Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pannexin1 Stabilizes Synaptic Plasticity and Is Needed for Learning

Pannexin 1 (Panx1) represents a class of vertebrate membrane channels, bearing significant sequence homology with the invertebrate gap junction proteins, the innexins and more distant similarities in the membrane topologies and pharmacological sensitivities with gap junction proteins of the connexin family. In the nervous system, cooperation among pannexin channels, adenosine receptors, and KATP channels modulating neuronal excitability via ATP and adenosine has been recognized, but little is known about the significance in vivo. However, the localization of Panx1 at postsynaptic sites in hippocampal neurons and astrocytes in close proximity together with the fundamental role of ATP and adenosine for CNS metabolism and cell signaling underscore the potential relevance of this channel to synaptic plasticity and higher brain functions. Here, we report increased excitability and potently enhanced early and persistent LTP responses in the CA1 region of acute slice preparations from adult Panx1−/− mice. Adenosine application and N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR)-blocking normalized this phenotype, suggesting that absence of Panx1 causes chronic extracellular ATP/adenosine depletion, thus facilitating postsynaptic NMDAR activation. Compensatory transcriptional up-regulation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 4 (grm4) accompanies these adaptive changes. The physiological modification, promoted by loss of Panx1, led to distinct behavioral alterations, enhancing anxiety and impairing object recognition and spatial learning in Panx1−/− mice. We conclude that ATP release through Panx1 channels plays a critical role in maintaining synaptic strength and plasticity in CA1 neurons of the adult hippocampus. This result provides the rationale for in-depth analysis of Panx1 function and adenosine based therapies in CNS disorders.
Physiotherapeutic evaluation of the spine in children attending sports classes of the Primary School in Mielec

Early detection of spine pathologies enables the provision of effective prophylactic and corrective interventions, including physical activity. Physical activity is an essential element of proper development of the human body and improvement of motor skills. Increased physical activity of children of sports classes seems to prevent the developmental anomalies of the spine. The aim of the present study was the physiotherapeutic evaluation of 10-12-year-old children attending sports classes of the Primary School in Mielec. The study population consisted of 56 healthy children (17 boys and 39 girls) regularly attending physical education classes. The range of physical fitness was assessed using the fingers-floor, Schober`s and Matthias tests. The findings demonstrated that the parameters of somatic development of pupils were within normal limits. Moreover, BMI was normal. The changes in somatic development were found to affect the level of physical fitness. Increased BMI was associated with deteriorated physical fitness. In the study population, boys had the results closer to normal limits. Pupils of the general profile class were characterised by qualitatively better physical activity as they spent their free time in a more variegated way. The activities of children from the sports classes were monotonous and lacked diversity. Postural defects, predominantly round backs, were observed in 29% of children from the sports classes.
Brains, not brawn: The use of “smart” comparable corpora in bilingual terminology mining

Current research in text mining favors the quantity of texts over their representativeness. But for bilingual terminology mining, and for many language pairs, large comparable corpora are not available. More importantly, as terms are defined vis-à-vis a specific domain with a restricted register, it is expected that the representativeness rather than the quantity of the corpus matters more in terminology mining. Our hypothesis, therefore, is that the representativeness of the corpus is more important than the quantity and ensures the quality of the acquired terminological resources. This article tests this hypothesis on a French-Japanese bilingual term extraction task. To demonstrate how important the type of discourse is as a characteristic of the comparable corpora, we used a state-of-the-art multilingual terminology mining chain composed of two extraction programs, one in each language, and an alignment program. We evaluated the candidate translations using a reference list, and found that taking discourse type into account resulted in candidate translations of a better quality even when the corpus size was reduced by half.
Implementing Regenerative Morphing

