Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Processing Connectives with a Complex Form-Function Mapping in L2: The Case of French “En Effet”

Discourse connectives are often reported to be difficult for second language learners, yet the causes of these difficulties are still not fully understood. In this paper, we test the ability of German-speaking learners to process and understand a connective with a complex form-function mapping in their L2-French, namely “en effet,” a connective that does not have an exact translation equivalent in their L1-German. We assess learners' competence both in an on-line processing experiment and an off-line judgment task. We argue that one of the interesting specificities of “en effet” is that the two coherence relations that it conveys cannot equally be conveyed implicitly. This case study therefore provides some information about advanced learners' sensitivity to the necessity of explicitly marking a coherence relation by the use of a connective. Our results indicate that advanced learners do not perceive the difference between relations that need and need not be marked by a discourse connective and have not acquired the complex form-function mapping of “en effet. ” We argue that these difficulties cannot be attributed to negative transfer effects, but reflect general limitations in proficiency.
Adolescent Obesity and Puberty: The “Perfect Storm”

Obesity is the most serious long‐term health risk currently facing America's adolescents. Weight gain during adolescence carries a higher risk for adult obesity and the metabolic syndrome. This review highlights early adolescence as a particularly high‐risk time for weight gain due to the synergy of naturally occurring metabolic changes along with increasing behavioral risk factors. One of the first potential health effects of abnormal weight gain during this period is earlier puberty, usually manifested as thelarche. The obesity epidemic is clearly implicated in the national trend toward earlier thelarche, although the data are not as strong in relation to menarche. Leptin activation of the hypothalamic‐pituitary axis, combined with insulin resistance, and increased adiposity may result in the higher estrogen levels that are linked to breast development. Young adolescents also experience a sharp decline in their level of physical activity, worsening nutritional habits, and other important psychosocial and developmental risk factors that may contribute to obesity and estrogen‐dependent disease in later life, including polycystic ovary syndrome and breast cancer. Unfortunately, the very psychosocial factors that contribute to abnormal weight gain during early adolescence make prevention and treatment in this population particularly challenging. Therefore, intervening prior to pubertal onset becomes even more important given the risk factors present once puberty begins.
Enhance resiliency to pool based key pre-distribution scheme

The security of the information stored or transmitted through a wireless sensor network against attacks is a primary objective. Key management includes many security services such as confidentiality and authentication. Under the constraints of WSN, designing a scheme of key management is a major challenge. In this paper, we improve the resilience of pool based on symmetric key pre-distribution scheme against capture nodes and secure connectivity coverage.
UAV-BASED PHOTOGRAMMETRIC POINT CLOUDS – TREE STEM MAPPING IN OPEN STANDS IN COMPARISON TO TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNER POINT CLOUDS

Abstract. In both ecology and forestry, there is a high demand for structural information of forest stands. Forest structures, due to their heterogeneity and density, are often difficult to assess. Hence, a variety of technologies are being applied to account for this "difficult to come by" information. Common techniques are aerial images or ground- and airborne-Lidar. In the present study we evaluate the potential use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a platform for tree stem detection in open stands. A flight campaign over a test site near Freiburg, Germany covering a target area of 120 × 75 [m2] was conducted. The dominant tree species of the site is oak (quercus robur) with almost no understory growth. Over 1000 images with a tilt angle of 45° were shot. The flight pattern applied consisted of two antipodal staggered flight routes at a height of 55 [m] above the ground. We used a Panasonic G3 consumer camera equipped with a 14–42 [mm] standard lens and a 16.6 megapixel sensor. The data collection took place in leaf-off state in April 2013. The area was prepared with artificial ground control points for transformation of the structure-from-motion (SFM) point cloud into real world coordinates. After processing, the results were compared with a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) point cloud of the same area. In the 0.9 [ha] test area, 102 individual trees above 7 [cm] diameter at breast height were located on in the TLS-cloud. We chose the software CMVS/PMVS-2 since its algorithms are developed with focus on dense reconstruction. The processing chain for the UAV-acquired images consists of six steps: a. cleaning the data: removing of blurry, under- or over exposed and off-site images; b. applying the SIFT operator [Lowe, 2004]; c. image matching; d. bundle adjustment; e. clustering; and f. dense reconstruction. In total, 73 stems were considered as reconstructed and located within one meter of the reference trees. In general stems were far less accurate and complete as in the TLS-point cloud. Only few stems were considered to be fully reconstructed. From the comparison of reconstruction achievement with respect to height above ground, we can state that reconstruction accuracy decreased in the crown layer of the stand. In addition we were cutting 50 [cm] slices in z-direction and applied a robust cylinder fit to the stem slices. Radii of the TLS-cloud and the SFM-cloud surprisingly correlated well with a Pearson's correlation coefficient of r = 0.696. This first study showed promising results for UAV-based forest structure modelling. Yet, there is a demand for additional research with regard to vegetation stages, flight pattern, processing setup and the utilisation of spectral information.
Replacement of mandibular molars with single-unit restorations supported by wide-body implants: immediate versus delayed loading. A randomized controlled study.

