Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mind the gap; or why humans are not just great apes

EVOLUTION HAS HAD a poor press in the social sciences and the humanities over the past century, though it has not always been so: the nineteenth century witnessed considerable interest among the nascent social sciences in the ideas propounded by the new evolutionists within biology. This is neither the time nor place to delve into the history of why evolutionary ideas subsequently came to be so vehemently eschewed by social scientists. Instead, my aim here is simply to underline the claim that an evolutionary perspective is not, as seems often to be supposed, a competing paradigm for conventional explanations in the social sciences. Rather, an evolutionary perspective should function, as it does in biology, as a framework theory that allows all the disparate subdisciplines to be integrated in a way that they can talk to each other on a level playing field. Biology has benefited enormously from an evolutionary perspective over the past half-century in particular, since an evolutionary framework has allowed ethologists and ecologists to integrate their work with physiologists and molecular geneticists (even though the former still grumble about the latter’s molecularisation of biology). I argue that Psychology— a notoriously fractionated discipline at the best of times—could benefit
WebCrow: A Web-Based System for Crossword Solving

Language games represent one of the most fascinating challenges of research in artificial intelligence. In this paper we give an overview of WebCrow, a system that tackles crosswords using the Web as a knowledge base. This appears to be a novel approach with respect to the available literature. It is also the first solver for non-English crosswords and it has been designed to be potentially multilingual. Although WebCrow has been implemented only in a preliminary version, it already displays very interesting results reaching the performance of a human beginner: crosswords that are "easy" for expert humans are solved, within competition time limits, with 80% of correct words and over 90% of correct letters.
Lipoic Acid Synthase ( LASY ) : A Novel Role in Inflammation , Mitochondrial Function and Insulin Resistance

Objective: Lipoic acid synthase (LASY) is the enzyme that is involved in the endogenous synthesis of lipoic acid, a potent mitochondrial antioxidant. The aim of this study was to study the role of LASY in type 2 diabetes. Research Design and Methods: We studied expression of LASY in animal models of type 2 diabetes. We also looked at regulation of LASY in vitro under conditions that exist in diabetes. Additionally, we looked at effects of LASY knock down on cellular antioxidant status, inflammation, mitochondrial function and insulin stimulated glucose uptake. Results: LASY expression is significantly reduced in tissues from animal models of diabetes and obesity compared to age and sex-matched controls. In vitro, LASY mRNA levels were decreased by the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNFα and high glucose. Down-regulation of the LASY gene by RNA interference (RNAi) reduced endogenous levels of lipoic acid, and the activities of critical components of the antioxidant defense network, increasing oxidative stress. Treatment with exogenous lipoic acid compensated for some of these defects. RNAi mediated downregulation of LASY induced a significant loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, and decreased insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in skeletal muscle cells. In endothelial cells, downregulation of LASY aggravated the inflammatory response which manifested as increase in both basal and TNF-α induced expression of the pro-inflammatory cytokine, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). Overexpression of the LASY gene ameliorated the inflammatory response. Conclusions: Deficiency of LASY results in an overall disturbance in the antioxidant defense network, leading to increased inflammation, insulin resistance and mitochondrial dysfunction.
CONTEXTUAL VARIABILITY AND INFANTS' PERCEPTION OF TONAL CATEGORIES

This paper reviews some of the major findings in infants' perception of phonetic categories, including consonants, vowels and lexical tones. We discuss empirical evidence suggesting a development from language general to language specific perception of phonetic categories. We focus on the problem of variability, especially the type of variability resulting from phonetic contexts. We then present results demonstrating that the ability to filter out contextual variability is a gradual learning process, unlike certain other perceptual abilities that are available at the initial state. The findings of this study will be discussed in the context of the mechanisms of early language development.
Ethics of innovative cardiac surgery.

The development of scientific inquiry and recognition of the individual are two of the major revolutions in thought that have occurred since mediaeval times. The tension between the two leads to moral choices that possibly reach their extreme in medicine. There may be conflict for the physician or surgeon between his duties to the individual patient and his obligations as a scientist to contribute to knowledge that can be generalised. Medical ethics addresses these conflicts but does not necessarily resolve them. Innovative surgery, especially the use of a new operation on the heart, poses ethical problems. In this article I discuss such problems together with the view that the ethical questions raised have not always been adequately considered and that the undertaking of some operations has not been ethical.
Current clinical evidence for the use of mesenchymal stem cells in articular cartilage repair

