Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age and sex effects on corpus callosum morphology across the lifespan

The corpus callosum (CC) is the largest interhemispheric white matter tract in the human brain, and is characterized by pronounced differences in morphology among individuals. There are limited data, however, regarding typical development, sex differences, and the neuropsychological correlates of individual differences within CC subregions. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging exams were collected in a large cohort (N = 305) of healthy individuals (ages 8–68). We used a highly reliable program to automatically identify the midsagittal plane and obtain CC subregion measures according to approaches described by Witelson [1989]: Brain 112:799–835 and Hampel et al. [1998]: Arch Neurol 55:193–198 and a measure of whole CC shape (i.e., circularity). CC measurement parameters, including area, perimeter, length, circularity, and CC subregion area values were generally characterized by inverted U‐shaped curves across the observed age range. Peak values for CC subregions were observed between ages 32 and 45, and descriptive linear correlations were consistent with sharper area changes in development. We also observed differing age‐associated changes across the lifespan between males and females in the CC subregion corresponding to the genu (Witelson's subregion 2), as well as CC circularity. Mediation analysis using path modeling indicated that genu area mediated the relationship between age and processing speed for females, and the relationship between age and visual learning and executive functioning for males. Taken together, our findings implicate sex differences in CC morphology across the lifespan that are localized to the genu, which appear to mediate neuropsychological functions. Hum Brain Mapp 36:2691–2702, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Circadian rhythms: From behaviour to molecules

In higher eukaryotes, circadian behaviour patterns have been dissected at the molecular level in Drosophila and, more recently, in the mouse. Considerable progress has been made in identifying some of the molecular components of the clock in the fly, where two genes, period (per) and timeless (tim), are essential for behavioural rhythmicity. The PER and TIM proteins show circadian cycles in abundance, and are part of a negative feedback loop with their own mRNAs. Within the pacemaker neurons, the PER and TIM products are believed to form a complex which allows them to translocate to the nucleus, but how they repress their own transcription is unclear. TIM is rapidly degraded by light, a feature which permits a compelling molecular description of both behavioural light entrainment and phase responses to light pulses. The regulation of per and tim is altered in different Drosophila tissues, however, and comparative analyses of the two genes outside the Diptera reveals further unusual patterns of tissue‐specific regulation. Evolution appears to have modified the way in which the two genes are utilised to generate circadian phenotypes. More recently, the cloning of mouse clock genes, including putative per homologues, opens up exciting possibilities for mammalian molecular chronobiology.
State Dependence Can Explain the Risk Aversion Puzzle

Risk aversion functions extracted from observed stock and option prices can be negative, as shown by Ait-Sahalia and Lo (2000), Journal of Econometrics 94: 9-51; and Jackwerth (2000), The Review of Financial Studies 13(2), 433-51. We rationalize this puzzle by a lack of conditioning on latent state variables. Once properly conditioned, risk aversion functions and pricing kernels are consistent with economic theory. To differentiate between the various theoretical explanations in terms of heterogeneity of beliefs or preferences, market sentiment, state-dependent utility, or regimes in fundamentals, we calibrate several consumption-based asset pricing models to match the empirical pricing kernel and risk aversion functions at different dates and over several years.
Using Life Cycle Assessment to Evaluate Green and Grey Combined Sewer Overflow Control Strategies

Decentralized approaches to managing urban stormwater are gaining increased attention within the contexts of urban sustainability, climate change adaptation, and as a means of reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This study applied a life cycle assessment (LCA) to comparing the environmental efficiency of three means of equivalently reducing CSOs to the Bronx River (Bronx, NY, USA). Strategy 1 featured decentralized green infrastructure technologies, while “grey” strategies 2 and 3 detained, and detained and treated, respectively, excess flows at the end of pipe. We estimated greenhouse gas emissions (in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents [t CO2‐eq]) over the construction, operation, and maintenance phases, including energy consumed at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), carbon sequestered, and shading provided by vegetation (in the case of the green approach) over a 50‐year analysis period. The study area comprised the entire drainage area contributing to New York State permitted CSO discharge points associated with the Hunts Point WWTP. The analysis was performed using a hybrid of process and economic input‐output (EIO) LCA methods. The decentralized green strategy outperformed the two grey strategies in terms of this set of environmental metrics. The net emissions of the green strategy over 50 years was 19,000 t CO2‐eq, whereas the grey strategies emitted 85,000 t CO2‐eq (detention) and 400,000 t CO2‐eq (detention and treatment). These results were significantly influenced by the emissions associated with the operation and maintenance activities required for strategies 2 and 3, and the carbon sequestered and shading provided by the vegetation in strategy 1, and suggest that watershed managers who seek to reduce CSOs and reduce carbon footprints would opt for the green approach.
Left ventricular long axis function in diastolic heart failure is reduced in both diastole and systole: time for a redefinition?

