Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural Correlates of Efficient GABAergic Transmission in the Basal Ganglia–Thalamus Pathway

Giant inhibitory terminals with multiple synapses, the counterparts of excitatory “detonator” or “driver” terminals, have not been described in the forebrain. Using three-dimensional reconstructions of electron microscopic images, we quantitatively characterize a GABAergic pathway that establishes synaptic contacts exclusively via multiple synapses. Axon terminals of the nigrothalamic pathway formed, on average, 8.5 synapses on large-diameter dendrites and somata of relay cells in the ventromedial nucleus of the rat thalamus. All synapses of a given terminal converged on a single postsynaptic element. The vast majority of the synapses established by a single terminal were not separated by astrocytic processes. Nigrothalamic terminals in the macaque monkey showed the same ultrastructural features both in qualitative and quantitative terms (the median number of synapse per target was also 8.5). The individual synapses were closely spaced in both species. The nearest-neighbor synaptic distances were 169 nm in the rat and 178 nm in the monkey. The average number of synapses within 0.75 μm from any given synapse was 3.8 in the rat and 3.5 in the monkey. The arrangement of synapses described in this study creates favorable conditions for intersynaptic spillover of GABA among the multiple synapses of a single bouton, which can result in larger charge transfer. This could explain faithful and efficient GABAergic signal transmission in the nigrothalamic pathway in the healthy condition and during Parkinson's disease. In addition, our structural data suggest that the rodent nigrothalamic pathway can be a valid model of the primate condition, when the mechanism of GABAergic transmission is studied.
First Steps in the Development of the Inventario de Comportamiento de Estudio: The Spanish Version of the Study Behavior Inventory

The Inventario de Comportamiento de Estudio (ICE), a Spanish version of the Study Behavior Inventory (SBI), was developed and tested using 594 undergraduate students at la Universidad de las Am�ricas, in the state of Puebla, Mexico. A team of bilingual specialists was assembled to produce a translation that might be generic enough to be understood across Spanish-speaking countries and cultures. Factor analytical techniques on student ICE responses produced a factor structure very similar that found in the English language SBI. Evidence of appropriate levels of construct validity of the instrument and the reliability of its scores was obtained. Key words: study behaviors, study habits, studying, academic self-regulation, Spanish language instruments, Study Behavior Inventory
Reading Difficulties in Adult Deaf Readers of French: Phonological Codes, Not Guilty!

Deaf people often achieve low levels of reading skills. The hypothesis that the use of phonological codes is associated with good reading skills in deaf readers is not yet fully supported in the literature. We investigated skilled and less skilled adult deaf readers' use of orthographic and phonological codes in reading. Experiment 1 used a masked priming paradigm to investigate automatic use of these codes during visual word processing. Experiment 2 used a serial recall task to determine whether orthographic and phonological codes are used to maintain words in memory. Skilled hearing, skilled deaf, and less skilled deaf readers used orthographic codes during word recognition and recall, but only skilled hearing readers relied on phonological codes during these tasks. It is important to note that skilled and less skilled deaf readers performed similarly in both tasks, indicating that reading difficulties in deaf adults may not be linked to the activation of phonological codes during reading.
Painful Small Fiber Neuropathies

Purpose of Review: This article reviews the clinical features, pathophysiology, and treatment of small fiber sensory neuropathy. Recent Findings: Neuropathic pain is prevalent among patients with peripheral neuropathies of diverse etiologies. For example, in one recent study using the sensitive Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory as a screening tool, neuropathic pain was reported in 94% of patients with different peripheral nervous system diseases. Neuropathic pain is frequently underrecognized or inadequately treated. Furthermore, the paucity of clinical signs with small fiber neuropathy may delay recognition of an organic process. Pain, or uncomfortable symptoms, typically results from damage to small unmyelinated nerve fibers (C fibers) or thinly myelinated nerve fibers (A delta fibers). Recent research has helped discover the location of the “pain generators” within the injured peripheral nerves. Small fiber neuropathies are relatively common in clinical practice, but until recently most of the available neurodiagnostic tests focused on large caliber nerve fibers. In the past two decades, the widespread use of quantitative sensory testing and punch skin biopsies to evaluate small caliber nerve fibers has substantially changed the neurologist’s ability to diagnose and manage small fiber sensory neuropathy. Summary: Neuropathic pain from small fiber neuropathy is prevalent and is caused by a wide variety of disorders, many of which are treatable, especially if recognized early in the process.
Langage et pratiques sociales [Étude sociolinguistique d'un groupe d'adolescents]

