Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive neuroscience in China

In the last decade, cognitive neuroscience in China has advanced in at least four aspects: first, specialized research institutes and bodies have been set up throughout the nation; second, more and more high-tech research facilities and approaches have been adopted by domestic researchers; third, international conferences on cognitive neuroscience have been held in Mainland China; and finally, publications relating cognitive processes to neural activation and functioning have increased. This paper selectively reviews research on perception and face recognition, attention, language, memory, and disorders in cognitive brain functions carried out by scientists in Mainland China. For visual perception, some excellent work has been carried out to investigate the neural mechanisms of perceptual priming, perceptual grouping, and perception of global/local properties in compound stimuli. For attention, much work is on issues such as the time course of brain activation in selective attention, the patterns of event-related potentials in visual and auditory selective attention, and the effect of pre-cueing on spatial attention. Because the Chinese language has many unique characteristics in phonological and syntactic systems and in the writing system, much research carried out in China takes advantage of these characteristics, trying to separate the universal and language-specific aspects of language processing and their neural correlates. Memory research is mainly at neuropsychological and neurobiological levels. Disorders of cognitive functioning and their underlying impairments in the brain are attracting more and more attention. The paper concludes that as the Chinese economy is growing fast, more resources will be poured into basic research. Thus, systematic research in various fields of cognitive neuroscience by Chinese scientists is no longer a dream. It is reasonable to expect that research in this field will be accelerated in China and become an important force in the world in the near future.
Rilpivirine Inhibits Drug Transporters ABCB 1 , SLC 22 A 1 , and SLC 22 A 2 In Vitro

Rilpivirine is a nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor approved for treatment of HIV-1 infection in antiretroviral-naive adult patients. Potential interactions with drug transporters have not been fully investigated. Transport by and inhibition of drug transporters by rilpivirine were analyzed to further understand the mechanisms governing rilpivirine exposure and determine the potential for transporter-mediated drug-drug interactions. The ability of rilpivirine to inhibit or be transported by ABCB1 was determined using ABCB1-overexpressing CEMVBL100 cells and Caco-2 cell monolayers. The Xenopus laevis oocyte heterologous protein expression system was used to clarify if rilpivirine was either transported by or inhibited the function of influx transporters SLCO1A2, SLCO1B1, SLCO1B3, SLC22A2, SLC22A6, and SLC22A8. The ability of rilpivirine to inhibit or be transported by SLC22A1 was determined using SLC22A1-expressing KCL22 cells. Rilpivirine showed higher accumulation in SLC22A1-overexpressing KCL22 cells than control cells (27% increase, P 0.03) and inhibited the functionality of SLC22A1 and SLC22A2 transport with 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50s) of 28.5 M and 5.13 M, respectively. Inhibition of ABCB1-mediated digoxin transport was determined for rilpivirine, which inhibited digoxin transport in the B-to-A direction with an IC50 of 4.48 M. The maximum rilpivirine concentration in plasma in patients following a standard 25-mg dosing regimen is around 0.43 M, lower than that necessary to substantially inhibit ABCB1, SLC22A1, or SLC22A2 in vitro. However, these data indicate that SLC22A1 may contribute to variability in rilpivirine exposure and that interactions of rilpivirine with substrates of SLC22A1, SLC22A2, or ABCB1 may be possible.
Statistical analysis of group-administered intervention data: Reanalysis of two randomized trials

Abstract Group-administered interventions often create statistical dependencies, which, if ignored, increase the rate of Type I errors. The authors analyzed data from two randomized trials involving group interventions to document the impact of statistical dependency on tests of intervention effects and to provide estimates of statistical dependency. Intraclass correlations ranged from . 02 to . 12. Adjusting for dependencies increased p values for the tests of intervention effects. The increase in the p values depended on the magnitude of the statistical dependence and available degrees of freedom. Results suggest that the literature may overstate the efficacy of group interventions and imply that it will be important to study why groups create dependencies. The authors discuss how dependencies impact statistical power and how researchers can address this concern.
Portfolio Optimization under Time-Varying Economic Regimes

