Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subplate Neurons: Crucial Regulators of Cortical Development and Plasticity

The developing cerebral cortex contains a distinct class of cells, subplate neurons, which form one of the first functional cortical circuits. Subplate neurons reside in the cortical white matter, receive thalamic inputs and project into the developing cortical plate, mostly to layer 4. Subplate neurons are present at key time points during development. Removal of subplate neurons profoundly affects cortical development. Subplate removal in visual cortex prevents the maturation of thalamocortical synapse, the maturation of inhibition in layer 4, the development of orientation selective responses in individual cortical neurons, and the formation of ocular dominance columns. In addition, monocular deprivation during development reveals that ocular dominance plasticity is paradoxical in the absence of subplate neurons. Because subplate neurons projecting to layer 4 are glutamatergic, these diverse deficits following subplate removal were hypothesized to be due to lack of feed-forward thalamic driven cortical excitation. A computational model of the developing thalamocortical pathway incorporating feed-forward excitatory subplate projections replicates both normal development and plasticity of ocular dominance as well as the effects of subplate removal. Therefore, we postulate that feed-forward excitatory projections from subplate neurons into the developing cortical plate enhance correlated activity between thalamus and layer 4 and, in concert with Hebbian learning rules in layer 4, allow maturational and plastic processes in layer 4 to commence. Thus subplate neurons are a crucial regulator of cortical development and plasticity, and damage to these neurons might play a role in the pathology of many neurodevelopmental disorders.
Ingestion and Adsorption of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis by Gammarus lacustris in the Laboratory

Several groups of Gammarus lacustris adults were exposed to solutions containing 0.5 and 5.0 mg of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis per liter for 1- or 24-h periods by using traditional static bioassay exposure procedures. During a postexposure holding period, fecal pellets were removed and plated on tryptic soy agar to determine B. thuringiensis subsp. israelensis spore content. The experiments verified that traditional exposure procedures assure ingestion of B. thuringiensis subsp. israelensis spores and provided a mean dose estimate of 1,948 spores ingested per test animal with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 891 to 4,296 (1-h exposure, 5.0 mg/liter). It was also found that dose level is highly dependent upon both exposure duration and concentration and that relatively short exposures can result in a relatively long-term retention of spores postexposure (≥30 days). Body burden experiments established that large numbers of spores adsorb to the bodies of test animals during exposure and may in part explain the long-term retention of spores in the test system postexposure. These results imply that in field applications of microbial control agents, toxicologically unaffected but exposed organisms might transport the agent to untreated sites, expanding the effective treatment area and the number of organisms exposed.
Behavioral Correlates of Deception in a Simulated Police Interview

Nonverbal indicators of deception in a simulated police interview were examined, particularly the relationship between arm and hand movements and deception, an area in which conflicting results have previously been found. Therefore, in this study, I adopted a more detailed scoring system of arm and hand movements and introduced a baseline interview. Results showed a decrease in subtle hand and finger movements during deception, and thus strongly supported the assumption that subjects try to control their behavior during deception but that this attempted control is only partly successful.
A Novel Wireless Sensor Network Architecture for Crowd Disaster Mitigation

Disasters aroused due to dynamic movement of large, uncontrollable crowds are ever increasing. The inherent realtime dynamics of crowd need to be tightly monitored and alerted to avoid such disasters. Most of the existing crowd monitoring systems is difficult to deploy, maintain, and dependent on single component failure. This research work proposes novel network architecture based on the key technologies of wireless sensor network and mobile computing for the effective prediction of causes of crowd disaster particularly stampedes in the crowd and thereby alerting the crowd controlling station to take appropriate actions in time. In the current implemented version of the proposed architecture, the smart phones act as wireless sensor nodes to estimate the probability of occurrence of stampede using data fusion and analysis of embedded sensors such as tri-axial accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS, light sensors etc. The implementation of the proposed architecture in smart phones provides light weight, easy to deploy, context aware wireless services for effective crowd disaster mitigation.
Influence of magnetic saturation on rotor bar current waveform and performance in induction machines

This paper investigates the influence of magnetic saturation on the rotor bar current waveform and performance characteristics of a squirrel-cage Induction Machine (IM). The levels of iron saturation in different parts, including stator and rotor back iron, tooth body and tooth tips etc., are examined and their influences are investigated, while the dominant part which causes the non-sinusoidal rotor bar current waveform is identified. It has revealed that the magnetic saturation, particularly in the rotor tooth, has a significant effect on the bar current waveform and the phenomenon is explained in depth.
Urban and Regional Planning

