Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Auditory Brain

1. Overview SECTION I - STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF THE AUDITORY BRAIN 2. Structural organization of the ascending auditory pathway 3. Structural organization of the descending auditory pathway 4. Central auditory neurotransmitters SECTION II - INFORMATION CODING IN THE AUDITORY BRAIN: SOUND IDENTIFICATION 5. Level and spectrum 6. Time varying sounds: amplitude envelope modulations 7. Pitch 8. Ethological stimuli 9. Speech 10. Formation of auditory streams 11. role of descending control in the auditory pathway SECTION III - INFORMATION CODING IN THE AUDITORY BRAIN: SOUND LOCATION 12. Binaural localization cues 13. Sound location: monaural cues and spectral cues for elevation 14. Physiological correlates of the precedence effect and binaural masking level differences SECTION IV - DEVELOPMENT, AGING AND PLASTICITY OF THE AUDITORY BRAIN 15. Development of the auditory pathway 16. Plasticity of the auditory pathway 17. Aging changes in the central auditory system SECTION V - COGNITION AND EMOTION IN THE AUDITORY BRAIN 18. The cognitive auditory cortex 19. Emotional responses to auditory stimuli SECTION VI - PATHOLOGY OF THE AUDITORY BRAIN 20. Disorders of the auditory brain 21. Tinnitus 22. Auditory prostheses for the brainstem and midbrain
Amiodarone Inhibits Trypanosoma cruzi Infection and Promotes Cardiac Cell Recovery with Gap Junction and Cytoskeleton Reassembly In Vitro

ABSTRACT We present the results of the first detailed study of the antiproliferative and ultrastructural effects of amiodarone on Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas' disease. Moreover, we report the effects of this compound on the recovery of F-actin fibrils, connexin43, and contractility in T. cruzi-infected cardiac myocytes. Amiodarone is the most prescribed class III antiarrhythmic agent and is frequently used for the symptomatic treatment of Chagas' disease patients with cardiac compromise. In addition, recent studies identified its antifungal and antiprotozoal activities, which take place through Ca2+ homeostasis disruption and ergosterol biosynthesis blockade. We tested different concentrations of amiodarone (2.5 to 10 μM) on infected primary cultures of heart muscle cells and observed a dose- and time-dependent effect on growth of the clinically relevant intracellular amastigote form of T. cruzi. Ultrastructural analyses revealed that amiodarone had a profound effect on intracellular amastigotes, including mitochondrial swelling and disorganization of reservosomes and the kinetoplast and a blockade of amastigote-trypomastigote differentiation. Amiodarone showed no toxic effects on host cells, which recovered their F-actin fibrillar organization, connexin43 distribution, and spontaneous contractility concomitant with the drug-induced eradication of the intracellular parasites. Amiodarone is, therefore, a promising compound for the development of new drugs against T. cruzi.
XPath Formal Semantics and Beyond: a Coq based approach