Our paper aims to answer the question: Can the macroeconomic condition be used to better allocate investments among different sectors of a market? Motivated by classical Markowitz portfolio theory, and prior work in attempting to incorporate exogenous economic factors in portfolio optimization [1][2][3][4], we explore three approaches to dynamically rebalance a portfolio as market or economic regimes change continuously over time. Traditionally, portfolio theory assumes that a set of assets can be characterized by a mean return and a covariance matrix, which are stationary over time. Empirically, it has been found [5] that this stationary assumption does not hold; indeed, the behavior of a group of assets is materially dependent on many observable and unobservable economic factors which change over time.
Binding and Cytotoxicity of Conjugated and Recombinant Fusion Proteins Targeted to the Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Receptor

Pokeweed antiviral protein (PAP) is a plant-derived, highly potent ribosome inactivating protein that causes inhibition of protein translation and rapid cell death. We and others have delivered this protein to various cell types, including cancer cells, using hormones to specifically target cells bearing the hormone receptor. Here, we compare binding and cytotoxicity of GnRH-PAP hormonotoxins prepared either by protein conjugation (GnRH-PAP conjugate) or through recombinant DNA technology (GnRH-PAP fusion). Although GnRH-PAP conjugate protein bound specifically to and caused cell death in cells bearing the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) receptor, we could not detect binding or cytotoxicity using two different versions of the fusion protein in receptor-positive cells. We conclude that generation of an active GnRH-PAP fusion protein may not be feasible either because both ends of the GnRH molecule are required for receptor binding, but only the NH2 terminus is free in the fusion protein and/or that more potent analogues of GnRH (inclusion of which is not feasible in the fusion protein) are needed for efficient targeting. In contrast, the GnRH-PAP conjugate shows promise as a novel anticancer agent, capable of targeting cancer cells expressing the GnRH receptor such as prostate, breast, ovarian, endometrial, and pancreatic cells. It may also be useful as a therapeutic agent to eliminate pituitary gonadotrophs, eliminating the need for chronic GnRH analogue administration to treat hormone-sensitive diseases.
Ethics and Intelligence after September 2001

Perhaps there is no need to mix intelligence and ethics. The Times took a strictly realist view some years ago that ‘Cold War or no Cold War, nations routinely spy on each other’, and the British Security Service’s official handout takes the view that ‘spying has been going on for centuries and as nations emerged they began spying on each other and will probably always do so’. Some would say that that is all that need be said. Intelligence is information and information gathering, not doing things to people; no-one gets hurt by it, at least not directly. Some agencies do indeed carry out covert action, which confuses the ethical issues, but this is a separable and subsidiary function; thus the British Joint Intelligence Committee is emphatically not a covert action committee. Yet, even as information gathering, intelligence carries an ethical baggage with it, or – to be more accurate – a baggage of unworthiness. This dates back at least two centuries, when Kant condemned espionage as ‘intrinsically despicable’ since it ‘exploits only the dishonesty of others’, and its modern version was illustrated in the judgement of two respected British academics in the 1990s that it was all ‘positively immoral’, apart ‘from certain extreme cases’. This baggage owes a lot to the visceral dislike of espionage, and to intelligence’s role of internal surveillance, but the distaste ranges wider. David Kahn, the doyen of the history of codebreaking, concluded that as an activity it is ‘surreptitious, snooping, sneaking . the very opposite of all that is best in mankind’. It was justified in defence, but ‘when a nation is not threatened, it is wrong for it to violate another’s dignity by clandestine prying into its messages’. Views are further confused by the media’s penchant for describing all intelligence collection as ‘spying’, producing a kind of guilt by association. Thus GCHQ, the British SIGINT centre, is always described as ‘the Cheltenham spy centre’, which it certainly is not. Recent events have given intelligence a more favourable image, but there is still a world-wide distrust of it, from liberal, anti-American, antiauthoritarian and other standpoints. There is still some feeling that its
Developments and Directions in Speech Recognition and Understanding , Part 1 T

