Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reversal of ethanol-seeking behavior by D1 and D2 antagonists in an animal model of relapse: differences in antagonist potency in previously ethanol-dependent versus nondependent rats.

Mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) transmission has been implicated in the consummatory and, more recently, the incentive-motivational aspect of ethanol's actions. The purpose of this study was to test whether ethanol-seeking behavior induced by an ethanol-associated contextual stimulus is sensitive to antagonism of DA transmission. Male Wistar rats were trained to orally self-administer 10% ethanol and to associate olfactory discriminative stimuli with the availability of ethanol (S(+)) versus nonreward (S(-)). Ethanol-reinforced operant responding then was extinguished by withholding ethanol and the associated S(+). After reaching a predetermined extinction criterion, reinstatement tests were conducted in which the animals were presented noncontingently with only the S(+) or S(-). Exposure to the S(+) but not the S(-) reinstated responding at the previously active lever. The D1 antagonist R(+)-7-chloro-8-hydroxy-3-methyl-1-phenyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydro-1H-3-benzazepine hydrochloride (SCH23390; 5, 10, 50 microg/kg s.c.) and the D2 antagonist eticlopride (5, 10, 50 microg/kg s.c.) dose dependently decreased the number of S(+)-induced responses and increased response latency. During a second test, conducted in the same rats, 3 weeks after withdrawal from a 12-day ethanol vapor inhalation procedure, the response-reinstating efficacy of the S(+) remained unaltered. However, the potency of both DA antagonists to inhibit the S(+)-induced drug-seeking response was significantly increased. The results confirm that ethanol-related contextual stimuli reliably elicit drug-seeking behavior and suggest that this effect requires activation of DA neurotransmission. The results also indicate that chronic ethanol exposure produces changes in D1 and D2 receptor function that lead to enhanced sensitivity to the behavioral effects of antagonists for these receptors.
Evaluating the Imagine stream architecture

This paper describes an experimental evaluation of the prototype Imagine stream processor. Imagine (Kapasi et al., 2002) is a stream processor that employs a two-level register hierarchy with 9.7 Kbytes of local register file capacity and 128 Kbytes of stream register file (SRF) capacity to capture producer-consumer locality in stream applications. Parallelism is exploited using an array of 48 floating-point arithmetic units organized as eight SIMD clusters with a 6-wide VLIW per cluster. We evaluate the performance of each aspect of the Imagine architecture using a set of synthetic micro-benchmarks, key media processing kernels, and full applications. These micro-benchmarks show that the prototype hardware can attain 7.96 GFLOPS or 25.4 GOPS of arithmetic performance, 12.7 Gbytes/s of SRF bandwidth, 1.58 Gbytes/s of memory system bandwidth, and accept up to 2 million stream processor instructions per second from a host processor. On a set of media processing kernels, Imagine sustained an average of 43% of peak arithmetic performance. An evaluation of full applications provides a breakdown of where execution time is spent. Over full applications, Imagine achieves 39.4% of peak performance, of the remainder on average 36.4% of time is lost due to load imbalance between arithmetic units in the VLIW clusters and limited instruction-level parallelism within kernel inner loops, 10.6% is due to kernel startup and shutdown overhead because of short stream lengths, 7.6% is due to memory stalls, and the rest is due to insufficient host processor bandwidth. Further analysis included in the paper presents the impact of host instruction bandwidth on application performance, particularly on smaller datasets. In summary, the experimental measurements described in this paper demonstrate the high performance and efficiency of stream processing: operating at 200 MHz, Imagine sustains 4.81 GFLOPS on QR decomposition while dissipating 7.42 Watts.
Fuzzy Control and Fuzzy Kinematic Mapping for a Redundant Space Robot