URBAN and regional planning aims essentially to create suitable physical environment conducive to healthy community life. It is no longer, 'the civic art' as it was before. It is now a distinct discipline, which analyses the complex human activities in order to achieve a rational use of land in towns and countryside. Town and regional planners aim at an orderly and integrated development of villages, cities and regions and thus have to operate within the legal frame-work pertaining to the development of land. Fiscal programming and capital budgeting and important aspects of urban and regional plans.
Atypical antipsychotic use and risk of fracture in persons with Parkinsonism

Our objective was to estimate the effect of atypical antipsychotics (AAs) on the rate of fractures in a parkinsonism population. We conducted an age‐ and state‐matched nested case‐control study in five states (CA, FL, NY, OH, IL) using the Medicaid analytic extract from 2001 to 2002. Eligible participants had a diagnosis of parkinsonism, excluding persons with secondary parkinsonism, bone cancer, bone infections, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and those who used conventional antipsychotics. The primary outcome was the occurrence of a fracture of the femur, ankle, fibula, tibia, humerus, radius, or ulna (N = 851). Risk‐set sampling defined controls (N = 4220). We used conditional‐logistic regression to derive adjusted odds ratios (AOR) and 95% confidence intervals of the association between fracture and use of quetiapine, risperidone, or olanzapine in the 60 days before the index date compared to nonuse. After adjustment for confounding, use of quetiapine (AOR 2.4; 95% CI 1.5–3.8), risperidone (AOR 1.2; 95% CI 0.9–1.7), or olanzapine (AOR 1.7; 95% CI 1.2–2.4) was associated with a higher rate of fracture. Use of an AA was associated with a higher rate of fracture in persons with parkinsonism. Prescribers must be cautious when using these agents in elderly persons with parkinsonism. © 2009 Movement Disorder Society
« Miroirs de l'autorégulation de l'apprentissage : les dilemmes des formateurs d'enseignants »

Les formateurs d’enseignants font face a des demandes croissantes concernant la promotion et l’autoregulation des apprentissages de leurs etudiants. De telles demandes peuvent entrainer plusieurs dilemmes professionnels resultant de conflits de croyances et de conditions d’enseignement qui prevalent. La presente etude examine comment les formateurs d’enseignants sont engages dans la promotion de l’autoregulation de l’apprentissage, dans le contexte neerlandais de formation des enseignants. Cette etude examine le sens que revet pour les formateurs d’enseignants, une utilisation active des approches de l’autoregulation de l’apprentissage. Elle degage plusieurs dilemmes professionnels auxquels font face les formateurs d’enseignants. Les difficultes que ces derniers vivent lors de l’implantation d’une telle approche semblent etre liees a leurs propres orientations, experiences et reflexions professionnelles.
Task Performance and Contextual Performance: The Meaning for Personnel Selection Research

This article distinguishes between task and contextual activities, and a taxonomy of contextual performance containing elements of organizational citizenship behavior and prosocial organizational behavior is offered. Evidence is presented demonstrating that supervisors weight roughly equally subordinate task and contextual performance when making overall judgments of their performance. This, along with data showing that personality successfully predicts contextual performance, provides an alternative explanation for recent meta-analytic findings that personality correlates moderately with overall performance. Personality may be predicting the contextual component of overall performance. Results from studies using the Hogan Personality Inventory confirm that correlations between personality and contextual criteria are higher than correlations between personality and overall performance. We argue that finding such links between predictors and individual criterion elements significantly advances the science .
Investigating the validity of an integrated listening-speaking task: A discourse-based analysis of test takers’ oral performances

Performance on integrated tasks requires candidates to engage skills and strategies beyond language proficiency alone, in ways that can be difficult to define and measure for testing purposes. While it has been widely recognized that stimulus materials impact test performance, our understanding of the way in which test takers make use of these materials in their responses, particularly in the context of listening-speaking tasks, remains predominantly intuitive. Recent studies have highlighted the problems associated with content-related aspects of task fulfilment on integrated tasks, but little attempt has been made to operationalize the way in which content from the input material is integrated into speaking performances. Using discourse data from a trial administration of a pilot for an Oxford English language test, this paper investigates how test takers integrate stimulus materials into their speaking performances on an integrated listening-then-speaking summary task, whether these behaviours are reflected in the relevant rating scale and, by implication, whether the test scores assigned according to this scale reflect real differences in the quality of oral performances. An innovative discourse analytic approach was developed to analyse content-related aspects of performance in order to determine if such aspects represent an appropriate measure of the speaking ability construct. Results showed that the measures devised, such as the number of key points included from the input text, and the accuracy with which information was reproduced or reformulated, effectively distinguished participants according to their level of speaking proficiency. The study’s findings support the use of this particular task-type and the appropriateness of the associated rating scale as a measure of speaking proficiency, as well as the utility of the devised discourse-based measures for the validation of integrated tasks in other assessment contexts.
Asian Conflicts and the Iraq War

