Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impairment on a simulated gambling task in long-term abstinent alcoholics.

BACKGROUND Recent research indicates that currently active or recently detoxified substance abusers make more disadvantageous decisions on a simulated gambling task (SGT). This study expands on the current literature by using the SGT to examine decision making in long-term abstinent alcoholics (mean of 6.6 years' abstinence) who do not have antisocial personality disorder or a history of conduct disorder. METHODS A total of 102 subjects (58 controls and 44 abstinent alcoholics) were tested on the SGT, in which subjects choose cards from 4 different decks that vary in terms of the magnitude of the immediate win (large or small) and the magnitude of long-term loss (large or small). The association of SGT performance with alcohol use variables, with the number of externalizing symptoms, and with personality measures of social deviance was examined. RESULTS Compared with controls, long-term abstinent alcohol-dependent subjects had more externalizing symptoms, had personality profiles associated with a proneness to social deviance, and made more disadvantageous decisions on the SGT. The magnitude of disadvantageous decision making was associated with the duration of peak alcohol use but was associated with only one measure (low socialization) of socially deviant personality traits. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that alcoholics can achieve long-term abstinence despite persistent deficits in decision making and abnormal personality profiles. The decision-making deficits either may be the result of long-term alcoholism or may reflect a factor predisposing to alcoholism that persists with abstinence. The possibility is raised that alcoholics who cannot achieve long-term abstinence are even more impaired on their decision making and have more abnormal personality profiles than the abstinent alcoholics studied here.
Histomorphometric study of the prenatal Development of the Circumvallate Papillae of one-humped camel ( Camelus dromedarius )

This study aimed at investigating the prenatal development of camel circumvallate papillae using standard histomorphometric methods. In the experiment, fifteen Camelus dromedarius foetuses obtained from Sokoto metropolitan abattoir at different gestational ages were used for the study. The fetuses were weighed and grouped according to their gestational ages which were estimated using their crown-vertebral-rump length. From the fifteen tongues used for the study, five belonged to the foetuses being in the first trimester of prenatal development, five came from the second trimester and the next five from the third trimester. A total of ten foetuses were males and five were females. In all stages of development, the tongues were elongated, with flattened and rounded apex . At the first trimester, the tongues were almost uniform width and thickness throughout the length. They were uniformly pinkish, withoutpigmentation and no visiblelingual papillae. At the second trimester, the tongues were observed to have taken the normal shape of an adult tongue with variable size and shape of lingual papillae; tapering rostrally from the root to the apex. Biometrically, the weight of the foetuses were found to be 0.18±0.05 to 21.70±7.28 kg from the first to the second trimester, the crown – vertebral – rump – length were found to be 15.75±4.42 to 94.00±2.83cm from the first trimester to the third trimester, weight of the head were found to be 25.05±15.17 to 1120.00±14.14g and weight of the tongues were found to be 0.79±0.22 to 116.25±11.49g from first trimester to third trimester. Histological observations showed that the circumvallate papillae were coveredwith keratinized stratified squamous epithelium, which was composed by basal, spinosum, granulosum and corneum layers. Lingual glands were located in the deeper parts of the papillae. The surface of the epithelium was less keratinised compared to that of the surrounding surface except the peripheral parts of the papilla. Dermal inter-digitations of variable sizes into the epidermis were observed along the whole surface. Few taste buds were observed along the medial papillary wall epithelium of the small-sized papillae.
Expression of costimulatory molecules B7-1, B7-2, and CD40 in the heart of patients with acute myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND In patients with acute myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), we previously reported that antigen-specific T cells infiltrate the heart and play an important role in the myocardial damage involved. For antigen-specific T-cell activation to occur, it is necessary for T cells to receive a costimulatory signal provided by costimulatory molecules expressed on antigen-presenting cells (APCs) as well as the main signal provided by binding of T-cell receptors to the antigen. METHODS AND RESULTS To investigate the roles of the costimulatory molecules B7-1, B7-2, and CD40 in the development of acute myocarditis and DCM, we analyzed the expression of these antigens in the myocardial tissues of patients with acute myocarditis and DCM. We also examined the expression of a cytolytic factor, perforin, in the infiltrating cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) and natural killer (NK) cells, because both killer lymphocytes are thought to damage B7-1-expressing APCs. We found that B7-1, B7-2, and CD40 were moderately to strongly expressed in the cardiac myocytes of patients with acute myocarditis. Weak to moderate expression of these antigens was also found in the cardiac myocytes of patients with DCM. There was infiltration of perforin-expressing CTLs and NK cells in the myocardial tissues of patients with acute myocarditis and DCM. CONCLUSIONS Our findings strongly suggest that expression of B7-1, B7-2, and CD40 antigens on cardiac myocytes may make them APCs for CTLs and NK cells and that they may play an important role in the direct myocardial damage by these killer cells in acute myocarditis and DCM.
Cloning and Functional Analysis of Pax6 from the Hydrothermal Vent Tubeworm Ridgeia piscesae

