Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pain, hyperalgesia and activity in nociceptive C units in humans after intradermal injection of capsaicin.

1. Capsaicin, the potent algesic substance in chilli peppers, was applied topically to, or injected intradermally into or outside, the receptive fields of 14 C mechanoheat (polymodal) nociceptor units in awake humans. The nociceptor discharges were recorded using microelectrodes inserted into the peroneal nerve. Simultaneously, the subjects estimated the magnitude of pain as a function of time during the first 1.5‐3 min after injection. Magnitude estimates of pain produced by heat and/or mechanical stimuli were also obtained before and after capsaicin in order to assess the magnitude of cutaneous hyperalgesia. 2. An injection within or adjacent to, but not greater than 4 mm outside, the receptive fields of C nociceptor units evoked discharges. The magnitude of pain and the mean discharge rate of the units were both maximal on injection, declining rapidly over the next 1‐3 min, which indicates that these nociceptors contribute to the magnitude and duration of pain evoked by capsaicin injection. 3. Reduced or abolished excitability in C nociceptors after capsaicin injection within the receptive fields correlated with analgesia at the injection site. 4. Capsaicin injection produced a wide surround area of mechanical hyperalgesia, i.e. pain on gently stroking the skin or abnormally intense pain on punctate stimulation. Nevertheless, the injections did not lower the thresholds or enhance the responses to such mechanical stimuli of C nociceptor units with their receptive fields in this hyperalgesic area. 5. Topical application of capsaicin evoked on‐going discharges in four units tested. Both nociceptor response thresholds and pain thresholds were lowered for heat from 45 to 35 degrees C. A newly developed weak response to stroking the skin in two units after capsaicin was accompanied by faint pain. 6. On‐going activity in sensitized C nociceptors and concomitant pain were effectively reduced by cooling the skin in the receptive area. 7. It is concluded that activity in C mechanoheat (polymodal) nociceptors contributes to the magnitude and duration of pain evoked by intradermal injection of capsaicin. The after‐effects of capsaicin on C nociceptor excitability depend on concentration: high concentration (by injection) leads to desensitization, whereas low concentration (by topical application) leads to sensitization. On‐going discharges and lowered response thresholds to heat in these units after topical application of capsaicin correlates with background pain as well as lowered pain thresholds to heat of the affected skin (primary hyperalgesia). The unchanged responsiveness of C nociceptors in the skin well outside the injection area indicates that central rather than peripheral sensitization accounts for the observed mechanical hyperalgesia in this region (secondary hyperalgesia).
Prosodic marking of semantic contrasts: Do speakers adapt to addressees?

Prosodic marking of semantic contrasts: do speakers adapt to addressees? describes a series of psycholinguistic experiments on the extent to which speakers adapt to addressees by using contrastive intonation. Four studies have been carried out to investigate prosodic adaptation processes of different kinds. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 report studies on the extent to which speakers, in the way they prosodically mark semantic contrasts, account for the knowledge state of their addressees. Chapter 4 and 5 report studies on the extent to which paralinguistic prosodic adaptation processes between interlocutors affect the prosodic marking of semantic contrasts. The experimental approach throughout the thesis consists of eliciting speech recordings which are analyzed by production and perception measures.
Correcting for Cryptic Relatedness in Genome-Wide Association Studies

While the individuals chosen for a genome-wide association study (GWAS) may not be closely related to each other, there can be distant (cryptic) relationships that confound the evidence of disease association. These cryptic relationships violate the GWAS assumption regarding the independence of the subjects' genomes, and failure to account for these relationships results in both false positives and false negatives. This paper presents a method to correct for these cryptic relationships. We accurately detect distant relationships using an expectation maximization (EM) algorithm for finding the identity coefficients from genotype data with know prior knowledge of relationships. From the identity coefficients we compute the kinship coefficients and employ a kinship-corrected association test. We assess the accuracy of our EM kinship estimation algorithm. We show that on genomes simulated from a Wright-Fisher pedigree, our method converges quickly and requires only a relatively small number of sites to be accurate. We also demonstrate that our kinship coefficient estimates outperform state-of-the-art covariance-based approaches and PLINK's kinship estimate. To assess the kinship-corrected association test, we simulated individuals from deep pedigrees and drew one site to recessively determine the disease status. We applied our EM algorithm to estimate the kinship coefficients and ran a kinship-adjusted association test. Our approach compares favorably with the state-of-the-art and far out-performs a na\"ive association test. We advocate use of our method to detect cryptic relationships and for correcting association tests. Not only is our model easy to interpret due to the use of identity states as latent variables, but also inference provides state-of-the-art accuracy.
Web Engineering: Creating a Discipline among Disciplines

Web engineering is a discipline among disciplines, cutting across computer science, information systems, and software engineering, as well as benefiting from several non-IT specializations. Intertwining so many disciplines presents a unique problem for organization and development. The authors discuss Web engineering's classification, define its characteristics, and contrast its present issues with previous problems in information technology.
Identification of conformational antigenic epitopes and dominant amino acids of buffalo β-lactoglobulin.

