Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary Design of an Artiicial Neural Network Controlling the Locomotion of a Six Legged Animat

abstract We use an evolutionary approach to design an artiicial neural network that controls the locomotion of a simulated hexapod robot. Our evolutionary algorithm is a simple geometry-oriented variation of the cellular encoding scheme that encodes both the architecture and the parameters of a neural network. A context-free tree-grammar is used to limit the size of the genetic search space by constraining the structure of the developmental programs evolved. In a series of preliminary experiments on a single-leg controller, various encoding schemes that allow the tuning of the network's synaptic weights are compared. One of those schemes is then implemented in a program that evolves modular controllers for the complete animat. The eeciency of the approach is discussed and solutions that may improve the results are proposed.
The Double Center of Gravity in Durkheim's Symbol Theory: Bringing the Symbolism of the Body Back in*

By studying Dürkheim through a Schopenhauerian lens, the one-sidedly cognitivist and functionalist reception of his social theory can be balanced. Durkheim explicitly rejected such monistic interpretations. His dialectical approach was always aimed at an essentially dualistic perception of man and society, wherein the lower pole, the individual, is central. In Durkheim's symbol theory, this position leads to two kinds of symbols: those that are bound to the human body, here called “this and that” symbols, and those people can choose freely, here called “this for that” symbols. This twofold symbol theory can already be found in medieval philosophy (e.g. Dante Alighieri) as well as in the work of Paul Ricoeur. For Durkheim the human person is the symbol par excellence. By implication the rituals in which the person is (re)constructed, that is the rites of passage, should be central. The interpretation here opens up new perspectives for a more psychological interpretation of Durkheim's sociology.
Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink

political authority. To drive home the gendered difference in conceptions of consumers in the post-war period, Deutsch sketches the hardware store shopping experience of the post-war male do-ityourselfer. Hardware store shopping maintained a high level of personal service and advicegiving that in no way undermined the authority of the male consumer. To the pre-war pattern of size and scale, post-war supermarkets added diversity of stock while expanding the nowestablished tradition of self-service to include pre-wrapped meat. Advertising campaigns erased women’s labour from the shopping equation. Air conditioning, carts and sleek design promised luxury, and stores described shopping as pleasure. For the government, supermarkets filled the new function of promoting American affluence and opportunity to the Cold War world. Women’s purchase of new processed items and the ease of acquiring, preparing and serving them became a part of that vision. Tracing the conquest of American grocery consumption by the supermarket, Deutsch then targets its gendered meanings. Crafting an apolitical consumer, despite evidence such as 1960s boycotts (called, tellingly, ladycotts), and billing supermarkets as designed specifically to meet the needs of female consumers and provide ‘what women want’, hid the scaffolding of rising corporate power, government policy, and inequalities of access and distribution that characterize the political economy of the American food distribution system. Deutsch leaves to another scholar the story behind the grape boycott – wherein California women farmworkers and farmworkers’ wives prevailed upon consumers, presumably female, to use their shopping to make social change. Sensitive and inclusive of the concerns of African-American consumers, Deutsch sketches the nuanced challenges chains meant for these communities. Blacks might protest against both chains and independents with ‘don’t shop where you can’t work’ campaigns, but they also hoped that a depersonalized and egalitarian shopping experience would improve conditions for black customers. Deutsch highlights the current politics of grocery distribution – provocatively highlighting food deserts and locavorism, the practice of purchasing and consuming food produced within a 100 mile radius to foster sustainability, and the class inequalities these reveal in a conclusion that masterfully connects past and present. Housewife’s Paradise helps explain why, while some Americans cope with keepin’ it real in the Whole Foods parking lot, that lot is out of reach for most.
Remodeling of motor cortex function in acute cerebral infarction patients following human urinary kallidinogenase

A total of 29 patients were treated within 48 hours after acute subcortical cerebral infarction with Xuesaitong or Xuesaitong plus human urinary kallidinogenase for 14 days. Neurological deficits, activity of daily living, and evaluations of distal upper limb motor functions at the 6-month follow-up showed that patients treated with Xuesaitong plus human urinary kallidinogenase recovered better than with Xuesaitong alone. In addition, functional MRI revealed that activation sites were primarily at the ipsilesional side of injury in all patients. Human urinary kallidinogenase induced hyperactivation of the ipsilesional primary sensorimotor cortex, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, and contralesional posterior parietal cortex. Results showed that human urinary kallidinogenase improved symptoms of neurological deficiency by enhancing remodeling of long-term cortical motor function in patients with acute cerebral infarction.
Bevacizumab in age‐related macular degeneration: a randomized controlled trial on the effect of injections every 4 weeks, 6 weeks and 8 weeks