The paired box 6 (Pax6) gene encodes a transcription factor essential for eye development in a wide range of animal lineages. Here we describe the cloning and characterization of Pax6 gene from the blind hydrothermal vent tubeworm Ridgeia piscesae (RpPax6). The deduced RpPax6 protein shares extensive sequence identity with Pax6 proteins from other species and contains both the paired domain and a complete homeodomain. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that it clusters with the corresponding sequence from the closely related species Platynereis dumerilii (P. dumerilii) of Annelida. Luciferase reporter assay indicate that RpPax6 protein suppresses the transcription of sine oculis (so) in D. melanogaster, interfering with the C-terminal of RpPax6. Taking advantage of Drosophila model, we show that RpPax6 expression is not able to rescue small eye phenotype of ey2 mutant, only to cause a more severe headless phenotype. In addition, RpPax6 expression induced apoptosis and inhibition of apoptosis can partially rescue RpPax6-induced headless phenotype. We provide evidence RpPax6 plays at least two roles: it blocks the expression of later-acting transcription factors in the eye development cascade, and it promotes cell apoptosis. Our results indicate alternation of the Pax6 function may be one of the possible causes that lead the eye absence in vestimentiferan tubeworms.
Neural Network Based Offline Tamil Handwritten Character Recognition System

In this paper we propose an approach to recognize handwritten Tamil characters using a multilayer perceptron with one hidden layer. The feature extracted from the handwritten character is Fourier descriptors. Also an analysis was carried out to determine the number of hidden layer nodes to achieve high performance of backpropagation network in the recognition of handwritten Tamil characters. The system was trained using several different forms of handwriting provided by both male and female participants of different age groups. Test results indicate that Fourier descriptors combined with backpropagation network provide good recognition accuracy of 97% for handwritten Tamil characters.
Stability of teleoperation systems under time-varying delays by using Lyapunov-Krasovskii techniques

This paper investigates the stability of a teleoperation system under time-varying communication delays. The system is a laboratory platform consisting on a scale model of a gantry crane, teleoperated by means of a haptic device. This paper focuses on the problems arising from the timevarying nature of the UDP communication delay. First, the actual delay is investigated and bounds on its magnitude and on its time-derivative are estimated, emulating different geographical connections. Second, a recent Lyapunov-Krasovkii technique taken from the literature (Zhao et al. 2007) is applied to the model of the system and stability bounds are obtained for the position error (PE) architecture. The method is applied for different controller parameters and delay bounds, and it is compared to a frequency-domain technique (Kao and Rantzer, 2007), showing reasonably non-conservative results.
A simple lumped parameter thermal model for electrical machine of TEFC design