This study examines the news coverage of the Iraq War and Asian conflicts by eight newspapers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines to compare the framing of two different levels of conflicts – international and local. Based on Galtung's war/peace journalism framework, a content analysis of 1558 stories on the Iraq War and the Asian conflicts involving Pakistan and India's tussle over Kashmir, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippine province of Mindanao and the Aceh and Maluku civil wars in Indonesia showed that the Asian newspapers used a war journalism frame in covering local conflicts but deployed a peace journalism frame in covering the Iraq War. Hard news stories were dominated by war journalism framing, while features and opinion pieces were dominated by peace journalism framing. Foreign-sourced stories from wire services contained more war journalism frames and fewer peace journalism frames than locally produced stories written by the newspapers' own correspondents.
Principal Components of Gradient Distribution for Aerial Images Segmentation

Aerial images segmentation is a principal task in many applications of remote sensing such as natural disaster monitoring, residential area detection and etc. This paper presents a new method for aerial images segmentation. The method can distinct urban terrains from non-urban terrains using a supervised learning algorithm. Extracted feature for image description is based on principal components analysis of gradient distribution. The proposed method tested on several aerial images of Google Earth taken by satellite and results show that it can segment these images with high accuracy and very fast speed.
Policy optimization for dynamic power management

Dynamic power management schemes (also called policies) can be used to control the power consumption levels of electronic systems, by setting their components in different states, each characterized by a performance level and a power consumption. In this paper, we describe power-managed systems using a finite-state, stochastic model. Furthermore, we show that the fundamental problem of finding an optimal policy which maximizes the average performance level of a system, subject to a constraint on the power consumption, can be formulated as a stochastic optimization problem called policy optimization. Policy optimization can be solved exactly in polynomial time (in the number of states of the model). We implemented a policy optimization tool and tested the quality of the optimal policies on a realistic case study.
The Accommodating Function: A Generalization of the Competitive Ratio

A new measure, the accommodating function, for the quality of on-line algorithms is presented. The accommodating function, which is a generalization of both the competitive ratio and the competitive ratio on accommodating sequences, measures the quality of an on-line algorithm as a function of the resources that would be sufficient for an optimal off-line algorithm to fully grant all requests. More precisely, if we have some amount of resources n, the function value at $\alpha$ is the usual ratio (still on some fixed amount of resources n), except that input sequences are restricted to those where the optimal off-line algorithm will not obtain a better result by having more than the amount $\alpha n$ of resources. The accommodating functions for three specific on-line problems are investigated: a variant of bin packing in which the goal is to maximize the number of items put in n bins, the seat reservation problem, and the problem of optimizing total flow time when preemption is allowed. We also show that when trying to distinguish between two algorithms, the decision as to which one performs better cannot necessarily be made from the competitive ratio or the competitive ratio on accommodating sequences alone. For the variant of bin-packing considered, we show that Worst-Fit has a strictly better competitive ratio than First-Fit, while First-Fit has a strictly better competitive ratio on accommodating sequences than Worst-Fit.
Contribution of the opioid system to alcohol aversion and alcohol drinking behavior.

The effect of blocking delta opioid receptors on alcohol aversion was examined in female alcohol-preferring (P) rats using a conditioned taste aversion (CTA) paradigm. In experiment 1, alcohol naive P rats were given i.p injections of 0.5, 1.0 or 1.5 g alcohol/kg BW or saline, paired with consumption of a banana-flavored solution during 5 conditioning trials. Alcohol in a dose of 0.5 g/kg was not aversive while the two higher doses (1.0 and 1.5 g/kg) were both aversive in the CTA paradigm. In experiment 2, the effect of the selective delta opioid receptor antagonist, naltrindole (NTI), on alcohol aversion was examined. Rats were pretreated with NTI in doses of 2.5, 5.0, 10.0 or 20.0 mg/kg before conditioning using the nonaversive dose of alcohol from Experiment 1. As in experiment 1, the 0.5 g/kg dose of alcohol did not produce a CTA. Administration of NTI alone in doses of 2.5, 5.0 or 10.0 mg/kg did not produce a CTA. However, when the nonaversive dose of alcohol (0.5 g/kg) was combined with NTI in a dose of either 5.0 or 10.0 mg/kg, an aversion to alcohol was seen. The highest dose of NTI (20 mg/kg) produced a CTA when given either alone and in combination with alcohol. The results indicate that blocking the action of opioid peptides at the delta opioid receptor can make a nonaversive dose of alcohol aversive which suggests that opioid peptides, acting via the delta opioid receptor, play an important role in regulating alcohol aversion.
“Development of the Gender Minority Stress and Resilience Measure.”: Correction.