XPath was introduced as the standard language for addressing parts of XML documents, and has been widely adopted by practioners and theoreticaly studied. We aim at building a logical framework for formal study and analysis of XPath and have to face the combinatorial complexity of formal proofs caused by XPath expressive power. We chose the Coq proof assistant and its powerful inductive constructions to rigorously investigate XPath peculiarities. We focus in this paper on a basic modeling of XPath syntax and semantics, and make two contributions. First, we propose a new formal semantics, which is an interpretation of paths as first order logic propositions that turned out to greatly simplify our formal proofs. Second, we formally prove that this new interpretation is equivalent to previously known XPath denotational semantics, opening perspectives for more ambitious mathematical characterizations. We illustrate our Coq based model through several examples and we develop a formal proof of a simple yet significant XPath property that compares quite favorably to a former informal proof.
Genome size evolution in relation to leaf strategy and metabolic rates revisited.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS It has been proposed that having too much DNA may carry physiological consequences for plants. The strong correlation between DNA content, cell size and cell division rate could lead to predictable morphological variation in plants, including a negative relationship with leaf mass per unit area (LMA). In addition, the possible increased demand for resources in species with high DNA content may have downstream effects on maximal metabolic efficiency, including decreased metabolic rates. METHODS Tests were made for genome size-dependent variation in LMA and metabolic rates (mass-based photosynthetic rate and dark respiration rate) using our own measurements and data from a plant functional trait database (Glopnet). These associations were tested using two metrics of genome size: bulk DNA amount (2C DNA) and monoploid genome size (1Cx DNA). The data were analysed using an evolutionary framework that included a regression analysis and independent contrasts using a phylogenetic tree with estimates of molecular diversification times. A contribution index for the LMA data set was also calculated to determine which divergences have the greatest influence on the relationship between genome size and LMA. KEY RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS A significant negative association was found between bulk DNA amount and LMA in angiosperms. This was primarily a result of influential divergences that may represent early shifts in growth form. However, divergences in bulk DNA amount were positively associated with divergences in LMA, suggesting that the relationship may be indirect and mediated through other traits directly related to genome size. There was a significant negative association between genome size and metabolic rates that was driven by a basal divergence between angiosperms and gymnosperms; no significant independent contrast results were found. Therefore, it is concluded that genome size-dependent constraints acting on metabolic efficiency may not exist within seed plants.
Continuum bound states as surface states of a finite periodic system

We discuss the relation between continuum bound states (CBSs) localized on a defect, and surface states of a finite periodic system. We model an experiment of Capasso et al. [F. Capasso, C. Sirtori, J. Faist, D. L. Sivco,S-N. G. Chu, and A. Y. Cho, Nature (London) 358, 565 (1992)] using the transfer-matrix method. We compute the rate for intrasubband transitions from the ground state to the CBS and derive a sum rule. Finally we show how to improve the confinement of a CBS while keeping the energy fixed.
Olfactory Bulb Field Potentials and Respiration in Sleep-Wake States of Mice

It is well established that local field potentials (LFP) in the rodent olfactory bulb (OB) follow respiration. This respiration-related rhythm (RR) in OB depends on nasal air flow, indicating that it is conveyed by sensory inputs from the nasal epithelium. Recently RR was found outside the olfactory system, suggesting that it plays a role in organizing distributed network activity. It is therefore important to measure RR and to delineate it from endogenous electrical rhythms like theta which cover similar frequency bands in small rodents. In order to validate such measurements in freely behaving mice, we compared rhythmic LFP in the OB with two respiration-related biophysical parameters: whole-body plethysmography (PG) and nasal temperature (thermocouple; TC). During waking, all three signals reflected respiration with similar reliability. Peak power of RR in OB decreased with increasing respiration rate whereas power of PG increased. During NREM sleep, respiration-related TC signals disappeared and large amplitude slow waves frequently concealed RR in OB. In this situation, PG provided a reliable signal while breathing-related rhythms in TC and OB returned only during microarousals. In summary, local field potentials in the olfactory bulb do reliably reflect respiratory rhythm during wakefulness and REM sleep but not during NREM sleep.
Universal operations in Hochschild homology

We provide a general method for finding all natural operations on the Hochschild complex of E-algebras, where E is any algebraic structure encoded in a prop with multiplication, as for example the prop of Frobenius, commutative or A_infty-algebras. We show that the chain complex of all such natural operations is approximated by a certain chain complex of formal operations, for which we provide an explicit model that we can calculate in a number of cases. When E encodes the structure of open topological conformal field theories, we identify this last chain complex, up quasi-isomorphism, with the moduli space of Riemann surfaces with boundaries, thus establishing that the operations constructed by Costello and Kontsevich-Soibelman via different methods identify with all formal operations. When E encodes open topological quantum field theories (or symmetric Frobenius algebras) our chain complex identifies with Sullivan diagrams, thus showing that operations constructed by Tradler-Zeinalian, again by different methods, account for all formal operations. As an illustration of the last result we exhibit two infinite families of non-trivial operations and use these to produce non-trivial higher string topology operations, which had so far been elusive.
A Maximum Entropy Approach to Chinese Pin Yin-To-Character Conversion