PURPOSE This prospective randomized controlled trial aimed to compare single implant-supported mandibular molar restorations using either an immediate or a delayed loading protocol. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty subjects requiring single mandibular molar replacement were consecutively treated. One implant was placed in each patient. Fifteen subjects were assigned to delayed loading protocol and 15 to immediate loading protocol according to a randomization table. After insertion, the delayed loaded implants were connected to a healing abutment and restored after 3 to 4 months of healing without loading. The immediately loaded implants were loaded within 24 hours of surgery with a provisional restoration. The interim prosthesis was placed in centric occlusion. All contacts in lateral excursions were eliminated. At implant placement the maximum value of insertion torque was recorded. Radiographic bone level change was measured on periapical radiographs obtained at the time of implant placement and 12 months after loading. Means of the 2 groups were compared by Student t test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The level of significance was set at . 05. RESULTS No implants were lost in the delayed loading group (0/15), whereas 1 implant failed (1/15) in the immediate loading group. No differences were observed in relation to implant length or insertion torque between the groups. The average radiographic bone level change after 1 year of function was 1.2 +/- 0.55 mm (range, 0.5 to 2.6 mm) and 0.77 +/- 0.38 mm (range, 0.29 to 1.23 mm) for the delayed loaded and the immediately loaded implants, respectively. The difference in radiographic bone level change between the delayed and immediate loading groups was statistically significant (P = .022; CI = -0.79 to -0.06; Student t test). CONCLUSIONS Immediate loading of wide-diameter implants supporting single restorations in mandibular molar sites seems to be a suitable clinical option. Moreover, the radiographic bone level change observed after 12 months of loading was significantly less for immediately loaded implants.
Targeting the human MUC1 oncoprotein: A tale of two proteins

Commentary to: Bismuth-213 radioimmunotherapy with C595 anti–MUC1 monoclonal antibody in an ovarian cancer ascites model Emma Y. Song, Chang F Qu, Syed M.A. Rizvi, Chand Raja, Julia Beretov, Alfred Morgenstern, Christos Apostolidis, Frank Bruchertseifer, Alan Perkins
Supernatant of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Induces Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Possessing Mesenchymal Features

