Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stable learning of functional maps in self-organizing spiking neural networks with continuous synaptic plasticity

This study describes a spiking model that self-organizes for stable formation and maintenance of orientation and ocular dominance maps in the visual cortex (V1). This self-organization process simulates three development phases: an early experience-independent phase, a late experience-independent phase and a subsequent refinement phase during which experience acts to shape the map properties. The ocular dominance maps that emerge accommodate the two sets of monocular inputs that arise from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) to layer 4 of V1. The orientation selectivity maps that emerge feature well-developed iso-orientation domains and fractures. During the last two phases of development the orientation preferences at some locations appear to rotate continuously through ±180° along circular paths and referred to as pinwheel-like patterns but without any corresponding point discontinuities in the orientation gradient maps. The formation of these functional maps is driven by balanced excitatory and inhibitory currents that are established via synaptic plasticity based on spike timing for both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. The stability and maintenance of the formed maps with continuous synaptic plasticity is enabled by homeostasis caused by inhibitory plasticity. However, a prolonged exposure to repeated stimuli does alter the formed maps over time due to plasticity. The results from this study suggest that continuous synaptic plasticity in both excitatory neurons and interneurons could play a critical role in the formation, stability, and maintenance of functional maps in the cortex.
The Early Management Of Hips In Cerebral Palsy

Eighty-six years ago Ludloff (1902) considered that the cause of bilateral hip dislocation in a six-year-old girl with spastic cerebral palsy was spasticity of the adductor and flexor muscles. Since then there has been a wealth of literature (for a full review see Reimers 1980, 1981; Vidal et al. 1984, 1985; Kalen and Bleck 1985; Silver et al. 1985; Bleck 1987), which implicitly leads to several conclusions. (1) These hips are normal at birth. 2
IGF2 DNA methylation is a modulator of newborn’s fetal growth and development

The insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) gene, located within a cluster of imprinted genes on chromosome 11p15, encodes a fetal and placental growth factor affecting birth weight. DNA methylation variability at the IGF2 gene locus has been previously reported but its consequences on fetal growth and development are still mostly unknown in normal pediatric population. We collected one hundred placenta biopsies from 50 women with corresponding maternal and cord blood samples and measured anthropometric indices, blood pressure and metabolic phenotypes using standardized procedures. IGF2/H19 DNA methylation and IGF2 circulating levels were assessed using sodium bisulfite pyrosequencing and ELISA, respectively. Placental IGF2 (DMR0 and DMR2) DNA methylation levels were correlated with newborn’s fetal growth indices, such as weight, and with maternal IGF2 circulating concentration at the third trimester of pregnancy, whereas H19 (DMR) DNA methylation levels were correlated with IGF2 levels in cord blood. The maternal genotype of a known IGF2/H19 polymorphism (rs2107425) was associated with birth weight. Taken together, we showed that IGF2/H19 epigenotype and genotypes independently account for 31% of the newborn’s weight variance. No association was observed with maternal diabetic status, glucose concentrations or prenatal maternal body mass index. This is the first study showing that DNA methylation at the IGF2/H19 genes locus may act as a modulator of IGF2 newborn’s fetal growth and development within normal range. IGF2/H19 DNA methylation could represent a cornerstone in linking birth weight and fetal metabolic programming of late onset obesity.
FCS - MPC with reduced switching frequency applied to a multi - cell AFE rectifier with improved transient behavior

To generate medium and high voltage with low Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) are used multilevel converters, through use of low voltage semiconductors devices, for applications as AC drives, PV farms and active power filters. This converter uses between the AC supply and the power cells a multipulse transformer, which is in charge of the harmonic cancellation of the input current harmonics generated by the three - phase rectifier. This transformer is expensive, heavy, bulky and must be designed according to the power, and the number of power cells. This work uses a THD minimization strategy based on a Finite Control Set - Model Predictive Control (FCS - MPC), which propose change the multipulse transformer by a simpler transformer, achieving a low THD in the input current of multi-cell AFE rectifier. The work is centered in the solution in one disadvantage of the FCS - MPC, high switching frequency. To solve this drawback, an additional objective function is used, which reduces the states changes of the power switches. Unfortunately, because of this the FCS - MPC loses an advantage, fast dynamic response to changes. In order to improve this issue, is necessary a modified control scheme, which detects the steady state and transient state to change the objectives of the FCS-MPC. Simulation results shows the feasibility of the proposed control.
Computational Mechanisms of Interaction for CSCW