Given two source images S1 and S2, the regenerative morphing algorithm will generate N−1 intermediate images that together smoothly transition between S1 and S2. The hallmark of this algorithm is its lack of ghosting features, which typically occur when certain parts of an image fade away as they transition into another image. To achieve this result, we try to minimize the bidirectional similarity between two images in several ways. The bidirectional similarity of two images S and T of possibly different sizes is defined in [SCSI08] as
Expression Pattern of Inflammatory Response Genes and Their Regulatory MicroRNAs in Bovine Oviductal Cells in Response to Lipopolysaccharide: Implication for Early Embryonic Development

In the present study, we used an in vitro model to investigate the response of the oviduct with respect to inflammatory mediators and their regulatory microRNAs in case of bacterial infection and subsequent association with embryo survival. For this, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, cultured primary bovine oviductal cells (BOEC) were challenged with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for 24h and the temporal expression pattern of inflammatory mediators and their regulatory microRNAs were measured at 0, 3, 6, 12, 24 and 48h after LPS treatment. Intriguingly, the temporal patterns of all miRNAs except miR-21 were significantly up-regulated at 6h after LPS treatment. Whereas, we observed significant overexpression of pro-inflammatory mediators as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) and interleukin-1 beta (IL1β) after LPS challenge for 24h. On the other hand, the expression level of essential elements like oviductal glycoprotein 1 (OVGP1) and insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) was significantly decreased in challenged groups compared with control. Moreover, miR-155, miR-146a, miR-223, miR-21, miR-16 and miR-215 have shown a clear suppression in challenged group after LPS treatment. In the 2nd experiment there were four groups of blastocysts produced, namely embryo+LPS free media, embryo+LPS, BOEC+embryo and BOEC+embryo+LPS. The suboptimal oviduct environment due to LPS challenge is found to have a significant influence on the expression of inflammatory response genes (TNFα and CSF1), stress response genes (SOD and CAT), mitochondrial activity, reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and apoptotic level either in cultured or co-cultured blastocysts. Collectively, LPS challenge led to aberrant changes in oviductal transcriptome profile, which could lead to a suboptimal environment for embryo development.
Energy consumption of Graphic Processing Units with respect to automotive use-cases

With the introduction of API's like CUDA, Stream+ or OpenCL, modern Graphics Processing Units (GPU's) can be easily employed for general purpose computing. Plus, their comparatively low price per GFLOP makes them interesting candidates for coprocessors in future embedded Electronic Control Units (ECUs). Yet, as car manufacturers thrive to reduce the Thermal Design Power (TDP) of each and every ECU within the car, and GPUs are unfortunately commonly known for their high energy demands, it is important to further investigate the power consumption of GPUs for typical automotive applications. Thus, we measured the energy consumption of General Purpose GPU applications within the driver assistance and the multimedia domain, examined a prototypical implementation of a novel 3D navigation application and had a look at applications that make use of the GPU for H.264/AVC video decoding. These investigations show that the few existing prediction models for GPU power consumption are rather too simple for automotive purposes and have to be evolved in a future step.
A faster distributed arithmetic architecture for FPGAs

Distributed Arithmetic (DA) is an important technique to implement digital signal processing (DSP) functions in FPGAs. However, traditional lookup table (LUT) based DA architectures contain one or more carry propagation chains in the critical path that dictates the fastest time at which an entire design can run. In this paper, we describe a novel technique that can reduce or eliminate the carry-propagate chain from the critical path in LUT based DA architectures on FPGAs. In the proposed scheme, the individual bits of a word do not have to be processed as a unit. Instead, the current iteration can start as soon as the least significant bit (LSB) of the previous iteration is available, without waiting for the entire word from the previous iteration to be fully computed. This technique has great potential in speeding up DSP applications based on DA. Designs are described for serial and parallel DALUT and accumulator structures in which an n-bit carry chain, where n is the word length, is broken into smaller r-bit chains, 1*nnr < n . A cost-performance analysis of the designs is presented. The analysis shows that the designs proposed in this paper have a lower cost-performance ratio (indicating better performance) than traditional DA designs. We also show that the 8-bit (r = 8) designs offer a good compromise between cost and performance. The implementation is on a Xilinx chip XC4028XL-3-BG256 using Xilinx Foundation tools v 3.1i. The results show that the proposed designs can achieve speedup by a factor of at least 1.5 over traditional DA designs in some cases.
Sticks and carrots for the design of international climate agreements with renegotiations

