Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conversational Skills of Children with Cleft Lip and Palate: A Replication and Extension

Objective To replicate and to extend a previous study examining the conversational skills of children with cleft lip and palate. Participants Thirty-four children (33 to 44 months) participated: 17 children with cleft lip and palate and 17 noncleft children. Methods The children were observed during an interaction with caregivers in their homes. Samples of caregiver-child interactions were coded as assertive or responsive, for type of conversational act, and for discourse level categories. Profiles of conversational activity were determined for each child based on the coding. Correlations were performed to examine the relationship between assertiveness and speech variables (articulation and resonance) for the children with cleft lip and palate. Results Group comparisons revealed that the children with cleft lip and palate produced fewer assertive utterances, were less likely to respond adequately to comments by caregivers, and produced more topic maintaining and fewer topic extending utterances than did their noncleft peers during conversational interactions. Examination of individual child data indicated that 35% of the children with cleft lip and palate exhibited conversational profiles characterized by either low assertiveness or low responsiveness. Finally, a significant positive correlation was noted between conversational assertiveness and speech production skills. Conclusion These findings suggested that the children with cleft lip and palate were less conversationally assertive than their noncleft peers. Further, there appeared to be a relationship between speech production skills and conversational skills, suggesting that poor speech may be impacting language performance for these children.
Spectroscopic Characterization of Mineralogy and Its Diversity Across Vesta

A New Dawn Since 17 July 2011, NASA's spacecraft Dawn has been orbiting the asteroid Vesta—the second most massive and the third largest asteroid in the solar system (see the cover). Russell et al. (p. 684) use Dawn's observations to confirm that Vesta is a small differentiated planetary body with an inner core, and represents a surviving proto-planet from the earliest epoch of solar system formation; Vesta is also confirmed as the source of the howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) meteorites. Jaumann et al. (p. 687) report on the asteroid's overall geometry and topography, based on global surface mapping. Vesta's surface is dominated by numerous impact craters and large troughs around the equatorial region. Marchi et al. (p. 690) report on Vesta's complex cratering history and constrain the age of some of its major regions based on crater counts. Schenk et al. (p. 694) describe two giant impact basins located at the asteroid's south pole. Both basins are young and excavated enough amounts of material to form the Vestoids—a group of asteroids with a composition similar to that of Vesta—and HED meteorites. De Sanctis et al. (p. 697) present the mineralogical characterization of Vesta, based on data obtained by Dawn's visual and infrared spectrometer, revealing that this asteroid underwent a complex magmatic evolution that led to a differentiated crust and mantle. The global color variations detailed by Reddy et al. (p. 700) are unlike those of any other asteroid observed so far and are also indicative of a preserved, differentiated proto-planet. Spacecraft data provide a detailed characterization of the second most massive asteroid in the solar system. The mineralogy of Vesta, based on data obtained by the Dawn spacecraft’s visible and infrared spectrometer, is consistent with howardite-eucrite-diogenite meteorites. There are considerable regional and local variations across the asteroid: Spectrally distinct regions include the south-polar Rheasilvia basin, which displays a higher diogenitic component, and equatorial regions, which show a higher eucritic component. The lithologic distribution indicates a deeper diogenitic crust, exposed after excavation by the impact that formed Rheasilvia, and an upper eucritic crust. Evidence for mineralogical stratigraphic layering is observed on crater walls and in ejecta. This is broadly consistent with magma-ocean models, but spectral variability highlights local variations, which suggests that the crust can be a complex assemblage of eucritic basalts and pyroxene cumulates. Overall, Vesta mineralogy indicates a complex magmatic evolution that led to a differentiated crust and mantle.
RFID data analysis using tensor calculus for supply chain management

In current trends of consumer products market, there is a growing significance of the role of retailers in the governance of supply chains. RFID is a promising infrastructure-less technology, allowing to connect an object with its virtual counterpart, i.e., its representation within information systems. However, the amount of RFID data in supply chain management is vast, posing significant challenges for attaining acceptable performance on their analysis. Current approaches provide hard-coded solutions, with high consumption of resources; moreover, these exhibit very limited flexibility dealing with multidimensional queries, at various levels of granularity and complexity. In this paper we propose a general model for supply chain management based on the first principles of linear algebra, in particular on tensorial calculus. Leveraging our abstract algebraic framework, our technique allows both quick decentralized on-line processing, and centralized off-line massive business logic analysis, according to needs and requirements of supply chain actors. Experimental results show that our approach, utilizing recent linear algebra techniques can process analysis efficiently, when compared to recent approaches. In particular, we are able to carry out the required computations even in high memory constrained environments, such as on mobile devices. Moreover, when dealing with massive amounts of data, we are capable of exploiting recent parallel and distributed technologies, subdividing our tensor objects into sub-blocks, and processing them independently.
Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry in osteonecrosis of the femoral head.

