Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological effects of 4‐aminopyridine on demyelinated mammalian motor and sensory fibers

The selective response of demyelinated sensory fibers to 4‐aminopyridine (4‐AP) has been proposed as a mechanism underlying the reported paresthesias that complicate the use of this potassium‐channel blocking agent in clinical trials for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and neuromuscular disorders. To identify differences in the electrophysiological response of specific fiber types to the application of 4‐AP, rat ventral and dorsal spinal roots, demyelinated by intrathecal injections of lysophosphatidylcholine, were examined in vitro before and during potassium‐channel blockade. The compound action potentials of demyelinated ventral roots showed a prominent postspike negativity associated with a broadening of single action potentials following application of 4‐AP. Under similar conditions, whole root responses of demyelinated dorsal root axons also developed a late negativity, but individual fibers were observed to fire repetitively in response to a single stimulus. The data support the hypothesis that the prominent sensory dysfunctions reported in clinical trials of 4‐AP are due to the selective response characteristics of sensory fibers.
Job satisfaction amongst aged care staff: exploring the influence of person-centered care provision

ABSTRACT Background: There are challenges in attracting and sustaining a competent and stable workforce in aged care, and key issues of concern such as low staff job satisfaction and feelings of not being able to provide high quality care have been described. This study aimed to explore the association between person-centered care provision and job satisfaction in aged care staff. Methods: Residential aged care staff (n = 297) in Australia completed the measure of job satisfaction and the person-centered care assessment tool. Univariate analyses examined relationships between variables, and multiple linear regression analysis explored the extent to whichperceived person-centredness could predict job satisfaction of staff. Results: Perceived person-centred care provision was significantly associated with job satisfaction, and person-centred care provision could explain nearly half of the variation in job satisfaction. The regression model with the three person-centered care subscales as predictor variables accounted for 40% of the variance in job satisfaction. Personalizing care had the largest independent influence on job satisfaction, followed by amount of organizational support and degree of environmental accessibility. Personalizing care and amount of organizational support had a statistically significant unique influence. Conclusions: As person-centered care positively correlated with staff job satisfaction, supporting staff in providing person-centered care can enhance job satisfaction and might facilitate attracting and retaining staff in residential aged care. The findings reiterate a need to shift focus from merely completing care tasks and following organizational routines to providing high quality person-centered care that promotes the good life of residents in aged care.
Grid Map based Free Space Estimation using Stereo Vision

This contribution proposes a temporally filtered free space estimation method for autonomous driving using dense disparity images from stereo vision. Urban environments feature complex surroundings in which the free space is limited by large and relatively flat obstacles (e.g. cars and curbs). Free space methods relying on single frame measurements suffer from sensor noise and depth artifacts, leading to large deviations from the ground truth free space. We meet this challenge by temporally filtering the occupancy of height and orientation features in a probabilistic occupancy grid. In the following the free space boundaries are estimated from the origin of the sensor in the occupancy grid. In contrast to existing methods our approach allows us to detect static free space boundaries which are not in the current sensor’s field of view. The proposed approach is evaluated on different urban scenes and compared to a state of the art free space method.
Behavioural and physiological responses of three chicken breeds to pre-slaughter shackling and acute heat stress

1. The aim of this study was to compare the behavioural and physiological responses to hanging and acute heat stress in three different chicken breeds. Chicks were obtained from a slow-growing French ‘Label Rouge’ line (SGL), a fast-growing standard line (FGL) and a heavy line (HL). The SGL, FGL and HL birds were slaughtered at their respective market ages of 12, 6 and 6 weeks, in an attempt to achieve similar body weights. Before stunning, birds were either shackled by their legs on the moving line for 2 min (shackling stress: SH) or placed in a room at 35°C and 60% of humidity for 3·5 h and then shackled for 2 min (acute heat stress plus shackling: H + SH) or subjected to minimal stress by shackling for 10 s before stunning (control group: C). 2. Bird physiological responses to the three pre-slaughter treatments were estimated by measuring blood corticosterone, glycaemia, creatine kinase activity, acid–base status and electrolyte concentration as well as lactate content and glycolytic potential in the breast (Pectoralis major) and thigh (Ilio tibialis) muscles. Behavioural responses to shackling stress were evaluated by measuring wing flapping duration, straightening up attempts and vocalisations. 3. Blood corticosterone was higher in SH and H + SH groups than in the C group, regardless of genotype. The struggling activity on the shackle line differed among chicken breeds. It was more intense and occurred more rapidly after hanging in the SGL birds than in both other breeds. Furthermore, SGL struggling activity was not affected by hanging duration while it increased with hanging duration in FGL and HL birds. 4. Wing flapping duration was negatively correlated with blood pH, bicarbonate concentration and positively correlated with breast muscle lactate content, indicating that struggling stimulated ante-mortem glycolysis activity in breast muscle. Acute heat stress affected blood Ca2+ and Na+ concentration and increased glycaemia and glycolytic potential of thigh muscle. 5. Both acute heat stress and shackling before slaughter were experienced as stressful events by all types of birds.
Multi-level Debugging for Multi-stage, Parallelizing Compilers

