Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Quadriceps and Hamstrings Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation Stretching on Knee Movement Sensation

Streepey, JW, Mock, MJ, Riskowski, JL, VanWye, WR, Vitvitskiy, BM, and Mikesky, AE. Effects of quadriceps and hamstrings proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretching on knee movement sensation. J Strength Cond Res 24(4): 1037-1042, 2010-Stretching before competition has traditionally been thought to benefit performance; however, recent evidence demonstrating reduced muscle force and power immediately after stretching suggests otherwise. We hypothesized that knee joint position sense would be diminished immediately after proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching to the hamstrings and quadriceps. Eighteen subjects (aged 18-30 years) were seated with their dominant foot attached to a motorized arm with the knee flexed at 135°. To block external cues, the subjects wore a blindfold, earplugs, and headphones providing white noise. The knee was displaced in either the flexion or the extension direction at a velocity of 0.4°·s−1, and subjects pressed a button when they sensed motion. The knee was returned to 135°, and the test was repeated for a total of 10 trials. The PNF group received PNF stretching to the hamstrings and quadriceps of the dominant leg. The SHAM group had the dominant leg passively moved within each subject's functional range of motion. The ability to detect knee movement was retested in the PNF and SHAM groups. Pre- and posttest latencies between movement onset and subject response were analyzed. Results indicated that the PNF group had significantly increased latencies after stretching (from 2.56 ± 0.83 to 3.46 ± 1.90 seconds) compared with the SHAM group (3.93 ± 2.40 to 3.72 ± 2.15 seconds). It is concluded that PNF stretching of the hamstrings and quadriceps may acutely diminish sensitivity to knee movement. For coaches and trainers, these findings are consistent with previous reports of loss in muscle force and power immediately after stretching, suggesting that stretching just before competition may diminish performance.
Lamina Associated Polypeptide 1 (LAP1) Interactome and Its Functional Features

Lamina-associated polypeptide 1 (LAP1) is a type II transmembrane protein of the inner nuclear membrane encoded by the human gene TOR1AIP1. LAP1 is involved in maintaining the nuclear envelope structure and appears be involved in the positioning of lamins and chromatin. To date, LAP1’s precise function has not been fully elucidated but analysis of its interacting proteins will permit unraveling putative associations to specific cellular pathways and cellular processes. By assessing public databases it was possible to identify the LAP1 interactome, and this was curated. In total, 41 interactions were identified. Several functionally relevant proteins, such as TRF2, TERF2IP, RIF1, ATM, MAD2L1 and MAD2L1BP were identified and these support the putative functions proposed for LAP1. Furthermore, by making use of the Ingenuity Pathways Analysis tool and submitting the LAP1 interactors, the top two canonical pathways were “Telomerase signalling” and “Telomere Extension by Telomerase” and the top functions “Cell Morphology”, “Cellular Assembly and Organization” and “DNA Replication, Recombination, and Repair”. Once again, putative LAP1 functions are reinforced but novel functions are emerging.
Collecting annotations for induced musical emotion via online game with a purpose emotify

One of the major reasons why music is so enjoyable is its emotional impact. Indexing and searching by emotion would greatly increase the usability of online music collections. However, there is no consensus on the question which model of emotion would fit this task best. Such a model should be easy for listeners to use both to tag and to retrieve emotion, and should lead to unambiguous results. The latter is complicated not only due to linguistic issues, but also because musical emotion is a subjective phenomenon that depends on many extra-musical factors, such as mood of the listener, musical preferences, age, personality. We investigate this problem by creating a game with a purpose Emotify to collect emotional labels for a set of 400 musical excerpts in different genres. We use the Geneva Emotional Music Scales (GEMS) to annotate this corpus. In this technical report we analyze the data produced by the game. We find that the factors that influence induced musical emotion (in the order of decreasing importance) are musical preferences, mood and gender. We measure the agreement of listeners using Cronbach’s alpha and find that it differs hugely per emotional category (amazement, sadness and solemnity are most inconsistent, and tenderness, power and joyful activation - most consistent categories) and does not differ significantly among the four tested musical genres (rock, pop, classical and electronic music).
A Nash-type Dimensionality Reduction for Discrete Subsets of L 2