Purpose: Several clinical trials have established the efficacy of ranibizumab therapy administered every 4 weeks to treat exudative age‐related macular degeneration (ARMD). Bevacizumab appears to be a cost‐effective alternative to ranibizumab, although an optimal injection schedule has not yet been determined. In this study, we set out to determine whether bevacizumab treatment in exudative ARMD every 6 or 8 weeks is non‐inferior to bevacizumab treatment every 4 weeks.
Lunar Phases Effect in Chinese Stock Returns

This paper investigates the relation between lunar phases and stock market returns of China. The findings indicate that stock returns are lower on the days around a new moon than on the days around a full moon. This pattern of returns is pervasive; we find it for two major Chinese stock indexes over the last 16 years. The author concludes that lunar phases do affect stock returns in china, and the culture is one of the factors which affect investor’s sentiment and behavior and then affect stock returns.
Parental Speech at 6 Months Predicts Joint Attention at 12 Months

In a prospective longitudinal study of a representative community sample (N = 264), mothers' references to infants' mental states were coded during a topic-sharing task in the home at 6 months. Joint attention behaviour was assessed in the laboratory at 12 months. Individual joint attention skills (gaze following, gaze alternating, and declarative pointing) were significantly inter-correlated, with a single factor accounting for 68% of the variance. Mothers' references to infants' mental states at 6 months predicted infants' joint attention at 12 months. The association was not explained by sociodemographic characteristics of the family, the mother's mental state, or by the quantity or acoustic properties of her speech. However, variability in pitch of maternal speech was an independent predictor of the infants' later joint attention skills. Taken together, these findings suggest that mothers' infant-directed speech fosters infants' attentive participation in topic-sharing interactions, which in turn provide an important arena in which joint attention skills develop over the first year of life.
Adaptive unsupervised extraction of one component of a linear mixture with a single neuron

Extracting one specific component of a linear mixture is to isolate it due to the observation of several mixtures of all the components. This is done in an unsupervised way, based on the sole knowledge that the components are independent. The classical solution is independent component analysis which extracts the components all at the same time. In this paper, given at least as many sensors as components, we propose a simpler approach which independently extracts each component with one neuron. The weights of the neuron are optimized by minimizing an even polynomial of its output. The corresponding adaptive algorithm is an extended anti-Hebbian rule with very low complexity. It can extract any specific negative kurtosis component. Global stability of the algorithm is investigated as well as steady-state fluctuations. The influence of additive noise is also considered. These theoretical results are thoroughly confirmed by computer simulations.
An assessment of the wealth holdings of recent widows.

OBJECTIVES This study examines the wealth holdings of recent widows, how they compare to those of married couple households, and the potential to use this wealth to augment the incomes of widowed women. METHODS Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation are used to investigate the amount and composition of wealth held by four different groups: always married women, about-to-be-widowed women, recent widows, and long-standing widows. Regression analyses assess the impact of group membership on wealth holding controlling for other sociodemographic factors, and annuity calculations assess the potential for wealth to augment income. RESULTS About-to-be widowed women have fewer assets than intact couples, and there is a further decline in assets at the time of the husbands' deaths and in the ensuing period. Estimates of the annuity value of widows' wealth show that its liquidation would do little to improve the economic situation of the poorest widows. DISCUSSION These findings parallel what is known about income changes that surround the death of a spouse. They also point to the need for additional research on the relationship between wealth holdings and mortality as well as the roles that health care costs, life insurance, and bequests may play in altering widows' wealth.
O-GLcNAc Post-Translational Modifications Regulate the Entry of Neurons Into an Axon Branching Program

Many neuronal cytosolic and nuclear proteins are post‐translationally modified by the reversible addition of O‐linked N‐acetylglucosamine (O‐GlcNAc) on serines and threonines. The cellular functions of O‐GlcNAc modifications in neuronal development are not known. We report that O‐GlcNAc‐modified proteins are distributed nonuniformly throughout cultured primary chicken forebrain neurons, with intense immunostaining of the cell body, punctuate immunostaining in axons and all processes, and localization in filopodia/lamellipodia. Overexpression of O‐GlcNAcase, the enzyme that removes O‐GlcNAc from proteins, increased the percentage of neurons exhibiting axon branching without altering the frequency of axon branches on a per neuron basis and increased the numbers of axonal filopodia. Conversely, pharmacologically increasing O‐GlcNAc levels on proteins through specific inhibition of O‐GlcNAcase with the inhibitor 9d decreased the numbers of axonal filopodia, but had no effect on axon length or branching. Treatment with an alternative O‐GlcNAcase inhibitor, PUGNAc, similarly decreased the number of axonal filopodia. Furthermore, axon branching induced by the adenylyl cyclase activator forskolin was suppressed by pharmacological inhibition of O‐GlcNAcase. Western analysis revealed that O‐GlcNAc levels regulate the phosphorylation of some PKA substrates in response to forskolin. These data provide the first evidence of O‐GlcNAc modification‐specific influences in neuronal development in primary culture, and indicate specific roles for O‐GlcNAc in the regulation of axon morphology. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol, 2009
Contextual stimuli and proactive inhibition