T o advance research, it is important to identify promising future research directions , especially those that have not been adequately pursued or funded in the past. The working group producing this article was charged to elicit from the human language technology (HLT) community a set of well-considered directions or rich areas for future research that could lead to major paradigm shifts in the field of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and understanding. ASR has been an area of great interest and activity to the signal processing and HLT communities over the past several decades. As a first step, this group reviewed major developments in the field and the circumstances that led to their success and then focused on areas it deemed especially fertile for future research. Part 1 of this article will focus on historically significant developments in the ASR area, including several major research efforts that were guided by different funding agencies, and suggest general areas in which to focus research. Part 2 (to appear in the next issue) will explore in more detail several new avenues holding promise for substantial improvements in ASR performance. These entail cross-disciplinary research and specific approaches to address three-to-five-year grand challenges aimed at stimulating advanced research by dealing with realistic tasks of broad interest. SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS IN SPEECH RECOGNITION AND UNDERSTANDING The period since the mid-1970s has witnessed the multidisciplinary field of ASR proceed from its infancy to its coming of age and into a quickly growing number of practical applications and commercial markets. Despite its many achievements, however, ASR still remains far from being a solved problem. As in the past, we expect that further research and development will enable us to create increasingly powerful systems, deploy-able on a worldwide basis. This section briefly reviews highlights of major developments in ASR in five areas: infrastructure, knowledge representation, models and algorithms, search, and metadata. Broader and deeper discussions of these areas can INFRASTRUCTURE Moore's Law observes long-term progress in computer development and predicts doubling the amount of computation achievable for a given cost every 12 to 18 months, as well as a comparably shrinking cost of memory. These developments have been instrumental in enabling ASR researchers to run increasingly complex algorithms in sufficiently short time frames (e.g., meaningful experiments that can be done in less than a day) to make great progress since 1975. The availability of common speech corpora for speech training, …
Use of MDCT to Differentiate Autoimmune Pancreatitis From Ductal Adenocarcinoma and Interstitial Pancreatitis.

OBJECTIVE The purposes of this study were to identify the most common imaging features of autoimmune pancreatitis and to evaluate the utility of MDCT for differentiating autoimmune pancreatitis from two more frequently encountered differential diagnoses--pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and acute interstitial pancreatitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS Dual-phase contrast-enhanced MDCT images of 91 patients (39 with autoimmune pancreatitis, 25 with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, 27 with acute interstitial pancreatitis) were evaluated by two radiologists in consensus for distribution of pancreatic abnormality, sausage shape, low-attenuation halo, pancreatic duct dilatation, peripancreatic stranding, lymphadenopathy, biliary abnormality, vascular involvement, and renal lesions. Chi-square tests, multiple logistic regression analysis, and ROC analysis were performed. RESULTS The most common imaging features of autoimmune pancreatitis were sausage shape (25/39 [64%]) and low-attenuation halo (23/39 [59%]). Pancreatic duct dilatation (20/25 [80%]) and biliary dilatation (11/25 [44%]) were most frequent in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Peripancreatic stranding (22/27 [81%]) was most frequent in acute interstitial pancreatitis. Sausage shape, low-attenuation halo, and absence of a pancreatic duct or biliary dilatation differentiated autoimmune pancreatitis from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma with an accuracy of 0.88. Sausage shape and absence of peripancreatic stranding differentiated autoimmune pancreatitis from acute interstitial pancreatitis with an accuracy of 0.82. There was no significant difference in the frequency of vascular involvement or of lymphadenopathy among these diagnoses. CONCLUSION Typical cases of autoimmune pancreatitis can be accurately differentiated from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and acute interstitial pancreatitis on the basis of characteristic MDCT features. However, autoimmune pancreatitis should be considered in the presence of atypical features.
Prehospital thrombolysis: lessons from Sweden and their application to the United Kingdom