A multi-stage compilation framework transforms portions of programs written in a productivity-level language into an efficiency-level language, such as C, with explicit hardwarespecific optimizations. It is challenging for compiler programmers to debug errors in the compilation because they must perform complicated end-to-end reasoning, relating the programs across the multiple stages of compilation. To simplify this debugging effort, we present multi-level debugging, a novel combination of error-checking algorithms in a multi-stage compilation environment. Our method particularly aims to model and check sequential and parallel notions of nondeterminism and related bugs introduced by the compilation. Using our method, the programmer can systematically eliminate potential sources of the bug in the compilation process and focus only on the real source. We demonstrated on two real multi-stage compilers the effectiveness of multi-stage debugging in simplifying the diagnosis of manually-injected bugs as well as in an actual bug encountered during compiler development.
A storage-efficient cryptography-based access control solution for subversion

Version control systems are widely used in software development and document management. Unfortunately, versioning confidential files is not normally supported: Existing solutions encrypt the transport channel, but store data in plaintext within a repository. We come up with an access control solution that allows secure versioning of confidential files even in the presence of a malicious server administrator. Using convergent encryption as a building block, we enable space-efficient storage of version histories despite secure encryption. We describe an implementation of our concept for the Subversion (SVN) system, and evaluate storage efficiency and runtime of this implementation. Our implementation is compatible with existing SVN versions without requiring changes to the storage backend.
Tinbergen on mirror neurons

Fifty years ago, Niko Tinbergen defined the scope of behavioural biology with his four problems: causation, ontogeny, survival value and evolution. About 20 years ago, there was another highly significant development in behavioural biology—the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs). Here, I use Tinbergen's original four problems (rather than the list that appears in textbooks) to highlight the differences between two prominent accounts of MNs, the genetic and associative accounts; to suggest that the latter provides the defeasible ‘best explanation’ for current data on the causation and ontogeny of MNs; and to argue that functional analysis, of the kind that Tinbergen identified somewhat misleadingly with studies of ‘survival value’, should be a high priority for future research. In this kind of functional analysis, system-level theories would assign MNs a small, but potentially important, role in the achievement of action understanding—or another social cognitive function—by a production line of interacting component processes. These theories would be tested by experimental intervention in human and non-human animal samples with carefully documented and controlled developmental histories.
Semantic vs. Syntactic vs. N-gram Structure for Machine Translation Evaluation

We present results of an empirical study on evaluating the utility of the machine translation output, by assessing the accuracy with which human readers are able to complete the semantic role annotation templates. Unlike the widely-used lexical and n-gram based or syntactic based MT evaluation metrics which are ﬂuency-oriented, our results show that using semantic role labels to evaluate the utility of MT output achieve higher correlation with human judgments on adequacy. In this study, human readers were employed to identify the semantic role labels in the translation. For each role, the ﬁller is considered an accurate translation if it expresses the same meaning as that annotated in the gold standard reference translation. Our SRL based f-score evaluation metric has a 0.41 correlation coefﬁcient with the human judgement on adequacy, while in contrast BLEU has only a 0.25 correlation coefﬁcient and the syntactic based MT evaluation metric STM has only 0.32 correlation coefﬁcient with the human judgement on adequacy. Our results strongly indicate that using semantic role labels for MT evaluation can be signiﬁ-cantly more effective and better correlated with human judgement on adequacy than BLEU and STM.
Large Artery Intracranial Occlusive Disease: A Large Worldwide Burden but a Relatively Neglected Frontier

Background and Purpose— Large artery intracranial occlusive disease (LAICOD) is a common and important stroke subtype. In this commentary, we review key epidemiological aspects of LAICOD. Summary of Review— LAICOD has emerged as the most common stroke subtype worldwide and is associated with a high risk of recurrent stroke. Hypotheses have been proposed to explain causation, which include such factors as traditional cardiovascular risk factors, high blood volume states, and genetic abnormalities. Approaches to treatment such as antithrombotic therapies, revascularization procedures, and counterpulsation devices hold promise. Conclusions— LAICOD poses a major stroke problem worldwide and is likely the most common stroke subtype. The etiology and treatment of this disorder remain poorly defined. International collaborations are needed to pool collective knowledge and develop definitive studies to better understand causation and treatment of LAICOD.
Argument Understanding and Argument Choice A Case Study