A special box was constructed making it possible for undergraduates to learn and recall in either of 2 distinctive environments, the other environment being a conventional memory drum. 3 experiments were conducted; in each Ss served for several daily sessions, each day learning 2 lists of 25 words by serial anticipation, after being tested by free recall for the 2 lists learned the day before. In each experiment, 1/2 of the Ss were subjected to a change in environment during the experiment, and the change was maintained until the end of the experiment. Recall became worse with successive days. A change of context improved recall or retarded its decline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
Item Format and Social Desirability: Implications for Interpretation of the MBTI ∗

The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) remains widely used in many counseling applications despite extensive criticism of its basic nature and psychometric properties. The present study was designed to examine specifically the accuracy of the claimed minimal influence of social desirability on Form G of the MBTI. Undergraduate students (n = 26) judged the desirability of each item option of Form G, which was compared across the 60 item pairs in which both options were scored. The rated values were approximately equal for two domains, while J and E item options were judged to be more desirable than their P and I paired response options. A second study (n = 52) evaluated the social desirability of the 16 MBTI type descriptors, finding most descriptions to be above the neutral range in desirability. These results suggest that stylistic responding contaminates MBTI profiles and interpretative material. Consequently, users should consider alternative measures and at the very least, take great care in interpreting the MBTI because of its flawed structure.
Regulation of apoptosis by viral gene products

Apoptosis is the process whereby individual cells of multicellular organisms undergo systematic self-destruction in response to a wide variety of stimuli. Apoptosis is a genetically controlled preprogrammed event which eliminates cells during development when they have become redundant or which functions as an emergency response after radiation damage, viral infection, or aberrant growth induced by the activation of oncogenes. In the case of virus-infected cells, the induction of early cell death would severely limit virus production and reduce or eliminate spread of progeny virus in the host. Thus, most animal viruses have evolved strategies to evade or delay early apoptosis to allow production of high yields of progeny virus. Over the past few years both the biochemical basis of apoptosis and its regulation by viral products have become clearer. For example, part of the apoptotic program includes the induction of cellular endonucleases which could target replicating viral DNA and prevent virus production at a very early stage. Thus, the problem facing the virus is to replicate and package large numbers of progeny genomes safely within newly synthesized viral capsids. Many viruses have evolved genes encoding proteins which effectively suppress or delay apoptosis long enough for the production of sufficient quantities of progeny. In addition, a growing number of viruses are now known to induce apoptosis actively at late stages of infection. This process may represent a final and important step in the spread of progeny to neighboring cells while also evading host immune inflammatory responses and protecting progeny virus from host enzymes and antibodies. Such virally induced apoptosis may also contribute to some clinical manifestations and cytotoxicity associated with several human diseases of viral origin. The purpose of this review is to summarize recent information on the induction and suppression of apoptosis by viral products as well as to propose how this knowledge may provide insights into basic cell biology and offer the potential of new therapeutic applications. A recent comprehensive review by Shen and Shenk (75) also deals with some aspects of the subjects covered below.
The Power of Their Presence: Minority Group Teachers and Schooling

This review focuses on the experiences of minority group teachers as they move into teacher credential programs and then into the teaching profession. Research reports published between 1989 and 1998 were considered if they focused on the experiences of preservice and in-service minority group teachers in public school contexts. After a descriptive synthesis provides a snap-shot of the actual experiences of minority group teachers in schooling, a social justice framework is used to guide teacher educators and school-based professionals in their construction of robust recruitment and retention programs. This review demonstrates the power of the presence of minority group teachers but also demonstrates the obstacles to full realization of their potential. Perhaps the opportunity to imagine the possibilities of schooling in the context of making a real difference in students' lives is the catalyst minority group people need to enter and remain in the teaching profession.
Shifts in the model of service delivery in intellectual disability in Victoria

A fundamental restructuring of welfare states has occurred in the last decade and, in common with other fields of health and welfare, intellectual disability services have evolved from a largely institutional character to a diverse range of housing and community provision and individually tailored approaches to service delivery. Aspects of the shift towards marketisation which emphasise individualism and the power of the consumer and de-emphasise membership of categorical groups, are reflected in the values and principles that now drive intellectual disability policy and have to some extent been embraced by stakeholders in the field. However, these shifts have also led to tensions and pose inherent contradictions that may obstruct the realisation of policy objectives. Using a framework derived from Baldock and Evers, this paper explores some of the recent policy shifts in the field of intellectual disability, examines the dilemmas they pose and the major questions to be addressed in this field at the beginning of the 21st Century.
A measurement study and implication for architecture design in wireless body area networks