This paper examines renegotiations of international climate agreements for carbon abatement. We explore coalition stability under ‘optimal transfers’ that have been suggested to stabilise international environmental agreements (e.g. McGinty in Oxford Economic Papers 59, 45–62, 2007). Such transfer schemes need to be refined when agreements are renegotiated. We determine the requirements that transfers between signatories of an international climate agreement must satisfy in order to stabilise the sequence of agreements that performs best in terms of provision of the public good ‘carbon abatement’. If these requirements are met, no country wants to change its membership status at any stage. In order to demonstrate the applicability of our result we use the STACO model, a 12-regions global model, to assess the impact of well-designed transfer rules on the stability of an international climate agreement. Although there are strong free-rider incentives, we find a stable grand coalition in the first commitment period in a game with one round of renegotiations if renegotations take place sufficiently early.
Interleukin 7 promotes long-term in vitro growth of antitumor cytotoxic T lymphocytes with immunotherapeutic efficacy in vivo

A major obstacle to the effective use of adoptive immunotherapeutic treatment of cancer is the difficulty of obtaining tumor-reactive lymphocytes in either sufficient numbers or with appropriate in vivo function to make such an approach feasible. Previous studies have shown that antitumor cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) with in vivo efficacy can be generated in vitro from lymphoid cells obtained from lymph nodes that drain the anatomical site of a tumor. Results presented here demonstrate that inclusion of interleukin 7 (IL-7) into the medium in which such CTL are cultured can support their growth in vitro for prolonged periods of time in the absence of repeated stimulation with either tumor stimulator cells or tumor antigen. More importantly, antitumor CTL propagated in medium containing IL-7 have retained both their antigenic specificity and their ability to reject tumors in vivo subsequent to intravenous injection. Parallel cultures of antitumor CTL similarly cultured in medium containing only IL-2 could only be maintained for 5-6 wk, after which the number and proportion of viable cells that were recoverable from such cultures progressively decreased. Phenotypic analysis of CTL maintained after extended culture (i.e., 22 mo) in medium containing IL-7 demonstrated them to be CD3+4-8+ T cells. These cells were also found to express lymphocyte function associated 1, intercellular adhesion molecule 1, and Mel-14 cell interaction molecules. The data also demonstrate that these CTL do not require the presence of antigen-presenting cell populations to mount a proliferative response to tumor stimulator cells. Cells in these cultures were also demonstrated to produce IL-2 after stimulation with irradiated tumor cells, thereby indicating that these CTL have become independent of the requirement for CD4+ helper cells to survive and function either in vitro or in vivo. Collectively, the findings that IL- 7 can beneficially augment the generation, and propagate the long-term growth, of antitumor CTL from lymph nodes draining a tumor site may have profound implications for promoting the immunotherapeutic treatment of cancer in humans.
Segmentation of switching dynamics with a Hidden Markov Model of neural prediction experts

We discuss a framework for modeling the switching dynamics of a time series based on hidden Markov models (HMM) of prediction experts, here neural networks. Learning is treated as a maximum likelihood problem. In particular, we present an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for adjusting the expert parameters as well as the HMM transition probabilities. Based on this algorithm, we develop a heuristic that achieves a hard segmentation of the time series into distinct dynamical modes and the simultaneous specialization of the prediction experts on the segments. We present examples of the application of this algorithm to the segmentation of arti cial and nancial time series.
J un 2 00 3 Galaxy Bias in Quintessence Cosmological Models

