Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of MAMDC1 as a Candidate Susceptibility Gene for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)

Background Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune disorder with multiple susceptibility genes. We have previously reported suggestive linkage to the chromosomal region 14q21-q23 in Finnish SLE families. Principal Findings Genetic fine mapping of this region in the same family material, together with a large collection of parent affected trios from UK and two independent case-control cohorts from Finland and Sweden, indicated that a novel uncharacterized gene, MAMDC1 (MAM domain containing glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor 2, also known as MDGA2, MIM 611128), represents a putative susceptibility gene for SLE. In a combined analysis of the whole dataset, significant evidence of association was detected for the MAMDC1 intronic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) rs961616 (P –value = 0.001, Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.292, 95% CI 1.103–1.513) and rs2297926 (P –value = 0.003, OR = 1.349, 95% CI 1.109–1.640). By Northern blot, real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and immunohistochemical (IHC) analyses, we show that MAMDC1 is expressed in several tissues and cell types, and that the corresponding mRNA is up-regulated by the pro-inflammatory cytokines tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interferon gamma (IFN-γ) in THP-1 monocytes. Based on its homology to known proteins with similar structure, MAMDC1 appears to be a novel member of the adhesion molecules of the immunoglobulin superfamily (IgCAM), which is involved in cell adhesion, migration, and recruitment to inflammatory sites. Remarkably, some IgCAMs have been shown to interact with ITGAM, the product of another SLE susceptibility gene recently discovered in two independent genome wide association (GWA) scans. Significance Further studies focused on MAMDC1 and other molecules involved in these pathways might thus provide new insight into the pathogenesis of SLE.
Multi-Layer Sparse Representation for Weighted LBP-Patches Based Facial Expression Recognition

In this paper, a novel facial expression recognition method based on sparse representation is proposed. Most contemporary facial expression recognition systems suffer from limited ability to handle image nuisances such as low resolution and noise. Especially for low intensity expression, most of the existing training methods have quite low recognition rates. Motivated by sparse representation, the problem can be solved by finding sparse coefficients of the test image by the whole training set. Deriving an effective facial representation from original face images is a vital step for successful facial expression recognition. We evaluate facial representation based on weighted local binary patterns, and Fisher separation criterion is used to calculate the weighs of patches. A multi-layer sparse representation framework is proposed for multi-intensity facial expression recognition, especially for low-intensity expressions and noisy expressions in reality, which is a critical problem but seldom addressed in the existing works. To this end, several experiments based on low-resolution and multi-intensity expressions are carried out. Promising results on publicly available databases demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach.
POLYGLOT-NER: Massive Multilingual Named Entity Recognition

The increasing diversity of languages used on the web introduces a new level of complexity to Information Retrieval (IR) systems. We can no longer assume that textual content is written in one language or even the same language family. In this paper, we demonstrate how to build massive multilingual annotators with minimal human expertise and intervention. We describe a system that builds Named Entity Recognition (NER) annotators for 40 major languages using Wikipedia and Freebase. Our approach does not require NER human annotated datasets or language specific resources like treebanks, parallel corpora, and orthographic rules. The novelty of approach lies therein - using only language agnostic techniques, while achieving competitive performance. Our method learns distributed word representations (word embeddings) which encode semantic and syntactic features of words in each language. Then, we automatically generate datasets from Wikipedia link structure and Freebase attributes. Finally, we apply two preprocessing stages (oversampling and exact surface form matching) which do not require any linguistic expertise. Our evaluation is two fold: First, we demonstrate the system performance on human annotated datasets. Second, for languages where no gold-standard benchmarks are available, we propose a new method, distant evaluation, based on statistical machine translation.
Theoretical expression of error event probability for a trellis chaos coded modulation concatenated with space-time blok code

In this paper, we propose a new insights for the chaos coded modulation (CCM) schemes originally proposed by Kozic & al. using the approximation of the distance spectrum distribution with some usual laws, a complete study of the performances of these CCM schemes when they are concatenated with a Space Time Block Code (STBC) is proposed. Accurate bounds are obtained even in the case of time selective channels.
Random Combinatorial Structures and Prime Factorizations