The present report documents the research activities undertaken in Task 3.2 of the COMIC project. The objective of the three years of research of Strand 3 is to develop a conceptual foundation for designing computational mechanisms of interaction for CSCW applications that can support the complex task of articulating distributed cooperative activities. The report consists of three parts: Based on a survey of social science studies of cooperative work, Part 1 outlines a conceptual framework for the development of the concept of mechanisms of interaction. Part 3 presents the comprehensive analysis of CSCW systems (applications, shells, models) that have been analyzed in order to unravel and assess the underlying mechanisms of interaction. Part 2 brings the two bodies of evidence together, identifies requirements for mechanisms of interaction, and outlines the conceptual foundation for the design of mechanisms of interaction in CSCW systems. Document ID COMIC-D3.1 Status Accepted Type Deliverable Version 3.0 Date October 4, 1993 Editors C. Simone (Milano), K. Schmidt (Risø) Task 3.2 © The COMIC Project, Esprit Basic Research Action 6225 Project coordinator: Tom Rodden Computing Department University of Lancaster Lancaster LA1 4YR United Kingdom Phone: (+44) 524 593 823 Fax: (+44) 524 593 608 Email: tom@comp.lancs.ac.uk The COMIC project comprises the following institutions: Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), Bonn, Germany Risø National Laboratory, Roskilde, Denmark Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden Swedish Institute for Computer Science (SICS), Stockholm, Sweden Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands University of Lancaster, Lancaster, United Kingdom (Coordinating Partner) University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom University of Milano, Milano, Italy University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland Editors of this report: Carla Simone Kjeld Schmidt Dept. of Information Sciences Cognitive Systems Group University of Milano Risoe National Laboratory I-20135 Milano P.O. Box 49 Italy DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark Phone: (+39) 2 55006-289 Phone: (+45) 4677 5146 Fax: (+39) 2 55006-276 Fax: (+45) 4675 5170 Email: simone@hermes.mc. dsi.unimi. it Email: kschmidt@risoe.dk ISBN 0-901800-30-9 Lancaster University, 1993 This report is available via anonymous FTP from ftp.comp.lancs.ac.uk.
Regulation of synaptic activity by snapin‐mediated endolysosomal transport and sorting

Recycling synaptic vesicles (SVs) transit through early endosomal sorting stations, which raises a fundamental question: are SVs sorted toward endolysosomal pathways? Here, we used snapin mutants as tools to assess how endolysosomal sorting and trafficking impact presynaptic activity in wild‐type and snapin−/− neurons. Snapin acts as a dynein adaptor that mediates the retrograde transport of late endosomes (LEs) and interacts with dysbindin, a subunit of the endosomal sorting complex BLOC‐1. Expressing dynein‐binding defective snapin mutants induced SV accumulation at presynaptic terminals, mimicking the snapin−/− phenotype. Conversely, over‐expressing snapin reduced SV pool size by enhancing SV trafficking to the endolysosomal pathway. Using a SV‐targeted Ca2+ sensor, we demonstrate that snapin–dysbindin interaction regulates SV positional priming through BLOC‐1/AP‐3‐dependent sorting. Our study reveals a bipartite regulation of presynaptic activity by endolysosomal trafficking and sorting: LE transport regulates SV pool size, and BLOC‐1/AP‐3‐dependent sorting fine‐tunes the Ca2+ sensitivity of SV release. Therefore, our study provides new mechanistic insights into the maintenance and regulation of SV pool size and synchronized SV fusion through snapin‐mediated LE trafficking and endosomal sorting.
Cooperation between PDGF and FGF converts slowly dividing O-2Aadult progenitor cells to rapidly dividing cells with characteristics of O- 2Aperinatal progenitor cells

We have shown previously that oligodendrocyte-type-2 astrocyte (O-2A) progenitor cells isolated from adult rat optic nerves can be distinguished in vitro from their perinatal counterparts on the basis of their much slower rates of division, differentiation, and migration when grown in the presence of cortical astrocytes or PDGF. This behavior is consistent with in vivo observations that there is only a modest production of oligodendrocytes in the adult CNS. As such a behavior is inconsistent with the likely need for a rapid generation of oligodendrocytes following demyelinating damage to the mature CNS, we have been concerned with identifying in vitro conditions that allow O- 2Aadult progenitor cells to generate rapidly large numbers of progeny cells. We now provide evidence that many slowly dividing O-2Aadult progenitor cells can be converted to rapidly dividing cells by exposing adult optic nerve cultures to both PDGF and bFGF. In addition, these O- 2Aadult progenitor cells appear to acquire other properties of O- 2Aperinatal progenitor cells, such as bipolar morphology and high rate of migration. Although many O-2Aadult progenitor cells in cultures exposed to bFGF alone also divide rapidly, these cells are multipolar and migrate little in vitro. Oligodendrocytic differentiation of O- 2Aadult progenitor cells, which express receptors for bFGF in vitro, is almost completely inhibited in cultures exposed to bFGF or bFGF plus PDGF. As bFGF and PDGF appear to be upregulated and/or released after injury to the adult brain, this particular in vitro response of O- 2Aadult progenitor cells to PDGF and bFGF may be of importance in the generation of large numbers of new oligodendrocytes in vivo following demyelination.
Behaviour-Aware Compositions of Things