ABSTRACT Introduction: Articular cartilage is renowned for its poor intrinsic capacity for repair. Current treatments for osteoarthritis are limited in their ability to reliably restore the native articular cartilage structure and function. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) present an attractive treatment option for articular cartilage repair, with a recent expansion of clinical trials investigating their use in patients. Areas covered: This paper provides a current overview of the clinical evidence on the use of MSCs in articular cartilage repair. Expert opinion: The article demonstrates robust clinical evidence that MSCs have significant potential for the regeneration of hyaline articular cartilage in patients. The majority of clinical trials to date have yielded significantly positive results with minimal adverse effects. However the clinical research is still in its infancy. The optimum MSC source, cell concentrations, implantation technique, scaffold, growth factors and rehabilitation protocol for clinical use are yet to be identified. A larger number of randomised control trials are required to objectively compare the clinical efficacy and long-term safety of the various techniques. As the clinical research continues to evolve and address these challenges, it is likely that MSCs may become integrated into routine clinical practice in the near future.
The effect of chronic anticonvulsant therapy on serum lipids and lipoproteins in epileptic children

We measured serum lipids and lipoproteins in 33 epileptic children who were treated with phenobarbital, valproate, and carbamazepine. High-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) was significantly higher in the epileptic children than in two control groups: healthy nonepileptic children, and epileptic children before starting anticonvulsant therapy. Our findings indicate that anticonvulsant drugs should be added to the list of substances that affect serum HDL-c.
Gαq-TRPC6-mediated Ca2+ Entry Induces RhoA Activation and Resultant Endothelial Cell Shape Change in Response to Thrombin*

RhoA activation and increased intracellular Ca2+ concentration mediated by the activation of transient receptor potential channels (TRPC) both contribute to the thrombin-induced increase in endothelial cell contraction, cell shape change, and consequently to the mechanism of increased endothelial permeability. Herein, we addressed the possibility that TRPC signals RhoA activation and thereby contributes in actinomyosin-mediated endothelial cell contraction and increased endothelial permeability. Transduction of a constitutively active Gαq mutant in human pulmonary arterial endothelial cells induced RhoA activity. Preventing the increase in intracellular Ca2+ concentration by the inhibitor of Gαq or phospholipase C and the Ca2+ chelator, BAPTA-AM, abrogated thrombin-induced RhoA activation. Depletion of extracellular Ca2+ also inhibited RhoA activation, indicating the requirement of Ca2+ entry in the response. RhoA activation could not be ascribed to storeoperated Ca2+ (SOC) entry because SOC entry induced with thapsigargin or small interfering RNA-mediated inhibition of TRPC1 expression, the predominant SOC channel in these endothelial cells, failed to alter RhoA activity. However, activation of receptor-operated Ca2+ entry by oleoyl-2-acetyl-sn-glycerol, the membrane permeable analogue of the Gαq-phospholipase C product diacylglycerol, induced RhoA activity. Receptor-operated Ca2+ activation was mediated by TRPC6 because small interfering RNA-induced TRPC6 knockdown significantly reduced Ca2+ entry. TRPC6 knockdown also prevented RhoA activation, myosin light chain phosphorylation, and actin stress fiber formation as well as inter-endothelial junctional gap formation in response to either oleoyl-2-acetyl-sn-glycerol or thrombin. TRPC6-mediated RhoA activity was shown to be dependent on PKCα activation. Our results demonstrate that Gαq activation of TRPC6 signals the activation of PKCα, and thereby induces RhoA activity and endothelial cell contraction.
Orthogonal rational functions, associated rational functions and functions of the second kind

Consider the sequence of polesA = {α1, α2, . }, and suppose the rational functions φj with poles in A form an orthonormal system with respect to a Hermitian positive-definite inner product. Further, assume the φj satisfy a three-term recurrence relation. Let the rational function φ j\1 with poles in {α2, α3, . } represent the associated rational function of φj of order 1; i.e. the φ (1) j\1 do satisfy the same three-term recurrence relation as the φj . In this paper we then give a relation between φj and φ (1) j\1 in terms of the so-called rational functions of the second kind. Next, under certain conditions on the poles in A, we prove that the φ j\1 form an orthonormal system of rational functions with respect to a Hermitian positive-definite inner product. Finally, we give a relation between associated rational functions of different order, independent of whether they form an orthonormal system.
Personalized Microtopic Recommendation on Microblogs

