Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A longitudinal twin study of the direction of effects between psychopathic personality and antisocial behaviour.

BACKGROUND Antisocial behaviour may partly develop as a consequence of psychopathic personality. However, neither the direction of effects nor the aetiology of the association has previously been clarified. The aim in this study was to investigate the direction of effects between psychopathic personality and antisocial behaviour, and to investigate the genetic and environmental contribution to this association. METHOD Twins (n = 2,255) in the Swedish Twin Study of Child and Adolescent Development were prospectively followed from adolescence to adulthood. We used a longitudinal cross-lagged twin model to study the associations between psychopathic personality and antisocial behaviour. RESULTS Psychopathic personality in mid-adolescence predicted antisocial behaviour in adulthood (p < .001), but not the other way around. However, bidirectional effects were found when a measure of persistent antisocial behaviour (from age 8-9 to age 16-17) was used. Psychopathic personality predicted both rule-breaking behaviour (p < .001) and aggressive behaviour (p < .01). Genetic factors were of importance in mediating the longitudinal associations between psychopathic personality and antisocial behaviour. CONCLUSIONS This study provides evidence that genetically influenced psychopathic personality is a robust predictor of adult antisocial behaviour, but also that persistent antisocial behaviour has an impact on adult psychopathic personality via genetic effects.
Blood Pressure, C-Reactive Protein, and Risk of Future Cardiovascular Events

Background—Accumulating data suggest a link between blood pressure and vascular inflammation. Methods and Results—We examined the relationship between blood pressure, C-reactive protein (CRP), and incident first cardiovascular events among 15 215 women followed prospectively over a median of 8.1 years. In cross-sectional analyses at baseline, median levels of CRP for women with blood pressure <120/75, 120 to 129/75 to 84, 130 to 139/85 to 89, 140 to 159/90 to 94, and ≥160/95 mm Hg were 0.96, 1.42, 2.20, 2.82, and 3.34 mg/L, respectively (P for trend <0.0001). Increasing categories of blood pressure were significant predictors of CRP levels at baseline. In prospective analyses, both elevated CRP levels (≥3 mg/L) and increasing categories of blood pressure were independent determinants of future cardiovascular events, and CRP had incremental prognostic value at all levels of blood pressure. The adjusted hazard ratio for women with blood pressure ≥160/95 mm Hg and CRP levels ≥3 mg/L was 8.31 (95% CI, 4.44 to 15.55, P <0.0001) compared with those with blood pressure <120/75 and CRP levels <3 mg/L. After participants had been divided into 4 groups on the basis of CRP levels (<3 or ≥3 mg/L) and blood pressure levels (<130/85 or ≥130/85), the risk factor–adjusted hazard ratios were as follows: low CRP/low blood pressure, 1.0; high CRP/low blood pressure, 1.87 (P =0.002); low CRP/high blood pressure, 2.54 (P <0.0001); and high CRP/high blood pressure, 3.27 (P <0.0001). Conclusions—CRP and blood pressure are independent determinants of cardiovascular risk, and their predictive value is additive.
Winning Hearts and Minds for Europe

This article empirically explores the impact of symbols of European integration and good or bad news about Europe on individuals’ European identity. The analysis is based on a distinction between civic and cultural components of identity, which enables testing of the model in a way that could not be done with existing survey instruments. The model depicts these two components as conceptually and empirically distinct and responding differently to various cues in the environment. The findings showthat many respondents identify with Europe and the EU, mostly in civic terms, and explain how citizens and institutions interact to nurture identities. They show the strong impact of symbols and news on European identity. Other findings include the predominant effect of symbols on cultural identity and news on civic identity. The results have profound implications for our understanding of European integration, political behavior, and minority integration in multicultural societies.
Clear Speech Strategies and Speech Perception in Adverse Listening Conditions

