Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long‐term depression of C‐fibre‐evoked spinal field potentials by stimulation of primary afferent Aδ‐fibres in the adult rat

Long‐term potentiation (LTP) of spinal C‐fibre‐evoked field potentials can be induced by brief electrical stimulation of afferent C‐fibres, by natural noxious stimulation of skin or by acute nerve injury. Here, we report that in urethane anaesthetized, adult rats prolonged high frequency burst stimulation of the sciatic nerve at Aδ‐fibre strength produced long‐term depression (LTD) of C‐fibre‐evoked field potentials, and also depressed the increased amplitudes of C‐fibre‐evoked field potentials recorded after LTP had been established (depotentiation). Electrical stimulation of Aβ‐fibres failed to induce LTD or depotentiation. In spinalized rats, prolonged Aδ‐fibre conditioning stimulation induced LTP rather than LTD of C‐fibre‐evoked field potentials. Thus, tonic descending inhibition may determine the direction of plastic changes in C‐fibre‐mediated synaptic transmission. Spinal application of the N‐methyl‐d‐aspartic acid receptor antagonist D‐APV blocked induction of LTD in intact rats and LTP in spinalized rats. The presently described LTD and the depotentiation of established LTP of C‐fibre‐evoked field potentials in spinal dorsal horn may underlie some forms of prolonged analgesia induced by peripheral nerve stimulation procedures.
The art of the possible: experience and practice in health impact assessment in New South Wales.

Richard Seymour was appointed the first Inspector of Nuisances in Sydney in 1884. His work approving and inspecting opium dens, privies, abattoirs and tanneries contained many of the elements we now call health impact assessment (HIA). Indeed the entire corpus of planning and environmental protection legislation and the building codes have encoded provisions which are a distillation of the accumulated wisdom and prejudice formed in doing these assessments. In this article I have attempted to distil some of the lessons learned in the commissioning and conduct of environmental health impact assessments in NSW since 1990, in the hope that some of these at least will be of direct relevance to the conduct of HIA in other settings.
Visual design of physical user interfaces for NFC-based mobile interaction

Near Field Communication (NFC) can facilitate mobile interaction with everyday objects, associated digital information and ubiquitous services. Despite the simplicity of the touch-like interaction between mobile devices and tagged physical objects, most people are still unfamiliar with this physical interaction, resulting in various usability problems. In order to improve mobile interaction with NFC-tagged objects, that serve as physical user interfaces (UI), we examine various aspects of their visual design. We identify different phases of mobile interaction with tagged objects and apply a user centered design process to create and evaluate different symbols for these phases. We report on the iterative design of NFC-symbols and physical UIs using low- and high-fidelity prototyping and present the results of a user study which was carried out with an experience prototype for an advertising scenario.
Pattern-Wise Trust Assessment of Sensor Data

One of the most important tasks of a sensor network (SN) is to detect occurrences of interesting events in the monitored environment. However, data measured by SN is often affected by errors. We investigate the problem of assessing trustworthiness (trust) of a sensor value (tested value) in the presence of events and errors. A usual approach is to express the trust as a deviation of the tested value from a reference value (a normal value). State of the art approaches aim at defining the reference value in terms of a context consisting of values of spatially proximate sensors that are correlated with the tested value. However, they trade accuracy for simplicity and use a fixed context consisting of values of a fixed neighborhood (e.g., All values within a circular neighborhood of radius r). Therefore, such a fixed context fails in most practical cases by under or overestimating the reference values. We present the first pattern-wise method (PW) for trust assessment of sensor data that addresses the limitations of the state of the art approaches by departing from the idea of the fixed neighborhood. We consider a variable neighborhood that consists of an arbitrary subset of the spatially proximate sensors. We define the context as a frequent spatial pattern consisting of values of the variable neighborhood that frequently co-occurs with the tested value in the stream of sensor values. We define the trust as a belief (probability) that the tested value is correct given selected features of a frequent pattern consisting of the context and the tested value. We compute trust as the output of the logistic regression, where the input variables consist of the following features of the pattern: (I) the relative frequency, (II) the conditional probability of the tested value given the context and (III) the size of the variable neighborhood. Experimental results confirmed superiority of the proposed method over the state of the art method.
The Anatomy of Brexit Debate on Facebook

