Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HUMANOID ROBOTS AS COOPERATIVE PARTNERS FOR PEOPLE

Received Accepted This paper presents an overview of our work towards building socially intelligent, cooperative humanoid robots that can work and learn in partnership with people. People understand each other in social terms, allowing us to engage others in a variety of complex social interactions including communication, social learning, and cooperation. We present our theoretical framework that is a novel combination of Joint Intention Theory and Situated Learning Theory and demonstrate how it can be applied to develop our sociable humanoid robot, Leonardo. We demonstrate the robot’s ability to learn quickly and effectively from natural human instruction using gesture and dialog, and then cooperate to perform a learned task jointly with a person. Such issues must be addressed to enable many new and exciting applications for robots that require them to play a long-term role in people’s daily lives.
Reproducibility of retinal nerve fiber thickness measurements using the stratus OCT in normal and glaucomatous eyes.

PURPOSE To determine the reproducibility of Stratus Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) measurements around the optic nerve in normal and glaucomatous eyes. METHODS One eye was chosen at random from 88 normal subjects and 59 glaucomatous subjects distributed among mild, moderate, and severe glaucoma, determined by visual field testing. Subjects underwent six RNFL thickness measurements performed by a single operator over a 30-minute period with a brief rest between sessions. Three scans were taken with the high-density Standard RNFL protocol, and three were taken with the Fast RNFL protocol, alternating between scan protocols. RESULTS Reliability, as measured by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), was calculated for the overall mean RNFL thickness and for each quadrant. The ICC for the mean Standard RNFL thickness (and lower 95% confidence interval [CI]) in normal and glaucomatous eyes was 0.97 (0.96 CI) and 0.98 (0.97 CI), respectively. The ICC for the mean Fast RNFL thickness in normal and glaucomatous eyes was 0.95 (0.93 CI) and 0.97 (0.95 CI), respectively. Quadrant ICCs ranged between 0.79 and 0.97, with the nasal quadrant being the least reproducible of all four quadrants, using either the Standard or Fast RNFL program. The test-retest variability ranged from 3.5 microm for the average RNFL thickness measurements in normal eyes to 13.8 microm for the nasal quadrant measurements in glaucomatous eyes, which appeared to be the most variable. CONCLUSIONS Reproducibility of RNFL measurements using the Stratus OCT is excellent in normal and glaucomatous eyes. The nasal quadrant appears to be the most variable measurement. Standard RNFL and Fast RNFL scans are equally reproducible and yield comparable measurements. These findings have implications for the diagnosis of glaucoma and glaucomatous progression.
Using Web-scale N-grams to Improve Base NP Parsing Performance

We use web-scale N-grams in a base NP parser that correctly analyzes 95.4% of the base NPs in natural text. Web-scale data improves performance. That is, there is no data like more data. Performance scales log-linearly with the number of parameters in the model (the number of unique N-grams). The web-scale N-grams are particularly helpful in harder cases, such as NPs that contain conjunctions.
Streptococcal taxonomy based on genome sequence analyses

The identification of the clinically relevant viridans streptococci group, at species level, is still problematic. The aim of this study was to extract taxonomic information from the complete genome sequences of 67 streptococci, comprising 19 species, by means of genomic analyses, multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA), average amino acid identity (AAI), genomic signatures, genome-to-genome distances (GGD) and codon usage bias. We then attempted to determine the usefulness of these genomic tools for species identification in streptococci. Our results showed that MLSA, AAI and GGD analyses are robust markers to identify streptococci at the species level, for instance, S. pneumoniae, S. mitis, and S. oralis. A Streptococcus species can be defined as a group of strains that share ≥ 95% DNA similarity in MLSA and AAI, and > 70% DNA identity in GGD. This approach allows an advanced understanding of bacterial diversity.
An external fixation method and device to study fracture healing in rats