Sprache und soziale Praktiken. Gegenstand der gleichermasen linguistischen wie soziologischen Analyse ist eine aus einem Pariser Vorort stammende Gruppe von Jugendlichen proletarischer Herkunft. Von den in der soziologischen Taxinomie gemeinhin verwendeten Kriterien her gesehen (Alter, Geschlecht, soziale Herkunft, Wohnort, usw.), weist diese peer group tatsachlich homogenen Charakter auf. Die soziolinguistische Analyse zweier Reihen von Variablen — die Vokaloffnung und der Wegfall des /l/ bei den Personalpronomen elle(s) sowie die Selektion neutraler nebenordnender Konjunktionen (et, puis, et puis) — deckt die Grenzen dieser Homogenitat auf : zwei Untergruppen stehen in systematischem Gegensatz zueinander,eine interne soziolinguistische Hierarchie wird sichtbar. Dieser Befund macht einen neuerlichen Ruckgriff auf die soziologische Analyse der Akteure notwendig. Die Nachzeichnung der jeweiligen individuellen Sozialgeschichte und des familialen Werdegangs wie die Analyse der individuellen Habitusauspragungen losen den Widerspruch : diese peer group ist unter soziologischen wie linguistischen Gesichtspunkten sowohl relativ homogen als auch relativ heterogen. Sprachliche und soziale Praktiken sind in systematischen Bezug zueinander zu bringen. Die Beschreibung der individuellen Habitusformen erhellt die beobachteten Regelmasigkeiten und ermoglicht die soziolinguistische Analyse der Sprachpraxis der Gruppenmitglieder.
Human Adipose Tissue in Culture

Abstract. Explants of human adipose tissue were cultured for several days with noradrenaline (NA). After the culture period the explants were carefully washed, preincubated and then incubated for 2 h by a technique analogous to those generally used to study adipose tissue metabolism. The results show that explants cultured with NA were considerably less responsive to the acute lipolytic effect of catecholamines than explants not previously exposed to NA. The diminished responsiveness could not be reversed by the addition of phentolamine or by preincubating the explants with a prostaglandin antagonist and it was dependent upon the concentration of noradrenaline used in the culture medium as well as upon the period of time that the explants were exposed to the hormone. The cyclic AMP (cAMP) levels did not increase in response to NA in these explants. Addition of theophylline or dibutyryl cAMP elicited a lipolytic response. However, the phosphodiesterase levels were not increased in the explants cultured with noradrenaline. When freshly excised tissue specimens were incubated in the culture medium which had previously contained NA the acute lipolytic effect of catecholamines was blunted. The results indicate that an antagonist is formed during the incubation with NA which inhibits the responsiveness to catecholamines. The effect of the antagonist seems to be exerted at a step prior to the formation of cAMP.
‘They just seem to live their lives in their own little world’: lay perceptions of autism

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorders is believed to be higher than that of other conditions, such as Down syndrome or diabetes, yet few studies have explored the ideas lay people have about autism. Semi‐structured interviews were used to explore how 10 lay people with no knowledge or experience of autism conceptualised autism. Interpretative phenomenological analysis and discourse analysis illuminated four discourses: (1) autism as transgressing normative expectancies; (2) dependency and functional ability discourse; (3) autism and the discourse of mental status; (4) autism and explanatory discourses. Participants demonstrated clear views (although not necessarily correct) about the nature, origins and manifestations of autism. They drew upon their understanding of normal child development to make these assessments and they made judgements about the ability of individuals with autism to attain social independence. It is recommended that interactions between lay people and people with autism may help develop positive conceptualisations of autism.
Stanford Achievement Test—8th Edition: Reading Comprehension Subgroup Results

The following pages contain a set of five graphs depicting the median scaled scores and corresponding grade equivalents (GEs) on the 8th Edition Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-8) Reading Comprehension subtest for various groups of deaf and hard of hearing students. The median scores used in these graphs were extracted from a series of special decile norms computed for the population of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States during a special achievement test project conducted by the Center for Assessment and Demographic Studies (CADS). Since this population is heterogeneous with respect to various demographic, audiological, and educational characteristics, misconceptions could occur when interpreting the scores of individual students. For example, if a particular student has handicaps in addition to hearing impairment, it may not be useful to compare that student to the entire population of deaf and hard of hearing students. An individual student may also belong to more than one relevant group. Thus, it is appropriate at times to use more than one set of group norms when interpreting a score (e.g., handicap status norms, ethnic group norms, and program type norms). A complete listing of the special group norms is available in:
Efficacy of nasal strip and furosemide in mitigating EIPH in Thoroughbred horses.