Major allergen β-lactoglobulin exists in many mammalian types of milk except human breast. Buffalo milk also contains this major allergen but the detailed information on its epitopes is not available. The aim of this work was to map and characterize its conformational antigenic epitopes. Sixty mimotopes of buffalo β-lactoglobulin were produced by biopanning of phage display peptide library and then 2 mimotopes, specific for sera from rabbit 1 and 2, respectively, were predicted to be conformational epitope candidates by the use of DNAStar and web tool of MIMOX. On the basis of bioinformation analysis, 5 conserved amino acid residues PL-ENK were identified in 2 conformational epitope sequences and 7 conformational epitopes were derived from 2 mimotopes by molecular modeling. The result showed that these conformational epitopes were located in the 2 regions on buffalo β-lactoglobulin and composed of 5 hydrophilic and 2 hydrophobic amino acids.
Efficient Eye Blink Detection Method for disabled- helping domain

In this paper, we present a real time method based on some video and image processing algorithms for eye blink detection. The motivation of this research is the need of disabling who cannot control the calls with human mobile interaction directly without the need of hands. A Haar Cascade Classifier is applied for face and eye detection for getting eye and facial axis information. In addition, the same classifier is used based on Haar- like features to find out the relationship between the eyes and the facial axis for positioning the eyes. An efficient eye tracking method is proposed which uses the position of detected face. Finally, an eye blinking detection based on eyelids state (close or open) is used for controlling android mobile phones. The method is used with and without smoothing filter to show the improvement of detection accuracy. The application is used in real time for studying the effect of light and distance between the eyes and the mobile device in order to evaluate the accuracy detection and overall accuracy of the system. Test results show that our proposed method provides a 98% overall accuracy and 100% detection accuracy for a distance of 35 cm and an artificial light.
TGF-Beta Induced Erk Phosphorylation of Smad Linker Region Regulates Smad Signaling

The Transforming Growth Factor-Beta (TGF-β) family is involved in regulating a variety of cellular processes such as apoptosis, differentiation, and proliferation. TGF-β binding to a Serine/Threonine kinase receptor complex causes the recruitment and subsequent activation of transcription factors known as smad2 and smad3. These proteins subsequently translocate into the nucleus to negatively or positively regulate gene expression. In this study, we define a second signaling pathway leading to TGF-β receptor activation of Extracellular Signal Regulated Kinase (Erk) in a cell-type dependent manner. TGF-β induced Erk activation was found in phenotypically normal mesenchymal cells, but not normal epithelial cells. By activating phosphotidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), TGF-β stimulates p21-activated kinase2 (Pak2) to phosphorylate c-Raf, ultimately resulting in Erk activation. Activation of Erk was necessary for TGF-β induced fibroblast replication. In addition, Erk phosphorylated the linker region of nuclear localized smads, resulting in increased half-life of C-terminal phospho-smad 2 and 3 and increased duration of smad target gene transcription. Together, these data show that in mesenchymal cell types the TGF-β/PI3K/Pak2/Raf/MEK/Erk pathway regulates smad signaling, is critical for TGF-β-induced growth and is part of an integrated signaling web containing multiple interacting pathways rather than discrete smad/non-smad pathways.
Burden of HIV among primary school children and feasibility of primary school-linked HIV testing in Harare, Zimbabwe: A mixed methods study

