Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Astrocyte-Synapse Structural Plasticity

The function and efficacy of synaptic transmission are determined not only by the composition and activity of pre- and postsynaptic components but also by the environment in which a synapse is embedded. Glial cells constitute an important part of this environment and participate in several aspects of synaptic functions. Among the glial cell family, the roles played by astrocytes at the synaptic level are particularly important, ranging from the trophic support to the fine-tuning of transmission. Astrocytic structures are frequently observed in close association with glutamatergic synapses, providing a morphological entity for bidirectional interactions with synapses. Experimental evidence indicates that astrocytes sense neuronal activity by elevating their intracellular calcium in response to neurotransmitters and may communicate with neurons. The precise role of astrocytes in regulating synaptic properties, function, and plasticity remains however a subject of intense debate and many aspects of their interactions with neurons remain to be investigated. A particularly intriguing aspect is their ability to rapidly restructure their processes and modify their coverage of the synaptic elements. The present review summarizes some of these findings with a particular focus on the mechanisms driving this form of structural plasticity and its possible impact on synaptic structure and function.
Asymmetry in infants' selective attention to facial features during visual processing of infant-directed speech

Two experiments used eye tracking to examine how infant and adult observers distribute their eye gaze on videos of a mother producing infant- and adult-directed speech. Both groups showed greater attention to the eyes than to the nose and mouth, as well as an asymmetrical focus on the talker's right eye for infant-directed speech stimuli. Observers continued to look more at the talker's apparent right eye when the video stimuli were mirror flipped, suggesting that the asymmetry reflects a perceptual processing bias rather than a stimulus artifact, which may be related to cerebral lateralization of emotion processing.
An Incomplete-Market Model for Collateralized Debt Obligations

This article describes a model that appropriately treats the incompletemarket aspects of collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s). The model is a term-structure model that can be calibrated so that it precisely reproduces, in terms of a single set of model parameters, the market values of the prices of contracts on a number of different tranches and having a number of different maturities for each tranche. The calibrated model gives arbitrage-free ranges of prices for derivatives when this is appropriate, as is the case in the pricing of an unmarketed tranche. In this case, risk-neutral pricing is only a first step in the pricing process, which is completed by negotiation in the market. Thus, within a certain price range, tranche prices are market prices that are determined by investor perceptions as influenced by analysts’ reports, etc (and not by the predictions of a particular copula model). A related conclusion is that the Black-Scholes type hedging of changes in tranche value with time is not appropriate, and this is illustrated with reference to the effects of the downgrade of Ford and General Motors in May 2005. By way of contrast, definite prices for certain other derivatives are found when this is appropriate, as in the case of the pricing of forward-start CDO’s. 1Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7, CANADA; email: walker@physics.utoronto. ca; telephone: (416) 978-3821. 2I would like to thank, for stimulating discussions, the participants (and particularly Mark Davis) in the Isaac Newton Credit Workshop, February 24 March 4, 2005, organized by Mark Davis, and the accompanying Industry Credit Workshop, February 25-26, organized by Marek Musiela; and the participants in Credit 2005 – Counterparty Risk, Venice, 22-23 September, 2005. Thanks are also due to David Beaglehole, John Hull and Alan White for discussions and encouragement, and to Efim Katz and the Theory Group of the Institute Laue-Langevin, where some of this work was carried out, for their hospitality 3The support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada is acknowledged.
Postischemic (1 Hour) Hypothermia Significantly Reduces Ischemic Cell Damage in Rats Subjected to 2 Hours of Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion

Background and Purpose We investigated the effect of hypothermia induced 1 hour after transient (2-hour) middle cerebral artery occlusion on the extent of ischemic cell damage in the rat. Methods Middle cerebral artery occlusion was induced extracranial by insertion of a nylon filament into the right internal carotid artery. Two groups of rats were investigated: (1) rats (n=10) subjected to normothermic (37°C) ischemia and normothermic reperfusion; and (2) rats (n=10) subjected to normothermic ischemia and 1 hour of normothermic reperfusion followed by 3 hours of hypothermia (30°C). All rats were killed 1 week after the experiment, and brain sections were stained with hematoxylin and eosin for evaluation of ischemic cell damage. Results Infarct volume in normothermic rats involved 20.9±4.6% of the hemisphere, whereas hypothermic rats exhibited a significantly smaller (P<.001) infarct volume of 11.1 ± 2.7%. The numbers of surviving (or structurally intact) neurons within large sections of the cortex and striatum were significantly greater for hypothermic compared with normothermic rats (P< 01). Conclusions Our data suggest that postischemic induction of hypothermia significantly reduces ischemic cell damage after 2 hours of middle cerebral artery occlusion in the rat, and that an interval of time of at least 1 hour after ischemia exists in which hypothermic intervention is effective in either salvaging or postponing irreversible neuronal injury.
TextJoiner: On-demand Information Extraction with Multi-Pattern Queries

Web Information Extraction (WIE) is the task of automatically extracting knowledge from Web content. On-demand WIE systems such as KNOWITNOW [1] and TEXTRUNNER [2] allow users to query the Web for a textual context that indicates a desired relation. For example, the context “$x invented $y” indicates the Invented(x, y) relation. The WIE system is tasked with responding in real-time with a list of argument tuples (e.g. <A.G. Bell, Telephone>) of the query relation, extracted from the Web.
Multiontology Semantic Disambiguation in Unstructured Web Contexts

The ability of computers to automatically determine the right sense of words, according to the context where they appear, can help bridge the gap between syntax and semantics required for the full development of the Semantic Web. However, the applicability of these techniques is sometimes hampered by the unrestricted way in which humans annotate web resources, especially in folksonomies. In such cases many context words are useless (or even harmful) to determine the right meaning of another one. Furthermore, these contexts lack well-formed sentences, thus preventing syntactic analysis and other features exploited by traditional disambiguation techniques from being used. In this paper we propose a technique for intelligent context selection, based on semantic relatedness computation, to detect the set of words that could induce an effective disambiguation. We use this technique as starting point of a disambiguation process that receives an ambiguous keyword and its context words as input, and provides a list of possible senses for the keyword, scored according to the probability of being the intended one. It combines different techniques to operate: Web-based relatedness, overlap of semantic descriptions, and frequency of use of senses. It accesses any pool of online ontologies as source of word senses, in addition to other available resources. Both our context selection technique and disambiguation method have been tested in this work, obtaining promising results.
Sex Differences in the Morphine-Sparing Effects of Intraoperative Dexmedetomidine in Patient-Controlled Analgesia Following General Anesthesia

AbstractPrevious studies have reported that intraoperative dexmedetomidine has morphine-sparing effects in patient-controlled analgesia (PCA). The present study was designed to investigate the possible sex differences in the morphine-sparing effects of intraoperative dexmedetomidine following general anesthesia. A total of 223 patients scheduled for surgeries under general anesthesia were divided into female and male groups. Each group was then subdivided into 2 subgroups that were maintained using propofol/remifentanil/dexmedetomidine (PRD) or propofol/remifentanil/saline (PRS). During the first 24 hours postsurgery, both female and male PRD patients had lower scores on a visual analog scale (VAS) (fPRS vs fPRD, P < 0.05 or P < 0.01; mPRS mPRD, P < 0.05, P < 0.01, or P < 0.001) and consumed less morphine than their controls from the PRS group (fPRS vs fPRD, P = 0.0392; mPRS vs mPRD, P = 0.0041). Interestingly, the female PRD patients had similar VAS scores (fPRD vs mPRD, P > 0.05) and consumed comparable morphine compared to the male PRD patients (fPRD vs mPRD, P = 0.4238). However, when normalized to body weight, they consumed much more morphine than male PRD patients (fPRD vs mPRD, P < 0.001), and this effect was not seen in the PRS patients. Intraoperative administration of dexmedetomidine appeared to have a stronger morphine-sparing effect in controlling postoperative acute pain in male patients than in female patients.
TARGET-DRIVEN GENETIC ALGORITHMS FOR SYNTHESIZER CONTROL