This paper introduces a new approach based upon maximum entropy (ME) frame to solve the Pinyin-to-character (PTC) conversation problem. Mostly there is more than one Chinese characters share the same Pinyin. The task of PTC algorithm is to distinguish such kind ambiguity. PTC can be regards as to classify a Pinyin to a special character according the context which is represented as feature in ME. By taking the advantage of ME, the local and non-local information are included, so the conversation performance is improved. Experiments show that 87% hit rate (without tone) is achieved.
An adaptive resource allocation in OFDMA multi-hop relay networks

By incorporating relay technologies into cellular systems, multi-hop relay networks (MRNs) can provide higher throughput and wider coverage, but it is impossible to guarantee quality of service (QoS) requirements for users at the cell edge and in hot spots due to severe co-channel interference (CCI) and load imbalance. This paper proposes an adaptive resource allocation scheme with a joint consideration of interference coordination (IC) & load balancing (LB), and analyzes the downlink of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based MRNs with time division duplex (TDD) mode. We present a novel frequency reuse scheme for MRNs to mitigate CCI and maintain high spectral efficiency. We also provide practical LB-based handover mechanisms to evenly distribute users and guarantee the users' QoS. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our scheme not only satisfies the requirement of coverage probability, but also improves the throughput and accommodates more users in MRNs.
Autosomal Dominant Leukoencephalopathy and Subcortical Ischemic Stroke: A Clinicopathological Study

Background and Purpose We recently described an autosomal dominant syndrome characterized mainly by recurrent strokes and neuroimaging evidence of leukoencephalopathy. We now report the pathological findings in one of the affected subjects. Case Description A 40-year-old woman experienced her first grand mal seizure in 1971. From 1983 on she suffered recurrent strokes, seizures, and psychiatric disturbances with depressions, manic episodes, and dementia. In 1988, after her fourth stroke, she became tetraplegic with a severe pseudobulbar palsy, and she died in 1990. Pathological examination disclosed a recent capsulolenticular hematoma, multiple small deep infarcts, a diffuse myelin loss and pallor of the hemispheric white matter, and a widespread vasculopathy of the small arteries penetrating the white matter. The arterial wall was markedly thickened with an extensive nonamyloid eosinophilic deposit in the media and reduplication of the internal elastic lamella. Conclusions The underlying lesion of this hereditary disorder is located in the small arteries and is of unknown etiology. It differs from arteriosclerotic and amyloid angiopathies but is similar to that described in some cases of hereditary multi-infarct dementia.
GeneCAT—novel webtools that combine BLAST and co-expression analyses

The gene co-expression analysis toolbox (GeneCAT) introduces several novel microarray data analyzing tools. First, the multigene co-expression analysis, combined with co-expressed gene networks, provides a more powerful data mining technique than standard, single-gene co-expression analysis. Second, the high-throughput Map-O-Matic tool matches co-expression pattern of multiple query genes to genes present in user-defined subdatabases, and can therefore be used for gene mapping in forward genetic screens. Third, Rosetta combines co-expression analysis with BLAST and can be used to find ‘true’ gene orthologs in the plant model organisms Arabidopsis thaliana and Hordeum vulgare (Barley). GeneCAT is equipped with expression data for the model plant A. thaliana, and first to introduce co-expression mining tools for the monocot Barley. GeneCAT is available at http://genecat.mpg. de
Developing Reading Comprehension Questions.