Population-based surveys in Southern Africa suggest a substantial burden of undiagnosed HIV-infected long-term survivors of mother-to-child transmission. We conducted an HIV prevalence survey of primary school pupils in Harare, Zimbabwe, and evaluated school-linked HIV counselling and testing (HCT) for pupils, their families and schoolteachers. Population-weighted cluster sampling was used to select six primary schools. Randomly selected class-grade pupils underwent anonymous HIV testing, with concurrent school-linked family HCT offered during the survey. Focus group discussions and interviews were conducted with pupils, parents/guardians, counsellors, and schoolteachers. About 4386 (73%) pupils provided specimens for anonymous HIV testing. Median age was 9 years (IQR 8–11), and 54% were female. HIV prevalence was 2.7% (95% CI: 2.2–3.1) with no difference by gender. HIV infection was significantly associated with orphanhood, stunting, wasting, and being one or more class grades behind in school due to illness (p<0.001). After adjusting for covariates, orphanhood and stunting remained significantly associated with being HIV positive (p<0.001). Uptake of diagnostic HIV testing by pupils was low with only 47/4386 (1%) pupils undergoing HCT. The HIV prevalence among children under 15 years who underwent HIV testing was 6.8%. The main barrier to HIV testing was parents' fear of their children experiencing stigma and of unmasking their own HIV status should the child test HIV positive. Most guardians believed that a child's HIV-positive result should not be disclosed and the child could take HIV treatment without knowing the reason. Increased recognition of the high burden of undiagnosed HIV infection in children is needed. Despite awareness of the benefits of HIV testing, HIV-related stigma still dominates parents/guardians' psychological landscape. There is need for comprehensive information and support for families to engage with HIV testing services.
Evaluating Multilingual Question Answering Systems at CLEF

The paper offers an overview of the key issues raised during the seven years activity of the Multilingual Question Answering Track at the Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF). The general aim of the Multilingual Question Answering Track has been to test both monolingual and cross-language Question Answering (QA) systems that process queries and documents in several European languages, also drawing attention to a number of challenging issues for research in multilingual QA. The paper gives a brief description of how the task has evolved over the years and of the way in which the data sets have been created, presenting also a brief summary of the different types of questions developed. The document collections adopted in the competitions are sketched as well, and some data about the participation are provided. Moreover, the main evaluation measures used to evaluate system performances are explained and an overall analysis of the results achieved is presented.
animal d 13 C as a marker to study digesta passage kinetics in ruminants : a combined in vivo and in vitro study

The aim of the current study was to explore the use of the tracer C as an internal marker to assess feed fraction-specific digesta passage kinetics through the digestive tract of dairy cows. Knowledge on feed-specific fractional passage rates is essential to improve estimations on the extent of rumen degradation and microbial protein efficiency; however, this information is largely lacking. An in vivo and in vitro experiment was conducted with grass silages ( Lolium perenne L.) that were enriched with C by growing the grass under elevated CO2 conditions. In a crossover design, two dairy cows received pulse doses of two C-enriched grass silages and chromium-mordanted neutral detergent fibre (Cr-NDF) into the rumen. The two C-enriched grass silages used differed in digestibility and were grown under identical field conditions as the bulk silages fed to the animals. Faecal excretion patterns of C-enriched dry matter (C-DM), neutral detergent fibre (C-NDF) and Cr-NDF were established, and a nonlinear multicompartmental model was used to determine their rumen passage kinetics. In addition, the C-enriched silages were incubated in rumen liquid in an in vitro batch culture system at different time intervals to determine the effect of fermentation on C-enrichment in the residue. The in vitro study showed that the C : C ratios in DM and NDF residues remained stable from 24 h of incubation onwards. In addition, in vitro fractional degradation rates for C in the DM and NDF did not differ from those of C, indicating that fermentative degradation does not affect the C : C ratio in the DM nor in the NDF fraction of the residue. Model fits to the faecal excretion curves showed a significant difference in fractional rumen passage rates between Cr-NDF, C-DM and C-NDF (P < 0.025). Silage type had no clear effect on rumen passage kinetics (P > 0.081). Moreover, it showed that peak enrichments for C-DM and C-NDF in faeces were reached at 30.7 and 41.7 h post dosing, respectively. This is well after the time (24 h) when the C : C ratios of the in vitro unfermented residues have reached stable enrichment level. Fractional rate constants for particle passage from the rumen are estimated from the descending slope of faecal excretion curves. The present study shows that the decline in C : C ratio after peak enrichment is not affected by fermentative degradation and therefore can be used to assess feed component-specific fractional passage rates.
Wearable Power Source: A Newfangled Feasibility for Perovskite Photovoltaics

With the booming advances in wearable electronics and perovskite photovoltaics, flexible perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have emerged as promising candidates for self-power sources to sustainably drive next-generation electronics. Wearable PSCs must simultaneously exhibit high power efficiency, low weight, environmental stability, flexibility, stretchability, and twistability, which are essential for practical applications. In this Perspective, we lay out the key points for advancing the development of wearable perovskite power sources. We sequentially analyze the design, quality, printing methods, and standardized tests of wearable PSCs. Then, representative advances are summarized. Finally, we propose a comprehensive summary from the perspectives of both optoelectronics and mechanics for future research in wearable PSCs and provide an overview of possible integrated devices.
The hypercorrection effect in younger and older adults