A set of experiments is described which use Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to find the synthesizer parameters required to synthesize a target sound. Comparisons between the target and candidate sounds (for the algorithms’ fitness functions) are calculated via a mapping from the sound data to a set of timbral, perceptual, and statistical sound attributes, many of which have been used in recent machine learning research. In particular, the performance of a new type of modification to the standard GA, using an Increasingly Discriminating Fitness Function, is evaluated; the performance of a weighted-attribute fitness function is also tested. The main results are that all GA techniques perform better than random search, but that the new variations fail to provide an improvement over the standard GA.
Continuous Expressive Speaking Styles Synthesis based on CVSM and MR-HMM

This paper introduces a continuous system capable of automatically producing the most adequate speaking style to synthesize a desired target text. This is done thanks to a joint modeling of the acoustic and lexical parameters of the speaker models by adapting the CVSM projection of the training texts using MR-HMM techniques. As such, we consider that as long as sufficient variety in the training data is available, we should be able to model a continuous lexical space into a continuous acoustic space. The proposed continuous automatic text to speech system was evaluated by means of a perceptual evaluation in order to compare them with traditional approaches to the task. The system proved to be capable of conveying the correct expressiveness (average adequacy of 3.6) with an expressive strength comparable to oracle traditional expressive speech synthesis (average of 3.6) although with a drop in speech quality mainly due to the semi-continuous nature of the data (average quality of 2.9). This means that the proposed system is capable of improving traditional neutral systems without requiring any additional user interaction.
Bounded-Distance Network Creation Games

A <i>network creation game</i> simulates a decentralized and noncooperative construction of a communication network. Informally, there are <i>n</i> players sitting on the network nodes, which attempt to establish a reciprocal communication by activating, thereby incurring a certain cost, any of their incident links. The goal of each player is to have all the other nodes as close as possible in the resulting network, while buying as few links as possible. According to this intuition, any model of the game must then appropriately address a balance between these two conflicting objectives. Motivated by the fact that a player might have a strong requirement about her centrality in the network, we introduce a new setting in which a player who maintains her (maximum or average) distance to the other nodes within a given bound incurs a cost equal to the number of activated edges; otherwise her cost is unbounded. We study the problem of understanding the structure of pure Nash equilibria of the resulting games, which we call M<scp>ax</scp>BD and S<scp>um</scp>BD, respectively. For both games, we show that when distance bounds associated with players are nonuniform, then equilibria can be arbitrarily bad. On the other hand, for M<scp>ax</scp>BD, we show that when nodes have a uniform bound <i>D</i> ≥ 3 on the maximum distance, then the <i>price of anarchy</i> (PoA) is lower and upper bounded by 2 and <i>O</i>(<i>n</i><sup>1/⌊log<sub>3</sub> <i>D</i> ⌋+1</sup>), respectively (i.e., PoA is constant as soon as <i>D</i> is Ω(<i>n</i><sup>ε</sup>), for any ε > 0), while for the interesting case <i>D</i>=2, we are able to prove that the PoA is Ω(&sqrt;<i>n</i>) and <i>O</i>(&sqrt;<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>). For the uniform S<scp>um</scp>BD, we obtain similar (asymptotically) results and moreover show that PoA becomes constant as soon as the bound on the average distance is 2<sup><i>ω</i>(&sqrt;log <i>n</i>)</sup>.
Susceptibility to thiosemicarbazide (an antagonist of vitamin B6), and phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of brain.

Susceptibility to TSC1 (an antagonist of vitamin B6) was compared in seven animal species together with the protective effect of B61 on the induction of convulsions. Susceptibility to TSC occurred generally with the phylogenetic development of the brain of vertebrates as well as invertebrates. Abnormal behavior analogous to running fit in rat or mouse, which was thought to be a characteristic and activated form of locomotion, was also induced in every animal except the silkworm. In this experiment B6 was capable of arresting the induction of convulsions and abnormal behavior in guinea pig and gold-fish.
Impact of patient navigation on timely cancer care: the Patient Navigation Research Program.