We wished to establish a reproducible model for fracture fixation to be used in fracture healing research and therefore developed an external fixation construct and surgical procedure adapted to Sprague-Dawley rats. We evaluated the mechanical properties of the construct in brass rods and rat bone, in an Instron test machine with axial and transverse loading, and the in vivo performance. We found that the mechanical properties of the construct in brass rods were predictable and could be repeated in rat femora. In all tests, the axial load was about 10 times the transverse for the same degree of deformation. The stiffness among fixators was uniform. 1 mm pins caused about 50% less stiffness than 1.2 mm pins in axial loading of rat bone (p<0.001) and brass rods (p<0.001) as well as in transverse loading of brass rods (p<0.001). Loosening of 1 or 2 screws that lock the pins to the fixator reduced stiffness by about 50% in axial loading of rat bone (p=0.009) and brass rods (p=0.05). A change in the distance between the bone surface and the fixator was linearly related to the stiffness in axial loading of rat bone (p<0.001) and brass rods (p<0.001) and in transverse loading of brass rods (p<0.001). If the bone ends touched each other, the axial stiffness of the construct increased almost 10 times (265 N/mm), as compared to a fracture gap size of 2 mm (31 N/mm). In vivo experiments had a complication rate of less than 10% when we used 1.2 mm pins, 6 mm offset and rats weighing 350-450 g. Our method and device for experimental external fixation of rat femora are reliable and the findings are reproducible. These can be used in bone repair and fracture healing research.
Fundamental delay bounds in peer-to-peer chunk-based real-time streaming systems

This paper addresses the following foundational question: what is the maximum theoretical delay performance achievable by an overlay peer-to-peer streaming system where the streamed content is subdivided into chunks? As shown in this paper, when posed for chunk-based systems, and as a consequence of the store-and-forward way in which chunks are delivered across the network, this question has a fundamentally different answer with respect to the case of systems where the streamed content is distributed through one or more flows (sub-streams). To circumvent the complexity emerging when directly dealing with delay, we express performance in term of a convenient metric, called “stream diffusion metric”. We show that it is directly related to the end-to-end minimum delay achievable in a P2P streaming network. In a homogeneous scenario, we derive a performance bound for such metric, and we show how this bound relates to two fundamental parameters: the upload bandwidth available at each node, and the number of neighbors a node may deliver chunks to. In this bound, k-step Fibonacci sequences do emerge, and appear to set the fundamental laws that characterize the optimal operation of chunk-based systems.
Highly relativistic radiation belt electron acceleration, transport, and loss: Large solar storm events of March and June 2015

Two of the largest geomagnetic storms of the last decade were witnessed in 2015. On 17 March 2015, a coronal mass ejection‐driven event occurred with a Dst (storm time ring current index) value reaching −223 nT. On 22 June 2015 another strong storm (Dst reaching −204 nT) was recorded. These two storms each produced almost total loss of radiation belt high‐energy (E ≳ 1 MeV) electron fluxes. Following the dropouts of radiation belt fluxes there were complex and rather remarkable recoveries of the electrons extending up to nearly 10 MeV in kinetic energy. The energized outer zone electrons showed a rich variety of pitch angle features including strong “butterfly” distributions with deep minima in flux at α = 90°. However, despite strong driving of outer zone earthward radial diffusion in these storms, the previously reported “impenetrable barrier” at L ≈ 2.8 was pushed inward, but not significantly breached, and no E ≳ 2.0 MeV electrons were seen to pass through the radiation belt slot region to reach the inner Van Allen zone. Overall, these intense storms show a wealth of novel features of acceleration, transport, and loss that are demonstrated in the present detailed analysis.
Teriparatide May Accelerate Healing in Delayed Unions of Type III Odontoid Fractures: A Report of 3 Cases