Several categories of discourse moves and sequences have been studied in formal models of disputes. However, most of these models make two simplifications that neglect important factors in argumentation: (1) raising an argument is typically done by introducing one or several new facts in the dispute, assuming that the associated warrant is self-evident, and (2) variants of arguments addressing the same issue are rarely assessed in terms of their benefits and drawbacks. In this paper, we illustrate these two points by studying the role of alternative arguments in explaining the solution to a rather simple, but not so easily understandable problem. Arguments may differ in terms of the effort needed to communicate them, the confidence they achieve, and requirements on knowledge of the audience, which makes their relative benefit taskand context-dependent.1
Spike Train Correlation in Random Walk Integrate and Fire Neurons

One way to analyze how our brains function is to apply statistical models to neural data. In 1998, Shadlen and Newsome observed that a balanced random walk integrateand-re model can model experimental data such as single-unit recordings of rhesus monkeys. Using this model, I study the spike count correlation of two neurons under varying conditions. Through simulations, I look at the relationship of spike count correlation across two neurons to ring input rate when the inputs are independent and
Blind Extraction Algorithm in Wavelet Domain Based on Structuring Observation Vectors

The blind watermark extraction algorithms based on discrete cosine transform need some the priori knowledge. To overcome this problem, in this paper, two kinds of blind extraction algorithms using wavelet transform are presented with out prior knowledge. Firstly, this paper proposed an extraction algorithm based on discrete wavelet transform. The low frequency component embedded in the watermarked image based on discrete wavelet transform, combined respectively with its horizontal and vertical components are constructed as observation vectors. Then independent component analysis is used to extract the watermark image. Secondly, this paper proposed a blind extraction algorithm based on redundant discrete wavelet transform, by watermarked image, the mixing of the redundant discrete wavelet transform component of watermarked image and random matrix, to construct the observation vector. Then the watermark image can be recovered by independent component analysis. According to experiments, the proposed algorithms have better performance and can effectively achieve blind digital watermarking extaction.
Roles of Reactive Oxygen Species in the Spermatogenesis Regulation

Spermatogenesis is a complex process of male germ cells proliferation and maturation from diploid spermatogonia, through meiosis, to mature haploid spermatozoa. The process involves dynamic interactions between the developing germ cells and their supporting Sertoli cells. The gonadal tissue, with abundance of highly unsaturated fatty acids, high rates of cell division, and variety of testis enzymes results very vulnerable to the overexpression of reactive oxygen species (ROS). In order to address this risk, testis has developed a sophisticated array of antioxidant systems comprising both enzymes and free radical scavengers. This chapter sets out the major pathways of testis generation, the metabolism of ROS, and highlights the transcriptional regulation by steroid receptors of antioxidant stress enzymes and their functional implications. It also deals with of the advantages of the system biology for an antioxidant under steroid control, the major selenoprotein expressed by germ cells in the testis, the phospholipid hydroperoxide glutathione peroxidase (PHGPx/GPx4) having multiple functions and representing the pivotal link between selenium, sperm quality, and species preservation.
Changes in TL1A levels and associated cytokines during pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) ligand related molecule 1A (TL1A), also termed TNF superfamily member 15 and vascular endothelial growth inhibitor is important for tumorigenicity and autoimmunity. However, the function of TL1A in diabetic retinopathy (DR) remains to be elucidated. The present study established a diabetes mellitus (DM) rat model to investigate TL1A, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-1β (IL-1β) expression levels in the retina, vitreous and serum of rats with DM at different stages (1 month group, 3 month group and 6 month group). The present study determined that TL1A expression levels in the retina and vitreous from the DM 1 month group were significantly lower compared with the control group. However, TL1A levels in the retina and vitreous were significantly increased in advanced stages of DM compared with the control group. Furthermore, the levels of VEGF in the retina and vitreous were significantly higher in the DM groups compared with the control group. The expression levels of TNF-α and IL-1β in the retina and vitreous were significantly higher in DM 3 month and 6 month groups compared with the control group. It is of note that the expression levels of TL1A were significantly lower in the DM 1 and 3 month groups compared with the control group; however, they were significantly increased in the DM 6 month group compared with the DM 3 month group. The expression levels of VEGF, TNF-α and IL-1β in blood serum have been observed to exhibit similar expression change dynamics as those of the retina and vitreous. Therefore, these findings suggest that TL1A may be a protective factor of DR, and may provide a rationale for the development of novel therapeutic strategies to treat DR.
Role of the integrin-associated protein CD 9 in binding between sperm ADAM 2 and the egg integrin a 6 b 1 : Implications for murine fertilization