BACKGROUND Patient navigation is a promising intervention to address cancer disparities but requires a multisite controlled trial to assess its effectiveness. METHODS The Patient Navigation Research Program compared patient navigation with usual care on time to diagnosis or treatment for participants with breast, cervical, colorectal, or prostate screening abnormalities and/or cancers between 2007 and 2010. Patient navigators developed individualized strategies to address barriers to care, with the focus on preventing delays in care. To assess timeliness of diagnostic resolution, we conducted a meta-analysis of center- and cancer-specific adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) comparing patient navigation vs usual care. To assess initiation of cancer therapy, we calculated a single aHR, pooling data across all centers and cancer types. We conducted a metaregression to evaluate variability across centers. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS The 10521 participants with abnormal screening tests and 2105 with a cancer or precancer diagnosis were predominantly from racial/ethnic minority groups (73%) and publically insured (40%) or uninsured (31%). There was no benefit during the first 90 days of care, but a benefit of navigation was seen from 91 to 365 days for both diagnostic resolution (aHR = 1.51; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.23 to 1.84; P < .001)) and treatment initiation (aHR = 1.43; 95% CI = 1.10 to 1.86; P < .007). Metaregression revealed that navigation had its greatest benefits within centers with the greatest delays in follow-up under usual care. CONCLUSIONS Patient navigation demonstrated a moderate benefit in improving timely cancer care. These results support adoption of patient navigation in settings that serve populations at risk of being lost to follow-up.
Multi-media RISC informatics: retrieving information with simple structural components

This paper presents a novel architecture for building special-purpose agents for solving the information capture and access problem in large, unstructured data environments with uncertainty in data representation and interpretation. The key idea is to recognize and use underlying structure in such environments using simple components with specified performance guarantees connected by effective communication protocols. This paper brings together ideas from systems and theory: the design of mobile robots in unstructured physical environments, work in electronic libraries and know bets, topology, as well as the rich research in information retrieval and filtering to design a concrete software architecture for solving a wide range of highlevel user queries in multi-media environments.
Targeted adenovirus gene transfer to endothelial and smooth muscle cells by using bispecific antibodies

A major hurdle to adenovirus (Ad)-mediated gene transfer is that the target issue lacks sufficient levels of receptors to mediate vector attachment via its fiber coat protein. Endothelial and smooth muscle cells are primary targets in gene therapy approaches to prevent restenosis following angioplasty or to promote or inhibit angiogenesis. However, Ad poorly binds and transduces these cells because of their low or undetectable levels of functional Ad fiber receptor. The Ad-binding deficiency of these cells was overcome by targeting Ad binding to alpha v integrin receptors that are sufficiently expressed by these cells. In order to target alpha v integrins, a bispecific antibody (bsAb) that comprised a monoclonal Ab to the FLAG peptide epitope, DYKDDDDK, and a monoclonal Ab to alpha v integrins was constructed. In conjunction with the bsAb, a new vector, AdFLAG, which incorporated the FLAG peptide epitope into its penton base protein was constructed. Complexing AdFLAG with the bsAb increased the beta-glucuronidase transduction of human venule endothelial cells and human intestinal smooth muscle cells by seven- to ninefold compared with transduction by AdFLAG alone. The increased transduction efficiency was shown to occur through the specific interaction of the complex with alpha v integrins. These results demonstrate that bsAbs can be successfully used to target Ad to a specific cellular receptor and thereby increase the efficiency of gene transfer.
Finding Associations among Histone Modifications Using Sparse Partial Correlation Networks