Abstract : This report documents parts of the research in the Self Mobile Space Manipulator project at Carnegie Mellon University. We developed Fuzzy Logic Friction Compensation schemes that improve motion performance Of SM2. Both static and dynamic errors are reduced. Also, we propose Fuzzy Inverse Kinematic Mapping to resolve the redundancy problem in SM2. The proposed scheme works identically for redundant and non-redundant robots, does not require any constraints to be imposed on the robot configuration and provides a closed-form solution. We investigated this scheme in simulation and then implemented it for real-time teleoperation of SM2.
The Later Stone Age Calvaria from Iwo Eleru, Nigeria: Morphology and Chronology

Background In recent years the Later Stone Age has been redated to a much deeper time depth than previously thought. At the same time, human remains from this time period are scarce in Africa, and even rarer in West Africa. The Iwo Eleru burial is one of the few human skeletal remains associated with Later Stone Age artifacts in that region with a proposed Pleistocene date. We undertook a morphometric reanalysis of this cranium in order to better assess its affinities. We also conducted Uranium-series dating to re-evaluate its chronology. Methodology/Principal Findings A 3-D geometric morphometric analysis of cranial landmarks and semilandmarks was conducted using a large comparative fossil and modern human sample. The measurements were collected in the form of three dimensional coordinates and processed using Generalized Procrustes Analysis. Principal components, canonical variates, Mahalanobis D2 and Procrustes distance analyses were performed. The results were further visualized by comparing specimen and mean configurations. Results point to a morphological similarity with late archaic African specimens dating to the Late Pleistocene. A long bone cortical fragment was made available for U-series analysis in order to re-date the specimen. The results (∼11.7–16.3 ka) support a terminal Pleistocene chronology for the Iwo Eleru burial as was also suggested by the original radiocarbon dating results and by stratigraphic evidence. Conclusions/Significance Our findings are in accordance with suggestions of deep population substructure in Africa and a complex evolutionary process for the origin of modern humans. They further highlight the dearth of hominin finds from West Africa, and underscore our real lack of knowledge of human evolution in that region.
Security in wearable communications

Wearable computing has great potential to revolutionize the future of everyday lives. Nonetheless, communications among wearable devices may lead to significant security concerns, given that wearable devices often capture sensitive personal information and may have to operate in hostile environments. In this article, we systematically study the security issues in wearable communications. Specifically, we start with an overview of security concerns for typical wearable applications. Then we review the state-of-the-art research and state-of-the-practice development for security in wearable computing in both industry and academia. At last, we propose a layered adaptive security architecture, with the aim of preventing adversaries from "breaking through" all layers of security by simply compromising one particular security measure, and discuss possible mechanisms to enhance the security of each layer.
III Enhances Later Recall Enhancing Retention Through Reconsolidation : Negative Emotional Arousal Following Retrieval

When information is retrieved from memory, it enters a labile state rendering it amenable to change. This process of reconsolidation may explain, in part, the benefits that are observed in later retention following retrieval of information on an initial test. We examined whether the benefits of retrieval could be modulated by an emotional event occurring after retrieval. Participants studied Swahili-English vocabulary pairs. On a subsequent cued-recall test, each retrieval was followed by a blank screen, a neutral picture, or a picture inducing negative affect. Performance on a final cued-recall test was best for items whose initial retrieval was followed by negative pictures. This outcome occurred when a negative picture was presented immediately after (Experiment 1) or 2 s after (Experiment 2) successful retrieval, but not when it was presented after restudy of the vocabulary pair (Experiment 3). Postretrieval reconsolidation via emotional processing may enhance the usual positive effects of retrieval.
Turbo Codes Network-On-Chip-Implementation