CD9 is a tetraspan protein that associates with several b1 integrins, including a6b1. Because a6b1 is present on murine eggs and interacts with the sperm-surface glycoprotein ADAM 2 (fertilin b), we first asked whether CD9 is present on murine eggs and whether it functions in sperm–egg binding and fusion. CD9 is present on the plasma membrane of oocytes in the ovary as well as on eggs isolated from the oviduct. The anti-CD9 mAb, JF9, potently inhibits sperm–egg binding and fusion in vitro in a dose-dependent manner. JF9 also disrupts binding of fluorescent beads coated with native fertilin or a recombinant fertilin b disintegrin domain. (Both ligands bind to the egg via a6b1.) Immunohistochemistry showed that CD9 is undetectable in the uterine epithelium, appears basolaterally and as prominent apical patches on the epithelium in the region between the uterus and the oviduct, and then persists apically in the oviduct. The integrin a6A subunit is found in similar apical patches in the region between the uterus and oviduct, but is confined to the basal aspect of the epithelium in the uterus and oviduct. Hence, a6A and CD9 both are expressed on the apical epithelial surface at the uterine–oviduct junction. These findings correlate with the observation that fertilin b ‘‘knockout’’ sperm traverse the uterus but do not progress into the oviduct, contributing to the infertility of fertilin b2y2 male mice. Our results suggest that high-avidity binding between fertilin b (ADAM 2) and a6b1 requires cooperation between a6b1 and CD9. Such cooperation may assist sperm passage into the oviduct as well as sperm– egg interactions.
The Genealogical Population Dynamics of HIV-1 in a Large Transmission Chain: Bridging within and among Host Evolutionary Rates

Transmission lies at the interface of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) evolution within and among hosts and separates distinct selective pressures that impose differences in both the mode of diversification and the tempo of evolution. In the absence of comprehensive direct comparative analyses of the evolutionary processes at different biological scales, our understanding of how fast within-host HIV-1 evolutionary rates translate to lower rates at the between host level remains incomplete. Here, we address this by analyzing pol and env data from a large HIV-1 subtype C transmission chain for which both the timing and the direction is known for most transmission events. To this purpose, we develop a new transmission model in a Bayesian genealogical inference framework and demonstrate how to constrain the viral evolutionary history to be compatible with the transmission history while simultaneously inferring the within-host evolutionary and population dynamics. We show that accommodating a transmission bottleneck affords the best fit our data, but the sparse within-host HIV-1 sampling prevents accurate quantification of the concomitant loss in genetic diversity. We draw inference under the transmission model to estimate HIV-1 evolutionary rates among epidemiologically-related patients and demonstrate that they lie in between fast intra-host rates and lower rates among epidemiologically unrelated individuals infected with HIV subtype C. Using a new molecular clock approach, we quantify and find support for a lower evolutionary rate along branches that accommodate a transmission event or branches that represent the entire backbone of transmitted lineages in our transmission history. Finally, we recover the rate differences at the different biological scales for both synonymous and non-synonymous substitution rates, which is only compatible with the ‘store and retrieve’ hypothesis positing that viruses stored early in latently infected cells preferentially transmit or establish new infections upon reactivation.
Vitiligo: Clinical Findings in 1436 Patients

We retrospectively analyzed the clinical and epidemiological profiles of patients with vitiligo attending the pigmentary dermatoses clinic. One thousand four hundred and thirty‐six patients were seen between 1989 and 1993. Males constituted 54.5% of the group and females 45.5%. Mean age of the patients was 25 years, and average disease duration at the time of hospital visit was 3.7 years.
Empirical Study Towards a Leading Indicator for Cost of Formal Software Verification

Formal verification can provide the highest degree of software assurance. Demand for it is growing, but there are still few projects that have successfully applied it to sizeable, real-world systems. This lack of experience makes it hard to predict the size, effort and duration of verification projects. In this paper, we aim to better understand possible leading indicators of proof size. We present an empirical analysis of proofs from the landmark formal verification of the seL4 microkernel and the two largest software verification proof developments in the Archive of Formal Proofs. Together, these comprise 15,018 individual lemmas and approximately 215,000 lines of proof script. We find a consistent quadratic relationship between the size of the formal statement of a property, and the final size of its formal proof in the interactive theorem prover Isabelle. Combined with our prior work, which has indicated that there is a strong linear relationship between proof effort and proof size, these results pave the way for effort estimation models to support the management of large-scale formal verification projects.