Pursuing a line of work begun by Whitney, Nash showed that every C manifold of dimension d can be embedded in R in such a manner that the local structure at each point is preserved isometrically. We provide an analog of this result for discrete subsets of Euclidean space. For perfect preservation of infinitesimal neighborhoods we substitute near-isometric embedding of neighborhoods of bounded cardinality. There are a variety of empirical situations, abstracted to metric space tasks, in which small distances are meaningful and reliable, but larger ones are not. Such situations arise in source coding, image processing, computational biology, and other applications, and are the motivation for widely-used heuristics such as Isomap and Locally Linear Embedding. In such situations we offer the possibility of dimension reductions unobtainable with global methods, because the dimension of our locally (1 + )-distorting embedding is proportional to −2 log k, where k is the cardinality of the neighborhoods where distances are preserved and is independent of the number of points in the metric space. One may view our work as a local version of the widely-used Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma. We use a device of Nash, together with more recent metric embedding methods, to compose local dimensionality reducing embeddings within a global immersion (that preserves short distances), and with mild additional assumptions, a global embedding that also keeps distant points well-separated. We provide an efficient randomized algorithm for the embeddings. ∗yair@cs.huji. ac.il. School of Engineering and Computer Science, Hebrew University, Israel and Center for the Mathematics of Information, Caltech, CA, USA. Supported in part by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (195/02) and in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF CCF-065253). †brecht@ist.caltech.edu. Center for the Mathematics of Information, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125. ‡schulman@caltech.edu. Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125. Supported in part by NSA H98230-06-1-0074 and NSF CCF0515342.
First in vivo traveling wave magnetic particle imaging of a beating mouse heart

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a non-invasive imaging modality for direct detection of superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles based on the nonlinear magnetization response of magnetic materials to alternating magnetic fields. This highly sensitive and rapid method allows both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the measured signal. Since the first publication of MPI in 2005 several different scanner concepts have been presented and in 2009 the first in vivo imaging results of a beating mouse heart were shown. However, since the field of view (FOV) of the first MPI-scanner only covers a small region several approaches and hardware enhancements were presented to overcome this issue and could increase the FOV on cost of acquisition speed. In 2014 an alternative scanner concept, the traveling wave MPI (TWMPI), was presented, which allows scanning an entire mouse-sized volume at once. In this paper the first in vivo imaging results using the TWMPI system are presented. By optimizing the trajectory the temporal resolution is sufficiently high to resolve the dynamic of a beating mouse heart.
Surgery in Zollinger‐Ellison Syndrome Alters the Natural History of Gastrinoma

ObjectiveThe authors assessed the impact of gastrinoma resection on the subsequent development of hepatic metastases in Zollinger-Ellison syndrome. Summary Background DataThe symptoms of acid hypersecretion can be controlled medically in Zollinger-Ellison syndrome with high-dose pharmacologic therapy. The current role of surgery is curative excision of the gastrinoma. Because biochemical cure is obtained only in a portion of the patients and the neoplastic disease may be indolent in this syndrome, the ability of surgical resection of gastrinoma to alter or improve the subsequent development of hepatic metastases and mortality has not been defined. MethodsOne hundred twenty-four patients with the biochemical diagnosis of Zollinger-Ellison syndrome and no hepatic metastases on initial imaging studies were evaluated. Ninety-eight patients underwent surgical exploration for curative gastrinoma resections while 26 patients were managed medically. Long-term follow-up regarding development of hepatic metastases and survival were evaluated. ResultsSurgical exploration with gastrinoma excision resulted in a significantly decreased incidence of hepatic metastases 3% (3/98) compared with patients managed medically 23% (6/26) with comparable follow-up (p < 0.003). Two deaths due to metastatic gastrinoma occurred in the nonoperative group compared with no disease-specific deaths in the surgical group (p = 0.085). ConclusionsFor the patient with Zollinger-Ellison syndrome without metastatic disease, surgical exploration with attempted curative gastrinoma resection is recommended because it may alter the natural history of this syndrome.
Reconstructing Loopy Curvilinear Structures Using Integer Programming