Increasing evidence shows that some cells from peripheral blood fibroblast-like mononuclear cells have the capacity to differentiate into mesenchymal lineages. However, the insufficiency of these cells in the circulation challenges the cell isolation and subsequently limits the clinical application of these cells. In the present study, the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (pbMNCs) were isolated from wound animals and treated with the supernatant of bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (bmMSCs). Results showed these pbMNCs were fibroblast-like, had stromal morphology, were negative for CD34 and CD45, but positive for Vimentin and Collagen I, and had the multipotency to differentiate into adipocytes and osteoblasts. We named these induced peripheral blood-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (ipbMSCs). Skin grafts in combination with ipbMSCs and collagen I were applied for wound healing, and results revealed ipbMSC exhibited similar potency and effectiveness in the promotion of wound healing to the bmMSCs. Hereafter, we speculate that the mixture of growth factors and chemokines secreted by bmMSCs may play an important roles in the induction of the proliferation and mesenchymal differentiation of mononuclear cells. Our results are clinically relevant because it provide a new method for the acquisition of MSCs which can be used as a candidate for the wound repair.
Constrained Clustering and Its Application to Face Clustering in Videos

In this paper, we focus on face clustering in videos. Given the detected faces from real-world videos, we partition all faces into K disjoint clusters. Different from clustering on a collection of facial images, the faces from videos are organized as face tracks and the frame index of each face is also provided. As a result, many pair wise constraints between faces can be easily obtained from the temporal and spatial knowledge of the face tracks. These constraints can be effectively incorporated into a generative clustering model based on the Hidden Markov Random Fields (HMRFs). Within the HMRF model, the pair wise constraints are augmented by label-level and constraint-level local smoothness to guide the clustering process. The parameters for both the unary and the pair wise potential functions are learned by the simulated field algorithm, and the weights of constraints can be easily adjusted. We further introduce an efficient clustering framework specially for face clustering in videos, considering that faces in adjacent frames of the same face track are very similar. The framework is applicable to other clustering algorithms to significantly reduce the computational cost. Experiments on two face data sets from real-world videos demonstrate the significantly improved performance of our algorithm over state-of-the art algorithms.
A security protocol for information-centric networking in smart grids

The C-DAX project aims at providing a secure overlay network, as an overlay over an IP network, that provides an information-centric network (ICN) tailored to the needs and the capabilities of smart grids. This paper addresses how end-to-end security can be enforced in information-centric networks by proposing a protocol based on the concept of identity-based encryption, a type of public-key cryptography.
Excessive aggregation of membrane proteins in the Martini model

The coarse-grained Martini model is employed extensively to study membrane protein oligomerization. While this approach is exceptionally promising given its computational efficiency, it is alarming that a significant fraction of these studies demonstrate unrealistic protein clusters, whose formation is essentially an irreversible process. This suggests that the protein–protein interactions are exaggerated in the Martini model. If this held true, then it would limit the applicability of Martini to study multi-protein complexes, as the rapidly clustering proteins would not be able to properly sample the correct dimerization conformations. In this work we first demonstrate the excessive protein aggregation by comparing the dimerization free energies of helical transmembrane peptides obtained with the Martini model to those determined from FRET experiments. Second, we show that the predictions provided by the Martini model for the structures of transmembrane domain dimers are in poor agreement with the corresponding structures resolved using NMR. Next, we demonstrate that the first issue can be overcome by slightly scaling down the Martini protein–protein interactions in a manner, which does not interfere with the other Martini interaction parameters. By preventing excessive, irreversible, and non-selective aggregation of membrane proteins, this approach renders the consideration of lateral dynamics and protein–lipid interactions in crowded membranes by the Martini model more realistic. However, this adjusted model does not lead to an improvement in the predicted dimer structures. This implicates that the poor agreement between the Martini model and NMR structures cannot be cured by simply uniformly reducing the interactions between all protein beads. Instead, a careful amino-acid specific adjustment of the protein–protein interactions is likely required.
Beyond the Dopamine Hypothesis to the NMDA Glutamate Receptor Hypofunction Hypothesis of Schizophrenia