Wireless communication at near-capacity transmission throughputs is facilitated by employing sophisticated Error Correction Codes (ECCs), such as turbo codes. However, real time communication at high transmission throughputs is only possible if the challenge of implementing turbo decoders having equally high processing throughputs can be overcome. This motivates the implementation of turbo decoders using Networkson-Chip (NoCs), which facilitate flexible and high throughput parallel processing. However, turbo decoders conventionally operate on the basis of the Logarithmic Bahl-Cocke-JelinekRaviv (Log-BCJR) algorithm, which has an inherently-serial nature, owing to its data dependencies. This limits the exploitation of the NoC’s computing resources, particularly as the size of the NoC is scaled up. Motivated by this, we propose a novel turbo decoder algorithm, which eliminates the data dependencies of the Log-BCJR algorithm and therefore has an inherently-parallel nature. We show that by jointly optimizing the proposed algorithm with the NoC architecture, a significantly improved utility of the available computing resources is achieved. Owing to this, our proposed turbo decoder achieves a factor of up to 2.13 higher processing throughput than a Log-BCJR benchmarker. Index Terms – Turbo Codes, Network, Chip, ECC.
Telomere length in early life predicts lifespan

The attrition of telomeres, the ends of eukaryote chromosomes, is thought to play an important role in cell deterioration with advancing age. The observed variation in telomere length among individuals of the same age is therefore thought to be related to variation in potential longevity. Studies of this relationship are hampered by the time scale over which individuals need to be followed, particularly in long-lived species where lifespan variation is greatest. So far, data are based either on simple comparisons of telomere length among different age classes or on individuals whose telomere length is measured at most twice and whose subsequent survival is monitored for only a short proportion of the typical lifespan. Both approaches are subject to bias. Key studies, in which telomere length is tracked from early in life, and actual lifespan recorded, have been lacking. We measured telomere length in zebra finches (n = 99) from the nestling stage and at various points thereafter, and recorded their natural lifespan (which varied from less than 1 to almost 9 y). We found telomere length at 25 d to be a very strong predictor of realized lifespan (P < 0.001); those individuals living longest had relatively long telomeres at all points at which they were measured. Reproduction increased adult telomere loss, but this effect appeared transient and did not influence survival. Our results provide the strongest evidence available of the relationship between telomere length and lifespan and emphasize the importance of understanding factors that determine early life telomere length.
Enhancing the [13C]bicarbonate signal in cardiac hyperpolarized [1‐13C]pyruvate MRS studies by infusion of glucose, insulin and potassium

A change in myocardial metabolism is a known effect of several diseases. MRS with hyperpolarized 13C‐labelled pyruvate is a technique capable of detecting changes in myocardial pyruvate metabolism, and has proven to be useful for the evaluation of myocardial ischaemia in vivo. However, during fasting, the myocardial glucose oxidation is low and the fatty acid oxidation (β‐oxidation) is high, which complicates the interpretation of pyruvate metabolism with the technique. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the infusion of glucose, insulin and potassium (GIK) could increase the myocardial glucose oxidation in the citric acid cycle, reflected as an increase in the [13C]bicarbonate signal in cardiac hyperpolarized [1‐13C]pyruvate MRS measurements in fasted rats. Two groups of rats were infused with two different doses of GIK and investigated by MRS after injection of hyperpolarized [1‐13C]pyruvate. No [13C]bicarbonate signal could be detected in the fasted state. However, a significant increase in the [13C]bicarbonate signal was observed by the infusion of a high dose of GIK. This study demonstrates that a high [13C]bicarbonate signal can be achieved by GIK infusion in fasted rats. The increased [13C]bicarbonate signal indicates an increased flux of pyruvate through the pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme complex and an increase in myocardial glucose oxidation through the citric acid cycle. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KNOX genes: versatile regulators of plant development and diversity

Knotted1-like homeobox (KNOX) proteins are homeodomain transcription factors that maintain an important pluripotent cell population called the shoot apical meristem, which generates the entire above-ground body of vascular plants. KNOX proteins regulate target genes that control hormone homeostasis in the meristem and interact with another subclass of homeodomain proteins called the BELL family. Studies in novel genetic systems, both at the base of the land plant phylogeny and in flowering plants, have uncovered novel roles for KNOX proteins in sculpting plant form and its diversity. Here, we discuss how KNOX proteins influence plant growth and development in a versatile context-dependent manner.
Microbial nanowires: Is the subsurface “hardwired”?