The paper describes a lumped parameter thermal model of an electric motor of TEFC design. The transient thermal characteristics of the motor is estimated from a lumped parameter thermal model. Experiments were performed on a 3.5 H.P. capacitor run single-phase induction motor and the simulated results were verified with experimental data. It was found that the software gave a satisfactory estimation of the thermal characteristics of the TEFC single-phase induction motor examined. The software uses all the motor dimensions as input data for the thermal model, so it is useful at the design stage for performance prediction of the designed machine. Though developed for a single-phase induction motor, the model is equally applicable for any motors of TEFC design.
The politics of scale, place, and mobility in the Mexican peace movement, 2006–2012

This article explores social mobilization by the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) and United Forces for our Disappeared in Coahuila (FUUNDEC) between 2006 and 2012. Places and experiences at different geographical scales are important to social mobilization in Mexico because state authorities have used intricate scales of government, legislation, and decentralization to set the conditions for the prevalence of impunity and the lack of access to justice in cases of disappearances. The MPJD has had more national visibility and has negotiated more directly with federal authorities because of its focus on mobilization across the country through caravans. However, FUUNDEC has been more effective in pressing for local legislation that assists the families of the disappeared through its emphasis on the politics of scale.
Soft-core stream processing on FPGA: An FFT case study

The increasing design complexity associated with modern Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) has prompted the emergence of 'soft'-programmable processors which attempt to replace at least part of the custom circuit design problem with a problem of programming parallel processors. Despite substantial advances in this technology, its performance and resource efficiency for computationally complex operations remains in doubt. In this paper we present the first recorded implementation of a softcore Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT) on Xilinx Virtex FPGA technology. By employing a streaming processing architecture, we show how it is possible to achieve architectures which offer 1.1 GSamples/s throughput and up to 19 times speed-up against the Xilinx Radix-2 FFT dedicated circuit with comparable cost.
SpaceSearch: a library for building and verifying solver-aided tools

Many verification tools build on automated solvers. These tools reduce problems in a specific application domain (e.g., compiler optimization validation) to queries that can be discharged with a highly optimized solver. But the correctness of the reductions themselves is rarely verified in practice, limiting the confidence that the solver's output establishes the desired domain-level property. This paper presents SpaceSearch, a new library for developing solver-aided tools within a proof assistant. A user builds their solver-aided tool in Coq against the SpaceSearch interface, and the user then verifies that the results provided by the interface are sufficient to establish the tool's desired high-level properties. Once verified, the tool can be extracted to an implementation in a solver-aided language (e.g., Rosette), where SpaceSearch provides an efficient instantiation of the SpaceSearch interface with calls to an underlying SMT solver. This combines the strong correctness guarantees of developing a tool in a proof assistant with the high performance of modern SMT solvers. This paper also introduces new optimizations for such verified solver-aided tools, including parallelization and incrementalization. We evaluate SpaceSearch by building and verifying two solver-aided tools. The first, SaltShaker, checks that RockSalt's x86 semantics for a given instruction agrees with STOKE's x86 semantics. SaltShaker identified 7 bugs in RockSalt and 1 bug in STOKE. After these systems were patched by their developers, SaltShaker verified the semantics' agreement on 15,255 instruction instantiations in under 2h. The second tool, BGProof, is a verified version of an existing Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) router configuration checker. Like the existing checker, BGProof scales to checking industrial configurations spanning over 240 KLOC, identifying 19 configuration inconsistencies with no false positives. However, the correctness of BGProof has been formally proven, and we found 2 bugs in the unverified implementation. These results demonstrate that SpaceSearch is a practical approach to developing efficient, verified solver-aided tools.
Validation of MODIS aerosol optical depth retrieval over land

Aerosol optical depths (τa) are derived operationally for the first time from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) measurements over vegetated and partially vegetated land at 0.47 and 0.66 μm wavelengths. The extensive validation made during July – September 2000 encompasses 315 co‐located τa in space and time derived by MODIS and AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) from more than 30 AERONET sites. The lack of AERONET measurements in East Asia, India and Australia makes this validation unavailable for those regions. The MODIS aerosol retrievals, except in coastal zones, are found within the retrieval errors of Δτa = ±0.05 ±0.2 τa. The root mean square (RMS) errors are ≤ 0.1 in the continental inland regions and up to 0.3 in the coastal regions (attributed mainly to water contaminated signals). With this validation we believe that MODIS aerosol products can be used quantitatively in many applications with caution for possible residual clouds, snow/ice, and water contamination.
Not Just a Passing Phase: Social Work with Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People

