has been proposed in this paper outperforms the existing Hypercube Based Team Multicast Routing Protocol in presence of rushing attack.
A Network Security Evaluation Method Framework Based on Multiple Criteria Decision Making Theory

In this paper, we present a novel network security evaluation method framework, with a comprehensive analysis of the MADM (Multiple Attribute Decision Making) theory. This framework constructs a measurement model of network security, and normalizes the measurement process. It also provides specific evaluation methods to satisfying the practical requirements. Thereinafter, an example of network worm propagation evaluation is illustrated. Compared to existing evaluation methods, our methods are more comprehensive and scientific, and can make the rank preference order of each worm life cycle stage of each worm defense strategy. Our approach makes contribution on the standardization and scientific of the network security evaluation process.
Comparison of Selegiline and Rasagiline Therapies in Parkinson Disease: A Real-life Study

BackgroundWe aimed to compare indicators of Parkinson disease (PD) progression between patients first prescribed either selegiline or rasagiline as their antiparkinsonian drugs (APDs) on the basis of real-life data. MethodsPharmacy data on members of a large Israeli health maintenance organization, treated as patients with PD during 2001–2012 and prescribed selegiline or rasagiline as their first APD, were analyzed. The first APD was selegiline for 349 patients (2001–2006) and rasagiline for 485 patients (2007–2012). Time from monoamine oxidase type B inhibitor prescription until initiating treatment with dopamine agonists (DAs) or levodopa was compared between the groups using Cox regression adjusted to sex and age at initiation of APD. ResultsThe selegiline group was significantly older at first monoamine oxidase type B inhibitor purchase. In a similar follow-up time (3.0 [1.7] year for selegiline group, 3.1 y [1.4] for rasagiline group), the time to initiation of levodopa treatment did not differ between the 2 groups (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.06; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.86–1.31). The time to initiation of DA treatment was longer in the selegiline group (adjusted HR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.49–2.53). For those who were treated with DA before levodopa (n = 276), the time to initiation of levodopa treatment was longer in the rasagiline group (adjusted HR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.56–1.07). ConclusionsThe similarity in time to levodopa in both groups suggests no differences between selegiline and rasagiline in their effect on the natural history of PD. A possible interaction effect between rasagiline and DA might exist. A better symptomatic profile of selegiline more than that of rasagiline in the earlier stages of PD may explain the difference between the 2 groups in time to DA initiation.
Giving facilities for the design and test of web prefetching techniques

Web prefetching techniques have pointed to be especially important to reduce web latencies and, consequently, an important set of works can be found in the open literature. But, in general, it is not possible to do a fair comparison among the proposed prefetching techniques due to three main reasons: i) the underlying baseline system where prefetching is applied differs widely among the studies; ii) the workload used in the presented experiments is not the same; iii) different performance key metrics are used to evaluate their benefits. To deal with the first two problems we propose a new and free available environment to efficiently implement and study prefetching techniques. Our framework is a hybrid implementation that combines both real and simulated parts in order to provide both flexibility and accuracy. It reproduces in detail the behavior of web users, proxy severs and original servers. The simulator includes an independent module to provide performance results, such as precision (prefetching accuracy), recall, perceived latency, and byte transference. Related with the third mentioned problem our main concern is to identify which the main meaningful indexes are when studying the performance of different prefetching techniques. For this purpose, we propose a taxonomy based in three categories, which permits us to identify analogies and differences among the indexes commonly used. The choice of the appropriate key metric is of paramount importance for a correct and representative study. Keywords— Performance Evaluation; Web Prefetching Techniques; Simulation; Spatial Locality; Web performance
Postconditioned Symbolic Execution

Symbolic execution is emerging as a powerful technique for generating test inputs systematically to achieve exhaustive path coverage of a bounded depth. However, its practical use is often limited by path explosion because the number of paths of a program can be exponential in the number of branch conditions encountered during the execution. To mitigate the path explosion problem, we propose a new redundancy removal method called postconditioned symbolic execution. At each branching location, in addition to determine whether a particular branch is feasible as in traditional symbolic execution, our approach checks whether the branch is subsumed by previous explorations. This is enabled by summarizing previously explored paths by weakest precondition computations. Postconditioned symbolic execution can identify path suffixes shared by multiple runs and eliminate them during test generation when they are redundant. Pruning away such redundant paths can lead to a potentially exponential reduction in the number of explored paths. We have implemented our method in the symbolic execution engine KLEE and conducted experiments on a large set programs from the GNU Coreutils suite. Our results confirm that redundancy due to common path suffix is both abundant and widespread in real- world applications.
Self organising systems for mass computer literacy: Findings from the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments

Earlier work often referred to as the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments has shown that groups of children can leam to use public computers on their own. This paper presents the method and results of an experiment conducted to investigate whether such unsupervised group learning in shared public spaces is universal. The experiment was conducted with ‘hole in the wall’ (minimally invasive education, or MIE) kiosks in 23 locations in rural India. Focus groups in each location were tested for computer literacy for 9 months. Results, which are discussed in the paper, show that groups of children can leam to use computers and the Internet on their own, irrespective of who or where they are. The paper also discusses the engineering considerations for building such ‘hole in the wall’ computers in public spaces.
On relative-wealth effects and long-run growth

Abstract We develop a growth model in which individuals care about their social status, which is in turn determined by their relative wealth. It is shown that the presence of a desire for status, even if very limited, can generate endogenous long-run growth. When the status-seeking motive is weak, long-run growth only appears if the initial stock of capital is large enough.
Teacher Intentions, Teaching Practice, and Student Perceptions of Inquiry-Oriented Teaching.

AUTHOR Flick, Lawrence B. ; Dickinson, Valarie L. TITLE Teacher Intentions, Teaching Practice, and Student Perceptions of Inquiry-Oriented Teaching. PUB DATE 22 Mar 97 NOTE 45p. ; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (Oak Brook, IL, March 21-24, 1997). PUB TYPE Reports Research (143) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Case Studies; *Constructivism (Learning); *Discourse Analysis; *Discovery Learning; *Educational Strategies; *Inquiry; Intermediate Grades; Middle Schools; Science Instruction; Secondary Education; Student Attitudes; Thinking Skills
Event-Driven Implicit Authentication for Mobile Access Control

In order to protect user privacy on mobile devices, an event-driven implicit authentication scheme is proposed in this paper. Several methods of utilizing the scheme for recognizing legitimate user behavior are investigated. The investigated methods compute an aggregate score and a threshold in real-time to determine the trust level of the current user using real data derived from user interaction with the device. The proposed scheme is designed to: operate completely in the background, require minimal training period, enable high user recognition rate for implicit authentication, and prompt detection of abnormal activity that can be used to trigger explicitly authenticated access control. In this paper, we investigate threshold computation through standard deviation and EWMA (exponentially weighted moving average) based algorithms. The result of extensive experiments on user data collected over a period of several weeks from an Android phone indicates that our proposed approach is feasible and effective for lightweight real-time implicit authentication on mobile smartphones.
Rank level fusion in multibiometric systems

Multibiometric systems have recently become a preferred option for human identification over the unibiometric systems. It increases the recognition rate and confidence in the final decision, and simultaneously reduces the failure to enroll rate (FER). For identification mode, rank level fusion is a feasible option as incompatibility and normalization issues present at the score level fusion are not prominent at this level and also sufficient information is present to fuse as opposed to the decision level fusion. We propose an improvement in existing rank level fusion techniques using two levels of hierarchy. Series and parallel combinations are proposed to combine the output of various rank level fusion techniques. Two formulations of series and parallel combinations are extensively evaluated on multi-algorithm, multi-instance and multi-modal biometric systems created from three publicly available datasets: (i) NIST BSSR1 [1] multi-modal biometric score database, (ii) Face Recognition Grand Challenge V2.0 [2] and (iii) LG4000 [3] iris images.
Effective Bandwidth Utilization using Trusted LPEs in Anonymous Communication

network consists of autonomous systems that operate mutually for providing communication between the users. The user wants to be anonymous in this communication. The anonymous communication hides the identity of the communication parties. We propose a technique to achieve effective bandwidth utilization using trusted LPE (link processing element) in networks to deliver content from producer to consumers and hide the correspondence between them. In this technique, consumer registers interest for content by sending the Content Request Message (CRM) to the content's producer. Here the LPE that accepts CRM from the consumers merges and processes if they are intended for the same producer. In this process LPE receives number of CRMs from consumers and creates CRM with its identity and forwards to the content's producer as a single message. A producer produces the content requested by LPE that content send to LPE in network. Then LPE forwards content to consumers in reverse direction and duplicates into multiple content messages if necessary.