The study investigated the impact of different types of clear speech on speech perception in an adverse listening condition. Tokens were extracted from spontaneous speech dialogues in which participants completed a problem-solving task in good listening conditions or while experiencing a one-sided ‘communication barrier’: a real-time vocoder or multibabble noise. These two adverse conditions induced the ‘unimpaired’ participant to produce clear speech. When tokens from these three conditions were presented in multibabble noise, listeners were quicker at processing clear tokens produced to counter the effects of multibabble noise than clear tokens produced to counteract the vocoder, or tokens produced in good communicative conditions. A clarity rating experiment using the same tokens presented in quiet showed that listeners do not distinguish between different types of clear speech. Together, these results suggest that clear speaking styles produced in different communicative conditions have acoustic-phonetic characteristics adapted to the needs of the listener, even though they may be perceived as being of similar clarity.
Women in Socialist Society with Special Reference to the German Democratic Republic

This article analyses data on aspects of gender relations in the German Democratic Republic and relates its findings to the debate on socialism within feminist writing. It points to the many aspects of gender relations in which the GDR has made greater advances towards sexual equality than the advanced Western capitalist societies. Variations in the attained level of women's emancipation between state socialist societies are discussed, and comparisons with the USSR are made to underline them. It is suggested that the advances made by the GDR are due primarily to its socialist social and economic system but also to such factors as its relatively high level of social and economic development, its severe labour shortage, and its peculiarly German labour tradition. The article concludes that the capabilities of state socialist society to advance towards sexual equality have to be taken more seriously by feminist theorists than has hitherto been the case.
A Ticket based Security Framework for Fast Transmission in Wireless Mesh Network

In recent years, Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) has been emerged out as the next generation of wireless communication networks due to its economical feature in the era of broadband services it supports. However, security issues inherent in WMNs or any wireless networks needed to be considered before the deployment of such networks, since it is disagreeable to subscribers to acquire services without the assurance of security and privacy. Wireless security has become the hot are in the literature for diverse network technologies such as ad hoc networks, cellular networks, local area networks and sensor networks etc. On the other hand, the network authority necessitates the provisional anonymity such that all the misbehaving entities in the network remain traceable. This paper introduces a ticket based security
SIESTA: a multi-facet scan design system

Scan design methodology has led to a range of design-for-testability techniques. However, scan techniques are not universally accepted by circuit designers because of the various overheads involved, such as chip area, performance, I/O pin count and test application time. The authors present a multi-facet scan design system called SIESTA that attempts to find solutions that satisfy designer goals and constraints. SIESTA incorporates a range of methodologies and optimization techniques that deal with the issues of partial scan, circuit partitioning, test application and scan path chaining. It employs several new concepts that do not exist in other scan design systems. <<ETX>>
What is quality in neurosurgery?

Ihave had the privilege to participate in many and varied aspects of organized neurosurgery over the past 30 years and defining quality in neurosurgical practice remains elusive. How do we define quality? How do we measure, certify, regulate, and report quality? How do we ensure that quality will happen? It is much like beauty. It is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. It is also like beauty in that it is in the “eye of the beholder. ” Leonard da Vinci had one view of beauty in the Mona Lisa and Picasso yet another in his cubism portrayals of beauty. I believe that when you are sitting in an examination room, one-on-one with a patient and reach a conclusion and make a recommendation, you are defining quality. When you are in the operating room and decide just how hard to retract a nerve root or how much to elevate the dome of an aneurysm, you are defining quality. When you tell the patient’s family that there is nothing further to be done and care should be withdrawn, you are defining quality. When you decide to take one more trip back to the hospital to check on a patient, you are defining quality. You reach your personal definition of quality through
An ultra low power, ultra miniature voice command system based on Hidden Markov Models

A real-time HMM-based isolated word recognition system is implemented on an ultra low-power miniature DSP system. The DSP system consumes less than 1 milliWatt, much less than what is considered today as “low-resource”. It has a very small footprint and requires only a single hearing aid sized 1 volt battery. The efficient implementation of HMM and MFCC feature extraction algorithms is accomplished through the use of three processing units running concurrently. In addition to the DSP core, an input/output processor creates frames of input speech signals, and a WOLA fi1terbank unit performs windowing, FFT and vector multiplications. A system evaluation using a vocabulary of 18 words shows a success rate of more than 99%.
A Mutation in S6 of Shaker Potassium Channels Decreases the K+ Affinity of an Ion Binding Site Revealing Ion–Ion Interactions in the Pore