Microblogging services such as Sina Weibo and Twitter allow users to create tags explicitly indicated by the # symbol. In Sina Weibo, these tags are called microtopics, and in Twitter, they are called hashtags. In Sina Weibo, each microtopic has a designate page and can be directly visited or commented on. Recommending these microtopics to users based on their interests can help users efficiently acquire information. However, it is non-trivial to recommend microtopics to users to satisfy their information needs. In this article, we investigate the task of personalized microtopic recommendation, which exhibits two challenges. First, users usually do not give explicit ratings to microtopics. Second, there exists rich information about users and microtopics, for example, users' published content and biographical information, but it is not clear how to best utilize such information. To address the above two challenges, we propose a joint probabilistic latent factor model to integrate rich information into a matrix factorization-based solution to microtopic recommendation. Our model builds on top of collaborative filtering, content analysis, and feature regression. Using two real-world datasets, we evaluate our model with different kinds of content and contextual information. Experimental results show that our model significantly outperforms a few competitive baseline methods, especially in the circumstance where users have few adoption behaviors.
Biasing and the distribution of dark matter haloes

In hierarchical models of gravitational clustering, virialized haloes are biased tracers of the matter distribution. As discussed by Mo & White, this bias is non-linear and stochastic. They developed a model that allows one to write down analytic expressions for the mean of the bias relation, in the initial Lagrangian, and the evolved, Eulerian, spaces. We provide analytic expressions for the higher order moments as well. In the initial Lagrangian space, each halo occupies a volume that is proportional to its mass. Haloes cannot overlap initially, so this gives rise to volume exclusion effects which can have important consequences for the halo distribution, particularly on scales smaller than that of a typical halo. Our model allows one to include these volume exclusion effects explicitly when computing the mean and higher order statistics of the Lagrangian space halo distribution. As a result of dynamical evolution, the spatial distribution of haloes in the evolved Eulerian space is likely to be different from that in the initial Lagrangian space. When combined with the Mo & White spherical collapse model, the model developed here allows one to quantify the evolution of the mean and scatter of the bias relation. We also show how their approach can be extended to compute the evolution, not just of the haloes, but of the dark matter distribution itself. Biasing and its evolution depend on the initial power spectrum. Clustering from Poisson and white-noise Gaussian initial conditions is treated in detail, since, in these cases, exact analytical results are available. We conjecture that these results can be easily extended to provide an approximate but accurate model for the biasing associated with clustering from more general Gaussian initial conditions. For all initial power spectra studied here, the model predictions for the Eulerian bias relation are in reasonable agreement with numerical simulations of hierarchical gravitational clustering for haloes of a wide range of masses, whereas the predictions for the corresponding Lagrangian space quantities are accurate only for massive haloes.
Drug‐Induced Torsades de Pointes and Implications for Drug Development

Torsades de pointes is a potentially lethal arrhythmia that occasionally appears as an adverse effect of pharmacotherapy. Recently developed understanding of the underlying electrophysiology allows better estimation of the drug‐induced risks and explains the failures of older approaches through the surface ECG. This article expresses a consensus reached by an independent academic task force on the physiologic understanding of drug‐induced repolarization changes, their preclinical and clinical evaluation, and the risk‐to‐benefit interpretation of drug‐induced torsades de pointes. The consensus of the task force includes suggestions on how to evaluate the risk of torsades within drug development programs. Individual sections of the text discuss the techniques and limitations of methods directed at drug‐related ion channel phenomena, investigations aimed at action potentials changes, preclinical studies of phenomena seen only in the whole (or nearly whole) heart, and interpretation of human ECGs obtained in clinical studies. The final section of the text discusses drug‐induced torsades within the larger evaluation of drug‐related risks and benefits. (J Cardiovasc Electrophysiol, Vol. 15, pp. 475‐495, April 2004)
Alleviating the Sparsity Problem in Recommender Systems by Exploring Underlying User Communities

Collaborative Filtering, one of the main Recommender Systems’ approach, has been successfully employed to identify users and items that can be characterized as similar in large datasets. However, its application is limited due to the sparsity problem, which refers to a situation where information to infer similar users and predict items is missing. In this work, we address this by (i) detecting underlying user communities that aggregate similar tastes and (ii) predicting new relations within communities. As a consequence, we alleviate some of the major consequences of this problem. As shown by our experiments, our method is promising. When compared to a user-based Collaborative Filtering method, it provided gains of 20.2% in terms of sparsity decay, for instance, while improving RMSE values in only 2.8%.
Cardiac output measurements in off‐pump coronary surgery: comparison between NICO and the Swan‐Ganz catheter

