Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intrinsic Resistance of Oligodendrocytes to Prion Infection

Within the CNS, the normal form of cellular prion protein (PrPC) is expressed on neurons, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes. The contribution of these cell types to prion replication and pathogenesis is unclear. To assess the role of oligodendrocytes, we expressed PrPC under the control of the myelin basic protein (MBP) promoter in mice lacking endogenous PrPC. PrPC was detected in oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells but not in neurons and astrocytes. MBP-PrP mice never developed scrapie after intracerebral, intraperitoneal, or intraocular challenge with scrapie prions. Transgenic brains did not contain protease-resistant prion protein and did not transmit scrapie when inoculated into PrPC-overexpressing indicator mice. To investigate whether prion spread within the CNS depends on oligodendrocytic PrPC, we implanted PrPC-overexpressing neuroectodermal grafts into MBP-PrP brains. After intraocular prion inoculation, none of the grafts showed spongiform encephalopathy or prion infectivity. Hence oligodendrocytes do not support cell-autonomous prion replication, establishment of subclinical disease, and neural spread of prions. Prion resistance sets oligodendrocytes aside from both neurons and astrocytes.
New Zealand Scholar Mamas: The Influence of Motherhood on Academic Careers

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS . 4 TABLE OF FIGURES . 5 ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP . 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . 7 CHAPTER ONE. 8 INTRODUCTION TO THE INQUIRY . 8 Research Aim . 11 The Narrative Approach and Methods Used . 11 Researcher’s Background . 11 Overview of the Thesis . 12 CHAPTER TWO . 13 LITERATURE REV IEW . 13 Introduction. 13 The Academic Career. 13 Gender in Academia The Academic Gender Gap and Break ing the Ivory Ceiling . 17 Motherhood and Academia . 25 CHAPTER THREE. 34 METHODOLOGY AND METHODS . 34 Introduction. 34 Philosophical Assumptions . 34 What is Narrative Inquiry? 37 Sampling Method . 40 Data Collection. 42 Analysis . 43 Rigour . 49 Summary . 53 CHAPTER FOUR . 54 THE NARRATIVES AND THEIR F INDINGS. 54 Introduction. 54 Haylee’s* Story: “The Running Mama” . 54 Robyn’s* Story: “Playing the Game” . 57 Debbie’s* Story – “The Candid Mama” . 59 Wendy’s* Story: “Good Timing” . 62 Ruby’s* Story: “The Thankful Mama” . 65 Louise’s* Story: “The Breadwinning Mama” . 68 Grace’s* Story: “A Rocky Road” . 70 Themes . 73 CHAPTER FIVE . 92 DISCUSSION. 92 Introduction. 92 The dominant maternity narrative . 92 Shifting academic focus . 95 Heroes of the stories . 104 Summary . 108
Neurobiology of love.

Romantic love is a "universal. or near universal" human phenomenon. Recently, love, romantic love, also became a theme of interest for scientists. The current research is seeking an explanation to clarify the brain mechanisms that are responsible for love behavior and feelings. Until recently, the study of love has been mainly the field of psychology. The biology of love originates in the primitive parts of brain that eolved long before the cerebral cortex. Discoveries in neuroscience have led to the identification of specific areas, facilities, brain circuits that are involved in the genesis of love. However, love remained a research field mainly for psychologists, despite the massive increase in neuroscientific research. In the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies on the neuronal corelates of love, through the use of neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, PET) and in the studies that have investigated the action of the neurotransmitter and neuroendocrine systems.
A Good Practice Towards Top Performance of Face Recognition: Transferred Deep Feature Fusion

Unconstrained face recognition performance evaluations have traditionally focused on Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) dataset for imagery and the YouTubeFaces (YTF) dataset for videos in the last couple of years. Spectacular progress in this field has resulted in saturation on verification and identification accuracies for those benchmark datasets. In this paper, we propose a unified learning framework named Transferred Deep Feature Fusion (TDFF) targeting at the new IARPA Janus Benchmark A (IJB-A) face recognition dataset released by NIST face challenge. The IJB-A dataset includes real-world unconstrained faces from 500 subjects with full pose and illumination variations which are much harder than the LFW and YTF datasets. Inspired by transfer learning, we train two advanced deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) with two different large datasets in source domain, respectively. By exploring the complementarity of two distinct DCNNs, deep feature fusion is utilized after feature extraction in target domain. Then, template specific linear SVMs is adopted to enhance the discrimination of framework. Finally, multiple matching scores corresponding different templates are merged as the final results. This simple unified framework exhibits excellent performance on IJB-A dataset. Based on the proposed approach, we have submitted our IJB-A results to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for official evaluation. Moreover, by introducing new data and advanced neural architecture, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art by a wide margin on IJB-A dataset.
Statistical methods of automatic spectral classification and their application to the Hamburg/ESO survey