Under physiological conditions, potassium channels are extraordinarily selective for potassium over other ions. However, in the absence of potassium, certain potassium channels can conduct sodium. Sodium flux is blocked by the addition of low concentrations of potassium. Potassium affinity, and therefore the ability to block sodium current, varies among potassium channel subtypes (Korn, S.J., and S.R. Ikeda. 1995. Science. 269:410–412; Starkus, J.G., L. Kuschel, M.D. Rayner, and S.H. Heinemann. 1997. J. Gen. Physiol. 110:539–550). The Shaker potassium channel conducts sodium poorly in the presence of very low (micromolar) potassium due to its high potassium affinity (Starkus, J.G., L. Kuschel, M.D. Rayner, and S.H. Heinemann. 1997. J. Gen. Physiol. 110:539–550; Ogielska, E.M., and R.W. Aldrich. 1997. Biophys. J. 72:A233 [Abstr.]). We show that changing a single residue in S6, A463C, decreases the apparent internal potassium affinity of the Shaker channel pore from the micromolar to the millimolar range, as determined from the ability of potassium to block the sodium currents. Independent evidence that A463C decreases the apparent affinity of a binding site in the pore comes from a study of barium block of potassium currents. The A463C mutation decreases the internal barium affinity of the channel, as expected if barium blocks current by binding to a potassium site in the pore. The decrease in the apparent potassium affinity in A463C channels allows further study of possible ion interactions in the pore. Our results indicate that sodium and potassium can occupy the pore simultaneously and that multiple occupancy results in interactions between ions in the channel pore.
The Reverse Activity of Human Acid Ceramidase*

An overexpression system was recently developed to produce and purify recombinant, human acid ceramidase. In addition to ceramide hydrolysis, the purified enzyme was able to catalyze ceramide synthesis using [14C]lauric acid and sphingosine as substrates. Herein we report detailed characterization of this acid ceramidase-associated “reverse activity” and provide evidence that this reaction occurs in situ as well as in vitro. The pH optimum of the reverse reaction was ∼5.5, as compared with ∼4.5 for the hydrolysis reaction. Non-ionic detergents and zinc cations inhibited the activity, whereas most other cations were stimulatory. Of note, sphingomyelin also was very inhibitory toward this reaction, whereas the anionic lipids, phosphatidic acid and phosphatidylserine, were stimulatory. Of various sphingosine stereoisomers tested in the reverse reaction, only the natural, d-erythro form could efficiently serve as a substrate. Using d-erythro-sphingosine and lauric acid as substrates, the reaction followed normal Michaelis-Menten kinetics. The Km and Vmax values toward sphingosine were 23.75 μm and 208.3 pmol/μg/h, respectively, whereas for lauric acid they were 73.76 μm and 232.5 pmol/μg/h, respectively. Importantly, the reverse activity was reduced in cell lysates from a Farber disease patient to the same extent as the acid ceramidase activity. Furthermore, when 12-(N-methyl-N-(7-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1,3-diazol-4-yl)) (NBD)-conjugated lauric acid and sphingosine were added to cultured lymphoblasts from a Farber disease patient in the presence of fumonisin B (1), the conversion to NBD-ceramide was reduced ∼30% when compared with normal cells. These data provide important new information on human acid ceramidase and further document its central role in sphingolipid metabolism.
Insight into the mobilome of Aeromonas strains