UNLABELLED Osteonecrosis of the hip classically produces a heterogeneous density in the femoral head, although the bone marrow ischemia extends down to the femoral neck and trochanters. Also, bone insufficiency fractures due to diffuse bone loss have been implicated in the genesis of osteonecrosis. OBJECTIVES To use dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry to quantify the bone changes produced by osteonecrosis of the hip and to compare bone mineral density values in patients with osteonecrosis of the hip and in controls. METHODS Bone mineral density was measured at the femoral neck (total femoral neck, Ward's triangle, and trochanter), femoral head and lumbar spine using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DPX, L Lunar) in 22 patients with osteonecrosis of the hip and in 22 age- and sex-matched controls. RESULTS In the patients with osteonecrosis, bone mineral density on the affected side was higher than on the opposite side at the femoral head (+18%), femoral neck (+7%), and Ward's triangle (+6%) and lower at the trochanter (-4%). These differences were most marked at the more advanced end of the osteonecrosis spectrum. As compared to age-specific normative values, the osteonecrosis patients had moderately decreased bone mineral density values at the lumbar spine (-0.53 +/- 1.1 SD or -6 +/- 1.5%) and at the femoral neck on the normal side (-0.9 +/- 1.4 SD or 12 +/- 1.8%). As compared to the controls, bone mineral density was significantly decreased at Ward's triangle (-25%; P: 0.04) and nonsignificantly decreased at the lumbar spine (-4.7%; P: 0.15) and at the femoral neck (-15%; P: 0.09).
CML/SLAM studies and “Velocity-Over-Ground” SLAM

Simultaneous Localization and Map Building (SLAM), also known as Concurrent Mapping and Localization (CML), is a tracking technique with the following goals: 1) Construct maps of the locations of strong point scatterers in the sensors' field-of-view 2) Continually improve these maps as more sensor data arrives 3) Simultaneously achieve improved platform self-localization with respect to scatterer locations CML/SLAM's refinement of the platform location estimates is directly linked to its exploitation of the stationary nature of the scatterers of opportunity. However CML/SLAM is often computationally prohibitive as its architecture attempts to minimize the position error for each scatterer, i.e. “map-building. ” This requires all pairwise correlation information to be maintained and updated leading to very large memory and computation requirements. Nearly every Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) mission involves a transiting stage. Here “map-building” is unnecessary but can improve platform estimates. Can we capture relevant platform information without explicitly tracking strong point scatterers? We derive a CML/SLAM-inspired “velocity-based” estimator that provides virtually optimum performance in transit scenarios. The method is of the order of complexity of the single contact Kalman Filter. A reformulation of the CML/SLAM problem leads to new insights into performance and earlier results. In addition, this reformulation stresses the fundamentally relative nature of the available measurements and helped lead to the new “velocity-based” method. Theoretical arguments and real-data results are provided to reveal performance. A UUV with a forward-looking sonar along with an INS suite is the platform for this work.
Post-harvest physicochemical profile and bioactive compounds of 19 bananas and plantains genotypes

: Nineteen genotypes of bananas and plantains were analysed in order to differentiate the subgroups and/or groups of consumption or industrial use. Genotypes of banana and plantain from different genomic groups and in three ripening stages (2, 5 and 7) were studied in relation to physical and physicochemical characteristics, including bioactive compounds. Furthermore, with the obtained data analysed by multivariate statistical analyses (Principal Component Analysis) it was possible to relate all analysed characteristic profile of samples with the different genotype. The three ripening stages differentiate by total soluble solids, titratable acidity, chrome (C * ) and the carotenoids contents. ‘Ney Poovan’ contain high total soluble solid content and pulp-to-peel ratio, an interesting result for the promotion of this genotype for in natura consumption. ‘Ney Poovan’, ‘Ouro da Mata’, ‘Pelipita’ and ‘Tiparot’ are sources of antioxidant compounds. The genotypes ‘Pelipita’ and ‘Samurá B’ are promising for the industrial use, mainly for the processing of banana chips, for both green and ripe fruit.
Regulation of Expression of Stromal-Derived Factor-1 Receptors: CXCR4 and CXCR7 in Human Rhabdomyosarcomas