This article presents a detailed picture of six types of comprehension and five forms of questions that can be used to help students become interactive readers. The taxonomies of the types of comprehension and the forms of questions may also be used as a checklist for language teachers as well as materials developers. Teachers can use the taxonomies to make their own comprehension questions for texts that their students read to help them understand better what they read. In addition, they can be used to analyze instructional materials and to develop materials to ensure that the various forms of questions are used to help students respond to a variety of types of comprehension.
Improving Education on Doctor–Patient Relationships and Communication: Lessons from Doctors Who Become Patients

Purpose Medical education faces challenges in training empathetic doctors who have good patient communication skills. The author aimed to understand insights that doctors who become patients may gain concerning ways to improve doctor–patient relationships and communication in order to improve medical education. Method From 1999 to 2002, based in New York, the author conducted two in-depth, semistructured, two-hour interviews with each of 50 doctors who had serious illnesses concerning their overlapping experiences of being health care workers and becoming patients. Interviews examined their views about these issues and how their perspectives changed as a result of patienthood. Results These doctor–patients questioned whether and to what degree empathy could be taught, but nonetheless provided several techniques for improving communication with patients related to process and content of care. Processes included charting at the bedside rather than at the nursing station, acknowledging having kept patients waiting, and increasing awareness of nonverbal aspects of care. Content issues included communicating directly about taboo topics and being more sensitive in discussing “bad news,” adherence, and nonmedical concerns. Conclusions Doctors reported increased sensitivity to patients’ experiences and empathy in doctor–patient communication. These findings can help in teaching doctors to see more clearly that their specific point of view differs from that of patients, and can be limiting. This study also sheds light on the wide separation between intellectual and experiential learning, which needs to be addressed further in medical education and research.
Reproducibility-Optimized Test Statistic for Ranking Genes in Microarray Studies

A principal goal of microarray studies is to identify the genes showing differential expression under distinct conditions. In such studies, the selection of an optimal test statistic is a crucial challenge, which depends on the type and amount of data under analysis. Although previous studies on simulated or spike-in data sets do not provide practical guidance on how to choose the best method for a given real data set, we introduce an enhanced reproducibility-optimization procedure, which enables the selection of a suitable gene-ranking statistic directly from the data. In comparison with existing ranking methods, the reproducibility-optimized statistic shows good performance consistently under various simulated conditions and on Affymetrix spike-in data set. Further, the feasibility of the novel statistic is confirmed in a practical research setting using data from an in-house cDNA microarray study of asthma-related gene expression changes. These results suggest that the procedure facilitates the selection of an appropriate test statistic for a given data set without relying on a priori assumptions, which may bias the findings and their interpretation. Moreover, the general reproducibility-optimization procedure is not limited to detecting differential expression only but could be extended to a wide range of other applications as well.
Modeling Prosodic Features With Joint Factor Analysis for Speaker Verification

In this paper, we introduce the use of continuous prosodic features for speaker recognition, and we show how they can be modeled using joint factor analysis. Similar features have been successfully used in language identification. These prosodic features are pitch and energy contours spanning a syllable-like unit. They are extracted using a basis consisting of Legendre polynomials. Since the feature vectors are continuous (rather than discrete), they can be modeled using a standard Gaussian mixture model (GMM). Furthermore, speaker and session variability effects can be modeled in the same way as in conventional joint factor analysis. We find that the best results are obtained when we use the information about the pitch, energy, and the duration of the unit all together. Testing on the core condition of NIST 2006 speaker recognition evaluation data gives an equal error rate of 16.6% and 14.6%, with prosodic features alone, for all trials and English-only trials, respectively. When the prosodic system is fused with a state-of-the-art cepstral joint factor analysis system, we obtain a relative improvement of 8% (all trials) and 12% (English only) compared to the cepstral system alone.
Dynamic rescheduling of tasks in time predictable embedded systems

The work concerns an approach to the multi-threading and multitasking problem. The main research objective of the time predictable real-time systems is identified. A brief summary of the related works is given. Idea of thread interleaving is described and the architecture of the proposed time predictable embedded system is presented. The solution of the dynamic interleave controller of threads (DICT) with dynamically modified (reconfigured) priorities of tasks (threads) is analyzed. The paper investigates the model of the system and gives its simulation results. The entire system is synthesized in the hardware structure. Some experiments with that emphasize advantages of the proposed hardware implementation.
Improving Learning for Embodied Agents in Dynamic--Environments by State Factorisation