The mobilome is a pool of genes located within mobile genetic elements (MGE), such as plasmids, IS elements, transposons, genomic/pathogenicity islands, and integron-associated gene cassettes. These genes are often referred to as “flexible” and may encode virulence factors, toxic compounds as well as resistance to antibiotics. The phenomenon of MGE transfer between bacteria, known as horizontal gene transfer (HGT), is well documented. The genes present on MGE are subject to continuous processes of evolution and environmental changes, largely induced or significantly accelerated by man. For bacteria, the only chance of survival in an environment contaminated with toxic chemicals, heavy metals and antibiotics is the acquisition of genes providing the ability to survive in such conditions. The process of acquiring and spreading antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) is of particular significance, as it is important for the health of humans and animals. Therefore, it is important to thoroughly study the mobilome of Aeromonas spp. that is widely distributed in various environments, causing many diseases in fishes and humans. This review discusses the recently published information on MGE prevalent in Aeromonas spp. with special emphasis on plasmids belonging to different incompatibility groups, i.e., IncA/C, IncU, IncQ, IncF, IncI, and ColE-type. The vast majority of plasmids carry a number of different transposons (Tn3, Tn21, Tn1213, Tn1721, Tn4401), the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd class of integrons, IS elements (e.g., IS26, ISPa12, ISPa13, ISKpn8, ISKpn6) and encode determinants such as antibiotic and mercury resistance genes, as well as virulence factors. Although the actual role of Aeromonas spp. as a human pathogen remains controversial, species of this genus may pose a serious risk to human health. This is due to the considerable potential of their mobilome, particularly in terms of antibiotic resistance and the possibility of the horizontal transfer of resistance genes.
Pdm and Castor close successive temporal identity windows in the NB3-1 lineage

Neurogenesis in Drosophila and mammals requires the precise integration of spatial and temporal cues. In Drosophila, embryonic neural progenitors (neuroblasts) sequentially express the transcription factors Hunchback, Kruppel, Pdm1/Pdm2 (Pdm) and Castor as they generate a stereotyped sequence of neuronal and glial progeny. Hunchback and Kruppel specify early temporal identity in two posterior neuroblast lineages (NB7-1 and NB7-3), whereas Pdm and Castor specify late neuronal identity in the NB7-1 lineage. Because Pdm and Castor have only been assayed in one lineage, it is unknown whether their function is restricted to neuronal identity in the NB7-1 lineage, or whether they function more broadly as late temporal identity genes in all neuroblast lineages. Here, we identify neuronal birth-order and molecular markers within the NB3-1 cell lineage, and then use this lineage to assay Pdm and Castor function. We show that Hunchback and Kruppel specify first and second temporal identities, respectively. Surprisingly, Pdm does not specify the third temporal identity, but instead acts as a timing factor to close the second temporal identity window. Similarly, Castor closes the third temporal identity window. We conclude that Hunchback and Kruppel specify the first and second temporal identities, an unknown factor specifies the third temporal identity, and Pdm and Castor are timing factors that close the second and third temporal identity windows in the NB3-1 lineage. Our results provide a new neuroblast lineage for investigating temporal identity and reveal the importance of Pdm and Cas as timing factors that close temporal identity windows.
Concepts, Laws, and the Resurrection of Ideal Types'

methodological invention would be so ideal as to defy mere mortal attempts to understand it. Philosophical inattention to the logical plausibility of the notion has allowed it a troubled persistence. Many condemn; few-if anyanalyse. Mere condemnation has failed to dispel what intuition tells many is a vacuous conception or, at the very least, a confusion of many things. Yet, the absence of analysis which could show the vacuity or the confusion itself stems from the inability of theorists to reach some agreement upon what types are, or would be, if they were plausible tools of social study. To compound misfortune, Weber himself seems never to have stilled his
Direct synaptic connections between rods and OFF cone bipolar cells in the rabbit retina