Study Design Case Report. Objective To report on the treatment of 3 cases of painful delayed unions of type III odontoid fractures with teriparatide. Summary of Background Data Fractures of the C2 vertebra, also known as odontoid fractures, are an important subset of cervical spine fractures. Type III odontoid fractures pass through predominately cancellous bone of C2. Generally accepted treatment is external immobilization with either a rigid collar or a halo vest for 8 to 12 weeks. We report 3 patients who, despite external immobilization, developed painful delayed unions of type III odontoid fractures. Teriparatide is a novel anabolic drug therapy for osteoporosis. It has been shown to stimulate osteoblasts, enhance bone connectivity, increase endosteal cortical thickness, and improve bone mineral content. The drug is given through subcutaneous injection of 20 μg/d for between 6 weeks and 2 years. We treated these 3 patients with teriparatide. Each was informed that details of their case would be submitted for publication. Methods Retrospective case analysis. Results All 3 patients experienced both rapid clinical improvement and computed tomography evidence of fracture union. Conclusion These 3 cases represent relatively uncommon clinical scenarios in which type III odontoid fractures in osteoporotic women failed to unite with external immobilization over several months. The patients presented for follow-up with substantial, activity-limiting neck pain. All 3 were begun on teriparatide doses therapeutic for osteoporosis, and all 3 experienced both remarkable resolution of chronic neck pain and computed tomography-confirmed union of the fractures.
Lexical out-of-vocabulary models for one-stage speech interpretation

We present an approach to explicit, statistical, lexical-level out-of-vocabulary (OOV) word modeling for direct integration into the search space of a one-stage speech interpretation sys-tem. For this purpose, a generic pronunciation model for unknown words is derived from large pronunciation lexica and, optionally, word frequency knowledge. Known statistical language modeling (LM) methods are utilized to estimate different phoneme LM and apply different smoothing techniques. The resulting OOV word models are integrated with the hierarchical language model of our uniform modeling framework by declaring semantically irrelevant parts of the training utterances as unknown. Experiments were conducted with two different OOV training lexica on an airport information dialogue application, evaluating the results with both in-vocabulary (IV) and OOV-related metrics. Results for various OOV model conﬁgurations are presented, showing that OOV detection rates of 60-70 % can be achieved with 1-2 % falsely accepted IV words, simultaneously improving accuracy on the semantic representation.
Tuberous Sclerosis Complex Suppression in Cerebellar Development and Medulloblastoma : Separate Regulation of Mammalian Target of Rapamycin Activity and p 27 Kip 1 Localization

During development, proliferation of cerebellar granule neuron precursors (CGNP), candidate cells-of-origin for the pediatric brain tumor medulloblastoma, requires signaling by Sonic hedgehog (Shh) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF), the pathways of which are also implicated in medulloblastoma. One of the consequences of IGF signaling is inactivation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)–suppressing tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), comprised of TSC1 and TSC2, leading to increased mRNA translation. We show that mice, in which TSC function is impaired, display increased mTOR pathway activation, enhanced CGNP proliferation, glycogen synthase kinase-3A/B (GSK-3A/B) inactivation, and cytoplasmic localization of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27, which has been proposed to cause its inactivation or gain of oncogenic functions. We observed the same characteristics in wild-type primary cultures of CGNPs in which TSC1 and/or TSC2 were knocked down, and in mouse medulloblastomas induced by ectopic Shh pathway activation. Moreover, Shh-induced mouse medulloblastomas manifested Akt-mediated TSC2 inactivation, and the mutant TSC2 allele synergized with aberrant Shh signaling to increase medulloblastoma incidence in mice. Driving exogenous TSC2 expression in Shhinduced medulloblastoma cells corrected p27 localization and reduced proliferation. GSK-3A/B inactivation in the tumors in vivo and in primary CGNP cultures was mTORdependent, whereas p27 cytoplasmic localization was regulated upstream of mTOR by TSC2. These results indicate that a balance between Shh mitogenic signaling and TSC function regulating new protein synthesis and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibition is essential for the normal development and prevention of tumor formation or expansion. [Cancer Res 2009;69(18):7224–34]
Sources and Determinants of Vitamin D Intake in Danish Pregnant Women

Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy has been associated with the development of several adverse health outcomes, e.g., pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus, preterm delivery, low birth weight, birth length, and bone mineral content. The aims of the present study were to estimate the intake and sources of vitamin D in Danish pregnant women and to examine potential determinants of vitamin D intake of the recommended level (10 µg per day). In 68,447 Danish pregnant women the mean ± SD for vitamin D intake was 9.23 ± 5.60 µg per day (diet: 3.56 ± 2.05 µg per day, supplements: 5.67 ± 5.20 µg per day). 67.6% of the women reported use of vitamin D supplements but only 36.9% reported use of vitamin D supplements of at least 10 µg. Supplements were the primary source of vitamin D for the two higher quartiles of total vitamin D intake, with diet being the primary source for the two lower quartiles. Determinants of sufficient total vitamin D intake were: high maternal age, nulliparity, non-smoking, and filling out of the Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) during summer or fall. We propose that clinicians encourage vitamin D supplementation among pregnant women, with special focus on vulnerable groups such as the young, smokers and multiparous women, in order to improve maternal and fetal health both during and after pregnancy.
T Cells Detect Intracellular DNA but Fail to Induce Type I IFN Responses: Implications for Restriction of HIV Replication

HIV infects key cell types of the immune system, most notably macrophages and CD4+ T cells. Whereas macrophages represent an important viral reservoir, activated CD4+ T cells are the most permissive cell types supporting high levels of viral replication. In recent years, it has been appreciated that the innate immune system plays an important role in controlling HIV replication, e.g. via interferon (IFN)-inducible restriction factors. Moreover, innate immune responses are involved in driving chronic immune activation and the pathogenesis of progressive immunodeficiency. Several pattern recognition receptors detecting HIV have been reported, including Toll-like receptor 7 and Retinoic-inducible gene-I, which detects viral RNA. Here we report that human primary T cells fail to induce strong IFN responses, despite the fact that this cell type does express key molecules involved in DNA signaling pathways. We demonstrate that the DNA sensor IFI16 migrates to sites of foreign DNA localization in the cytoplasm and recruits the signaling molecules stimulator of IFN genes and Tank-binding kinase, but this does not result in expression of IFN and IFN-stimulated genes. Importantly, we show that cytosolic DNA fails to affect HIV replication. However, exogenous treatment of activated T cells with type I IFN has the capacity to induce expression of IFN-stimulated genes and suppress HIV replication. Our data suggest the existence of an impaired DNA signaling machinery in T cells, which may prevent this cell type from activating cell-autonomous anti-HIV responses. This phenomenon could contribute to the high permissiveness of CD4+ T cells for HIV-1.
Women's preferences for method of abortion and management of miscarriage

Background and methodology There is growing interest in the UK towards increasing treatment options for women undergoing abortion and miscarriage. Such options include home medical treatment and surgery under local anaesthesia (LA). This study aimed to gauge views of women undergoing abortion and treatment for miscarriage at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh towards medical treatment at home, and surgery under LA, to determine whether new services should be developed. The study consisted of a self-administered anonymous questionnaire. Results A total of 148 questionnaires were completed by women undergoing a medical abortion (n = 97; 66%), surgical abortion (n = 30; 20%) or surgical management of miscarriage (n = 21; 14%). Women having an abortion expressed a future preference for medical abortion in hospital (n = 64; 52%) at home (n = 31; 25%) or by surgery under general anaesthesia (GA) (n = 20; 17%) or LA (n = 7; 6%). Women having a miscarriage expressed a future preference for surgery under GA (n = 7; 35%), LA (n = 6; 30%) or medical management at home (n = 4; 20%) or in hospital (n = 3; 15%). Conclusions This study shows that medical abortion at home is a potentially popular choice for women having an abortion, with surgical abortion under LA less so. Both home medical management and surgery under LA would appear to be welcome service developments for women needing treatment for a miscarriage.
Combining frequency and spatial domain information for fast interactive image noise removal