We propose a novel approach to automated delineation of linear structures that form complex and potentially loopy networks. This is in contrast to earlier approaches that usually assume a tree topology for the networks. At the heart of our method is an Integer Programming formulation that allows us to find the global optimum of an objective function designed to allow cycles but penalize spurious junctions and early terminations. We demonstrate that it outperforms state-of-the-art techniques on a wide range of datasets.
Molecular Dynamics Simulations on High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing Systems

The acceleration of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using high-performance reconfigurable computing (HPRC) has been much studied. Given the intense competition from multicore and GPUs, there is now a question whether MD on HPRC can be competitive. We concentrate here on the MD kernel computation: determining the short-range force between particle pairs. In one part of the study, we systematically explore the design space of the force pipeline with respect to arithmetic algorithm, arithmetic mode, precision, and various other optimizations. We examine simplifications and find that some have little effect on simulation quality. In the other part, we present the first FPGA study of the filtering of particle pairs with nearly zero mutual force, a standard optimization in MD codes. There are several innovations, including a novel partitioning of the particle space, and new methods for filtering and mapping work onto the pipelines. As a consequence, highly efficient filtering can be implemented with only a small fraction of the FPGA’s resources. Overall, we find that, for an Altera Stratix-III EP3ES260, 8 force pipelines running at nearly 200 MHz can fit on the FPGA, and that they can perform at 95% efficiency. This results in an 80-fold per core speed-up for the short-range force, which is likely to make FPGAs highly competitive for MD.
Comparative Study between Traditional Approach and Physico-Chemical Approach in Acid Base Disorders Interpretation in Critically Ill Patients

Objective: The traditional approach for acid base interpretation is based on Handerson-Hasselbalch formula and includes Base Excess (BE), bicarbonate (HCO3), albumin corrected anion gap. The Physicochemical approach is centered on the Carbon Dioxide tension (PCO2), the strong ion difference (SID), strong ion gap (SIG) = SID apparent-SID effective and totally weak acids (Atot). The study aims to compare between the traditional approach and the physicochemical approach in acid base disorder interpretation. Design: Prospective observational study in an adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU) recruiting six hundred and sixty one patients. Methods: Arterial blood samples were analyzed to measure pH, PaCO2 sodium, potassium, chloride and lactate. Venous blood samples were analyzed to measure ionized calcium, magnesium, phosphorous and albumin. These samples were interpreted by both techniques. Results: Normal HCO3 and BE were detected by traditional approach in 49 cases of which SIG acidosis was detected in 22 cases (46%) and Hyperchloremic acidosis was detected in 29 cases (60%) by physicochemical method. SIG was elevated in 72 cases (58%) of 124 cases with high anion gap acidosis. SIDeff and BE were strongly correlated, r = 0.8, p 0.0001, while SIG and Albumin corrected Anion Gap (ALAG) were moderately correlated r = 0.56, p Conclusion: Both approaches are important for interpretation of the acid base status. Traditional approach identifies the diagnostic description without many calculations and detects body compensatory response to acid base disorders. Physicochemical approach is essential to identify the exact causation and the severity of the acid base disorders.
Planning Urban Green Space: A Comparison of European and Dutch Cities