Histone modifications are known to play an important role in the regulation of transcription. While individual modifications have received much attention in genome-wide analyses, little is known about their relationships. Some authors have built Bayesian networks of modifications, however most often they have used discretized data, and relied on unrealistic assumptions such as the absence of feedback mechanisms or hidden confounding factors. Here, we propose to infer undirected networks based on partial correlations between histone modifications. Within the partial correlation framework, correlations among two variables are controlled for associations induced by the other variables. Partial correlation networks thus focus on direct associations of histone modifications. We apply this methodology to data in CD4+ cells. The resulting network is well supported by common knowledge. When pairs of modifications show a large difference between their correlation and their partial correlation, a potential confounding factor is identified and provided as explanation. Data from different cell types (IMR90, H1) is also exploited in the analysis to assess the stability of the networks. The results are remarkably similar across cell types. Based on this observation, the networks from the three cell types are integrated into a consensus network to increase robustness. The data and the results discussed in the manuscript can be found, together with code, on http://spcn.molgen. mpg.de/index.html.
A hierarchical control plane for software-defined networks-based industrial control systems

Modern Industrial Control Systems (ICS) integrate advanced solutions from the field of traditional IP networks, i.e., Software-Defined Networks (SDN), in order to increase the security and resilience of communication infrastructures. Despite their clear advantages, such solutions also expose ICS to common cyber threats that may have a dramatic impact on the functioning of critical infrastructures, e.g., the power grid. As a response to these issues, this work develops a novel hierarchical SDN control plane for ICS. The approach builds on the features of a novel SDN controller named OptimalFlow that redesigns the network according to the solutions delivered by an integer linear programming (ILP) optimization problem. The developed ILP problem encapsulates a shortest path routing objective and harmonizes ICS flow requirements including quality of service, security of communications, and reliability. OptimalFlow exposes two communication interfaces to enable a hierarchical control plane. Its northbound interface reduces a complete switch infrastructure to an emulated (software) switch, while its southbound interface connects to an OpenFlow controller to enable the monitoring and control of real/emulated switches. Extensive experimental and numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed scheme.
A Giant Chelonioid Turtle from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco with a Suction Feeding Apparatus Unique among Tetrapods

Background Secondary adaptation to aquatic life occurred independently in several amniote lineages, including reptiles during the Mesozoic and mammals during the Cenozoic. These evolutionary shifts to aquatic environments imply major morphological modifications, especially of the feeding apparatus. Mesozoic (250–65 Myr) marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurid squamates, crocodiles, and turtles, exhibit a wide range of adaptations to aquatic feeding and a broad overlap of their tooth morphospaces with those of Cenozoic marine mammals. However, despite these multiple feeding behavior convergences, suction feeding, though being a common feeding strategy in aquatic vertebrates and in marine mammals in particular, has been extremely rarely reported for Mesozoic marine reptiles. Principal Findings A relative of fossil protostegid and dermochelyoid sea turtles, Ocepechelon bouyai gen. et sp. nov. is a new giant chelonioid from the Late Maastrichtian (67 Myr) of Morocco exhibiting remarkable adaptations to marine life (among others, very dorsally and posteriorly located nostrils). The 70-cm-long skull of Ocepechelon not only makes it one of the largest marine turtles ever described, but also deviates significantly from typical turtle cranial morphology. It shares unique convergences with both syngnathid fishes (unique long tubular bony snout ending in a rounded and anteriorly directed mouth) and beaked whales (large size and elongated edentulous jaws). This striking anatomy suggests extreme adaptation for suction feeding unmatched among known turtles. Conclusion/Significance The feeding apparatus of Ocepechelon, a bony pipette-like snout, is unique among tetrapods. This new taxon exemplifies the successful systematic and ecological diversification of chelonioid turtles during the Late Cretaceous. This new evidence for a unique trophic specialization in turtles, along with the abundant marine vertebrate faunas associated to Ocepechelon in the Late Maastrichtian phosphatic beds of Morocco, further supports the hypothesis that marine life was, at least locally, very diversified just prior to the Cretaceous/Palaeogene (K/Pg) biotic crisis.