Background: The aim of this prospective study was to compare continuous cardiac output measurements of the non‐invasive cardiac output system (NICO) with the pulmonary artery catheter during off‐pump coronary bypass surgery. Methods: Twenty‐two patients enrolled for off‐pump coronary surgery received both a pulmonary artery catheter and a non‐invasive cardiac output system for measurement of cardiac output. Data were compared by the Bland–Altman method to calculate the degree of agreement and to analyse if a significant difference existed between the two methods of cardiac output measurements. Results: Perioperatively, the non‐invasive cardiac output underestimated cardiac output, but postoperatively overestimated it. The limits of agreement were larger during surgery compared to the postoperative period (−3.1; +2.5 vs. −1.4; +2.2 L min−1). Perioperatively, cardiac output measured with the pulmonary artery catheter varied from 0.5 to 7.5 L min−1 (mean 3.6 L min−1) and with the non‐invasive cardiac output from 0.5 to 8.4 L min−1 (mean 3.9 L min−1). Postoperatively, these were 2.5–7.7 L min−1 (mean 4.5 L min−1) and 2.3–8.4 L min−1 (mean 4.9 L min−1), respectively. Conclusion: During off‐pump cardiac surgery, the non‐invasive cardiac output reliably measures cardiac output and does it more rapidly than a pulmonary artery catheter and may be more useful in order to detect rapid haemodynamic changes.
Noninvasive Ultrasound Imaging of Inflammation Using Microbubbles Targeted to Activated Leukocytes

BackgroundLipid microbubbles used for perfusion imaging with ultrasound are retained within inflamed tissue because of complement-mediated attachment to leukocytes within venules. We hypothesized that incorporation of phosphatidylserine (PS) into the microbubble shell may enhance these interactions by amplifying complement activation and thereby allow ultrasound imaging of inflammation. Methods and ResultsIn 6 mice, intravital microscopy of tissue necrosis factor-&agr;–treated cremaster muscle was performed to assess the microvascular behavior of fluorescein-labeled lipid microbubbles with and without PS in the shell. Ten minutes after intravenous injection, microbubble attachment to leukocytes within inflamed venules was greater for PS-containing than for standard lipid microbubbles (20±4 versus 10±3 per 20 optical fields, P <0.05). The ultrasound signal from retained microbubbles was assessed in the kidneys of 6 mice undergoing renal ischemia-reperfusion injury and in 6 control kidneys. The signal from retained microbubbles in control kidneys was low (<2.5 video intensity units) for both agents. After ischemia-reperfusion, the signal from retained microbubbles was 2-fold higher for PS-containing than for standard lipid microbubbles (18±6 versus 8±2 video intensity units, P <0.05). An excellent relation was found between the ultrasound signal from retained microbubbles and the degree of renal inflammation, assessed by tissue myeloperoxidase activity. ConclusionsWe conclude that noninvasive assessment of inflammation is possible by ultrasound imaging of microbubbles targeted to activated leukocytes by the presence of PS in the lipid shell.
Comparison of the Genetic Organization, Expression Strategies and Oncogenic Potential of HTLV-1 and HTLV-2

Human T cell leukemia virus types 1 and 2 (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2) are genetically related complex retroviruses that are capable of immortalizing human T-cells in vitro and establish life-long persistent infections in vivo. In spite of these apparent similarities, HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 exhibit a significantly different pathogenic potential. HTLV-1 is recognized as the causative agent of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) and tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM). In contrast, HTLV-2 has not been causally linked to human malignancy, although it may increase the risk of developing inflammatory neuropathies and infectious diseases. The present paper is focused on the studies aimed at defining the viral genetic determinants of the pathobiology of HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 through a comparison of the expression strategies and functional properties of the different gene products of the two viruses.
Person Re-identification: Past, Present and Future

Person re-identification (re-ID) has become increasingly popular in the community due to its application and research significance. It aims at spotting a person of interest in other cameras. In the early days, hand-crafted algorithms and small-scale evaluation were predominantly reported. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of large-scale datasets and deep learning systems which make use of large data volumes. Considering different tasks, we classify most current re-ID methods into two classes, i.e., image-based and video-based; in both tasks, hand-crafted and deep learning systems will be reviewed. Moreover, two new re-ID tasks which are much closer to real-world applications are described and discussed, i.e., end-to-end re-ID and fast re-ID in very large galleries. This paper: 1) introduces the history of person re-ID and its relationship with image classification and instance retrieval; 2) surveys a broad selection of the hand-crafted systems and the large-scale methods in both image- and video-based re-ID; 3) describes critical future directions in end-to-end re-ID and fast retrieval in large galleries; and 4) finally briefs some important yet under-developed issues.