We employ classical statistical methods of multivariate classification for the exploitation of the stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO objective prism survey (HES). In a simulation study we investigate the precision of a three-dimensional classification (Te ,l ogg ,( Fe/H)) achievable in the HES for stars in the eective temperature range 5200 K 10 (typically corresponding to BJ < 16:5). The accuracies in logg and (Fe/H) are better than 0:68 dex in the same S=N range. These precisions allow for a very ecient selection of metal-poor stars in the HES. We present a minimum cost rule for compilation of complete samples of objects of a given class, and a rejection rule for identification of corrupted or peculiar spectra. The algorithms we present are being used for the identification of other interesting objects in the HES data base as well, and they are applicable to other existing and future large data sets, such as those to be compiled by the DIVA and GAIA missions.
Promoter Methylation in the Genesis of Gastrointestinal Cancer

Colorectal cancers (CRC)-and probably all cancers-are caused by alterations in genes. This includes activation of oncogenes and inactivation of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs). There are many ways to achieve these alterations. Oncogenes are frequently activated by point mutation, gene amplification, or changes in the promoter (typically caused by chromosomal rearrangements). TSGs are typically inactivated by mutation, deletion, or promoter methylation, which silences gene expression. About 15% of CRC is associated with loss of the DNA mismatch repair system, and the resulting CRCs have a unique phenotype that is called microsatellite instability, or MSI. This paper reviews the types of genetic alterations that can be found in CRCs and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and focuses upon the epigenetic alterations that result in promoter methylation and the CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP). The challenge facing CRC research and clinical care at this time is to deal with the heterogeneity and complexity of these genetic and epigenetic alterations, and to use this information to direct rational prevention and treatment strategies.
A new chaotic attractor from general Lorenz system family and its electronic experimental implementation

This article introduces a novel three-dimensional continuous autonomous chaotic system with six terms and two quadratic nonlinearities. The new system contains two variational parameters and exhibits Lorenz-like attractors in numerical simulations and experimental measurements. The basic dynamical properties of the new system are analyzed by means of equilibrium points, eigenvalue structures, and Lyapunov exponents. The new system examined in Matlab-Simulink\textregistered and Orcad-PSpice\textregistered. An electronic circuit realization of the proposed system is presented using analog electronic elements such as capacitors, resistors, operational amplifiers and multipliers. The behaviour of the realized system is evaluated with computer simulations.
Conditional Families and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Youth Homelessness: Gender, Sexuality, Family Instability, and Rejection

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth home- lessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle-class families. In this 18-month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experienc- ing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the con- ditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth’s experi- ences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.
Inter-Flow Consistency: Novel SDN Update Abstraction for Supporting Inter-Flow Constraints

Software Defined Networks (SDN) are opening a new era in the world of networking by decoupling the data plane and control plane. With the centralized control plane, updating the networks becomes much more convenient to the network operators. However, due to the distributed nature of the data plane, people fail to avoid transitional states of SDN during network updates. The transitional states may be a combination of the old and the new network configurations, which may lead to incorrectness in forwarding behaviors and security vulnerabilities. This thesis complements the large body of consistent update mechanisms of SDN by proposing a novel network update abstraction, inter-flow consistency, which can guarantee certain relationships and constraints among different flows during network updates. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the update consistency abstraction across different flows. We propose an update scheduling algorithm based on dependency graphs, a data structure revealing dependency among different update operations and network elements, in order to guarantee two basic inter-flow consistency, spatial isolation and version isolation. Also, we implement a prototype system with a Mininet OpenFlow network and Ryu SDN controller to evaluate the performance of our approach.
Distribution Statement a Approved for Public Release Night Vision Camera Fusion with Natural Colors Using a Spectral / Texture Based Material Identification Algorithm

Combining multiple types of night vision cameras, such as low-light-level visible to near infrared (VNIR), shortwave (SWIR), mid-wave (MWIR), and/or long-wave infrared (LWIR), enables the presentation of complimentary information into a single display. A great deal of developmental work has been devoted to maximizing the information in the fused imagery; however, fusion schemes that rely on some form of mapping or transformation from the multi-band imagery to a composite false-color image do not consistently match recognizable "true" colors and also suffer from color consistency problems as the environment and materials in the scene change. Other related techniques that have proven useful for mapping single band grayscale values to a pseudo-color palette have limited utility for multi-band infrared systems, particularly in dynamic environments where the distribution of brightness values can change. This paper presents a method for combining night vision imagery from multiple cameras into a single fused output with recognizable colors. The colors are determined through a material identification algorithm that relies on a spectral/texture analysis along with additional ancillary information. The calculations are done in a probabilistic manner using a knowledge-based inference technique that considers material database matching together with expected scene content, available via future Global Information Grids and Geographical Information Grid Services. The result is that identified materials can be rendered in natural recognizable colors (e.g., grass is green), which aides in scene understanding, object identification, and also reduces viewer fatigue.
The Impact of a Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy on Event-Related Potentials in Patients with Tic Disorders or Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors

Context Tic disorders (TD) are characterized by the presence of non-voluntary contractions of functionally related groups of skeletal muscles in one or multiple body parts. Patients with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRB) present frequent and repetitive behaviors, such as nail biting or hair pulling. TD and BFRB can be treated with a cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) that regulates the excessive amount of sensorimotor activation and muscular tension. Our CBT, which is called the cognitive–psychophysiological (CoPs) model, targets motor execution and inhibition, and it was reported to modify brain activity in TD. However, psychophysiological effects of therapy are still poorly understood in TD and BFRB patients. Our goals were to compare the event-related potentials (ERP) of TD and BFRB patients to control participants and to investigate the effects of the CoPs therapy on the P200, N200, and P300 components during a motor and a non-motor oddball task. Method Event-related potential components were compared in 26 TD patients, 27 BFRB patients, and 27 control participants. ERP were obtained from 63 EEG electrodes during two oddball tasks. In the non-motor task, participants had to count rare stimuli. In the motor task, participants had to respond with a left and right button press for rare and frequent stimuli, respectively. ERP measures were recorded before and after therapy in both patient groups. Results CoPs therapy improved symptoms similarly in both clinical groups. Before therapy, TD and BFRB patients had reduced P300 oddball effect during the non-motor task, in comparison with controls participants. An increase in the P300 oddball effect was observed posttherapy. This increase was distributed over the whole cortex in BFRB patients, but localized in the parietal area in TD patients. Discussion These results suggest a modification of neural processes following CoPs therapy in TD and BFRB patients. CoPs therapy seems to impact patients’ attentional processes and context updating capacities in working memory (i.e., P300 component). Our results are consistent with a possible role of the prefrontal cortex and corpus callosum in mediating interhemispheric interference in TD.
Performance Analysis of Cognitive Spectrum-Sharing Single-Carrier Systems With Relay Selection

In this paper, we analyze the performance of cooperative spectrum sharing single-carrier (SC) relay systems. Taking into account the peak interference power at the primary user (PU) and the maximum transmit power at the secondary user (SU) network, two separate power allocation constraints are formed. For a two-hop decode-and-forward (DF) relaying protocol and two power allocation constraints, two relay selection schemes, namely, a full-channel state information (CSI)-based best relay selection (BRS) and a partial CSI-based best relay selection (PBRS), are proposed. The distributions of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratios (e2e-SNRs) for the four cases are derived first, and then their outage probabilities and asymptotic outage probabilities are derived in closed-form. The derived asymptotic outage probabilities are utilized to see different diversity gains. Monte Carlo simulations have verified the derived diversity gains for the four different cases. We also present upper bounds on the ergodic capacities for two particular cases.
Circulating MicroRNAs as Biomarkers for Sepsis

Sepsis represents a major cause of lethality during intensive care unit (ICU) treatment. Pharmacological treatment strategies for sepsis are still limited and mainly based on the early initiation of antibiotic and supportive treatment. In this context, numerous clinical and serum based markers have been evaluated for the diagnosis, the severity, and the etiology of sepsis. However until now, few of these factors could be translated into clinical use. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) do not encode for proteins but regulate gene expression by inhibiting the translation or transcription of their target mRNAs. Recently it was demonstrated that miRNAs are released into the circulation and that the spectrum of circulating miRNAs might be altered during various pathologic conditions, such as inflammation, infection, and sepsis. By using array- and single PCR-based methods, a variety of deregulated miRNAs, including miR-25, miR-133a, miR-146, miR-150, and miR-223, were described in the context of sepsis. Some of the miRNAs correlated with the disease stage, as well as patients’ short and long term prognosis. Here, we summarize the current findings on the role of circulating miRNAs in the diagnosis and staging of sepsis in critically ill patients. We compare data from patients with findings from animal models and, finally, highlight the challenges and drawbacks that currently prevent the use of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers in clinical routine.
BarA-UvrY Two-Component System Regulates Virulence of Uropathogenic E. coli CFT073