NEW TREND IN PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY Hypotheses of schizophrenia have progressed beyond the dopamine hypothesis of overactive mesolimbic dopamine neurons, causing the positive symptoms of psychosis and underactive mesocortical dopamine neurons, causing the negative, cognitive and affective symptoms of schizophrenia. A major hypothesis of schizophrenia proposes that numerous genetic risk factors converge on the A/-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor for the neurotransmitter glutamate. Theoretically, neurodevelopmental abnormalities in glutamate synapse formation result in the hypofunction of NMDA receptors. Since NMDA receptors regulate dopamine neurons, the hypofunction of NMDA receptors may be responsible for the abnormal dopamine activity associated with the symptoms of schizophrenia. For more than 30 years, the dopamine hypothesis has dominated theories of schizophrenia, based initially upon observations that drugs that increase dopamine, such as amphetamine and cocaine, can cause psychosis, whereas antipsychotic drugs that decrease dopamine by blocking dopamine D2 receptors can treat psychosis. 1
Increased endothelium-dependent renal vasodilation in cirrhotic rats.

We have evaluated the renal blood flow (RBF) response of cirrhotic rats to endothelium-dependent [acetylcholine (ACh)] and -independent [sodium nitroprusside (NP)] vasodilators. In anesthetized rats, ACh dose dependently increased RBF, but the response of the cirrhotic rats (n = 6) was significantly higher than that of the controls (n = 6). NP also increased RBF in a dose-dependent manner, but there were no differences between both groups. NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME; 10 mg/kg i.v.) significantly reduced the responses to ACh in both groups, but those of the cirrhotic rats were still higher than those of the controls. In experiments performed in isolated perfused kidneys, preconstricted with phenylephrine, dose-response curves for ACh and NP were obtained in the presence of indomethacin. Both ACh and NP decreased renal perfusion pressure dose dependently, but only the response of the cirrhotic rats (n = 5) to ACh was significantly higher than that of the controls (n = 5). L-NAME (100 microM) significantly reduced the responses to ACh and increased those of NP and abolished the differences between groups, except at the high dose of ACh. These results demonstrate an elevated endothelium-dependent vasodilator response in the cirrhotic kidney, which is eliminated by combined prostaglandin and nitric oxide (NO) synthesis inhibition and suggest that increased intrarenal activity of NO may be contributing to the renal alterations of liver cirrhosis.
Bad Behavior in Groups

Recent research shows the powerful impact of counterproductive behavior in teams. This study explores how team characteristics combine to influence bad behavior in groups. It builds upon recent work in organizational justice by exploring the relationship between overall justice climate and work groups’ deviant and political behavior. Findings suggest that the structure of the work itself, in the form of functional dependence, moderates this relationship. Specifically, it is argued that the relationship between injustice climate and deviant and political behavior will be strongest when functional dependence between employees is low. Results from a sample of 539 employees and 113 supervisors in 113 work units support the hypotheses.
Reproductive Senescence Blunts Response of Estrogen Receptor-α Expression to Estrogen Treatment in Rat Post-Ischemic Cerebral Microvessels

Background Several studies demonstrate that estrogen treatment improves cerebral blood flow in ischemic brain regions of young ovariectomized (OVX) rats. Estrogen receptor-α (ER-α) may mediate estrogen’s beneficial actions via its effects on the cerebral microvasculature. However, estrogen-derived benefit may be attenuated in aged, reproductively senescent (RS) rats. Our goal was to determine the effects of aging, estrogen deprivation and estrogen repletion with oral conjugated estrogens (CE) on postischemic cerebral microvascular protein expression of ER-α and ER-β. Methods Fisher-344 (n = 37) female rats were randomly divided into the following groups: OVX, OVX CE-treated, RS untreated, and RS CE-treated. After 30 days pretreatment with CE (0.01 mg/kg) rats were subjected to15 min. transient global cerebral ischemia. Non-ischemic naïve, OVX and RS rats were used as controls. Expression of ER-α and ER-β in isolated cortical cerebral microvessels (20 to 100 µm in diameter) was assessed using Western blot and immunohistochemistry techniques. Results Age and reproductive status blunted nonischemic ER-α expression in microvessels of OVX rats (0.31±0.05) and RS rats (0.33±0.06) compared to naïve rats (0.45±0.02). Postischemic microvascular expression of ER-α in OVX rats (0.01±0.0) was increased by CE treatment (0.04±0.01). Expression of ER-α in microvessels of RS rats (0.03±0.02) was unaffected by CE treatment (0.01±0.02). Western blot data are presented as a ratio of ER-α or ER-β proteins to β-actin and. Oral CE treatment had no effect on ER-β expression in postischemic microvessels of OVX and RS rats. Statistical analysis was performed by One-Way ANOVA and a Newman-Keuls or Student’s post-hoc test. Conclusion Chronic treatment with CE increases ER-α but not ER-β expression in cerebral microvessels of OVX rats. Aging appears to reduce the normal ability of estrogen to increase ER-α expression in postischemic cerebral microvessels.
Biochemical detection and monitoring of alcohol abuse and abstinence