The purpose of this investigation was to study the effects of an equine nasal strip (NS), furosemide (Fur), and a combination of both (NS + Fur) on exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH) at speeds corresponding to near-maximal effort. Five Thoroughbreds (526 +/- 25 kg) were run on a flat treadmill from 7 to 14 m/s in 1 m x s(-1) x min(-)1 increments every 2 wk (treatment order randomized) under control (Con), Fur (1 mg/kg iv 4 h prior), NS, or NS + Fur conditions. During each run, pulmonary arterial (Ppa) and esophageal (Pes) pressures were measured. Severity of EIPH was quantified via bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) 30 min postrun. Furosemide (Fur and NS + Fur trials) reduced peak Ppa approximately 7 mmHg compared with Con (P < 0.05) whereas NS had no effect (P > 0.05). Maximal Pes swings were not different among groups (P > 0.05). NS significantly diminished EIPH compared with the Con trial [Con, 55.0 +/- 36.2; NS, 30.8 +/- 21.8 x 10(6) red blood cells (RBC)/ml BAL fluid; P < 0.05]. Fur reduced EIPH to a greater extent than NS (5.2 +/- 3.0 x 10(6) RBC/ml BAL; P < 0.05 vs. Con and NS) with no additional benefit from NS + Fur (8.5 +/- 4.2 x 10(6) RBC/ml BAL; P > 0.05 vs. Fur, P < 0.05 vs. Con and NS). In conclusion, although both modalities (NS and Fur) were successful in mitigating EIPH, neither abolished EIPH fully as evaluated via BAL. Fur was more effective than NS in constraining the severity of EIPH. The simultaneous use of both interventions appears to offer no further gain with respect to reducing EIPH.
Migrant Remittances and (Under)Development in Mexico

This article examines two heuristically defined positions regarding the relationship between international migration and rural economic development in Mexico: the `structuralist' or `historical structuralist' position of the 1970s and early 1980s that argued that remittances do not lead to rural economic development; and the `functionalist' position of the 1990s that argued the opposite. The author critiques systematically the functionalist position, then situates it politically in the context of failed neoliberal economic policies. He argues for the need to study international migration as a total social process, that takes into account the comparative impact of migrant labor on the US and Mexican economies. Despite its subordination of social actors to determining social structures, the structural approach offers a better starting point for a reformulated approach to the social and economic consequences of international migration in the contemporary world.
A Knowledge-based Solution for Core Competence Evaluation in Human-Capital Intensive Companies

Determining fields of excellence in the know-how of knowledge intensive companies is often a crucial decisional process, aimed e.g., at identifying the competence to be strength- ened or to invest on in a long term strategy. In this paper we propose a semantic-based approach for automatic extraction of such a specializing knowledge, usually called Core Competence in knowledge management literature. The proposed approach exploits Description Logics as for- malism for the representation of knowledge sources and implements novel reasoning services, in particular informative common subsumers specifically devised for Core Competence evaluation.
Determining a Suitable Desired Factors for Nonnegative Matrix Factorization in Polyphonic Music Transcription

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is a technique that factorizes a given matrix V into W and H: NMF(Vmn )rarrWmr Hrn . NMF has been applied to various problem domains. So far there has been no fixed rule to select the number of NMF factoring (i.e. the desired factor r). In music transcription, the value r has the semantic of the desired musical line. If the r is not set correctly, the transcription output will not be accurate. In this paper, we present a tactic to get around this issue. We found that by concatenating an input audio stream with another audio stream with prior knowledge of r, where r ges the number of musical lines; we are guaranteed to get the correct number of musical lines in the transcription output. In our approach, NMF is applied to extract musical notes from FFT coefficients extracted from input polyphonic audio streams. The output from our experiment is encouraging and we hope to explore this further in the future.
Late nephrology referral and mortality among patients with end-stage renal disease: a propensity score analysis.

BACKGROUND Late nephrology referral has been associated with adverse outcomes among patients with end-stage renal disease; however, its relationship to mortality is unclear. We examined the impact of timing of nephrology care relative to initiation of dialysis on mortality after initiation of dialysis. METHODS Data from the Dialysis Morbidity and Mortality Study - Wave II, a prospective study of incident dialysis patients, were used. Late referral (LR) was defined as first nephrology visit <4 months and early referral (ER) as first nephrology visit >or=4 months prior to initiation of dialysis. Propensity scores (PS) were estimated using logistic regression to predict the probability that a given patient was LR. A Cox proportional hazards model was built to examine the association between timing of nephrology referral and mortality. RESULTS The cohort was comprised of 2195 patients: 54% were males, 66% were Caucasians, 26% were African-Americans and 33% were referred late. A Cox proportional hazards analysis demonstrated that compared with ER patients, LR patients had a 44% higher risk of death at 1 year after initiation of dialysis [hazards ratio (HR) = 1.44; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.15-1.80], which remained significant after adjusting for quintiles of PS (HR = 1.42; 95% CI: 1.12-1.80). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) who initiated dialysis, LR was associated with higher risk of death at 1 year after initiation of dialysis compared with ER.
Obtaining Complete Answers from Incomplete Databases

