Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reconstruction of Arm Movement Directions from Human Motor Cortex Using fMRI

Recent advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have been used to reconstruct cognitive states based on brain activity evoked by sensory or cognitive stimuli. To date, such decoding paradigms were mostly used for visual modalities. On the other hand, reconstructing functional brain activity in motor areas was primarily achieved through more invasive electrophysiological techniques. Here, we investigated whether non-invasive fMRI responses from human motor cortex can also be used to predict individual arm movements. To this end, we conducted fMRI studies in which participants moved their arm from a center position to one of eight target directions. Our results suggest that arm movement directions can be distinguished from the multivoxel patterns of fMRI responses in motor cortex. Furthermore, compared to multivoxel pattern analysis, encoding models were able to also reconstruct unknown movement directions from the predicted brain activity. We conclude for our study that non-invasive fMRI signal can be utilized to predict directional motor movements in human motor cortex.
Cu-Ni-Ti Composite Diffusion Coating of the Al2O3 Ceramic Surface and its Joining Mechanism

Al2O3 ceramic surface was metallized using multi-ionic composite coating technology. The obtained Cu-Ni-Ti composite coating was examined and evaluated by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffusion (XRD) and sound emissive scratch test (SEST). The composite coating composition, the element distribution, the phase structure of the deposited coating, and the jointing mechanism of the deposited coating/ceramics were analyzed. It was found that the obtained alloy coating layer contained elements such as Cu, Ti, Ni and Fe, etc, and no element segregation was observed. XRD result showed that the diffusion coating alloy layer was composed of CuTi2, Ni[TiO3] and Al2O3. Sound emissive scratch test (SEST) results revealed a good adhesion between the diffusion coating alloy layer and ceramic, and no spallation occurred under the maximum load of 100N.
LQG control over lossy TCP-like networks with probabilistic packet acknowledgements

This paper focuses on control applications over lossy data networks. Sensor data is transmitted to an estimation-control unit over a network and control commands are issued to subsystems over the same network. Sensor, control and acknowledgement packets may be randomly lost according to a Bernoulli process. In this context, the discrete-time linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) optimal control problem is considered. We can show how the partial loss of acknowledgements makes the optimal control law a nonlinear function of the information set. For the special case of complete state observation we can compute the optimal controller and show that the stability range increases monotonically with the arrival rate of the acknowledgement packets.
Rituximab for Remission Induction and Maintenance in Refractory Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease with high morbidity if untreated. Sometimes, despite aggressive treatments, the disease remains active with cumulative organic damage. We conducted a retrospective and descriptive observational study of patients with SLE refractory to conventional treatment who were treated with rituximab (RTX) as remission induction therapy and maintenance. There was a significant reduction in the conventional immunosuppressive drug dose and the number of relapses of disease. RTX appeared to be effective and safe for the induction and maintenance of remission in patient with SLE refractory to conventional treatment.
Mechanistic analysis of Zein nanoparticles/PLGA triblock in situ forming implants for glimepiride

Objectives The study aims at applying pharmaceutical nanotechnology and D-optimal fractional factorial design to screen and optimize the high-risk variables affecting the performance of a complex drug delivery system consisting of glimepiride–Zein nanoparticles and inclusion of the optimized formula with thermoresponsive triblock copolymers in in situ gel. Methods Sixteen nanoparticle formulations were prepared by liquid–liquid phase separation method according to the D-optimal fractional factorial design encompassing five variables at two levels. The responses investigated were glimepiride entrapment capacity (EC), particle size and size distribution, zeta potential, and in vitro drug release from the prepared nanoparticles. Furthermore, the feasibility of embedding the optimized Zein-based glimepiride nanoparticles within thermoresponsive triblock copolymers poly(lactide-co-glycolide)-block-poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(lactide-co-glycolide) in in situ gel was evaluated for controlling glimepiride release rate. Results Through the systematic optimization phase, improvement of glimepiride EC of 33.6%, nanoparticle size of 120.9 nm with a skewness value of 0.2, zeta potential of 11.1 mV, and sustained release features of 3.3% and 17.3% drug released after 2 and 24 hours, respectively, were obtained. These desirability functions were obtained at Zein and glimepiride loadings of 50 and 75 mg, respectively, utilizing didodecyldimethylammonium bromide as a stabilizer at 0.1% and 90% ethanol as a common solvent. Moreover, incorporating this optimized formulation in triblock copolymers-based in situ gel demonstrated pseudoplastic behavior with reduction of drug release rate as the concentration of polymer increased. Conclusion This approach to control the release of glimepiride using Zein nanoparticles/triblock copolymers-based in situ gel forming intramuscular implants could be useful for improving diabetes treatment effectiveness.
Raman and Raman optical activity (ROA) analysis of RNA structural motifs in Domain I of the EMCV IRES