Part 1: Context, Definitions, and Community An Overview Homophobia and HeterosexismUnderstanding the Context of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Lives Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual IdentitiesDefinitions and Dilemmas Culture, Community, and DiversityPart 2: Life Transitions Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Orientation in Childhood and Adolescence Between Men, Between WomenSexual and Intimate RelationshipsGay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Parents and Their ChildrenGay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People in the World of Work Middle-Aged and Old Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual AdultsPart 3: Special Issues Mental Health Violence in the Lives of Lesbians and Gay MenHIV Disease: A Social Work ResponsePart 4: Conclusion Affirming Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual LivesAppendix 1: ResourcesAppendix 2: Exercises for the Classroom
Design of primary and composite routing metrics for RPL-compliant Wireless Sensor Networks

The diversity of applications that current and emerging Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are called to support imposes different requirements on the underlying network with respect to delay and loss, while at the same time the WSN imposes its own intricacies. The satisfaction of these requirements highly depends on the metric upon which the forwarding routes are decided. In this view, the IETF ROLL group has proposed the RPL routing protocol, which can flexibly work on various routing metrics, as long as they hold specific properties. The system implementer/user is free to decide whether to use one or multiple routing metrics, as well as the way these metrics can be combined. In this paper, we provide ways to quantify the routing metrics so that they can be combined in an additive or lexical manner. We use extensive simulation results to evaluate the impact of several routing metrics on the achieved performance.
[Prevalence of pressure ulcers in person victim of trauma: predisposing factors].

INTRODUCTION Pressure ulcers [PrUs], recognized as a complex problem of multifactorial cause, with high costs at individual, family and socioeconomic level, are also taken as an indicator of quality in nursing care. Knowing that the Person Victim of Trauma involves high risk of developing PrUs, it is imperative to investigate the factors that lead to it OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of PrUs in Person Victim of Trauma; to identify predisposing factors for the development of PrUs. MATERIALS AND METHODS Observational study conducted in a non-probabilistic sample of convenience, with 500 trauma victims as participants, admitted to the Hospital Infante D. Pedro, in Aveiro, in 2010. Data were collected based on the Clinic Grid (Cunha & Costa, 2011) RESULTS: The prevalence of Pressure Ulcer [PrU] was 4% and the statistically significant factors of its development were : advanced age, greater length of stay, lower diastolic blood pressure, higher pain intensity; dependence in self-care: eating and drinking; presence of diabetes, presence of urinary catheter on admission and during hospitalization, use of diaper; dependence on hygiene and protection of integuments; presence of dry skin; need for physical restraint; taking antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medicine; longer time from admission to the first application of the Braden Scale; higher risk of PrU in the first assessment CONCLUSIONS This confirms the multifactorial development of PrUs, which makes it relevant for the nurses to consider factors such as length of stay, age, blood pressure, pain, reliance on self-care, physical restraint; antibiotics, assessment and risk level in their planning / implementation of preventive measures against that development and the consequent improvement of the quality of their care.
Polyamine-induced Z-DNA conformation in plasmids containing (dA-dC)n.(dG-dT)n inserts and increased binding of lupus autoantibodies to the Z-DNA form of plasmids.