Objective: To study the successful implementation of paramedic administered prehospital thrombolysis in Sweden, and to consider the implications of this for the UK. Methods: A series of research visits were undertaken, including visits to Uppsala Hospital and dispatch centre, ambulance stations in several counties of Sweden and Dalarna County, which has one of the longest experiences of telemedicine supported prehospital thrombolysis in Europe. Data relating to prehospital thrombolysis, stages in successful implementation, and potential barriers to change were identified. Results: Two thirds of the hospitals in Sweden now have some form of prehospital thrombolysis. A nationally agreed and standardised training programme and the fact that many ambulance paramedics are also qualified nurses has facilitated successful introduction, but Sweden's low population density is also an important factor. Data from Dalarna County indicate that the median “pain to needle” time has been reduced by 45 minutes with a concurrent reduction in complications from 50% to 25% (p=0.018). Inhospital mortality has also reduced from 12% to 6%, but with the small numbers involved this improvement does not achieve statistical significance (p=0.36). Conclusion: If the outcome of acute myocardial infarction in the United Kingdom is to be improved, and National Service Framework targets met, then prehospital thrombolysis is an important development. Several technical solutions already exist, and a single bolus thrombolytic agent is now available, but the main barriers to full implementation are related to the establishment of an effective training programme and the organisational changes that will facilitate this new practice. High quality research is urgently needed to guide the implementation of prehospital thrombolysis in a clinically and cost effective way.
Dose-dependent effects of inhaled 1 corticosteroids on bone mineral density in 2 postmenopausal women with asthma or 3 COPD : A registry-based cohort study

Affiliations: 8 1. Collaboration for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 9 University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 10 2. Institute for Heart and Lung Health, Department of Medicine, the University of British 11 Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 12 3. Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation, Vancouver Coastal Health Institute, 13 Vancouver, Canada 14 4. Department of Internal Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 15
Features Selection for Intrusion Detection Systems Based on Support Vector Machines

Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) deal with large amounts of data containing irrelevant and/or redundant features. These features result in a slow training and testing process, heavy computational resources, and low detection accuracy. Features selection, therefore, is an important issue in IDSs. A reduced features set improves system accuracy and speeds up the training and testing process considerably. In this paper, we propose a novel and simple method-Enhanced Support Vector Decision Function (ESVDF)-for features selection. This method selects features based on two important factors: the feature's rank (weight), which is calculated using Support Vector Decision Function (SVDF), and the correlation between the features, which is determined by either the Forward Selection Ranking (FSR) or Backward Elimination Ranking (BER) algorithm. Our method significantly decreases training and testing times without loss in detection accuracy. Moreover, it selects the features set independently of the classifier used. We have examined the feasibility of our approach by conducting several experiments using the DARPA dataset. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithms can deliver satisfactory results in terms of classification accuracy, training time, and testing time.
Constructing Linear-Sized Spectral Sparsification in Almost-Linear Time

We present the first almost-linear time algorithm for constructing linear-sized spectral sparsification for graphs. This improves all previous constructions of linear-sized spectral sparsification, which requires Ω(n2) time [1], [2], [3]. A key ingredient in our algorithm is a novel combination of two techniques used in literature for constructing spectral sparsification: Random sampling by effective resistance [4], and adaptive constructions based on barrier functions [1], [3].
Phenotype and genotype in mucolipidoses II and III alpha/beta: a study of 61 probands