The new Internet has led the evolution of the Ubiquitous Web to integrate physical world entities into virtual world things. Thus, Internet is evolving into the vision of the Internet of Things where everyday life things are identifiable, readable, recognizable, addressable, and controllable via the Internet. As mass market penetration of networked embedded devices seems to become a reality, it is necessary to develop platforms considering this kind of devices and their interactions. Future Internet has emerged as a new initiative to pave a novel and dynamic global network infrastructure that handles the changing global needs of business and society. The Internet of Things could benefit from the Web Service architecture like today's Web does. Then, Future service-oriented Internet things will offer their functionality via service-enabled interfaces. DPWS is a new emergent OASIS standard based on Web Service architectures to support interoperability among heterogeneous things. But there is still a need to represent explicitly the behaviour of things to develop applications in a more rigorous way. We propose to extend DPWS to specify the behaviour of things. We also propose verification techniques to check if a composition of things fulfills or violates the behaviour of those things.
Immunoreactive Substance P Is Decreased in Saliva of Patients with Chronic Back Pain Syndromes

Substance P, a neuropeptide associated with pain perception, is widely distributed in the central nervous system and is decreased in the cerebrospinal fluid of chronic pain patients as compared with that of healthy human volunteers. In this study, we have demonstrated the presence of immunoreactive substance P in saliva and further, that both saliva and plasma levels of immunoreactive substance P are lower in patients with chronic low back pain than in healthy human volunteers. To our knowledge, this is the first time that substance P has been identified in human saliva. These findings, together with the noninvasive nature of saliva collection, suggest that substance P in saliva may be useful as an alternative neurochemical correlate of chronic low back pain when collection of cerebrospinal fluid and plasma samples for substance P analysis is unacceptable or inappropriate.
Collective Human Mobility Patterns: A Case Study Using Data Usage Detail Records

Human mobility patterns have been widely investigated due to the application in various fields, such as urban planning and epidemiology. However, most existing researches mainly focus on human mobility patterns at the individual level. In this paper, we analyze collective mobility patterns using data usage detail records (UDRs) for over one million users from the cellular networks in a city of China. We first construct spatial networks where nodes represent base stations (BSs) and edge weights denote users' moving strength between BSs. The difference between communities detected from the networks are then identified. Finally, we discover users with different mobility patterns according to the community difference. Experimental results show that our method can effectively discover users with different mobility patterns. Moreover, we analyze different collective mobility patterns between the Spring Festival vacation and workdays combined with geographical information. Results show that human collective mobility are not always constrained by administrative boundaries, but also affected by social and environmental factors, such as transportations, geographical barriers and area economic types, etc. Besides, the discovered collective mobility patterns can be used to reveal spatial relationship, providing a new insight of human activity pattern and spatial interaction analysis.
Experimental determination of flow potential surfaces supporting a multiaxial formulation of viscoplasticity

The form and framework of constitutive relationships for structural metals are closely tied to the concepts of a potential function and normality. For example, in elasticity the complementary energy function (or thermodynamicallly, the related Gibbs free energy) has the properties of a potential and the strain vector can be interpreted geometrically as lying normal to surfaces of constant complementary energy density. The existence of the complementary energy function (or its dual, the strain energy density function) is not just a theoretical contrivance but relates directly to the path independence and reversibility that is the essence of elasticity. In plasticity, the yield function plays the role of a potential and the inelastic strain increment (or rate) vector is directed normal to the yield surface. Analogously, this implies a form of path independence in plasticity, not in the complete sense as in elasticity, but in an incremental sense. In either case, it is the potential/ normality structure that provides a consistent framework of a multiaxial theory. The validity of this structure has been experimentally ascertained (refs. 1-6) for a wide class of structural alloys under conditions where their mechanical behavior can be idealized as being largely time-independent, e.g., under relatively low strain rates and at low homologous temperatures.
Metal clusters inside out

Solid-state chemistry of cluster compounds with metals in the left part of the periodic table is described. As a function of the metal valence electron concentration (VEC), characteristic changes occur with stepwise changing features. Strongly metal–metal-bonded and ligand-encapsulated clusters exist for large values of VEC. At decreased values, endohedral atoms stabilize the clusters, and with the lowest values, only clusters exist with no ligand shell. This general trend holds for systems with discrete, as well as condensed, clusters as illustrated for d metals, including the lanthanides, alkaline earth and alkali metals.
Lymph Node Stromal Cells Negatively Regulate Antigen-Specific CD4+ T Cell Responses