Rhabdomyosarcomas (RMS) express CXCR4 and CXCR7 receptors that bind prometastatic α-chemokine stromal-derived factor-1 (SDF-1). In this report, we analyzed the activity of both promoters in a model of less metastatic human embryonal-RMS cell line (RD) and more metastatic alveolar-like RMS (RD cells transduced with paired box gene 3/forkhead homologue; PAX3-FKHR fusion gene). First, CXCR4 is barely detectable in RD and becomes upregulated in RD/PAX3-FKHR cells. In contrast, CXCR7 highly expressed in RD becomes downregulated in RD/PAX3-FKHR cells. Next, promoter deletion and mutation studies revealed that whereas (a) expression of CXCR4 in RD and RD/PAX3-FKHR cells required nuclear respiratory factor-1 (NRF-1) binding site and (b) was additionally upregulated by direct interaction of NRF-1 with PAX3-FKHR, CXCR7 promoter activity required a proximal nuclear factor-κB–binding motif. The requirement of these factors for CXCR4 and CXCR7 promoter activities was additionally supported after blocking NRF-1 and nuclear factor-κB. Furthermore, CXCR4 expression in PAX3-FKHR+ RMS cells seems to be enhanced because of the interaction of PAX3-FKHR and NRF-1 proteins in the proximal part of the promoter that prevents access of the negative regulator of transcription YY1 to its binding site. Finally, although hypoxia enhances CXCR4 and CXCR7 promoter activity and receptor expression in RD cells, it inhibits CXCR7 expression in RD/PAX3-FKHR cells. In conclusion, SDF-1 binding receptors CXCR4 and CXCR7 are differently regulated in RMS cells. The upregulation of CXCR4 and downregulation of CXCR7 expression by PAX3-FKHR or hypoxia may give SDF-1 an advantage to better engage the CXCR4 receptor, thus increasing RMS motility. Mol Cancer Res; 8(1); 1–14
Sky-CNN: A CNN-based Learning Approach for Skyline Scene Understanding

Skyline scenes are a scientific matter of interest for some geographers and urbanists. These scenes have not been well-handled in computer vision tasks. Understanding the context of a skyline scene could refer to approaches based on hand-crafted features combined with linear classifiers; which are somewhat side-lined in favor of the Convolutional Neural Networks based approaches. In this paper, we proposed a new CNN learning approach to categorize skyline scenes. The proposed model requires a pre-processing step enhancing the deep-learned features and the training time. To evaluate our suggested system; we constructed the SKYLINEScene database. This new DB contains 2000 images of urban and rural landscape scenes with a skyline view. In order to examine the performance of our Sky-CNN system, many fair comparisons were carried out using well-known CNN architectures and the SKYLINEScene DB for tests. Our approach shows it robustness in Skyline context understanding and outperforms the hand-crafted approaches based on global and local features.
Data mining for dwarf novae in SDSS, GALEX and astrometric catalogues

By cross-matching blue objects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the astrometric catalogues USNO-B1.0, GSC2.3 and CMC14, 64 new dwarf nova candidates with one or more observed outbursts have been identified. 14 of these systems are confirmed as cataclysmic variables through existing and follow-up spectroscopy. A study of the amplitude distribution and an estimate of the outburst frequency of these new dwarf novae and those discovered by the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey indicate that besides systems that are faint because they are farther away, there also exists a population of intrinsically faint dwarf novae with rare outbursts.
The Import and Export of Cognitive Science

From its inception, a large part of the motivation for Cognitive Science has been the need for an interdisciplinary journal for the study of minds and intelligent systems. In the inaugural editorial for the journal, Allan Collins (1977) wrote “Current journals are fragmented along old disciplinary lines, so there is no common place for workers who approach these problems from different disciplines to talk to each other” (p. 1). The interdisciplinarity of the journal has served a valuable cross-fertilization function for those who read the journal to discover articles written for and by practitioners across a wide range of fields. The challenges of building and understanding intelligent systems are sufficiently large that they will most likely require the skills of psychologists, computer scientists, philosophers, educators, neuroscientists, and linguists collaborating and coordinating their efforts. One threat to the interdisciplinarity of Cognitive Science, both the field and journal, is that it may become, or already be, too dominated by psychologists (Schunn, Crowley, & Okada, 1998; Von Eckardt, 2001). One piece of evidence supporting this contention is that many of the manuscripts submitted to Cognitive Science are given “psychology” as a field keyword by their authors. In 2005, psychology was a keyword for 51% of submissions, followed distantly by linguistics (17%), artificial intelligence (13%), neuroscience (10%), computer science (9%), and philosophy (8%) (these percentages sum to more than 100% because authors are not restricted to designating only a single field). Another quantitative way to assess the interdisciplinarity of Cognitive Science as well as its general intellectual niche is to analyze aggregated journal–journal citations. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) gathers data not only on how individual articles cite one another, but also on macroscopic citation patterns among journals. Journals or sets of journals can be considered as proxies for fields. As fields become established, they often create journals (Leydesdorff, Cozzens, & Van den Besselaar, 1994). As Collins (1977) wrote when launching Cognitive Science, “In starting the journal we are just adding another trapping in the formation of a new discipline” (p. 1). By studying the patterns of citations among journals that cite and are cited by Cognitive Science, we can better: 1) appreciate the scholarly ecology surrounding the journal and the journal’s role within this ecology, 2) establish competitor and alternate jourCognitive Science 30 (2006) 983–993 Copyright © 2006 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cellular localization and tissue distribution of polycystin‐1