We derive the evolution of the linear bias factor, b(z), in cosmological models driven by an exotic fluid with an equation of state: p x = wρ x , where −1 ≤ w < 0 (quintessence). Our aim is to put constrains on different cosmological and biasing models by combining the recent observational clustering results of optical (2dF) galaxies (Hawkings et al.) with those predicted by the models. We find that our bias model when fitted to the 2dF clustering results predicts different bias evolution for different values of w. The models that provide the weak biasing (b • ∼ 1.1) of optical galaxies found in many recent observational studies are flat, Ω m = 0.3 with w ≤ −0.9. These models however, predict a weak redshift evolution of b(z), not corroborated by N-body simulations.
Wirksamkeit eines angeleiteten kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutischen Selbsthilfeprogramms zur Be­handlung der Binge-Eating-Störung

Zusammenfassung. Das Hauptmerkmal der Binge-Eating-Störung (BES) sind Essanfälle, bei denen Betroffene das Gefühl des Kontrollverlusts erleben und große Mengen an Nahrung in einem abgrenzbaren Zeitraum zu sich nehmen. Essanfälle sind bei der BES nicht gefolgt von ­Kompensationsverhalten, führen zu einem hohen Leidensdruck und sind in vielen Fällen assoziiert mit Übergewicht. Manualisierte kognitiv-­verhaltenstherapeutische Behandlungsprogramme im Einzel- und Gruppensetting zur Therapie der BES haben sich in kontrollierten Studien als wirksam erwiesen. Auf der Grundlage eines etablierten Behandlungsmanuals wurde ein Selbsthilferatgeber für Betroffene publiziert und in der vorliegenden Studie in Rahmen eines buchbasierten angeleiteten Selbsthilfeprogramms (ASH-Programm) unter natürlichen klinischen ­Rahmenbedingungen überprüft. 22 Patienten (21 Frauen, 1 Mann; Durchschnittsalter 35.82 Jahre (SD = 10.35 Jahre)) nahmen am 8-wöchigen ­ASH-Programm zur Behandlung der BES gefolgt von drei Auffrischungssitzungen über 6 Monate teil. Zwei Patienten (9.1 %) beendeten das ­ASH-Programm während der aktiven Behandlungsphase vorzeitigt (Dropout). Die Anzahl wöchentlicher Essanfälle und die Essstörungspsychopathologie (restriktives Essverhalten, Figursorgen, Gewichtssorgen, essensbezogene Sorgen) reduzierten sich bis zum Ende der aktiven Behandlungsphase signifikant. In den Auffrischungssitzungen konnte eine Stabilisierung der erreichten Abnahme an wöchentlichen Essanfällen und Essstörungspsychopathologie verzeichnet werden. Bis zum Ende der Auffrischungssitzungen, 1, 3 und 6 Monate nach dem Ende der aktiven Behandlungsphase nahm zudem auch die allgemeine Psychopathologie (depressive- und Angstsymptomatik) signifikant ab. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass das vorliegende ASH-Programm wirksam für die Behandlung der BES ist.
No-Reference Metric Design With Machine Learning for Local Video Compression Artifact Level

In decoded digital video, the local perceptual compression artifact level depends on the global compression ratio and the local video content. In this paper, we show how to build a highly relevant metric for video compression artifacts using supervised learning. To obtain the ground truth for training, we first build a reference metric for local estimation of the artifact level, which is robust to scaling and sensitive to all types of compression artifacts. Next, we design a large feature set and use AdaBoost to create no-reference metrics trained with the output of the reference metric. Two separate trained no-reference metrics, one for flat and one for detailed areas, respectively, are necessary to cover all types of artifacts. The relevance of these metrics is validated in a compression artifact reduction application, using objective scores like PSNR and BIM, but also a subjective evaluation as proof. We conclude that our created reference metric is an accurate local estimator of the compression artifact level. We were able to copy the performance to two no-reference metrics, based on a weighted mixture of low-level features. Our new metrics enable a far superior performance of artifact reduction compared to relevant alternative proposals.
Applications of TMS to Therapy in Psychiatry