The Earth's shallow subsurface results from integrated biological, geochemical, and physical processes. Methods are sought to remotely assess these interactive processes, especially those catalysed by micro‐organisms. Using saturated sand columns and the metal reducing bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR‐1, we show that electrically conductive appendages called bacterial nanowires are directly associated with electrical potentials. No significant electrical potentials were detectable in columns inoculated with mutant strains that produced non‐conductive appendages. Scanning electron microscopy imaging revealed a network of nanowires linking cells‐cells and cells to mineral surfaces, “hardwiring” the entire length of the column. We hypothesize that the nanowires serve as conduits for transfer of electrons from bacteria in the anaerobic part of the column to bacteria at the surface that have access to oxygen, akin to a biogeobattery. These results advance understanding of the mechanisms of electron transport in subsurface environments and of how microorganisms cycle geologic material and share energy.
HYBRIDIZATION STUDIES ON THE HOST RACES OF EUROSTA SOLIDAGINIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR SYMPATRIC SPECIATION

We studied the inheritance of survival ability in host‐associated populations of the tephritid fly, Eurosta solidaginis, to test predictions of sympatric speciation models. Eurosta solidaginis induces galls on two species of goldenrod, Solidago altissima and S. gigantea. The host‐associated populations have been hypothesized to be host races that originated in sympatry (Craig et al. 1993). We found evidence for disruptive selection for host use, which is a critical assumption of sympatric speciation models. Each host race had higher survival rates on their host plant than on the alternative host. F1 and backcross hybrids also had lower survival rates than the pure host‐race flies on their host plant. Since assortative mating occurs due to host‐plant preference (Craig et al. 1993) this would select for divergence in host preference. Low hybrid survival could have been due to strong genetic incompatibilities of the populations or due to host adaptation by each population. Strong genetic incompatibilities would result in poor survival on all host plants, while host adaptation could result in low overall survival with high hybrid survival on some host plants with particularly “benign” environments. High survival of F1, F2, and backcross hybrids on some plant genotypes in some years supported the host adaptation hypothesis. F1 flies mated and oviposited normally and produced viable F2 and backcross hybrids indicating gene flow is possible between the host races. A few flies developed and emerged on the alternative host plant. This demonstrates that genes necessary to utilize the alternative host exist in both host races. This could have facilitated the origin of one of the populations via a host shift from the ancestral host. The inheritance of survival ability appears to be an autosomal trait. We did not find evidence that survival ability was maternally influenced or sex linked.
The Effect of Antenna Physics on Fading Correlation and the Capacity of Multielement Antenna Systems

In this paper, we investigate the effects of antenna directivity and antenna orientation on fading correlation and, therefore, the channel capacity in multiple-input-multiple-output communication systems by means of a spherical simulation model. The correlation is caused by the mutual interaction of the scattering environment and antenna elements. To study the effect of antenna directivity and orientations on the correlation and channel capacity in a more realistic environment, we extend the ldquoone-ringrdquo model to a spherical scattering environment, which is appropriate for narrowband 3D Rayleigh fading. In our model, scatterers around a subscriber unit are distributed over a sphere centered on the antenna array in the subscriber unit. Antenna directivity is included in a precise way, and the antenna array can be placed in any orientation. Any type of antenna can be studied in the model. Through simulation, we find that directive antenna elements in linear broadside arrays make the channel capacity more strongly directive than when antenna elements are isotropic. Moreover, different antenna patterns and orientations have different outage capacities depending on the interaction of antenna directivities and the incident waves, which shows that the antenna pattern and orientation affect the channel capacity to some extent. In the uniformly scatter-rich environment, the microstrip antenna array can have 10% higher outage capacity than that of the dipole antenna array.
Association between obesity indices and type 2 diabetes mellitus among middle-aged and elderly people in Jinan, China: a cross-sectional study