Raman and Raman optical activity (ROA) spectra were collected for four RNA oligonucleotides based on the EMCV IRES Domain I to assess the contributions of helix, GNRA tetraloop, U·C mismatch base pair and pyrimidine-rich bulge structures to each. Both Raman and ROA spectra show overall similarities for all oligonucleotides, reflecting the presence of the same base paired helical regions and GNRA tetraloop in each. Specific bands are sensitive to the effect of the mismatch and asymmetric bulge on the structure of the RNA. Raman band changes are observed that reflect the structural contexts of adenine residues, disruption of A-form helical structure, and incorporation of pyrimidine bases in non-helical regions. The ROA spectra are also sensitive to conformational mobility of ribose sugars, and verify a decrease in A-type helix content upon introduction of the pyrimidine-rich bulge. Several Raman and ROA bands also clearly show cooperative effects between the mismatch and pyrimidine-rich bulge motifs on the structure of the RNA. The complementary nature of Raman and ROA spectra provides detailed and highly sensitive information about the local environments of bases, and secondary and tertiary structures, and has the potential to yield spectral signatures for a wide range of RNA structural motifs.
Simulations of Contrail Optical Properties and Radiative Forcing for Various Crystal Shapes

The aim of this study is to investigate the sensitivity of radiative-forcing computations to various contrail crystal shape models. Contrail optical properties in the shortwave and longwave ranges are derived using a ray-tracing geometric method and the discrete dipole approximation method, respectively. Both methods present good correspondence of the single-scattering albedo and the asymmetry parameter in a transition range (3‐8 mm). There are substantial differences in single-scattering properties among 10 crystal models investigatedhere(e.g.,hexagonalcolumnsandplateswithdifferentaspectratios,andsphericalparticles). The single-scattering albedo and the asymmetry parameter both vary by up to 0.1 among various crystal shapes. The computedsingle-scattering properties are incorporatedin the moderate-resolutionatmospheric radiance andtransmittancemodel(MODTRAN)radiativetransfercodetosimulatesolarandinfraredfluxesatthetop oftheatmosphere. Particleshapeshaveastrongimpactonthecontrailradiativeforcingin boththeshortwave and longwave ranges. The differences in the net radiative forcing among optical models reach 50% with respect to the mean model value. The hexagonal-column and hexagonal-plate particles show the smallest net radiative forcing, and the largest forcing is obtained for the spheres. The balance between the shortwave forcing and longwave forcing is highly sensitive with respect to the assumed crystal shape and may even change the sign of the net forcing. The optical depth at which the mean diurnal radiative forcing changes sign from positive to negative varies from 4.5 to 10 for a surface albedo of 0.2 and from 2 to 6.5 for a surface albedo of 0.05. Contrails are probably never that optically thick (except for some aged contrail cirrus), however, and so will not have a cooling effect on climate.
Dendritic Cell Cancer Vaccines: From the Bench to the Bedside

The recognition that the development of cancer is associated with acquired immunodeficiency, mostly against cancer cells themselves, and understanding pathways inducing this immunosuppression, has led to a tremendous development of new immunological approaches, both vaccines and drugs, which overcome this inhibition. Both “passive” (e.g. strategies relying on the administration of specific T cells) and “active” vaccines (e.g. peptide-directed or whole-cell vaccines) have become attractive immunological approaches, inducing cell death by targeting tumor-associated antigens. Whereas peptide-targeted vaccines are usually directed against a single antigen, whole-cell vaccines (e.g. dendritic cell vaccines) are aimed to induce robust responsiveness by targeting several tumor-related antigens simultaneously. The combination of vaccines with new immuno-stimulating agents which target “immunosuppressive checkpoints” (anti-CTLA-4, PD-1, etc.) is likely to improve and maintain immune response induced by vaccination.
Optimal allocation of on-chip memory for multiple-API operating systems

The allocation of die area to different processor components is a central issue in the design of single-chip microprocessors. Chip area is occupied by both core execution logic, such as ALU and FPU datapaths, and memory structures, such as caches, TLBs, and write buffers. The authors focus on the allocation of die area to memory structures through a cost/benefit analysis. The cost of memory structures with different sizes and associativities is estimated by using an established area model for on-chip memory. The performance benefits of selecting a given structure are measured through a collection of methods including on-the-fly hardware monitoring, trace-driven simulation and kernel-based analysis. Special consideration is given to operating systems that support multiple application programming interfaces (APIs), a software trend that substantially affects on-chip memory allocation decisions. Results: Small adjustments in cache and TLB design parameters can significantly impact overall performance. Operating systems that support multiple APIs, such as Mach 3.0, increase the relative importance of on-chip instruction caches and TLBs when compared against single-API systems such as Ultrix. <<ETX>>
Psychopathological Processes Involved in Social Comparison, Depression, and Envy on Facebook