Objective: To test the hypothesis that, when measured in the long axis, left ventricular systolic function is abnormal in patients with diastolic heart failure. Design: A case–control study. Setting: University teaching hospital (tertiary referral centre). Patients: 68 patients with heart failure, 29 with a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of > 0.45 and diastolic dysfunction (diastolic heart failure), 39 with an LVEF of ≤ 0.45 (systolic heart failure), and 105 normal subjects, including 33 age matched controls. Methods: LVEF was measured by cross sectional Simpson's method, and mitral annular amplitudes and velocities by M mode and tissue Doppler echocardiography, respectively, along with mitral Doppler inflow velocities. Results were compared between the three groups. Main outcome measures: Peak systolic mitral annular velocity and amplitude between the different groups. Results: The mitral annular peak mean velocity and amplitude in systole were lower in the patients with diastolic heart failure (mean (SEM), 4.8 (0.2) cm/s) than in the age matched normal controls (6.1 (0.14) cm/s), but higher than those with systolic heart failure (2.8 (0.13) cm/s) (all p < 0.001). Similar changes were seen the mitral annular amplitude during systole. Peak early diastolic velocity and amplitude were also significantly reduced in the group with diastolic heart failure. Left ventricular hypertrophy was evident in over 95% patients in both diastolic and systolic heart failure groups, with a comparable left ventricular mass index. Conclusions: In patients with diastolic heart failure and evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy, there is systolic left ventricular impairment as measured by myocardial Doppler imaging of the longitudinal axis. Thus subtle abnormalities of systolic function are present in patients with heart failure and a normal left ventricular ejection fraction, and there appears to be a continuum of systolic function between those with truly normal, mildly impaired (labelled diastolic heart failure), and obviously abnormal left ventricular systolic function. Isolated diastolic dysfunction is uncommon.
Institutional Arrangements for Poverty Alleviation: The Lessons of Success

There are an increasing number of countries where governments have the political will to bring about a reorientation in the management of programmes and projects, but do not quite know how to design the supporting institutions capable of reaching the poor. The relevant factors here are administrative and social rather than technical and financial. The problem is how to share decision making with the poor at the local level in programmes initiated by government. Experience with recent business practice in developed countries is drawn on to analyse lessons of success in programmes in developing countries. Changes in public policies in the management of programmes to draw on the benefits of partnership with the poor, whose passivity acts as the major constraint in development, are suggested.
People and Power: Electricity Sector Reforms and the Poor in Europe and Central Asia

Empirical insights on household behavior and electricity consumption patterns in this book reveal that, in Europe and Central Asia, the erosion of tariff based subsidies has disproportionately affected the poor, while direct transfers through social benefit systems have often been inadequately targeted. The book suggests alternative strategies for achieving cost-recovery in the electricity sector in a socially and politically acceptable manner, providing lessons that are equally relevant for other utilities and regions.
Hierarchical unsupervised fuzzy clustering

A recursive algorithm for hierarchical fuzzy partitioning is presented. The algorithm has the advantages of hierarchical clustering, while maintaining fuzzy clustering rules. Each pattern can have a nonzero membership in more than one subset of the data in the hierarchy. Optimal feature extraction and reduction is optionally reapplied for each subset. Combining hierarchical and fuzzy concepts is suggested as a natural feasible solution to the cluster validity problem of real data. The convergence and membership conservation of the algorithm are proven. The algorithm is shown to be effective for a variety of data sets with a wide dynamic range of both covariance matrices and number of members in each class.
Income Transfer as Model of Economic Growth

This work aims to study the main Brazilian economic growth influenced by an income transfer program. For this purpose, we used the DSGE approach. The estimation of the parameters was performed using the Bayesian methodology and analysis of results was done by impulse response functions. The basic characteristic of this paper is to use two types of consumers: ricardian individuals and non-ricardian individuals. The first agents maximize intertemporally its utility function, while the second type of agents is limited to consume the amount received through income transfer. The results show that implantation this program brings positive returns for the whole economy, except for individuals ricardian.
Optimal combinational quota‐share and excess‐of‐loss reinsurance policies in a dynamic setting