Scratches on old films must be removed since these are more noticeable on higher definition and digital televisions. Wires that suspend actors or cars must be carefully erased during post production of special effects shots. Both of these are time consuming tasks but can be addressed by the following image restoration process: given the locations of noisy pixels to be replaced and a prototype image, restore those noisy pixels in a natural way. We call it image noise removal and this paper describes its fast iterative algorithm. Most existing algorithms for removing image noise use either frequency domain information (e.g low pass filtering) or spatial domain information (e.g median filtering or stochastic texture generation). The few that do combine the two domains place the limitation that the image be band limited and the band limits be known. Our algorithm works in both spatial and frequency domains without placing the limitations about band limits, making it possible to fully exploit advantages from each domain. While global features and large textures are captured in frequency domain, local continuity and sharpness are maintained in spatial domain. With a judicious choice of operations and domains in which they work, our dual-domain approach can reconstruct many contiguous noisy pixels in areas with large patterns while maintaining continuity of features such as lines. In addition, the image intensity does not have to be uniform. These are significant advantages over existing algorithms. Our algorithm is based on a general framework of projection onto convex sets (POCS). Any image analysis technique that can be described as a closed convex set can be cleanly plugged into the iteration loop of our algorithm. This is another important advantage of our algorithm. CR Categories: I.3. 3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture / Image Generation; Display Algorithms; I.3. 6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques – Interaction techniques; I.4. 4 [Image Processing]: Restoration; I.4. 9 [Image Processing]: Applications. Additional
Langerhans cell histiocytosis of the female genital tract

Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) of the female genital tract is rare. Four new cases are reported, and there is a review of the 38 cases in the literature. This disease may involve the vulva, vagina, cervix, endometrium, and ovary. Four distinct patient groups, segregated on the basis of initial presentation and subsequent anatomic extent of disease, were categorized as follows: (1) “pure” genital LCH, (2) genital LCH with subsequent multi‐organ involvement, (3) oral or cutaneous LCH with subsequent genital and multi‐organ involvement, and (4) diabetes insipidus with subsequent genital and multi‐organ disease. Although involvement of the genital tract can occur at any age, it is most common in young adulthood. Clinically, LCH may mimic either primary neoplasia or various inflammatory lesions; the major pathologic differential diagnosis is venereal and other inflammatory diseases. The pure genital form may have a distinct nosologic position in the spectrum of LCH similar to the “pure,” self‐limited cutaneous histiocytosis seen in infants. There is no correlation between histologic findings and the outcome of the genital lesions. There is also no correlation between clinical presentation and/or the extent of involvement and outcome of genital lesions; complete regression, partial improvement, persistent lesions, and recurrences were seen in all four groups of patients. The treatment of genital LCH is not well defined and is highly individualized. Therapy has included surgery, radiation, topical corticosteroids, topical nitrogen mustard, systemic chemotherapy, and combination therapy; mixed results were obtained with all treatment modalities. Although no modality has been shown to yield a superior outcome, complete surgical excision is advocated as initial therapy.
Gastric cancer: prevention, risk factors and treatment

Cancer starts with a change in one single cell. This change may be initiated by external agents and genetic factors. Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide and accounts for 7.6 million deaths (around 13% of all deaths) in 2008. Lung, stomach, liver, colon and breast cancer cause the most cancer deaths each year. In this review, different aspects of gastric cancer; including clinical, pathological characteristic of gastric cancer, etiology, incidence, risk factors, prevention and treatment are studied.
Extraction of High-Level Semantically Rich Features from Natural Language Text

To represent a text, Natural Language Processing applications are to determine and extract from the text features that are essential for the particular task. Although high-level features seem to be promising for many tasks, they were rarely addressed, since the extraction of those features is a big challenge. This thesis aims at extracting high-level semantically rich features from natural language text. The algorithms we will propose will enable development of novel applications in different areas.