Blocks of potential Z-DNA-forming (dA-dC)n. (dG-dT)n sequences are ubiquitous in eukaryotic genomes. We examined whether naturally occurring polyamines, putrescine, spermidine and spermine, could provoke the Z-DNA conformation in plasmids pDHf2 and pDHf14 with 23 and 60 bp inserts respectively of (dA-dC)n. (dG-dT)n sequences using an e.l. i.s. a. Spermidine and spermine could provoke Z-DNA conformation in these plasmids, but putrescine was ineffective. For pDHf2 and pDHf14, the concentration of spermidine at the midpoint of B-DNA to Z-DNA transition was 25 microM, whereas that of spermine was 16 microM. Polyamine structural specificity was evident in the ability of spermidine homologues to induce Z-DNA. Inorganic cations, Co(NH3)6(3+) and Ru(NH3)6(3+), were ineffective. Our experiments also showed increased binding of anti-DNA autoantibodies from lupus patients as well as autoimmune MRL-lpr/lpr mice to pDHf2 and pDHf14 in the presence of polyamines. These data demonstrate that small blocks of (dA-dC)n. (dG-dT)n sequences could assume the Z-DNA conformation in the presence of natural polyamines. Increased concentrations of polyamines in the sera of lupus patients might facilitate immune complex-formation involving circulating DNA and anti-Z-DNA antibodies.
Distribution of Glutamate Receptor Subunit NMDAR1 in the Hippocampus of Normal Elderly and Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

Immunocytochemical techniques were employed to study the distribution and cytological features of NMDAR1-immunoreactive elements in the human hippocampal formation. Subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD), presenting with a wide range of neuropathology and classified into six Braak stage (I-VI), and nondemented age-matched controls were examined. In control cases, the most intense NMDAR1 immunoreactivity was observed within the soma and dendrites of granule cells in the dentate gyrus and pyramidal neurons in Ammon's horn. Whereas small variations in the pattern of immunoreactivity were noted in control cases, AD subjects were characterized with intersubject variability which in most instances correlated with neuropathologic severity. For example, AD cases, particularly those with mild/modest pathology (Braak I-III), were indistinguishable from controls in the overall pattern of immunolabeling. In contrast, in those more severe AD cases (Braak IV-VI) the intensity of immunolabeling within the CA fields was greater than observed in controls and those with mild AD pathology. In addition, in pathologically severe cases numerous NMDAR1-positive pyramidal neurons were characterized by unique morphologic features including long and often tortuous apical dendrites. These latter findings were most prevalent in the CA1 region and subiculum. In contrast to the marked increase in immunolabeling in the CA fields, in the dentate gyrus we observed a reduction in NMDAR1 labeling particularly within the outer molecular layer (i.e., termination zone of the perforant pathway). This latter region was also the site of a number of NMDAR1-labeled plaques. Notably, the overall pattern of NMDAR1 immunoreactivity is distinct from that observed with antibodies against AMPA receptor subunits and suggests a differential role of various inotropic glutamate receptors in hippocampal plasticity in AD.
Asymptotic connectivity for the network of RNA secondary structures

Given an RNA sequence a, consider the network G = (V;E), where the set V of nodes consists of all secondary structures of a, and whose edge set E consists of all edges connecting two secondary structures whose base pair distance is 1. Define the network connectivity, or expected network degree, as the average number of edges incident to vertices of G. Using algebraic combinatorial methods, we prove that the asymptotic connectivity of length n homopolymer sequences is 0:473418 ? n. This raises the question of what other network properties are characteristic of the network of RNA secondary structures. Programs in Python, C and Mathematica are available at the web site this http URL RNAexpNumNbors.
Jointly Learning Grounded Task Structures from Language Instruction and Visual Demonstration

To enable language-based communication and collaboration with cognitive robots, this paper presents an approach where an agent can learn task models jointly from language instruction and visual demonstration using an And-Or Graph (AoG) representation. The learned AoG captures a hierarchical task structure where linguistic labels (for language communication) are grounded to corresponding state changes from the physical environment (for perception and action). Our empirical results on a cloth-folding domain have shown that, although state detection through visual processing is full of uncertainties and error prone, by a tight integration with language the agent is able to learn an effective AoG for task representation. The learned AoG can be further applied to infer and interpret on-going actions from new visual demonstration using linguistic labels at different levels of granularity.