Mammalian retinal circuits are broadly divided into rod and cone pathways, responsible for dark‐ and light‐adapted vision, respectively. The classic rod pathway employs a single type of rod bipolar cell, which synapses with AII amacrine cells. AII amacrine cells then pass the signal to ON and OFF cone bipolar cells, respectively. Alternatively, rod signals may enter cones via gap junctions between rods and cones, and then pass from cones to cone bipolar cells. Thus, this second rod pathway does not utilize rod bipolar cells. Finally, in rodents, a third rod pathway, involving direct connections between rods and certain OFF cone bipolar cells, has been suggested. In this study, 56 OFF cone bipolar cells in the rabbit retina were dye‐injected with Lucifer Yellow and their photoreceptor connections were examined by confocal microscopy in wholemount. The locations of rod and cone terminals were marked with antibodies to mGluR6 or synaptic proteins. Most OFF cone bipolar dendrites terminated at cone pedicles but some made potential contacts with rod spherules. The synaptic nature of these sites was confirmed by the presence of GluR2 receptors. All three OFF bipolar cell types had dendrites that terminated at rod spherules. However, ∼80% of Ba2 and Ba3, but only 26% of Ba1 OFF cone bipolar cells made rod contacts. This variability suggests differential rod input to certain retinal pathways. In summary, we report anatomical evidence for direct connections between rods and OFF cone bipolar cells in a nonrodent mammal. Our data suggest that this alternative rod pathway may be a common feature of the mammalian retina. J. Comp. Neurol. 474:1–12, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Speed sensorless field-oriented control of a six-phase saturated model of induction motors drive with online stator resistance estimation using ANFIS

In this paper, a field-oriented control-space vector modulation scheme is presented for a six-phase speed and voltage sensorless saturated model of induction motor drive. The new in this paper is that the saturation model of induction motor is taken into consideration. Also, a simple method is introduced to estimate the motor rotor speed and on line estimation of the stator resistance using adaptive neural fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Finally, some simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness and capability of the proposed control scheme.
Optimization Space Exploration of the FastFlow Parallel Skeleton Framework

Parallel skeletons are a structured parallel programming abstraction that provide programmers with a predefined set of algorithmic templates that can be combined, nested and parametrized with sequential code to produce complex programs. The implementation of these skeletons is currently a manual process, requiring human expertise to choose suitable implementation parameters that provide good performance. This paper presents an empirical exploration of the optimization space of the FastFlow parallel skeleton framework. We performed this using a Monte Carlo search of a random subset of the space, for a representative set of platforms and programs. The results show that the space is program and platform dependent, non-linear, and that automatic search achieves a significant average speedup in program execution time of 1:6 over a human expert. An exploratory data analysis of the results shows a linear dependence between two of the parameters, and that another two parameters have little effect on performance. These properties are then used to reduce the size of the space by a factor of 6, reducing the cost of the search. This provides a starting point for automatically optimizing parallel skeleton programs without the need for human expertise, and with a large improvement in execution time compared to that achievable using human expert tuning.
The scaling window of the 2‐SAT transition

We consider the random 2‐satisfiability (2‐SAT) problem, in which each instance is a formula that is the conjunction of m clauses of the form x∨y, chosen uniformly at random from among all 2‐clauses on n Boolean variables and their negations. As m and n tend to infinity in the ratio m/n→α, the problem is known to have a phase transition at αc=1, below which the probability that the formula is satisfiable tends to one and above which it tends to zero. We determine the finite‐size scaling about this transition, namely the scaling of the maximal window W(n, δ)=(α−(n,δ), α+(n,δ)) such that the probability of satisfiability is greater than 1−δ for αα+. We show that W(n,δ)=(1−Θ(n−1/3), 1+Θ(n−1/3)), where the constants implicit in Θ depend on δ. We also determine the rates at which the probability of satisfiability approaches one and zero at the boundaries of the window. Namely, for m=(1+ε)n, where ε may depend on n as long as |ε| is sufficiently small and |ε|n1/3 is sufficiently large, we show that the probability of satisfiability decays like exp(−Θ(nε3)) above the window, and goes to one like 1−Θ(n−1|ε|−3 below the window. We prove these results by defining an order parameter for the transition and establishing its scaling behavior in n both inside and outside the window. Using this order parameter, we prove that the 2‐SAT phase transition is continuous with an order parameter critical exponent of 1. We also determine the values of two other critical exponents, showing that the exponents of 2‐SAT are identical to those of the random graph. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 18: 201–256 2001