Background The relationship between obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) varies with geographical area and race. Objectives To investigate the prevalence of T2DM and the proportion of subjects with undiagnosed T2DM. In addition, to compare the associations between different obesity indices and T2DM for middle-aged and elderly people from six communities in Jinan, China. Setting A cross-sectional study was designed and the study subjects were chosen from blocks which were randomly selected in the 6 communities of Jinan, China in 2011–2012. Participants A total of 3277 residents aged ≥50 years were eligible for this study, but 1563 people were excluded because they did not provide anthropometric data such as height, weight, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC) or information about their current medication use. Hence, 1714 participants were included in the final data analysis. Results The prevalence of T2DM among people aged ≥50 years was 16.6% (19.3% for men and 15.3% for women) and the proportion of patients with undiagnosed T2DM was 32.7%. Compared with the lowest levels of body mass index (BMI), WC, waist-to-hip ratio or waist-to-stature ratio (WSR), the ORs and 95% CIs of the highest levels for men, after adjusting for age, smoking, alcohol drinking, regular exercise, hypertension, TG and TC, were 1.607 (0.804 to 3.210), 2.189 (1.118 to 4.285), 1.873 (0.968 to 3.623) and 2.572 (1.301 to 5.083), respectively, and for women, 2.764 (1.622 to 4.712), 2.407 (1.455 to 3.985), 2.500 (1.484 to 4.211) and 2.452 (1.447 to 4.155), respectively. Conclusions Among adults aged ≥50 years in Jinan, China, the best indicator of the relationship between obesity and T2DM is WSR for men and BMI for women, respectively.
Controllability of a Leader-Follower Dynamic Network with Interaction Time Delays

This paper studies the controllability of a leader-follower network of dynamic agents in the presence of communication delays. The network dynamics is governed by nearest neighbor rules over a fixed communication topology. The leader is a particular agent acting as an external input to steer the other member agents. We derive sufficient conditions of the controllability of the dynamic network and give an example to illustrate the main results.
Management of Village Common Forests in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: Historical Background and Current Issues in Terms of Sustainability

This study was conducted to investigate the historical management system of village common forests (VCF) in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh and observe the current issues related to their sustainability. The study on historical context was based on secondary information to establish the linkages of VCF development and management in the CHT. Field visits to four VCF in the Bandarban Hill Districts were also conducted to cross check the information collected from secondary sources to observe the current status and management pattern of these VCF through semi-structured interviews, group discussion, key-informant interviews and biodiversity assessment. VCF in the CHT undoubtedly play an important role in biodiversity conservation and as well as supporting daily necessities of the community people. We found that VCF still are the source of fuel wood, herbs, roots, bamboo shoots, wild fruits, vines or leaves for cooking or medicinal use necessary to sustain the lives of the indigenous communities in the CHT. Field visits to different VCF show that the VCF are necessarily small in size (57 ha) and around 108 families are dependent on these community managed village forests. A total of 163 plant species from 60 families were also recorded from these VCF including some rare plant and animal species which are not usually found in the reserve forests and the un-classed state forests due to continued deforestation and land degradation. However, population pressure combined with improved marketing facilities, ignorance, over exploitation, personal greed, tenure insecurity, faulty government policies regarding settlement of land and breakdown of the traditional systems exerting pressures on these VCF and the overall condition of these important biodiversity rich areas are degrading or shrinking in size and number gradually. Recognizing the traditional and customary resource rights of the indigenous communities in the CHT, acknowledging resource management system, providing tenure security, encouraging communities through legal and financial incentives in protecting these VCF or any other state owned forest areas solely for the conservation of biodiversity following an intensive management plan, resolving long lasting land related conflicts, and at the same time upholding the spirit of CHT Peace Accord 1997 could be important policy tools for the sustainability of these VCF in the CHT. Lessons learned from this study will be useful in formulating effective policies for community based forest management in Bangladesh and other developing countries.