In this paper, we describe a large insurance company's surplus by a Brownian motion with positive drift, which is the approximation of a classical risk process. The problem of minimizing the probability of ruin by controlling the combinational quota‐share and excess‐of‐loss reinsurance strategy is considered. We show that the optimal combinational reinsurance strategy must be the pure excess‐of‐loss reinsurance strategy. Moreover, we give an explicit solution for the optimal reinsurance strategy. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Anesthesia and post‐mortem interval profoundly influence the regulatory serine phosphorylation of glycogen synthase kinase‐3 in mouse brain

Glycogen synthase kinase‐3 (GSK3) is a crucial enzyme contributing to the regulation of neuronal structure, plasticity and survival, is implicated as a contributory factor in prevalent diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and mood disorders and is regulated by a wide range of signaling systems and pharmacological agents. Therefore, factors regulating GSK3 in vivo are currently of much interest. GSK3 is inhibited by phosphorylation of serine‐9 or serine‐21 in GSK3β and GSK3α, respectively. This study found that accurate measurements of phospho‐Ser‐GSK3 in brain are confounded by a rapid post‐mortem dephosphorylation, with ∼90% dephosphorylation of both GSK3 isoforms occurring within 2 min post‐mortem. Furthermore, three anesthetics, pentobarbital, halothane and chloral hydrate, each caused large in vivo increases in the serine phosphorylation of both GSK3β and GSK3α in several regions of mouse brain. Thus, studies of the phosphorylation state of GSK3 in brain, and perhaps in other tissues, need to take into account post‐mortem changes and the effects of anesthetics and there is a direct correlation between anesthesia and high levels of serine‐phosphorylated GSK3.
Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values

In "Reclaiming the Game", William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other students. In a field overwhelmed by reliance on anecdotes, the factual findings are striking - and sobering. Anyone seriously concerned about higher education will find it hard to wish away the evidence that athletic recruitment is problematic even at those schools that do not offer athletic scholarships. Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted in the highly influential studies The Shape of the River and The Game of Life, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at thirty-three academically selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that recruited athletes "underperform:" they do even less well academically than predicted by their test scores and high school grades. Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has widened substantially. This book examines the forces that have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for reform. At its core, "Reclaiming the Game" is an argument for re-establishing athletics as a means of fulfilling - instead of undermining - the educational missions of our colleges and universities.
A new auxiliary current injection circuit for improved transient response of step-up/step-down DC-DC converters

In this paper, a new auxiliary current injection circuit (ACIC) is developed aiming at improvement in the dynamic response of DC-DC converters under load transients. The developed ACIC can be used as a generic auxiliary module for both step-up/step-down DC-DC converters. The auxiliary current injection circuit is a bidirectional power converter, designed for low power ratings with higher bandwidth, to operate only during load transients. The performance of the developed auxiliary power converter has been evaluated in conjunction with an interleaved boost converter as main converter, which has limitation on bandwidth due to its inherent right half plane zero. Experimental results for a 250 W, 100 kHz interleaved boost converter prototype with auxiliary current injection circuit are presented. The peak overshoot/undershoot and the transient recovery time are reduced significantly with the incorporation of developed ACIC.
Increased inferior frontal activation during word generation: A marker of genetic risk for schizophrenia but not bipolar disorder?

During verbal‐fluency tasks, impairments in performance and functional abnormalities in the inferior frontal cortex have been observed in both schizophrenia patients and their unaffected relatives. We sought to examine whether such functional abnormalities are a specific marker of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia. We studied a sample of 132 subjects, comprising 39 patients with schizophrenia, 10 unaffected monozygotic (MZ) cotwins of schizophrenia probands, 28 patients with bipolar disorder, 7 unaffected MZ cotwins of bipolar disorder probands and 48 healthy controls. Blood oxygen level‐dependent response was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging during the performance of an overt verbal‐fluency task with two levels of task difficulty, in a cytoarchitectonic region of interest encompassing Brodmann areas 44 and 45 bilaterally. Patients with schizophrenia and the unaffected MZ cotwins of schizophrenia probands showed increased activation in the inferior frontal cortex relative to healthy controls and bipolar patients. Increased engagement of the inferior frontal cortex during verbal‐fluency may thus be a marker of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Deep vein thrombosis after total knee replacement.