A new reinforcement learning algorithm designed specifically for robots and embodied systems is described. Conventional reinforcement learning methods intended for learning general tasks suffer from a number of disadvantages in this domain including slow learning speed, an inability to generalise between states, reduced performance in dynamic environments, and a lack of scalability. Factor-Q, the new algorithm, uses factorised state and action, coupled with multiple structured rewards, to address these issues. Initial experimental results demonstrate that Factor-Q is able to learn as efficiently in dynamic as in static environments, unlike conventional methods. Further, in the specimen task, obstacle avoidance is improved by over two orders of magnitude compared with standard Qlearning.
Developmental differences in infants' attentional responses to face-voice incongruity of mother and stranger.

COHEN, SARALE E. Developmental Differences in Infants' Attentional Responses to Face-Voice Incongruity of Mother and Stranger. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 1155-1158. Early perceptual-cognitive development was studied in 48 infants, 5 and 8 months old. Attentional behaviors were observed to systematic presentations of face-voice matching and mismatching of mother and a female stranger. Differences in the direction and duration of first fixation to congruous and incongruous conditions suggest that some of the 8-month-old infants may have developed specific auditory-visual expectations. Fixations at both ages were significantly longer to novel than to familiar figures; however, auditory novelty did not differ from auditory familiarity in determining visual fixation. Boys, at both ages, deployed their attention more widely than girls.
Modulation of the excitability of cholinergic basal forebrain neurones by KATP channels

The expression of ATP‐sensitive K+ (KATP) channels by magnocellular cholinergic basal forebrain (BF) neurones was investigated in thin brain slice and dissociated cell culture preparations using a combination of whole‐cell, perforated‐patch and single‐channel recording techniques. Greater than 95% of BF neurones expressed functional KATP channels whose activation resulted in membrane hyperpolarization and a profound fall in excitability. The whole‐cell KATP conductance was 14.0 ± 1.5 nS and had a reversal potential of –91.4 ± 0.9 mV that shifted by 59.6 mV with a tenfold increase in [K+]o. IKATP was inhibited reversibly by tolbutamide (IC50 of 34.1 μm) and irreversibly by glibenclamide (0.3–3 nm) and had a low affinity for [ATP]i (67% reduction with 6 mm[MgATP]i). Using perforated‐patch recording, a small proportion of the conductance was found to be tonically active. This was weakly potentiated by diazoxide (0.1 mm extracellular glucose) but insensitive to pinacidil (≤500 μm). Single‐channel KATP currents recorded in symmetrical 140 mm K+‐containing solutions exhibited weak inward rectification with a mean conductance of 66.2 ± 1.9 pS. Channel activity was inhibited by MgATP (>50 μm) and activated by MgADP (200 μm). The K+ channels opener diazoxide (200–500 μm) increased channel opening probability (NPo) by 486 ± 120% whereas pinacidil (500 μm) had no effect. In conclusion, the characteristics of the KATP channels expressed by BF neurones are very similar to channels composed of SUR1 and Kir6.2 subunits. In the native cell, their affinity for ATP is close to the resting [ATP]i, potentially allowing them to be modulated by physiologically relevant changes in [ATP]i. The effect of these channels on the level of ascending cholinergic excitation of the cortex and hippocampus is discussed.
Do TREC web collections look like the web?

We measure the WT10g test collection, used in the TREC-9 and TREC 2001 Web Tracks, and the . GOV test collection used in the TREC 2002 Web and Interactive Tracks, with common measures used in the web topology community, in order to see if these collections "look like" the web. This is not an idle question; characteristics of the web, such as power law relationships, diameter, and connected components have all been observed within the scope of general web crawls, constructed by blindly following links. The . GOV collection is a fairly straightforward 18GB crawl of sites in the . gov domain. In contrast, WT10g was carved out from a much larger crawl specifically to be a web search test collection within the reach of university researchers. Do such collections retain the properties of the larger web? In the case of WT10g and . GOV, yes.