Introduction Many combinatorial structures decompose into components, with the list of component sizes carrying substantial information. An integer factors into primes—this is a similar situation, but different in that the list of sizes of factors carries all the information for identifying the integer. The combinatorial structures to keep in mind include permutations, mappings from a finite set into itself, polynomials over finite fields, partitions of an integer, partitions of a set, and graphs. The similar behavior of prime factorization and cycle decompositions of permutations was observed by Knuth and Trabb Pardo [24]. We attempt to explain why such systems are similar. We are interested in probability models which pick “a random combinatorial structure of size n”, meaning that each of the objects of that size is equally likely. We also consider the model which picks an integer uniformly from 1 to n. Such models lead to stochastic processes that count the number of components of each conceivable size. What are the common features of these processes? There are two broad areas of commonality. The first and most basic is essentially an algebraic property. It involves representing the distribution of the combinatorial process as that of a sequence of independent but not identically distributed random variables, conditioned on a weighted sum; see (5). All our combinatorial examples satisfy this exactly. On the other hand, prime factorizations of a uniformly chosen integer cannot be described in terms of conditioning a process of independent random variables on the value of a weighted sum because the value of the weighted sum in this case tells us the value of the random integer. However, by considering conditioning as a special case of the more general construction of “biasing” a distribution, we can view prime factorization as having a very close relative of the conditioning property. Conditioning independent random variables on various weighted sums has a long history; for combinatorial examples we refer the reader to Shepp and Lloyd [29], Holst [20], Kolchin [25], Diaconis and Pitman [13], and Arratia and Tavare [9]. The second broad area of commonality, shared by some but not all of the examples listed above, is an analytic property. The number of components of size at most x has, for fixed x, a limit in distribution as n →∞, and the expected value of this limit is asymptotic to θ logx as x→∞ , where θ > 0 is a constant. We call combinatorial structures that have this property “logarithmic”. For the main examples in this paper the logarithmic structures are permutations, polynomials, mappings, the Ewens sampling formula, and prime factorizations, and the nonlogarithmic structure is that of integer partitions. Richard Arratia is professor of mathematics at the University of Southern California. His e-mail address is rarratia@math.usc. edu.
"Empathy Intensity" In Early Childhood: Classified Intensity Of Emotion During Empathy Situations

This article examined intensity of emotion in children while reacting to empathy situations. It aimed to reveal a connection between children's intensity of emotion in regard to empathy situations and their ability to explain emotions and their choice of empathetic behavior. Two theoretical sources were chosen to examine this subject. The first and major is the accumulating knowledge of empathy in children, and the second is the closest term to describe the intensity of emotion self-regulation. The ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. This study examined the intensity of emotions of children regarding empathy situations, and the connection between the intensity of emotions and the child's willingness to act in situations that arouse empathy. This study concentrated on Empathy Intensity. It tried to classify Empathy Intensity during empathy situations. It also looked for connections between Empathy Intensity and other parts of empathy with hope that Empathy Intensity could shed light on the knowledge about the mechanisms underlying empathic feelings during empathy situations.
The effect of acute administration of Vitamin D on micro vascular endothelial function in Caucasians and South Asian Indians

Background Vitamin D is a modulator of the immune system. There is some limited evidence that it also increases local blood flow in response to stress. Material/Methods In the present study, we examined 20 age matched subjects; 10 whom were from India and 10 Caucasians from the United States. Subjects were administered 4000 IU of Vitamin D3 for 3 weeks at breakfast. The function of the endothelial cells was evaluated in 2 ways; first, the response to 4 minutes of vascular occlusion was measured with a laser Doppler flow meter and second, the blood flow response to local heat at 42°C for 6 minutes. Results The results of the experiments showed that, as reported previously, the endothelial function in people from India was less than their Caucasian counterparts. The blood flow response to heat was reduced after 3 weeks administration of vitamin D in both groups and the response to vascular occlusion in the Caucasian group. But there was only a 20% reduction in the blood flow response to heat in the Caucasian group and a 50% reduction in the group from India. Conclusions Thus acute doses of vitamin D may increase vascular tone and reduce blood flow to tissue during stressors. Dosages administered for a longer duration may have beneficial effects on endothelial function but this was not examined here.
Random worlds and maximum entropy

Given a knowledge base theta containing first-order and statistical facts, a principled method, called the random-worlds method, for computing a degree of belief that some phi holds given theta is considered. If the domain has size N, then one can consider all possible worlds with domain (1, . . ., N) that satisfy theta and compute the fraction of them in which phi is true. The degree of belief is defined as the asymptotic value of this fraction as N grows large. It is shown that when the vocabulary underlying phi and theta uses constants and unary predicates only, one can in many cases use a maximum entropy computation to compute the degree of belief. Making precise exactly when a maximum entropy calculation can be used turns out to be subtle. The subtleties are explored, and sufficient conditions that cover many of the cases that occur in practice are provided. <<ETX>>
Assessing the Impact of Work Environment on Employee Engagement among Non-Academic Staff of the University