Nowadays users get informed and shape their opinion through social media. However, the disintermediated access to contents does not guarantee quality of information. Selective exposure and confirmation bias, indeed, have been shown to play a pivotal role in content consumption and information spreading. Users tend to select information adhering (and reinforcing) their worldview and to ignore dissenting information. This pattern elicits the formation of polarized groups -- i.e., echo chambers -- where the interaction with like-minded people might even reinforce polarization. In this work we address news consumption around Brexit in UK on Facebook. In particular, we perform a massive analysis on more than 1 Million users interacting with Brexit related posts from the main news providers between January and July 2016. We show that consumption patterns elicit the emergence of two distinct communities of news outlets. Furthermore, to better characterize inner group dynamics, we introduce a new technique which combines automatic topic extraction and sentiment analysis. We compare how the same topics are presented on posts and the related emotional response on comments finding significant differences in both echo chambers and that polarization influences the perception of topics. Our results provide important insights about the determinants of polarization and evolution of core narratives on online debating.
Queue performance measures for cognitive radios in spectrum sharing systems

This paper investigates the queuing system of a cognitive user who is trying to communicate, using spectrum sharing methods, over a channel reserved to a licensed user. For the cognitive user to use the channel, its transmission power should satisfy the outage probability requirement of the primary user. In this environment, the cognitive user is found to have an M/G/1 queue model, where the queue service rate is equal to the cognitive channel capacity. Some queue performance measures are investigated. These include the first two moments of the service time process, mean waiting and transit times, mean number of waiting and transit packets, mean duration of server busy period, and mean number of packets served during a busy period. We also investigate the effects of changing some of the communication environment parameters on the queue behavior.
Darwin: customizable resource management for value-added network services

The Internet is rapidly changing from a set of wires and switches that carry packets into a sophisticated infrastructure that delivers a set of complex value-added services to end users. Services can range from bit transport all the way up to distributed value-added services like video teleconferencing, data mining, and distributed interactive simulations. Before such services can be supported in a general and dynamic manner we have to develop appropriate resource management mechanisms. These resource management mechanisms must make it possible to identify and allocate resources that meet service or application requirements, support both isolation and controlled dynamic sharing of resources across organizations sharing physical resources, and be customizable so services and applications can tailor resource usage to optimize their performance. The Darwin project is developing a set of customizable resource management mechanisms that support value-added services, In this paper we present these mechanisms, describe their implementation in a prototype system, and describe the results of a series of proof-of-concept experiments.
Occurrence of streptomycin-dependent mutations in a streptomycin-resistant culture of Diplococcus pneumoniae

Attempts to find streptomycin-dependent (str-d) mutations in the sensitive SIII-1 strain of Diplococcus pneumoniae have been unsuccessful, for, if they occur at all, such mutations must arise with a frequency of <10-"1 (A. W. Ravin and A. K. Mishra, J. Bacteriol. 90:1161, 1965). Recently, however, dependent mutants were found in a culture of the resistant str-r3 strain, a mutant of the SIll-i strain having a maximal level of resistance to streptomycin of 150 ,ug/ml. These dependent mutants were found in a batch of frozen str-r3 cells which had been rendered competent to undergo transformation reactions. Three types of cells were found in this population: cells phenotypically like str-r3 (the predominant class), cells capable of resisting as much as 500 ,ug of streptomycin per ml, and cells dependent upon streptomycin. The second and third types occurred with frequencies of 1.2 X 10-5 and 6.8 x 10-6, respectively, in the culture in question. Figure 1 shows the colony-forming ability of two streptomycin-dependent strains, designated A58 and Cr3-1, which were isolated for further study. Both of these dependent mutants differ from the dependent str-dl strain (possessing a mutation of streptococcal origin) reported earlier (A. W. Ravin and A. K. Mishra, J. Bacteriol. 90:1161, 1965); unlike the str-dl strain, they can grow poorly in the absence of streptomycin, and they are also able to tolerate higher concentrations of the antibiotic than can str-dl. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was extracted from these streptomycin-dependent strains, and from another isolate, designated Cr3-2. The latter strain belonged to the type resisting 500 ,ug/ml of streptomycin. These DNA preparations were used to transform sensitive SIII-i cells (Table 1). DNA from strains A58 and Cr3-1 produced two classes of transformants: the str-r3 type, and cells dependent upon streptomycin. The streptomycin-dependent transformants produced in these transformation reactions were
Controller synthesis for assistive robotic device using twisted-string actuation

In this paper, an adaptive robust controller of assistive robotic device using a dual twisted-string actuation devices was synthesized. With the consideration of system uncertainties, nonlinear dynamics, and operational dead-zones, a compensation strategy for high accuracy motion control is integrated in the controller. The proposed controller not only accounts for the tracking performance but also minimizes synchronization errors of the dual-axial system. A test platform was designed to validate the performance of the proposed ARC controller, which can achieve tracking performance of individual twisted-string actuation and minimize the synchronization error simultaneously. The performance of the proposed ARC controller was compared with the outcome of regular PID controller as well.
Food web dynamics in the benthic habitat of a groundwater-fed, freshwater pond