Background Mucolipidoses II and III alpha/beta (ML II and ML III) are lysosomal disorders in which the essential mannose 6-phosphate recognition marker is not synthesised on to lysosomal hydrolases and other glycoproteins. The disorders are caused by mutations in GNPTAB, which encodes two of three subunits of the heterohexameric enzyme, N-acetylglucosamine-1-phosphotransferase. Objectives Clinical, biochemical and molecular findings in 61 probands (63 patients) are presented to provide a broad perspective of these mucolipidoses. Methods GNPTAB was sequenced in all probands and/or parents. The activity of several lysosomal enzymes was measured in plasma, and GlcNAc-1-phosphotransferase was assayed in leucocytes. Thirty-six patients were studied in detail, allowing extensive clinical data to be abstracted. Results ML II correlates with near-total absence of phosphotransferase activity resulting from homozygosity or compound heterozygosity for frameshift or nonsense mutations. Craniofacial and orthopaedic manifestations are evident at birth, skeletal findings become more obvious within the first year, and growth is severely impaired. Speech, ambulation and cognitive function are impaired. ML III retains a low level of phosphotransferase activity because of at least one missense or splice site mutation. The phenotype is milder, with minimal delays in milestones, the appearance of facial coarsening by early school age, and slowing of growth after the age of 4 years. Conclusions Fifty-one pathogenic changes in GNPTAB are presented, including 42 novel mutations. Ample clinical information improves criteria for delineation of ML II and ML III. Phenotype–genotype correlations suggested in more general terms in earlier reports on smaller groups of patients are specified and extended.
Constitutively active H-ras accelerates multiple forms of plasticity in developing visual cortex

Experience-dependent cortical plasticity has been studied by using loss-of-function methods. Here, we take the complementary approach of using a genetic gain-of-function that enhances plasticity. We show that a constitutively active form of H-ras (H-rasG12V), expressed presynaptically at excitatory synapses in mice, accelerates and enhances multiple, mechanistically distinct forms of plasticity in the developing visual cortex. In vivo, H-rasG12V not only increased the rate of ocular dominance change in response to monocular deprivation (MD), but also accelerated recovery from deprivation by reverse occlusion. In vitro, H-rasG12V expression decreased baseline presynaptic release probability and enhanced presynaptically expressed long-term potentiation (LTP). H-rasG12V expression also accelerated the increase following MD in the frequency of miniature excitatory potentials, mirroring accelerated plasticity in vivo. These findings demonstrate accelerated neocortical plasticity, which offers an avenue toward future therapies for many neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Getting back on the beat: links between auditory–motor integration and precise auditory processing at fast time scales

The auditory system is unique in its ability to precisely detect the timing of perceptual events and use this information to update motor plans, a skill that is crucial for language. However, the characteristics of the auditory system that enable this temporal precision are only beginning to be understood. Previous work has shown that participants who can tap consistently to a metronome have neural responses to sound with greater phase coherence from trial to trial. We hypothesized that this relationship is driven by a link between the updating of motor output by auditory feedback and neural precision. Moreover, we hypothesized that neural phase coherence at both fast time scales (reflecting subcortical processing) and slow time scales (reflecting cortical processing) would be linked to auditory–motor timing integration. To test these hypotheses, we asked participants to synchronize to a pacing stimulus, and then changed either the tempo or the timing of the stimulus to assess whether they could rapidly adapt. Participants who could rapidly and accurately resume synchronization had neural responses to sound with greater phase coherence. However, this precise timing was limited to the time scale of 10 ms (100 Hz) or faster; neural phase coherence at slower time scales was unrelated to performance on this task. Auditory–motor adaptation therefore specifically depends upon consistent auditory processing at fast, but not slow, time scales.
CUNI-LMU Submissions in WMT2016: Chimera Constrained and Beaten

This paper describes the phrase-based systems jointly submitted by CUNI and LMU to English-Czech and English-Romanian News translation tasks of WMT16. In contrast to previous years, we strictly limited our training data to the constraint datasets, to allow for a reliable comparison with other research systems. We experiment with using several additional models in our system, including a feature-rich discriminative model of phrasal translation.