Summary Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been applied to a growing number of psychiatric disorders as a noninvasive probe to study the underlying neurobiologic processes involved in psychiatric disorders and as a putative treatment. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is unparalleled in its ability to test the hypotheses generated by functional neuroimaging studies by modulating activity in selected neural circuits. As a focal intervention that may in some cases exert lasting effects, TMS offers the hope of targeting and ameliorating the circuitry underlying psychiatric disorders. The ultimate success of such an approach depends on our knowledge of the neural circuitry underlying these disorders, of how TMS exerts its effects, and of how to control the application of TMS to exert the desired effects. Although most clinical trials have focused on the treatment of major depression, increasing attention has been paid to schizophrenia and anxiety disorders. Many of these trials have supported a significant effect of TMS, but in some studies the effect is small and short lived. Current challenges in the field include determining how to enhance the efficacy of TMS in these disorders and how to identify patients for whom TMS may be efficacious.
DIVIDEND ANNOUNCEMENTS AND THE VALUATION EFFECTS OF CORPORATE DIVESTITURE

We examine the returns to 175 divestitures and 21 acquisitions associated with divestiture occurring between 1990 and 1994. Consistent with previous research, we find positive abnormal returns associated with divestiture on and before the announcement date. However, abnormal returns disappear, save for day -1, upon application of a contemporaneous dividend announcement filter. Acquiring firms experience significant positive abnormal returns on average the day prior to announcement. Moreover, acquiring firm wealth effects weaken considerably upon application of a contemporaneous dividend filter. Our research suggests that wealth effects associated with divestitures are sensitive to contemporaneous dividend announcement effects, and studies that fail to employ careful data filtering techniques may produce biased results.
Node Relevance Determination

Hierarchical Bayesian inference in parameterised models offers an approach for controlling complexity. In this paper we utilise a novel prior for the leaning of a model’s structure. We call the prior node relevance determination. It is applicable in a range of models including sigmoid belief networks and Boltzmann machines. We demonstrate how the approach may be applied to determine structure in a multi-layer perceptron.
Mining behavior models from enterprise web applications

Today's enterprise web applications demand very high release cycles---and consequently, frequent tests. Automating these tests typically requires a behavior model: A description of the states the application can be in, the transitions between these states, and the expected results. Furthermore one needs scripts to make the abstract actions (transitions) in the model executable. As specifying such behavior models and writing the necessary scripts manually is a hard task, a possible alternative could be to extract them from existing applications. However, mining such models can be a challenge, in particular because one needs to know when two states are equivalent, as well as how to reach that state. We present ProCrawl (PROcess CRAWLer), a generic approach to mine behavior models from (multi-user) enterprise web applications. ProCrawl observes the behavior of the application through its user interface, generates and executes tests to explore unobserved behavior. In our evaluation of three non-trivial web applications (an open-source shop system, an SAP product compliance application, and an open-source conference manager), ProCrawl produces models that precisely abstract application behavior and which can be directly used for effective model-based regression testing.
Dynamically reconfigurable logic LSI-PCA-1

This paper describes the realization of a dynamically reconfigurable logic LSI based on a novel parallel computer architecture. The key point of the architecture is its dual-structured cell array to enable dynamic and autonomous reconfiguration of the logic circuit. The LSI was completed with successful introduction of two specific features: fully asynchronous logic circuits and homogeneous structure using only LUTs.
Strategizing for Successful IT Projects in the Digital Era

The objective of this paper is to increase our understanding of how organizations strategize with a view to making their digital investments successful and the impact such digital strategies actually have on business outcomes. We examined 2940 papers related to digital business strategies, of which 31 were included in relevant empirical research. These papers were reviewed and subjected to thematic synthesis. Many organizations appear to initiate scattered digital initiatives without a clear idea of where they are going. Companies can benefit from a deliberate digital strategy that enhances the ability of businesses to quickly adjust to new trends, possibilities, and threats, as well as a constant balancing of new possibilities with the exploitation of current assets.