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is characterized by the formation of fluid‐filled cysts in both kidneys, in addition to a variety of extra‐renal manifestations. The PKD1 gene product, polycystin‐1, encodes a novel protein with a putative role in cell–cell/cell–matrix interactions. The present study we focused on the (sub)cellular localization of polycystin‐1 in cultured cells, and on its tissue distribution in various organs. In Madin Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells, several polyclonal antibodies showed intense staining at the sites of interaction between adjacent cells, which remained after Triton extraction. Weak cytoplasmic staining was observed. No signal was detected at the free borders of cell aggregates, supporting a role for polycystin‐1 in cell–cell interactions. At the tissue level, polycystin‐1 expression was observed in specific cell types in tissues with known manifestations of the disease, but also in tissues of organs which have not been reported to be affected in ADPKD. Expression was frequently seen in epithelia, but also in endocrine cells (pancreatic islets, parathyroid‐producing cells, clusters in the adenohypophysis, clusters in the adrenal gland, and Leydig cells in the testis). In addition, expression was observed in myocardium and more weakly in myocytes of cardiac valves, of the cerebral arteries, and of skeletal muscles. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease

Clinical criteria for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease include insidious onset and progressive impairment of memory and other cognitive functions. There are no motor, sensory, or coordination deficits early in the disease. The diagnosis cannot be determined by laboratory tests. These tests are important primarily in identifying other possible causes of dementia that must be excluded before the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease may be made with confidence. Neuropsychological tests provide confirmatory evidence of the diagnosis of dementia and help to assess the course and response to therapy. The criteria proposed are intended to serve as a guide for the diagnosis of probable, possible, and definite Alzheimer's disease; these criteria will be revised as more definitive information becomes available.
Visualizing synaptic vesicle turnover and pool refilling driven by calcium nanodomains at presynaptic active zones of ribbon synapses

Significance Sensory synapses in the retina are characterized by special structures at the site of neurotransmitter release called synaptic ribbons, which transmit information about both sustained and rapidly changing visual stimuli. Because rapid signaling is important for detecting spatial and temporal contrast, we investigated the mechanism of fast neurotransmitter release at ribbon synapses, using high-resolution imaging of synaptic vesicle turnover and calcium responses. We find that nanodomains of high calcium at ribbons drive exocytosis of membrane-associated synaptic vesicles within milliseconds, accounting for the rapid component of neurotransmitter release, whereas replacement of lost vesicles occurs at membrane-distal sites on the ribbon. The results provide insight into synaptic mechanisms that enhance detection of contrast, a fundamental aspect of visual processing. Ribbon synapses of photoreceptor cells and second-order bipolar neurons in the retina are specialized to transmit graded signals that encode light intensity. Neurotransmitter release at ribbon synapses exhibits two kinetically distinct components, which serve different sensory functions. The faster component is depleted within milliseconds and generates transient postsynaptic responses that emphasize changes in light intensity. Despite the importance of this fast release for processing temporal and spatial contrast in visual signals, the physiological basis for this component is not precisely known. By imaging synaptic vesicle turnover and Ca2+ signals at single ribbons in zebrafish bipolar neurons, we determined the locus of fast release, the speed and site of Ca2+ influx driving rapid release, and the location where new vesicles are recruited to replenish the fast pool after it is depleted. At ribbons, Ca2+ near the membrane rose rapidly during depolarization to levels >10 µM, whereas Ca2+ at nonribbon locations rose more slowly to the lower level observed globally, consistent with selective positioning of Ca2+ channels near ribbons. The local Ca2+ domain drove rapid exocytosis of ribbon-associated synaptic vesicles nearest the plasma membrane, accounting for the fast component of neurotransmitter release. However, new vesicles replacing those lost arrived selectively at the opposite pole of the ribbon, distal to the membrane. Overall, the results suggest a model for fast release in which nanodomain Ca2+ triggers exocytosis of docked vesicles, which are then replaced by more distant ribbon-attached vesicles, creating opportunities for new vesicles to associate with the ribbon at membrane-distal sites.
Serological diagnosis of amoebiasis by immunofluorescence

A positive serological diagnosis of amoebiasis could be made by immunofluorescence in 66 of 78 established cases, taking a serum titre of 16 or higher as diagnostic: at this level there were no false positives among 94 control sera. The test is simple and may be carried out on amoebic smears stored for several months in 2-octanol. The serological activity is largely confined to the IgG immunoglobulin fraction and is specific for Entamoeba histolytica; cross reactions were not detected with other protozoa. Gel diffusion serological analysis permitted a positive diagnosis of amoebiasis in 60 of the 78 cases, and, combining this with the immunofluorescence test, raised the diagnostic score to 71 cases.