INTRODUCTION The prevalence of deep vein thrombosis after total knee replacement has been quoted to be between 46% and 84% in the Western literature. The aims of this study were to determine its prevalence in the Singapore population and to assess the need for prophylaxis against deep vein thrombosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS We examined data on 100 consecutive patients undergoing total knee replacement at the Adult Reconstructive Service, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Singapore General Hospital and assessed the possible risk factors: age, sex, weight, previous surgery, unilateral or bilateral surgery, postoperative rehabilitation, tourniquet and operating time. Functional and knee scores based on the Knee Society Clinical Rating System were also assessed. No prophylaxis was given to these patients. These patients underwent a duplex scan of both lower limbs on the seventh postoperative day. Treatment was instituted only if proximal deep vein thrombosis was detected. RESULTS The overall incidence of deep vein thrombosis was 14% with 64.3% of it occurring distally. Deep vein thrombosis was more common in bilateral total knee replacement (22.2%) compared to unilateral total knee replacement (13.2%). Partial thrombosis was present in 71.4% and occurred predominantly in the ipsilateral leg. There was no evidence of propagation. Only 1 patient developed pulmonary embolism and was treated successfully but there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis on duplex scan in this patient. CONCLUSION There was no significant difference in the risk factors between patients who did and those who did not develop deep vein thrombosis.
Stem Volume and Above-Ground Biomass Estimation of Individual Pine Trees From LiDAR Data: Contribution of Full-Waveform Signals

The diameter at breast height (DBH) is the most extensively measured parameter in the field for estimating stem volume and aboveground biomass of individual trees. However, DBH can not be measured from airborne or spaceborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data. Consequently, volume and biomass must be estimated from LiDAR data using other tree metrics. The objective of this paper is to examine whether full-waveform (FW) LiDAR data can improve volume and biomass estimation of individual pine trees, when compared to usual discrete-return LiDAR data. Sets of metrics are derived from canopy height model (CHM-only metrics), from the vertical distribution of discrete-returns (CHM+DR metrics), and from full-waveform LiDAR data (CHM+FW metrics). In each set, the most relevant and non-collinear metrics were selected using a combination of methods using best subset and variance inflation factor, in order to produce predictive models of volume and biomass. CHM-only metrics (tree height and tree bounding volume [tree height x crown area] provided volume and biomass estimates of individual trees with an error (mean error ± standard deviation) of 2% ± 26% and -15% ±49%, which is equivalent to previous studies. CHM+FW metrics did not improve stem volume estimates (5% ± 31%), but they increased the accuracy of aboveground biomass estimates ( -4%±31%). The approach is limited by the delineation of individual trees. However, the results highlight the potential of full-waveform LiDAR data to improve aboveground biomass estimates through a better integration of branch and leaf biomass than with discrete-return LiDAR data.
LINCing the eukaryotic tree of life – towards a broad evolutionary comparison of nucleocytoplasmic bridging complexes

ABSTRACT The nuclear envelope is much more than a simple barrier between nucleoplasm and cytoplasm. Nuclear envelope bridging complexes are protein complexes spanning both the inner and outer nuclear envelope membranes, thus directly connecting the cytoplasm with the nucleoplasm. In metazoans, they are involved in connecting the cytoskeleton with the nucleoskeleton, and act as anchoring platforms at the nuclear envelope for the positioning and moving of both nuclei and chromosomes. Recently, nucleocytoplasmic bridging complexes have also been identified in more evolutionarily diverse organisms, including land plants. Here, I discuss similarities and differences among and between eukaryotic supergroups, specifically of the proteins forming the cytoplasmic surface of these complexes. I am proposing a structure and function for a hypothetical ancestral nucleocytoplasmic bridging complex in the last eukaryotic common ancestor, with the goal to stimulate research in more diverse emerging model organisms. Summary: A broad evolutionary comparison of eukaryotic nucleocytoplasmic bridging complexes suggests that they might have evolved from protein complexes involved in attaching centrosomes to the nuclear envelope.
A Face in the Crowd: Recognizing Peptides Through Database Search*

Peptide identification via tandem mass spectrometry sequence database searching is a key method in the array of tools available to the proteomics researcher. The ability to rapidly and sensitively acquire tandem mass spectrometry data and perform peptide and protein identifications has become a commonly used proteomics analysis technique because of advances in both instrumentation and software. Although many different tandem mass spectrometry database search tools are currently available from both academic and commercial sources, these algorithms share similar core elements while maintaining distinctive features. This review revisits the mechanism of sequence database searching and discusses how various parameter settings impact the underlying search.