Aim of the Study - The objective of this study was to access the impact of work environment on employee engagement among the non-academic staffs of the university in Nigeria. Social exchange theory (SET) was utilized in developing the research framework. Methodology - A total of 150 non-academics staff from l University, representing a response rate of 63.3% participated in this study. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The correlation and the hypothesis were tested using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 2.0). The Cronbach’s Alpha value for the variables ranging from 0.724 to 0.804 indicates very good reliability of the research instrument. Findings - The findings indicate a moderate relationship between the work environment and employee engagement, and the hypothesis is not supported. Practical Implications - The study will provide direction to both the management and the university staff for them to proactively focus on providing a healthy and comfortable working environment that will boost engagement, which lead towards enhancing the performance of university staff, and also the university administrators in various ways.
ERIT - A Collection of Efficient and Reliable Intersection Tests

We describe ERIT, a collection of C routines for efficiently and reliably handling intersection queries between pairs of primitive objects in three dimensions. ERIT supports intersection queries between the following pairs of primitives: triangle/line-segment, triangle/triangle, sphere/line-segment, sphere/triangle, cylinder/line-segment, cylinder/triangle, cylinder/sphere, cone/line-segment, cone/ triangle, toroid/line-segment, toroid/triangle, and sphere/sphere. All intersection routines are based on standard "epsilon-based" floating-point arithmetic. Practical tests have proved that ERIT's routines are efficient and reliable, and we provide performance statistics for three widely-used hardware platforms.
Anterior Cingulate Conflict Monitoring and Adjustments in Control

Conflict monitoring by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been posited to signal a need for greater cognitive control, producing neural and behavioral adjustments. However, the very occurrence of behavioral adjustments after conflict has been questioned, along with suggestions that there is no direct evidence of ACC conflict-related activity predicting subsequent neural or behavioral adjustments in control. Using the Stroop color-naming task and controlling for repetition effects, we demonstrate that ACC conflict-related activity predicts both greater prefrontal cortex activity and adjustments in behavior, supporting a role of ACC conflict monitoring in the engagement of cognitive control.
A Comparative Study on Measurement of Maxillary Occlusal Cant Obtained through Facebow Transfer and Using Lateral CEPH.: An in vivo Study

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to compare measurements of maxillary occlusal cant obtained through facebow transfer and through lateral cephalogram. Method: 40 subjects were included in this study according to inclusion and exclusion criteria and divided into two groups: dentulous and edentulous. For edentulous subjects, all the steps of complete denture fabrication were carried out and finished dentures were delivered. Alginate impressions were now made for all the subjects (with complete denture worn in edentulous cases) for both upper and lower arches. The study was conducted in two parts. Facebow transfer was done next and casts were mounted. In first part of the study, sagittal inclination was measured after facebow transfer. After mounting of the casts, four points were marked to measure the inclination of the occlusal plane. In second part, cephalometric evaluation of occlusal plane and Frankfurt horizontal plane was carried out. Angle between Frankfurt horizontal plane and the occlusal plane was maxillary occlusal cant. which was evaluated by tracing. Paired t test was used to compare mean facebow values and lateral ceph values in edentulous subjects. Intergroup comparison between lateral ceph and mean facebow values between dentulous and edentulous subjects was evaluated using independent t test. Results: Facebow measurements gave comparatively higher values in both dentulous and edentulous patients and are subjected to less variation as compared to the lateral cephalogram values p<0.0001. Conclusion: The occlusal plane angle of lateral cephalogram was found to be significantly different from angle obtained through facebow transfer.
Representations of Interpersonal Interaction and Race/Ethnicity: An Examination of Prime-Time Network Television Programs

Racial and ethnic relations in America are a form of social interaction about which changing perceptions could have important consequences. Current research examining the nature of discrete social interaction situations in entertainment content on television is lacking. This study was conducted with the objective of obtaining an updated account of the state of interpersonal interaction portrayals between characters of different racial/ethnic backgrounds in popular prime time programs on broadcast television. Specifically, we analyzed prime-time television program content on 4 major U.S. broadcast networks. Findings are interpreted via a media priming framework.
Dynamical chaos and uniformly hyperbolic attractors: from mathematics to physics

Research is reviewed on the identification and construction of physical systems with chaotic dynamics due to uniformly hyperbolic attractors (such as the Plykin attraction or the Smale-Williams solenoid). Basic concepts of the mathematics involved and approaches proposed in the literature for constructing systems with hyperbolic attractors are discussed. Topics covered include periodic pulse-driven models; dynamics models consisting of periodically repeated stages, each described by its own differential equations; the construction of systems of alternately excited coupled oscillators; the use of parametrically excited oscillations; and the introduction of delayed feedback. Some maps, differential equations, and simple mechanical and electronic systems exhibiting chaotic dynamics due to the presence of uniformly hyperbolic attractors are presented as examples.
JAK-STAT in heterochromatin and genome stability