Is Facebook utilization beneficial or detrimental for psychological well-being? I draw on outstanding research (e.g., Chou and Edge, 2012; Lin and Utz, 2015; Appel et al., 2016; Ehrenreich and Underwood, 2016; Vogel and Rose, 2016; Hu et al., 2017) to substantiate that examining other individuals’ positively presented material on Facebook may have detrimental consequences. Increasing comparisons on Facebook may generate feelings of envy, the latter being a significant process determining the effect of growing social comparison on psychological well-being. To date, there is an increasing body of literature investigating the psychological consequences of Facebook usage, the function of relationship closeness in producing the feelings of contentment and envy, the impacts of exposure to positive content on Facebook, the link between envy and depression on Facebook, and the function of tie strength in expecting the emotional results of browsing Facebook. I am specifically interested in how previous research explored the consequences of Facebook use on psychological outcomes, the moderating function of envy in the link between Facebook use and reduced affective wellbeing, the psychological results of non-interactive Facebook conduct, and the role of relationship closeness in anticipating user’s contentment and envy after inspecting a post. A synthesis of the extant literature suggests that inspecting other individuals’ positive news on Facebook brings about contentment through emotional contagion, whereas negative news causes discomfort as a consequence of mood contagion, the transmissible effect being more powerful when the news is associated with a strong tie. The outcomes of this research back the argument that self-confidence and dispositional envy are instrumental in producing Facebook envy. These findings highlight that the emotional results of browsing Facebook are considerably affected by the substance of the comment, the personal attributes of the Facebook user, and link between the reader and the poster. As limitations in the current review, more hypotheses need to be tested and future directions for subsequent multilevel research on the behavioral and cognitive outcomes of Facebook should illuminate why when individuals achieve belongingness demands on Facebook, they feel in a superior way about themselves and their reputation in social circles.
Characterization of Carotenoids from Streptomyces sp. of marine and fresh water environment

In the present study characterization of carotenoids from selected strains of Streptomyces sp. of Tendania anhelan, Epinephelus diacanthus and Cyprinus carpio, and Osepherenemous gourami were observed. The interaction of microbes particularly Streptomyces sp. in the gut and sponges of fishes in two environmental biotopes and their ability of producing carotenoids were assessed. The UV spectrum, TLC and HPLC results showed the biosynthesis of carotenoids in various strains of Streptomyces sp. , clearly indicate the presence of phytoene, phytofluene, α-carotene, β- carotene and β-isorenieratene. Carotenoids are also important due to their potential antitumor properties and because they are used as colorants in the food industry to pigment salmon, trout and poultry flesh, or to intensify the colour of egg yolk. These pigments are not essential for other carotene containing microorganisms, as is the case for fungi but they are indeed very important due to their ability to act as antioxidant agents.
Effects of intracellular injection of calcium buffers on light adaptation in Limulus ventral photoreceptors

The calcium sequestering agent, EGTA, was injected into Limulus ventral photoreceptors. Before injection, the inward membrane current induced by a long stimulus had a large initial transient which declined to a smaller plateau. Iontophoretic injection of EGTA tended to prevent the decline from transient to plateau. Before injection the plateau response was a nonlinear function of light intensity. After EGTA injection the response-intensity curves tended to become linear. Before injection, bright lights lowered the sensitivity as determined with subsequent test flashes. EGTA injection decreased the light-induced changes in sensitivity. Ca-EGTA buffers having different levels of free calcium were pressure-injected into ventral photoreceptors; the higher the level of free calcium, the lower the sensitivity measured after injection. The effects of inotophoretic injection of EGTA were not mimicked by injection or similar amounts of sulfate and the effects of pressure injection of EGTA buffer solutions were not mimicked by injection of similar volumes of pH buffer or mannitol. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that light adaptation is mediated by a rise of the intracellular free calcium concentration.
A HEURISTIC APPROACH TO THE INDEX TRACKING PROBLEM: A CASE STUDY OF THE TEHRAN EXCHANGE PRICE INDEX

Index tracking, the most popular form of passive fund management, is a portfolio selection problem in which the return of one of the stock market indexes is reproduced by creating a tracking portfolio consisting of a subset of the stocks included in the index. Index tracking has been known as an NP-Hard problem, and sophisticated approaches have been proposed in the literature to solve this problem. This paper presents an easyto-implement heuristic solution to this complex problem. The proposed approach was implemented to develop a tracking portfolio of 438 stocks listed in the Tehran Exchange Price Index. The numerical results indicate that the approach is able to identify quality solutions within reasonable model runtime.
Z-Bus Loss Allocation