We consider the problem of answering queries from databases that may be incomplete. A database is incomplete if some tuples may be missing from some relations, and only a part of each relation is known to be complete. This problem arises in several contexts. For example, systems that provide access to multiple heterogeneous information sources often encounter incomplete sources. The question we address is to determine whether the answer to a specific given query is complete even when the database is incomplete. We present a novel sound and complete algorithm for the answer-completeness problem by relating it to the problem of independence of queries from updates. We also show an important case of the independence problem (and therefore ofthe answer-completeness problem) that can be decided in polynomial time, whereas the best known algorithm for this case is exponential. This case involves updates that are described using a conjunction of comparison predicates. We also describe an algorithm that determines whether the answer to the query is complete in the current state of the database. Finally, we show that our ‘treatment extends naturally to partiallyincorrect databases. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies aTe not made OT distributed for direct commercial advantage, the VLDB copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Very Large Data Base Endowment. To copy otherwise, OT to republish, requirea a fee and/or special permission from the Endowment. Proceedings of the 22nd VLDB Conference Mumbai(Bombay), India, 1996
A Network Model of Change Interpretation : Identity Orientation and Networking

Because of the increasing scale and pace of changes across markets, products, and technologies, the transfer and conversion of knowledge have become critical to both the survival and advancement of organisations. In many situations, traditional governance structures have proved inadequate not only as a means of survival and keeping abreast of industry developments, but also in exploiting knowledge in the setting of new standards that leads to learning and organisational change. Several researchers have argued for the pursuit of cooperative strategies as a means of creating new knowledge and skills that will facilitate change outside the firm’s boundaries (e.g., Hamel, 1991; Lyles, 1994; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). However, despite the emphasis on knowledge transfer and the pursuit of cooperative strategies as an important motive for and facilitator of learning and organisational change, the lack of theoretical integration and empirical research leaves many questions unanswered.
F2 variation in Newcastle and Leeds English liquid systems

In this paper we present a production study designed to explore the relationship between three observations which have previously been made about liquids in British English: first, that laterals have prosodically-determined ‘clear’ (syllable-initial) and ‘dark’ (syllable-final) variants; second, that some varieties of English have either clear [1] in all positions or dark [l] in all positions; third, that some varieties with clear [1] have dark [r] while some varieties with dark [1] have clear [r] (in broad phonetic transcription). We take F2 as an acoustic correlate of clearness/darkness and report on F2 variation in two representative varieties of British English, one which has clear initial [1] (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and one with dark initial [1] (Leeds). We show that Newcastle English has higher F2 frequencies in [1] than in [r] and that the reverse pattern is found in Leeds English. These patterns can also be found in adjacent unstressed vowels but not in adjacent stressed vowels. Final [1] in both varieties has a lower F2 than initial [1]. In intervocalic contexts, these F2 distinctions in the liquids are observed in iambic words for both varieties. In trochaic words they are observed for Leeds only, though the vowel effects can be observed in both varieties. We discuss some phonological consequences of these findings.
A multi-objective continuous genetic algorithm for financial portfolio optimization problem

Financial portfolio management with both quantity and cardinality constraints can be modeled as a NP-hard continuous optimization problem where two objectives are optimized: maximizing the return of the portfolio and minimizing its risk. In this paper, we propose a work that aims at developing and tuning a multi-objective continuous genetic algorithm that gives the best Pareto-set of portfolios with different trade-offs between objectives. Experiments have been conducted using realistic pricing history of the CAC40 stock market. The reported results show the configuration of the genetic algorithm with the best performance.
Axial Cardiac MRI Registration

This paper focuses on finding techniques that can be used in cardiac magnetic resonance images semi- automatic registration in a simple and fast way. The suggested technique depends on using parts of one image selected by the user to be matched with another image of the same patient in order to find control points or correspondences between those two images. The experiment focuses on three techniques and compared between them, all techniques used the Gaussian pyramid in order to sample the images to the third pyramid level; which reduces the image size and so increases the performance time of matching; and then segment the target image into smaller images to be compared with the template image. The third matching technique is then used in intra- subject cardiac MRI rigid axial registration.
Eurographics/ Ieee-vgtc Symposium on Visualization 2010 an Evaluation of Glyph Perception for Real Symmetric Traceless Tensor Properties

A perceptual study of four tensor glyphs for symmetric, real, traceless tensors was performed. Each glyph encodes three properties of the system: Orientation, uniaxiality (alignment along the direction of orientation), and biaxi-ality (alignment along a vector orthogonal to the orientation). Thirty users over two studies were asked to identify these three properties for each glyph type under a variety of permutations in order to evaluate the effectiveness of visually communicating the properties; response time was also measured. We discuss the significant differences found between the methods as guidance to the use of these glyphs for traceless tensor visualization.