The canonical JAK-STAT signaling pathway transmits signals from the cell membrane to the nucleus, to regulate transcription of particular genes involved in development and many other physiological processes. It has been shown in Drosophila that JAK and STAT also function in a non-canonical mode, to regulate heterochromatin. This review discusses the non-canonical functioning of JAK and STAT, and its effects on biological processes. Decreased levels of activated JAK and increased levels of unphosphorylated STAT generate higher levels of heterochromatin. These higher heterochromatin levels result in suppression of hematopoietic tumor-like masses, increased resistance to DNA damage, and longer lifespan.
Exploring deep brain stimulation as a treatment for tinnitus

Roughly 10-15% of people suffer from tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Many patients experience various symptoms associated with the continuous ringing sound. Unfortunately, no treatment is currently available for tinnitus. Recent studies have shown that tinnitus is caused by disrupted brain signals. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) sends electrical impulses to the brain to correct these disruptions. Several studies carried out as part of this dissertation found DBS to be a suitable treatment option for tinnitus. However, further research is necessary before this treatment can be applied in practice.
The bHLH Gene Hes1 as a Repressor of the Neuronal Commitment of CNS Stem Cells

Hes1 is one of the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors that regulate mammalian CNS development, and its loss- and gain-of-function phenotypes indicate that it negatively regulates neuronal differentiation. Here we report that Hes1−/− mice expressed both early (TuJ1 and Hu) and late (MAP2 and Neurofilament) neuronal markers prematurely, and that there were approximately twice the normal number of neurons in theHes1−/− brain during early neural development. However, immunochemical analyses of sections and dissociated cells using neural progenitor markers, including nestin, failed to detect any changes in Hes1−/− progenitor population. Therefore, further characterization of neural progenitor cells that discriminated between multipotent and monopotent cells was performed using two culture methods, low-density culture, and a neurosphere assay. We demonstrate that the self-renewal activity of multipotent progenitor cells was reduced in theHes1−/− brain, and that their subsequent commitment to the neuronal lineage was accelerated. TheHes1−/− neuronal progenitor cells were functionally abnormal, in that they divided, on average, only once, and then generated two neurons, (instead of one progenitor cell and one neuron), whereas wild-type progenitor cells divided more. In addition, some Hes1−/− progenitors followed an apoptotic fate. The overproduction of neurons in the earlyHes1−/− brains may reflect this premature and immediate generation of neurons as well as a net increase in the number of neuronal progenitor cells. Taken together, we conclude that Hes1 is important for maintaining the self-renewing ability of progenitors and for repressing the commitment of multipotent progenitor cells to a neuronal fate, which is critical for the correct number of neurons to be produced and for the establishment of normal neuronal function.
Hippocampal volume in normal aging and traumatic brain injury.

PURPOSE To present a normative database of hippocampal and temporal horn volume and to clarify the relationship between these measures and cognitive outcome in patients with traumatic brain injury. METHODS Ninety-six healthy volunteers and 94 patients with traumatic brain injury were examined with coronal intermediate and T2-weighted MR imaging. Multispectral segmentation and volume analyses were performed. The volumetry of the hippocampus and temporal horn was characterized in the control subjects. Volumetric measures in a group of patients with traumatic brain injury who had received MR imaging 3 months or less after injury were compared with measurements in other patients in the chronic phase of recovery. The relationship between neuropsychological testing and volumetric measures was analyzed with particular emphasis on the correlation between cognitive outcome and hippocampal and temporal horn volumes. RESULTS No significant age group differences were found in the normative group from age 16 to 65. Left and right hippocampal volumes were interrelated and did not differ from each other. This was also true for the temporal horns. Hippocampal and temporal horn volumes were not significantly related. Women had larger hippocampi relative to cranial volume. Comparisons between patients with traumatic brain injury and control subjects showed significant yet modest bilateral atrophic changes in hippocampal and temporal horn enlargement in the patients with brain injury. Hippocampal and temporal horn volumes correlated significantly with each other in the group with traumatic brain injury. Cognitive outcome was modestly related to hippocampal and temporal horn volumes. However, in a specific subgroup whose images were acquired between 71 and 210 days after injury, strong correlations were noted in which temporal horn volume correlated highly with IQ and hippocampal volume correlated with verbal memory function. CONCLUSION Hippocampal and temporal horn volumes appear to be independent variables in healthy control subjects. Traumatic brain injury results in significant hippocampal atrophy and temporal horn enlargement. The hippocampus and temporal horn volumes were inversely correlated in the group with traumatic brain injury, suggesting a differential relationship of these structures in patients with brain injury as compared with control subjects. In the subacute phase, the volume of the temporal horn may be indicative of intellectual outcome and that of the hippocampus appears to be indicative of verbal memory function.