The merits and limitations of traditional and new markers for alcohol abuse (and abstinence) are critically examined for detection and monitoring of alcoholics, hazardous drinkers and binge drinkers. The traditional markers discussed include γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT), aspartate and alanine aminotransaminases (AST, ALT) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV); new markers include mitochondrial AST, carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT), serum/urine 5- hydroxytryptophol, β-hexosaminidase and acetaldehyde adducts. The strengths and weaknesses of several of the self-reporting screening questionnaires are also explored. No laboratory test is reliable enough on its own to support a diagnosis of alcoholism. Sensitivities and specificities vary considerably and depend on the population concerned. GGT continues to remain the test that combines greatest convenience and sensitivity; its diagnostic accuracy can be enhanced by combination with other traditional markers (AST, ALT, MCV). None of the newer markers offers significant advantage, although CDT seems to be better at monitoring patients for increased alcohol consumption or progress towards abstinence.
Towards Bloom filter-based indexing of iris biometric data

Conventional biometric identification systems require exhaustive 1 : N comparisons in order to identify biometric probes, i.e. comparison time frequently dominates the overall computational workload. Biometric database indexing represents a challenging task since biometric data is fuzzy and does not exhibit any natural sorting order. In this paper we present a preliminary study on the feasibility of applying Bloom filters for the purpose of iris biometric database indexing. It is shown, that by constructing a binary tree data structure of Bloom filters extracted from binary iris biometric templates (iris-codes) the search space can be reduced to O(logN). In experiments, which are carried out on a database of N = 256 classes, biometric performance (accuracy) is maintained for different conventional identification systems. Further, perspectives on how to employ the proposed scheme on large-scale databases are given.
Bridging the gap between functional and anatomical features of cortico‐cerebellar circuits using meta‐analytic connectivity modeling

Theories positing that the cerebellum contributes to cognitive as well as motor control are driven by two sources of information: (1) studies highlighting connections between the cerebellum and both prefrontal and motor territories, (2) functional neuroimaging studies demonstrating cerebellar activations evoked during the performance of both cognitive and motor tasks. However, almost no studies to date have combined these two sources of information and investigated cortico‐cerebellar connectivity during task performance. Through the use of a novel neuroimaging tool (Meta‐Analytic Connectivity Modelling) we demonstrate for the first time that cortico‐cerebellar connectivity patterns seen in anatomical studies and resting fMRI are also present during task performance. Consistent with human and nonhuman primate anatomical studies cerebellar lobules Crus I and II were significantly coactivated with prefrontal and parietal cortices during task performance, whilst lobules HV, HVI, HVIIb, and HVIII were significantly coactivated with the pre‐ and postcentral gyrus. An analysis of the behavioral domains showed that these circuits were driven by distinct tasks. Prefrontal‐parietal‐cerebellar circuits were more active during cognitive and emotion tasks whilst motor‐cerebellar circuits were more active during action execution tasks. These results highlight the separation of prefrontal and motor cortico‐cerebellar loops during task performance, and further demonstrate that activity within these circuits relates to distinct functions. Hum Brain Mapp 35:3152–3169, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.