This paper presents a new procedure for allocating transmission losses to generators and loads in the context of pools operated under a single marginal price derived from a merit-order approach. The procedure is based on the network Z-bus matrix, although all required computations exploit the sparse Y-bus matrix. One innovative feature and advantage of this method is that, unlike other proposed approaches, it exploits the full set of network equations and does not require any simplifying assumptions. The method is based on a solved load flow and is easily understood and implemented. The loss allocation process emphasizes current rather than power injections, an approach that is intuitively reasonable and leads to a natural separation of the system losses among the network buses. Results illustrate the consistency of the new allocation process with expected results and with the performance of other methods.
Clone attack! Perception of crowd variety

When simulating large crowds, it is inevitable that the models and motions of many virtual characters will be cloned. However, the perceptual impact of this trade-off has never been studied. In this paper, we consider the ways in which an impression of variety can be created and the perceptual consequences of certain design choices. In a series of experiments designed to test people's perception of variety in crowds, we found that clones of appearance are far easier to detect than motion clones. Furthermore, we established that cloned models can be masked by color variation, random orientation, and motion. Conversely, the perception of cloned motions remains unaffected by the model on which they are displayed. Other factors that influence the ability to detect clones were examined, such as proximity, model type and characteristic motion. Our results provide novel insights and useful thresholds that will assist in creating more realistic, heterogeneous crowds.
Bayesian hypothesis testing for the distribution of insurance claim counts using the Gibbs sampler

We construct and present a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for the estimation of posterior odds and probabilities of alternative models used to evaluate competing hypotheses regarding three common discrete distributions involved in the modeling of the outstanding claim counts in actuarial science. The proposed methodology involves advanced statistical techniques of Bayesian modeling which make use of the Gibbs sampling variable selection algorithm. One of the main advantages of this approach over the popular reversible jump algorithm [12] is its straightforward implementation using the MCMC language tool of WINBUGS software [17]. The methodology is applied to a real data set. Directions regarding the implementation in WINBUGS are provided at the Appendix. It is worth noting that although the context of the problem is actuarial, the methodology can be applied to any field of science where the aim is the comparison or selection of discrete distributions of counts.
Rechts-, Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungswissenschaftliche Sektion Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften Diskussionspapiere Der Dfg- Forschergruppe 454: Heterogene Arbeit: Positive Und Normative Aspekte Der Qualifikationsstruktur Der Arbeit Catalyzers for Social Insurance: Education Subsidies vs. Real Ca

We set up a two-period model, where individuals finance educational investment and first-period consumption by borrowing against risky second-period labor income. We show that the government should use both education subsidies and capital taxation to mitigate distortions, stemming from social insurance through labor taxation, and we derive a Ramsey-rule for the optimal combination of these instruments. Relative to capital taxation, optimal education subsidies increase in their relative effectiveness to boost labor and in individuals' underinvestment into education, but they decrease in their relative net distortions. For their absolute levels, indirect complementarity effects, i.e., influencing the effectiveness of the other instrument, do matter. Generally, a decrease in capital taxes should go along with an increase in education subsidies. We also show that, even under uncertainty, the optimal capital tax rate can be zero, if education subsidies are equally effective in boosting labor supply, relative to distorting educational investment. Abstract We set up a two-period model, where individuals finance educational investment and first-period consumption by borrowing against risky second-period labor income. We show that the government should use both education subsidies and capital taxation to mitigate distortions, stemming from social insurance through labor taxation, and we derive a Ramsey-rule for the optimal combination of these instruments. Relative to capital taxation, optimal education subsidies increase in their relative effectiveness to boost labor and in individuals' underinvestment into education, but they decrease in their relative net distortions. For their absolute levels , indirect complementarity effects, i.e., influencing the effectiveness of the other instrument, do matter. Generally, a decrease in capital taxes should go along with an increase in education subsidies. We also show that, even under uncertainty, the optimal capital tax rate can be zero, if education subsidies are equally effective in boosting labor supply, relative to distorting educational investment. Risk * We are very indebted to Bas Jacobs, whose contributions to this paper have been invaluable. Financial support by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung is gratefully acknowledged. " Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter. "
An Exclusive WS-Ranking Method for Ranking of Web Blogs Using Webometrics and Sociometrics

In recent years, society has moved towards becoming "information society", virtual space has become the communication channel and the tool of socialization. While internet usage has grown, the way people are using the internet has also changed. More interactive online technology such as blogs, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and other innovations which are part of greater interactivity and user-generated content that characterize so-called 'Web 2.0' -- i.e. sites allowing users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue -- have become more prominent. Information retrieval has become a great challenge in web blogs and social networking web sites. Webometrics is a study of web-based content with primarily quantitative methods for social science research goals using techniques that are not specific to one field of study, which emphasizes the development of applied methods for use in the wider social sciences. This research focuses on developing a ranking algorithm for web blogs using webometrics and sociometrics. Most of the existing ranking algorithms use forward links, back links and weblog data. This paper gives an idea of using centrality measurement to rank web blogs.