ABSTRACT The hypercorrection effect, which refers to the finding that errors committed with high confidence are more likely to be corrected than are low confidence errors, has been replicated many times, and with both young adults and children. In the present study, we contrasted older with younger adults. Participants answered general-information questions, made confidence ratings about their answers, were given corrective feedback, and then were retested on questions that they had gotten wrong. While younger adults showed the hypercorrection effect, older adults, despite higher overall accuracy on the general-information questions and excellent basic metacognitive ability, showed a diminished hypercorrection effect. Indeed, the correspondence between their confidence in their errors and the probability of correction was not significantly greater than zero, showing, for the first time, that a particular participant population is selectively impaired on this error correction task. These results potentially offer leverage both on the mechanisms underlying the hypercorrection effect and on reasons for older adults’ memory impairments, as well as on memory functions that are spared.
Yale Working Papers on Economic Applications and Policy Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market* Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market

and Yale for many helpful suggestions. We are grateful to Mike Chernew for the access to, and Tami Swenson for clarification of, the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey data. All remaining errors are our own. Fang and Silverman gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured. Abstract We provide strong evidence of advantageous selection in the Medigap insurance market, and analyze its sources. Using Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) data, we find that, conditional on controls for the price of Medigap, medical expenditures for senior citizens with Medigap coverage are, on average, about $4,000 less than for those without. But, if we condition on health, expenditures for seniors on Medigap are about $2,000 more. These two findings can only be reconciled if those with less health expenditure risk are more likely to purchase Medigap, implying advantageous selection. By combining the MCBS and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we investigate the sources of this advantageous selection. These include income, education, longevity expectations and financial planing horizons, as well as cognitive ability. Once we condition on all these factors, seniors with higher expected medical expenditure are indeed more likely to purchase Medigap. Surprisingly, risk preferences do not appear to be a source of advantageous selection. But cognitive ability emerges as a particularly important factor, consistent with a view that many senior citizens have difficulty understanding Medicare and Medigap rules.
Quantitative prediction of intermittent high-frequency oscillations in neural networks with supralinear dendritic interactions

The explanation of higher neural processes requires an understanding of the dynamics of complex, spiking neural networks. So far, modeling studies have focused on networks with linear or sublinear dendritic input summation. However, recent single-neuron experiments have demonstrated strongly supralinear dendritic enhancement of synchronous inputs. What are the implications of this amplification for networks of neurons? Here, I show numerically and analytically that such networks can generate intermittent, strong increases of activity with high-frequency oscillations; the models developed predict the shape of these events and the oscillation frequency. As an example, for the hippocampal region CA1, events with 200-Hz oscillations are predicted. I argue that these dynamics provide a plausible explanation for experimentally observed sharp-wave/ripple events. High-frequency oscillations can involve the replay of spike patterns. The models suggest that these patterns may reflect underlying network structures.
A 200 °C Universal Gate Driver Integrated Circuit for Extreme Environment Applications

High-temperature power converters (dc-dc, dc-ac, etc.) have enormous potential in extreme environment applications, including automotive, aerospace, geothermal, nuclear, and well logging. For successful realization of such high-temperature power conversion modules, the associated control electronics also need to perform at high temperature. This paper presents a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based high-temperature gate driver integrated circuit (IC) incorporating an on-chip low-power temperature sensor and demonstrating an improved peak output current drive over our previously reported work. This driver IC has been primarily designed for automotive applications, where the underhood temperature can reach 200 °C. This new gate driver prototype has been designed and implemented in a 0.8 μm, 2-poly, and 3-metal bipolar CMOS-DMOS (Double-Diffused Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) on SOI process and has been successfully tested for up to 200 °C ambient temperature driving a SiC MOSFET and a SiC normally-ON JFET. The salient feature of the proposed universal gate driver is its ability to drive power switches over a wide range of gate turn-ON voltages such as MOSFET (0 to 20 V), normally-OFF JFET (-7 to 3 V), and normally-ON JFET (-20 to 0 V). The measured peak output current capability of the driver is around 5 A and is thus capable of driving several power switches connected in parallel. An ultralow-power on-chip temperature supervisory circuit has also been integrated into the die to safeguard the driver circuit against excessive die temperature (≥220 °C). This approach utilizes increased diode leakage current at higher temperature to monitor the die temperature. The power consumption of the proposed temperature sensor circuit is below 10 μW for operating temperature up to 200 °C.