Lymph node (LN) stromal cells (LNSCs) form the functional structure of LNs and play an important role in lymphocyte survival and the maintenance of immune tolerance. Despite their broad spectrum of function, little is known about LNSC responses during microbial infection. In this study, we demonstrate that LNSC subsets display distinct kinetics following vaccinia virus infection. In particular, compared with the expansion of other LNSC subsets and the total LN cell population, the expansion of fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs) was delayed and sustained by noncirculating progenitor cells. Notably, newly generated FRCs were preferentially located in perivascular areas. Viral clearance in reactive LNs preceded the onset of FRC expansion, raising the possibility that viral infection in LNs may have a negative impact on the differentiation of FRCs. We also found that MHC class II expression was upregulated in all LNSC subsets until day 10 postinfection. Genetic ablation of radioresistant stromal cell–mediated Ag presentation resulted in slower contraction of Ag-specific CD4+ T cells. We propose that activated LNSCs acquire enhanced Ag-presentation capacity, serving as an extrinsic brake system for CD4+ T cell responses. Disrupted function and homeostasis of LNSCs may contribute to immune deregulation in the context of chronic viral infection, autoimmunity, and graft-versus-host disease.
Palladium: Preparation and Catalytic Properties of Particles of Uniform Size

A method has been developed for the preparation of uniform palladium particles of diameter from 55 to 450 angstroms. Uniform particles of gold layered on palladium were also synthesized. Hydrothermal treatment of aluminum hydroxide sol was used to prepare rods of alumina with uniform cross section from 100 to 500 angstroms and of varying lengths. The palladium was adsorbed as individual particles on alumina rods, both present in aqueous suspension. Then the suspension was dried to give a catalyst containing metal particles of uniform size dispersed in open pores produced by the intermeshing of the alumina rods. This procedure guaranteed the absence of diffusion control in the rate of reactions observed experimentally. All stages of the preparation were monitored with the electron microscope. The kinetics of the ethylene-hydrogen reaction were examined by means of a pulse technique. The number of active sites determined by carbon monoxide titration of the surface was equal to the number of surface atoms as determined by the calculation of the quantities of compounds involved in the synthesis and electron microscope examination. Furthermore, the activity per site depended on the method of preparation, being four times smaller when sodium formate was used as a reducing agent instead of sodium citrate. This may be due to the fact that the shape of particles makes certain crystallographic planes more favorable. Decrease in the size of particles to 56 angstroms produced no effect on catalytic activity beyond that due to the increase in the number of surface atoms. The activity of commercial 5 percent palladium on alumina diluted 100-fold with alumina gave 80.4 percent conversion with propylene and 82.7 percent conversion with ethylene. Thus there was little difference in the behavior of the two olefins.
Size‐related variation in protein abundance in the brain and abdominal tissue of bumble bee workers

Female bumble bee workers of the same species often show a profound body size variation that is linked to a division of labour. Large individuals are more likely to forage whereas small individuals are more likely to perform in‐nest activities. A higher sensory sensitivity, stronger circadian rhythms as well as better learning and memory performances appear to better equip large individuals for outdoor activities compared to their smaller siblings. The molecular mechanisms underlying worker functional polymorphism remain unclear. Proteins are major determinants of an individual's morphology and behaviour. We hypothesized that the abundance of proteins such as metabolic enzymes as well as proteins involved in neuronal functions would differ with body size and provide insights into the mechanisms underlying size‐dependent physiological specialization in bumble bee workers. We conducted protein quantification measurements based on liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry on tissue samples derived from small and large Bombus impatiens and Bombus terrestris workers. Proteins found to differ significantly in abundance between small and large workers belong to the categories of structure, energy metabolism and stress response. These findings provide the first proteomic insight into mechanisms associated with size‐based division of labour in social insects.
Generic links and paths stability model for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of autonomous mobiles nodes forming a temporary network without using any existing infrastructure or centralized administration. MANETs are characterized by a dynamic topology which makes routing a critical task. Conventional routing protocols are mainly based on shortest paths computation which could be not effective facing the mobility of nodes. Therefore, finding stable paths in MANETS is a more reliable strategy to improve routing. In this paper, we study the stability of links and paths in MANETs. At that end, we define a generic and simple model for links and paths stability in MANETs, then, we investigate, using the new defined metrics, the effect of mobility under various scenarios. Our study showed that our model is perfectly capable of predicting the behavior of links and paths and that proactive routing always constructs low stability paths even under slow moving nodes.
On the existence and uniqueness of solutions of switched Hamiltonian systems

This paper investigates the elementary issue of existence and uniqueness of solutions of switched Hamiltonian systems. By means of Banach fixed point theorem, we propose a sufficient condition of existence and uniqueness of solutions of switched Hamiltonian systems. The property of existence and uniqueness of solutions shows that for a switched system, one of the multiple equilibria of subsystems may not be an equilibrium point of the whole switched system. That is, the equilibrium of a switched system is not equivalent to that of its' subsystems.