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC), a member of extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli, cause ∼80% of community-acquired urinary tract infections (UTI) in humans. UPEC initiates its colonization in epithelial cells lining the urinary tract with a complicated life cycle, replicating and persisting in intracellular and extracellular niches. Consequently, UPEC causes cystitis and more severe form of pyelonephritis. To further understand the virulence characteristics of UPEC, we investigated the roles of BarA-UvrY two-component system (TCS) in regulating UPEC virulence. Our results showed that mutation of BarA-UvrY TCS significantly decreased the virulence of UPEC CFT073, as assessed by mouse urinary tract infection, chicken embryo killing assay, and cytotoxicity assay on human kidney and uroepithelial cell lines. Furthermore, mutation of either barA or uvrY gene reduced the production of hemolysin, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α and IL-6) and chemokine (IL-8). The virulence phenotype was restored similar to that of wild-type by complementation of either barA or uvrY gene in trans. In addition, we discussed a possible link between the BarA-UvrY TCS and CsrA in positively and negatively controlling virulence in UPEC. Overall, this study provides the evidences for BarA-UvrY TCS regulates the virulence of UPEC CFT073 and may point to mechanisms by which virulence regulations are observed in different ways may control the long-term survival of UPEC in the urinary tract.
Performance Improvement for Flash Memories Using Loop Optimization

Flash memories have advanced features such as non-volatility, fast access speed, and low power consumption that they are adopted in various ubiquitous portable devices. However, the speed of writing on flash memory is relatively slower than that of reading, and extensive research efforts are devoted to overcome these restrictions, mostly in the field of flash translation layers (FTLs). This paper proposes an orthogonal approach of reducing flash memory writing time, by detecting and eliminating unnecessary write operations before execution of embedded applications. For this purpose, we extend static analysis techniques previously used in the compilers for program optimization. Our research focuses on loop blocks, which are usually used for massive data management and likely to efficiently enhance performance when improved. As a result, we show that the proposed method reduces the amount of data to be written and improves the writing performance for flash memories.
Relationships between Changes in Coping Strategies and Community Integration Status at 6 and 12 Months after Traumatic Brain Injury

ii Acknowledgments . iii List of Tables and Figure.vi List of Abbreviations . vii List of Appendices. viiviii 1.0 Introduction . 1 2.0 Background.3 2.1 Definition and Classification of Traumatic Brain Injury.3 2.2 Pathophysiology of TBI.4 2.3 Epidemiology of TBI . 5 2.4 Symptoms and Signs of TBI . 6 2.5 Sequelae of TBI . 7 2.6 Coping Strategies Theory and TBI . 11 2.7 Summary . 15 2.8 Purpose and Objectives.17 3.0 Method.18 3.1 Design and Participants.18 3.2 Measures . 19 3.3 Procedures.25 3.4 Statistical analysis.26 4.0 Results . 28 4.1 Changes in coping strategies across time (Objective 1) . 29 4.2 Relationships between changes in coping strategies and community integration (Objective 2) . 30
Transfer and Structure Learning in Markov Logic Networks

Markov logic networks are a recently developed knowledge representation capable of compactly representing complex relationships and handling uncertainty in a principled manner. The deep transfer algorithm of Davis and Domingos proposes a method for learning the structure of an MLN by incorporating cross-domain knowledge — for example, using the relationships between yeast proteins to inform predictions about relationships in the movie business. This thesis explores several questions related to this algorithm and to cross-domain transfer in general. I first develop methods for simultaneous transfer from multiple domains, and propose that much of the success of deep transfer may be explained by a small number of commonly occurring structural properties, e.g. symmetry and transitivity. I then demonstrate empirically that deep transfer often performs best when using the target domain as its own transfer source, e.g. the most effective way to predict relationships in the movie business is to examine other relationships in the movie business. This suggests a reinterpretation of the deep transfer algorithm as a method for single-domain structure learning. Finally, I describe a new algorithm for cross-domain transfer which transfers a more specific form of structure than the second-order cliques used by Davis and Domingos, and show empirically that my approach performs competitively to the deep transfer algorithm, despite using a less sophisticated form of learning in the source domain.
International Journal of Hospitality Management New Consumer Behavior: a Review of Research on Ewom and Hotels

Keywords: Electronic word-of-mouth Online reviews Impacts Hotels a b s t r a c t This study aims to gather and analyze published articles regarding the influence of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on the hotel industry. Articles published in the last five years appearing in six different academically recognized journals of tourism have been reviewed in the present study. Analysis of these articles has identified two main lines of research: review-generating factors (previous factors that cause consumers to write reviews) and impacts of eWOM (impacts caused by online reviews) from consumer perspective and company perspective. A summary of each study's description, methodology and main results are outlined below, as well as an analysis of findings. This study also seeks to facilitate understanding and provide baseline information for future articles related to eWOM and hotels with the intention that researchers have a " snapshot " of previous research and the results achieved to date.