Ponds, defined as inland waterbodies with small area < 50,000 m, are very numerous, and have important values for human being. However, many of the ponds around the world were threatened by a series of anthropogenic alterations of the surrounding environment, including land-use change and catchment development. Integrated understanding of ecosystem processes is required for better conservation of ponds. One critical ecosystem process is how organic carbon flows through components in the food web. Organic carbon transfer in ponds may differ from lakes or streams. Pelagic pathways of organic carbon transfer are thought to predominate in lakes, and allochthonous carbon is thought to provide the majority of organic carbon for consumers in food webs in streams. Epiphytes and filamentous algae, although often considered as symptoms for degradation of aquatic ecosystems, could be important basal resources for organisms in clear water ponds. We combined gut content analysis (GCA), stable isotope analysis (SIA) and fatty acid composition analysis to study carbon sources for animals in a groundwater-fed pond with very clear water and abundant macrophytes in the southeast of South Australia. MixSIAR model was used to interpret SIA results. Results confirmed that most macroinvertebrates and fish relied heavily on organic matter derived from epiphytes and filamentous cyanobacteria. One caddisfly larvae (Triplectidae sp.) and diving beetle (Antiporus sp.) derived their organic carbon from sources other than those sampled in this study, possibly methane-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) and terrestrial materials. Our study demonstrated that the combined use of several tracing techniques (GCA, SIA, and fatty acid composition analysis) was powerful in determining the trophic base of a complex food web. In addition, this tool kit provided new insights into
Bootstrapping navigation and path planning using human positional traces

Navigating and path planning in environments with limited a priori knowledge is a fundamental challenge for mobile robots. Robots operating in human-occupied environments must also respect sociocontextual boundaries such as personal workspaces. There is a need for robots to be able to navigate in such environments without having to explore and build an intricate representation of the world. In this paper, a method for supplementing directly observed environmental information with indirect observations of occupied space is presented. The proposed approach enables the online inclusion of novel human positional traces and environment information into a probabilistic framework for path planning. Encapsulation of sociocontextual information, such as identifying areas that people tend to use to move through the environment, is inherently achieved without supervised learning or labelling. Our method bootstraps navigation with indirectly observed sensor data, and leverages the flexibility of the Gaussian process (GP) for producing a navigational map that sampling based path planers such as Probabilistic Roadmaps (PRM) can effectively utilise. Empirical results on a mobile platform demonstrate that a robot can efficiently and socially-appropriately reach a desired goal by exploiting the navigational map in our Bayesian statistical framework.
THE RÔLE OF THE "WAX" OF THE TUBERCLE BACILLUS IN ESTABLISHING DELAYED HYPERSENSITIVITY

Guinea pigs sensitized with egg albumin along with the purified wax fraction of the human tubercle bacillus respond with delayed hypersensitive reactivity to the protein antigen. Previous publications have reported a similar activity of the wax with respect to tuberculoprotein and picryl chloride. The effect is not referable to an ordinary adjuvant activity of the bacillary wax, since antibody titers are not increased in animals which receive it, and since a known adjuvant, water-in-oil emulsion, has no effect with respect to the induction of delayed hypersensitivity. This report further extends the rôle of the tubercle bacillary wax in the induction of delayed hypersensitive states.
CyclinPred: A SVM-Based Method for Predicting Cyclin Protein Sequences