Reliability and energy efficiency are two key performance metrics in wireless body area network (WBAN) to meet the requirement of healthcare applications. The network architecture of WBAN has significant impact on transmission performance. In this paper, we investigate the network architecture through the measurement study of WBANs. In particular, we measure the performance achieved for star and multihop IEEE 802.15. 4 WBANs in terms of packet reception ratio (PRR), collection delay, energy consumption, and energy balancing. The experimental results show that in the star architecture network, only 40% of on-body nodes are able to achieve required PRR performance (0.95) when transmitting at the maximum power. This indicates the demand of multihop transmissions. In the multihop experiment, we use a customized collection tree protocol (CTP) to formulate multihop networks. Our multihop measurement results show that the link quality based routing achieves good performance in terms of PRR (>;0.96) and collection delay (<;150 ms for 95% of nodes). We further suggest the choice of the optimal transmission power level by inspecting the average number of transmissions per packet, network energy consumption and average cost per hop.
Do people use reverse psychology? An exploration of strategic self-anticonformity

This research examined reports of the real-world use of reverse psychology, or what we term strategic self-anticonformity (SSA). In Study 1, participants reported examples in which they engaged in SSA and rated the success and frequency of use of this influence tactic. These data suggested the existence of two forms of SSA, one used as a general persuasion tactic and one used specifically to garner interpersonal reassurance. Study 2 compared the prevalence of these two forms of SSA with the use of three previously established influence tactics (i.e., door-in-the-face, foot-in-the-door, and disrupt-then-reframe). The results suggest that SSA is a prevalent, real-world influence tactic deserving of further study.
Global eQTL Mapping Reveals the Complex Genetic Architecture of Transcript-Level Variation in Arabidopsis

The genetic architecture of transcript-level variation is largely unknown. The genetic determinants of transcript-level variation were characterized in a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population (n = 211) of Arabidopsis thaliana using whole-genome microarray analysis and expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping of transcript levels as expression traits (e-traits). Genetic control of transcription was highly complex: one-third of the quantitatively controlled transcripts/e-traits were regulated by cis-eQTL, and many trans-eQTL mapped to hotspots that regulated hundreds to thousands of e-traits. Several thousand eQTL of large phenotypic effect were detected, but almost all (93%) of the 36,871 eQTL were associated with small phenotypic effects (R2 < 0.3). Many transcripts/e-traits were controlled by multiple eQTL with opposite allelic effects and exhibited higher heritability in the RILs than their parents, suggesting nonadditive genetic variation. To our knowledge, this is the first large-scale global eQTL study in a relatively large plant mapping population. It reveals that the genetic control of transcript level is highly variable and multifaceted and that this complexity may be a general characteristic of eukaryotes.
Modelling Network Protocols with Object Petri Nets

This paper examines how object-oriented extensions to the Petri Net formalism can address a number of issues in the modelling of network protocols. The object-oriented extensions lead to the formalism of Object Petri Nets, with a textual language form referred to as LOOPN++. The paper considers practical examples for which clean, well-structured models can be created because of the support for modularity, inheritance, polymorphism, genericity, and mobile objects.
Chronic Blockade of Nitric Oxide Does Not Produce Hypertension in Baroreceptor Denervated Rabbits

Abstract—Although the vascular action of endothelium-derived nitric oxide in modulating arterial pressure is well established, nitric oxide can also act as a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. In addition, there is evidence for an interaction between nitric oxide and baroreceptor afferent processing; thus, nitric oxide may regulate blood pressure through central modulation of arterial baroreflexes. To test this possible interaction of nitric oxide and baroreflexes in the long-term regulation of blood pressure, we measured arterial pressure and heart rate responses to nitric oxide blockade by using L-NAME (50 mg/kg per day in drinking water) over 7 days in baroreceptor intact and sinoaortic denervated conscious rabbits. In the baroreceptor intact animals, blockade of nitric oxide leads to a significant increase in mean arterial pressure (from 75±2 to 84±3 mm Hg) and decrease in heart rate (from 233±8 to 195±8 bpm) that was sustained over the 7 days of nitric oxide blockade. In the sinoaortic denervated animals, blockade of nitric oxide initially led to a similar increase in arterial pressure (82±3 mm Hg on the second day), but in all sinoaortic denervated animals this increase was not sustained and recovered back to pre–L-NAME levels. This finding indicates that baroreflexes play an important role in the long-term control of blood pressure, and, second, that one mediator of this control is nitric oxide.