This paper addresses the relevance of urban environmental quality of life. It aims to compare Dutch cities with European cities in terms of the present state and availability of urban green spaces. A comparative tool based on the so-called spider model is proposed. The results of these spider models show interesting links and patterns both between and in Dutch and European cities. The spider models also show that small cities in both Europe and the Netherlands have better conditions in terms of urban green and non built-up area. A high population density goes together with a low availability of total recreational and urban green areas. While Big-European and Big-Dutch cities have a relatively higher population density and lower total recreational and urban green areas, Small-European and Small-Dutch cities have higher total recreational and urban green areas and a lower population density. This comparative framework shows that a sufficient availability of urban green spaces is more problematic for big cities.
Coverage and Rate Analysis for Downlink HetNets Using Modified Reverse Frequency Allocation Scheme

The deployment of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) inevitably demands the design of interference management techniques to elevate the overall network performance. This paper presents a novel interference mitigation technique known as reverse frequency allocation (RFA), which provides an efficient resource allocation compared with the other state-of-the-art techniques. RFA reverses the transmission direction of interferers, thereby minimizing the cross-tier interference. Eventually, better coverage as well as increased data rates are achieved by providing complementary spectrum to the macro and pico users. In this paper, we present a tractable approach for modeling HetNets under the proposed RFA scheme. Specifically, we employ well known tools from stochastic geometry to derive closed-form expressions for the coverage probability and rate coverage in two-tier cellular network employing RFA and its variants. The modeling is performed using two approaches; first, where the base stations and users are modeled as independent Poisson point processes (PPPs) and second, the interference is approximated using the fluid model. It is shown that the results obtained from the PPP model are accurate for higher values of path loss exponents, while the results from fluid model are useful for smaller values of path loss exponents. The plausibility of model is validated through the Monte-Carlo simulations and the network performance is evaluated in terms of coverage probability, coverage rate, and outage capacity. The results demonstrate that 2-RFA yields outage capacity gains of 13% as compared with the soft fractional frequency reuse scheme, whereas, the performance gains can be further improved by 14% by employing the proposed variants of RFA.
Recency-based collaborative filtering

Collaborative filtering is regarded as one of the most promising recommendation algorithms. Traditional approaches for collaborative filtering do not take concept drift into account. For example, user purchase interests may be volatile. A new mother may be interested in baby toys, although previously she had no interest in these. A man may like romantic films while he preferred action movies one year ago. Collaborative filtering is characterized by concept drift in the real world. To make time-critical predictions, we argue that the target users' recent ratings reflect his/her future preferences more than older ratings. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm namely recency-based collaborative filtering to explore the weights for items based on their expected accuracy on the future preferences. Our proposed approach is based on item-based collaborative filtering algorithms. Specifically, we design a new similarity function to produce similarity scores that better reflect the reality. Our experimental results have shown that the new algorithm substantially improves the precision of traditional collaborative filtering algorithms.
Increasing the Yield in Targeted Next-Generation Sequencing by Implicating CNV Analysis, Non-Coding Exons and the Overall Variant Load: The Example of Retinal Dystrophies

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) are major causes of blindness. They result from mutations in many genes which has long hampered comprehensive genetic analysis. Recently, targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) has proven useful to overcome this limitation. To uncover “hidden mutations” such as copy number variations (CNVs) and mutations in non-coding regions, we extended the use of NGS data by quantitative readout for the exons of 55 RP and LCA genes in 126 patients, and by including non-coding 5′ exons. We detected several causative CNVs which were key to the diagnosis in hitherto unsolved constellations, e.g. hemizygous point mutations in consanguineous families, and CNVs complemented apparently monoallelic recessive alleles. Mutations of non-coding exon 1 of EYS revealed its contribution to disease. In view of the high carrier frequency for retinal disease gene mutations in the general population, we considered the overall variant load in each patient to assess if a mutation was causative or reflected accidental carriership in patients with mutations in several genes or with single recessive alleles. For example, truncating mutations in RP1, a gene implicated in both recessive and dominant RP, were causative in biallelic constellations, unrelated to disease when heterozygous on a biallelic mutation background of another gene, or even non-pathogenic if close to the C-terminus. Patients with mutations in several loci were common, but without evidence for di- or oligogenic inheritance. Although the number of targeted genes was low compared to previous studies, the mutation detection rate was highest (70%) which likely results from completeness and depth of coverage, and quantitative data analysis. CNV analysis should routinely be applied in targeted NGS, and mutations in non-coding exons give reason to systematically include 5′-UTRs in disease gene or exome panels. Consideration of all variants is indispensable because even truncating mutations may be misleading.
Abdominal obesity and the prevalence of diabetes and intermediate hyperglycaemia in Chinese adults