Functional annotation of protein sequences with low similarity to well characterized protein sequences is a major challenge of computational biology in the post genomic era. The cyclin protein family is once such important family of proteins which consists of sequences with low sequence similarity making discovery of novel cyclins and establishing orthologous relationships amongst the cyclins, a difficult task. The currently identified cyclin motifs and cyclin associated domains do not represent all of the identified and characterized cyclin sequences. We describe a Support Vector Machine (SVM) based classifier, CyclinPred, which can predict cyclin sequences with high efficiency. The SVM classifier was trained with features of selected cyclin and non cyclin protein sequences. The training features of the protein sequences include amino acid composition, dipeptide composition, secondary structure composition and PSI-BLAST generated Position Specific Scoring Matrix (PSSM) profiles. Results obtained from Leave-One-Out cross validation or jackknife test, self consistency and holdout tests prove that the SVM classifier trained with features of PSSM profile was more accurate than the classifiers based on either of the other features alone or hybrids of these features. A cyclin prediction server- CyclinPred has been setup based on SVM model trained with PSSM profiles. CyclinPred prediction results prove that the method may be used as a cyclin prediction tool, complementing conventional cyclin prediction methods.
Recent Insights into the Contribution of the Changing Hypertrophic Chondrocyte Phenotype in the Development and Progression of Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is an extremely prevalent age-related condition. The economic and societal burden due to the cost of symptomatic treatment, inability to work, joint replacement, and rehabilitation is huge and increasing. Currently, there are no effective medical therapies that delay or reverse the pathological manifestations of OA. Current treatment options are, without exception, focused on slowing down progression of the disease to postpone total joint replacement surgery for as long as possible and keeping the associated pain and joint immobility manageable. Alterations in the articular cartilage chondrocyte phenotype might be fundamental in the pathological mechanisms of OA development. In many ways, the changing chondrocyte phenotype in osteoarthritic cartilage resembles the process of endochondral ossification as seen, for instance, in developing growth plates. However, the relative contribution of endochondral ossification to the changing chondrocyte phenotype in the development and progression of OA remains poorly described. In this review, we will discuss the current knowledge regarding the cartilage endochondral phenotypic changes occurring during OA development and progression, as well as the molecular and environmental effectors driving these changes. Understanding how these molecular mechanisms determine the chondrocyte cell fate in OA will be essential in enabling cartilage regenerative approaches in future treatments of OA.
Characterization of Atmospheric Profile Retrievals From Limb Sounding Observations of an Inhomogeneous Atmosphere

Limb sounders measure atmospheric radiation that is dependent on a radial and angular distribution of temperature and atmospheric constituents. Based on this dependency, we perform and characterize both two dimensional (radial and angular) and one dimensional (vertical) limb profile retrievals of a distribution of carbon monoxide (CO), which represents a simulated plume off the coast of south-east Asia. Both the one dimensional (1-D) and two dimensional (2-D) limb retrievals are characterized by evaluating their averaging kernels and error covariances on a radial and angular grid that spans the plume. This 2-D characterization allows the radial and angular resolution as well as the degrees of freedom and information content to be computed for these limb retrievals. We apply this 2-D characterization of a limb retrieval to a comparison of the 2D retrieval with the 1-D (vertical) retrieval. We find the information content for the 2-D retrieval is an order of magnitude larger than that of the 1-D retrieval and the degrees of freedom is about a factor of two larger. We also use the 2-D averaging kernel to develop a strategy for validation of a limb retrieval with an in-situ measurement.
Programming robotic agents with action descriptions

This paper tackles the problem of generalizing robot control programs over multiple objects, tasks and environments, based on the concept of action descriptions. These are abstract, general, semantic descriptions of an action that are augmented during execution with subsymbolic parameters specific to the context at hand. The parameters are inferred through reasoning rules, which extract the context from the action description and the belief state of the robot. The proposed system scales well with increasing number of reasoning rules required to support the knowledge-intensive manipulation tasks. The architecture combines the high-level robot control program with the reasoning engine in a modular way, thus improving the scalability of the system. The approach is validated in the context of setting a table with a PR2 robot.
Occurrence of a specific dual symbiosis in the excretory organ of geographically distant Nautiloids populations.

Nautilus is one of the most intriguing of all sea creatures, sharing morphological similarities with the extinct forms of coiled cephalopods that evolved since the Cambrian (542-488 mya). Further, bacterial symbioses found in their excretory organ are of particular interest as they provide a great opportunity to investigate the influence of host-microbe interactions upon the origin and evolution of an innovative nitrogen excretory system. To establish the potential of Nautilus excretory organ as a new symbiotic system, it is, however, necessary to assess the specificity of this symbiosis and whether it is consistent within the different species of present-day Nautiloids. By addressing the phylogeny and distribution of bacterial symbionts in three Nautilus populations separated by more than 6000 km (N. pompilius from Philippines and Vanuatu, and N. macromphalus from New Caledonia), this study confirms the specificity of this dual symbiosis involving the presence of betaproteobacteria and spirochaete symbionts on a very wide geographical area. Overall, this work sheds further light on Nautiloids excretory organ as an innovative system of interaction between bacteria and cephalopods.
[Gastric cancer].

The stomach is a sac-like organ located between the esophagus and small intestine. The stomach aids in digestion and stores food. Anatomically, the stomach has been broken down into 5 different regions: cardia, fundus, body, antrum, and pylorus (see below). The stomach is also composed of 5 different tissue layers: mucosa, submucosa, muscularis, subserosa, and serosa. The more layers a cancer invades, the worse its prognosis. 1 [ ] 2 [ ]