Researchers currently lack a reliable and valid means of assessing minority stress and resilience factors in transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) people. This study was conducted to develop and evaluate the validity of a tool to better assess these constructs in TGNC populations. The Gender Minority Stress and Resilience (GMSR) measure was developed grounded on Meyer’s minority stress model, and adjusted to reflect the experiences of TGNC populations based on TGNC literature and archival data from TGNC focus groups. The final GMSR includes scales assessing 9 constructs: gender-related discrimination, gender-related rejection, gender-related victimization, nonaffirmation of gender identity, internalized transphobia, negative expectations for future events, nondisclosure, community connectedness, and pride. In the current study, 844 participants completed the GMSR measure as well as measures related to mental health, general life stress, and social support. Results indicated good model fit, criterion validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity for the 9 hypothesized scales. Discriminant validity for the scales were also partially supported. Overall, the current study offers preliminary evidence of the reliability and validity of the GMSR Measure for use with TGNC populations. The GMSR Measure has several uses for both research and clinical purposes, including increasing understanding of the experiences and correlates of gender minority stress and resilience factors and assessing whether specific therapies or interventions are helpful in reducing risk and supporting resilience in TGNC populations.
Reconceptualizing career success

A cursory search of the literature yields literally thousands of books and articles about career success in one form or another. Even when the search is narrowed to social science journal articles combining 'career' and 'success,' well over 1000 "hits" can be obtained from sources such as ISI's Social Sciences Citation Index and PsycINFO. Perhaps this should not be any great surprise, considering how central the word 'success' is to life in Western society. Few questions stop one in one's tracks as effectively as: "Am I successful? ", "Have I been a failure? ", or "What has been the price of my success? "
La violencia delincuencial asociada a la salud mental en la población salvadoreña

El presente es un estudio expos facto con un diseno retrospectivo y transeccional, que considero una muestra probabilistica de 1,143 personas (538 hombres y 605 mujeres) con un rango de edad entre 17 y 56 anos o mas. Los instrumentos de medida fueron la Escala de estres y ansiedad delincuencial, y el Cuestionario de salud general. Los resultados revelaron que aproximadamente las tres cuartas partes de la muestra considero que el contexto de violencia delincuencial afecto su salud mental. Existen diferencias entre hombres y mujeres. Las mujeres y los residentes urbanos presentaron mayor numero de sintomas de estres y ansiedad delincuencial. Se sugieren recomendaciones para estudios futuros
Association of Metronidazole Resistance and Natural Competence in Helicobacter pylori

ABSTRACT To study whether the capability of horizontal DNA transfer is associated with metronidazole resistance in Helicobacter pylori, a total of 81 clinical isolates were tested for MICs of metronidazole (MTZ). The MIC assays were performed by using the E-test and reconfirmed by the agar dilution method. Natural competence assays were performed by transferring a chloramphenicol acetyltransferase cassette and a 23S rRNA gene from a clarithromycin-resistant strain (with an A-to-G mutation at nucleotide 2143) by using natural transformation. Of the 81 isolates, 65 (80.2%) were naturally competent while 16 were not. Among the 65 naturally competent strains, 39 (60%) were highly resistant to MTZ (MICs, >32 μg/ml) while only 2 of 16 (12.5%) noncompetent strains were highly MTZ resistant (P, <0.001). Therefore, there is an association between natural competence and MTZ resistance.
Relationships Between First and Second Language Phonological Processing Skills and Reading in Chinese‐English Speakers living in English‐Speaking Contexts

The relationships between phoneme categorisation, phonological processing, and reading performance were examined in Chinese‐English speaking children in an English‐speaking environment. Second language (L2, i.e., English) phonological processing but not phoneme categorisation was related to L2 reading. First language (L1) oral language skills were related to Chinese reading with L1 phonological processing being related to the Chinese reading task with a strong phonological component (pseudocharacter reading). L1 phoneme categorisation skill was not strongly related to L1 reading. These findings suggest that phonological processing is related to reading tasks with heavy phonological demands, such as reading in an alphabetic orthography or pseudocharacter reading in a nonalphabetic orthography. Exposure to L1 reading might influence processes used by Chinese‐speaking children in an English‐speaking environment.