Abstract Objective To assess the association of indicators of general and abdominal obesity with the prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and intermediate hyperglycaemia (IHG) in the Chinese population. Methods We used data of 50 905 adults aged 18–79 years in the 2002 China National Nutrition and Health Survey. Recommended Chinese cut-off values were used for BMI (24 kg/m2) and waist circumference (WC; 85 cm in men, 80 cm in women). Optimal cut-offs for waist:height ratio (WHtR) were determined from analyses of receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results The prevalence of T2DM and IHG was 2·6 % and 1·9 % respectively. ROC curve analyses indicated 0·5 as the optimal cut-off value for WHtR in both sexes. High BMI, WC and WHtR were all associated with the prevalence of glucose tolerance abnormalities, with the highest prevalence ratio (PR) for high WHtR (men: PR = 2·85, 95 % CI 2·54, 3·21; women: PR = 3·10, 95 % CI 2·74, 3·51). When combining BMI and WHtR, in men either a high BMI or a high WHtR alone was associated with increased risk. Among women, a high BMI without a concomitant high WHtR was not associated with increased glucose tolerance abnormalities risk, whereas a high WHtR was associated with risk irrespective of BMI. Conclusions Among the Chinese adult population measures of central obesity are better predictors of glucose tolerance abnormalities prevalence than BMI. A WHtR cut-off point of 0·5 for both men and women can be considered as optimum for predicting (pre-) diabetes and may be a useful tool for screening and health education.
Fine Structure of the Male Reproductive System and Reproductive Behavior of Lutzomyia longipalpis Sandflies (Diptera: Psychodidae: Phlebotominae)

Background The male reproductive system of insects can have several tissues responsible for the secretion of seminal fluid proteins (SFPs), such as testes, accessory glands, seminal vesicles, ejaculatory duct and ejaculatory bulb. The SFPs are transferred during mating and can induce several physiological and behavioral changes in females, such as increase in oviposition and decrease in sexual receptivity after copulation. The phlebotomine Lutzomyia longipalpis is the main vector of visceral leishmaniasis. Despite its medical importance, little is known about its reproductive biology. Here we present morphological aspects of the male L. longipalpis reproductive system by light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and compare the mating frequency of both virgin and previously mated females. Results The male L. longipalpis reproductive system is comprised by a pair of oval-shaped testes linked to a seminal vesicle by vasa deferentia. It follows an ejaculatory duct with an ejaculatory pump (a large bulb enveloped by muscles and associated to tracheas). The terminal endings of the vasa deferentia are inserted into the seminal vesicle by invaginations of the seminal vesicle wall, which is composed by a single layer of gland cells, with well-developed endoplasmic reticulum profiles and secretion granules. Our data suggest that the seminal vesicle acts both as a spermatozoa reservoir and as an accessory gland. Mating experiments support this hypothesis, revealing a decrease in mating frequency after copulation that indicates the effect of putative SFPs. Conclusion Ultrastructural features of the L. longipalpis male seminal vesicle indicated its possible role as an accessory gland. Behavioral observations revealed a reduction in mating frequency of copulated females. Together with transcriptome analyses from male sandfly reproductive organs identifying ESTs encoding orthologs of SFPs, these data indicate the presence of putative L. longipalpis SFPs reducing sexual mating frequency of copulated females.