Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personal behavior and virtual fragmentation

In the last few years the importance of multiplayer games has seen an immense growth. On par with that, the virtual environments (VEs) increased in their size. Today there exist more than 120 MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) ranging from FPS (first person shooter) to classic RPG (role playing game) settings. Such an evolution leads to the fact that players start to "live" in a virtual world. Thus each player at least partially merges with his character (playing figure) and acts in the virtual world. Nevertheless there can be huge gaps between ones real and virtual behavior. This paper uses a well balanced set of questions based on the psychological big5 model to show the mentioned gaps between real world and virtual world attitude. The underlying online survey models 30 selected questions about online and real world behavior. The results are stored in a database in order to statistically interpret them afterwards. The analysis includes correlations between deterministic values (such as age, nationality and gender) and traits of the big5 model (like surgery, emotional stability and conscientiousness). Furthermore it contains other surprising conclusions about the difference in behavior.
Declarative Memory

Neuroimaging of declarative memory is not an endeavor divorced from psychology but, instead, is another path through which a more complete understanding of memory has emerged. Specifically, neuroimaging allows us to determine if differences between memory states emerge from quantitatively or qualitatively distinct underlying encoding operations. Further, it has allowed for greater specification of the putative control operations adopted when we make decisions about our memories. We describe some examples of insights provided by neuroimaging into the many and varied processes that support encoding and retrieval of declarative memory.
Breastfeeding is associated with decreased pneumonia incidence among HIV-exposed, uninfected Kenyan infants

Objective:HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) infants have higher infectious disease morbidity and mortality than unexposed infants. We determined the incidence and risk factors for pneumonia, a leading cause of infant mortality worldwide, in a cohort of HEU infants. Identifying predictors of pneumonia among HEU infants may enable early identification of those at highest risk. Design:A retrospective cohort of HEU infants participating in a Kenyan perinatal HIV study, enrolled between 1999 and 2002. Methods:Infants were followed monthly from birth to 12 months. Incidence of pneumonia diagnosed at monthly study visits, sick-child visits or by means of averbal autopsy was estimated with a 14-day window for new episodes. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to identify predictors of first pneumonia occurrence. Results:Among 388 HEU infants with 328 person-years of follow-up, the incidence of pneumonia was 900/1000 child-years [95% confidence interval (CI) 800–1000]. Maternal HIV viral load at 32 weeks’ gestation [hazard ratio 1.2 (1.0–1.5) per log10 difference] and being underweight (weight-for-age Z-score <−2) at the previous visit [hazard ratio 1.8 (1.1–2.8)] were associated with increased risk of pneumonia. Breastfed infants had a 47% lower risk of pneumonia than those never breastfed [hazard ratio 0.53 (0.39–0.73)], independent of infant growth, maternal viral load and maternal CD4%. Breastfeeding was also associated with a 74% lower risk of pneumonia-related hospitalization [hazard ratio 0.26 (0.13–0.53)]. Conclusions:The incidence of pneumonia in this cohort of HEU infants was high. Our observations suggest that maternal viral suppression and breastfeeding may reduce the burden of pneumonia among HEU infants.
A PANCHROMATIC VIEW OF THE RESTLESS SN 2009ip REVEALS THE EXPLOSIVE EJECTION OF A MASSIVE STAR ENVELOPE

The double explosion of SN 2009ip in 2012 raises questions about our understanding of the late stages of massive star evolution. Here we present a comprehensive study of SN 2009ip during its remarkable rebrightenings. High-cadence photometric and spectroscopic observations from the GeV to the radio band obtained from a variety of ground-based and space facilities (including the Very Large Array, Swift, Fermi, Hubble Space Telescope, and XMM) constrain SN 2009ip to be a low energy (E ∼ 1050 erg for an ejecta mass ∼0.5 M☉) and asymmetric explosion in a complex medium shaped by multiple eruptions of the restless progenitor star. Most of the energy is radiated as a result of the shock breaking out through a dense shell of material located at ∼5 × 1014 cm with M ∼ 0.1 M☉, ejected by the precursor outburst ∼40 days before the major explosion. We interpret the NIR excess of emission as signature of material located further out, the origin of which has to be connected with documented mass-loss episodes in the previous years. Our modeling predicts bright neutrino emission associated with the shock break-out if the cosmic-ray energy is comparable to the radiated energy. We connect this phenomenology with the explosive ejection of the outer layers of the massive progenitor star, which later interacted with material deposited in the surroundings by previous eruptions. Future observations will reveal if the massive luminous progenitor star survived. Irrespective of whether the explosion was terminal, SN 2009ip brought to light the existence of new channels for sustained episodic mass loss, the physical origin of which has yet to be identified.
Oxidative Modification of Nuclear Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase Phosphatase 1 Is Involved in Transforming Growth Factor β1-induced Expression of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor 1 in Fibroblasts*

Transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) stimulates reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in various cell types, which mediates many of the effects of TGF-β. The molecular mechanisms whereby TGF-β increases ROS production and ROS modulate the signaling processes of TGF-β, however, remain poorly defined. In this study, we show that TGF-β1 stimulates NADPH oxidase 4 (Nox4) expression and ROS generation in the nucleus of murine embryo fibroblasts (NIH3T3 cells). This is associated with an increase in protein thiol modification and inactivation of MAPK phosphatase 1 (MKP-1), a nuclear phosphatase. Furthermore, knockdown of MKP-1 using small interfering RNA enhances TGF-β1-induced phosphorylation of JNK and p38 as well as the expression of plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1), a TGF-β-responsive gene involved in the pathogenesis of many diseases. Knockdown of Nox4 with Nox4 small interfering RNA, on the other hand, reduces TGF-β1-stimulated ROS production, p38 phosphorylation, and PAI-1 expression. TGF-β also increased the nuclear level of Nox4 protein as well as PAI-1 expression in human lung fibroblasts (CCL-210 cells), suggesting that TGF-β may induce PAI-1 expression by a similar mechanism in human lung fibroblasts. In summary, in this study we have identified nuclear MAPK phosphatase MKP-1 as a novel molecular target of ROS in TGF-β signaling pathways. Our data suggest that increased generation of ROS by Nox4 mediates TGF-β1-induced PAI-1 gene expression at least in part through oxidative modification and inhibition of MKP-1 leading to a sustained activation of JNK and p38 MAPKs.
Intravascular Ultrasound Classification of Plaque Distribution in Left Main Coronary Artery Bifurcations: Where Is the Plaque Really Located?

Background—Angiographic classifications of the location and severity of disease in the main vessel and side branch of coronary artery bifurcations have been proposed and applied to distal left main coronary artery (LMCA) bifurcation. Methods and Results—We reviewed 140 angiograms of distal LMCA and ostial left anterior descending (LAD) and left circumflex (LCX) artery lesions with preintervention intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) of both the LAD and LCX arteries as well as the LMCA. Of 140 patients, 92.9% had at least 1 cross section with ≥40% IVUS plaque burden versus 57.2% of patients with an angiographic diameter stenosis ≥50%. Contrary to angiographic classifications, IVUS showed that bifurcation disease was rarely focal and that both sides of the flow divider were always disease-free. Continuous plaque from the LMCA into the proximal LAD artery was seen in 90%, from the LMCA into the LCX artery in 66.4%, and from the LMCA into both the LAD and LCX arteries in 62%. Plaque localized to either the LAD or LCX ostium and not involving the distal LMCA was seen in only 9.3% of LAD arteries and 17.1% of LCX arteries. Plaque distribution was not influenced by the LAD/LCX angiographic angle, lesion severity, LMCA length, or remodeling. We proposed an IVUS classification for bifurcation lesions illustrating longitudinal and circumferential spatial plaque distribution. Conclusions—Angiographic classification of LMCA bifurcation lesions is rarely accurate. IVUS shows that the carina is always spared and that the disease is diffuse rather than focal. Clinical Trial Registration—URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00180466.
Energy-efficient routing protocol for energy harvesting wireless sensor network

Generally, the energy of the wireless sensor network (WSN) is powered by limited and portable batteries. Since there is a great challenge along with the increasing demands in sensor networks for multimedia applications, using renewable energy in WSNs becomes essential. In this paper, the nodes in WSN generate renewable energy used for routing and sensing by solar panel and the energy-efficient routing protocol for energy harvesting WSN is designed and implemented. In selecting routes, the transmission quality, energy consumption and energy wasting are taken into account and the effect of bit error rate (BER) is considered. The transmission quality is affected by BER as a Bernoulli process. Dynamic programming is utilized to find the shortest path after which the network is divided into different layers to evaluate the energy efficiency. In simulation experiment, the protocol is compared with two existing protocol: Minimum-hop routing protocol and Dynamic power-conscious routing scheme. The experimental result shows that the proposed routing protocol outperforms the other two protocols in terms of transmission quality, energy consumption and energy wasting.
Model evolution by run-time parameter adaptation

Models can help software engineers to reason about design-time decisions before implementing a system. This paper focuses on models that deal with non-functional properties, such as reliability and performance. To build such models, one must rely on numerical estimates of various parameters provided by domain experts or extracted by other similar systems. Unfortunately, estimates are seldom correct. In addition, in dynamic environments, the value of parameters may change over time. We discuss an approach that addresses these issues by keeping models alive at run time and feeding a Bayesian estimator with data collected from the running system, which produces updated parameters. The updated model provides an increasingly better representation of the system. By analyzing the updated model at run time, it is possible to detect or predict if a desired property is, or will be, violated by the running implementation. Requirement violations may trigger automatic reconfigurations or recovery actions aimed at guaranteeing the desired goals. We illustrate a working framework supporting our methodology and apply it to an example in which a Web service orchestrated composition is modeled through a Discrete Time Markov Chain. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the approach.
A New Flavonoid from Limonium axillare

A new flavonol glycoside identified as myricetin 3‐O‐β‐D‐sor‐boside (1) has been isolated from the leaves of L. axillare. The new compound showed a moderate inhibition of Ehrlich ascites carci‐noma cells.
Elucidating the relationship between crystallo-chemistry and optical properties of CIGS nanocrystals

The performance of solar cells fabricated using Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2 nanocrystal (NC) inks synthesized using the hot injection method has yielded efficiencies up to 12% recently. The efficiency of these devices is highly dependent on the chemical composition and crystallographic quality of the NCs. The former has been extensively discussed as it can be easily correlated to the optical properties of the film, but detailed crystallographic structure of these NCs has scarcely been discussed and it can influence both the optical and electrical properties. Hence both chemical composition and crystal structure should be explored for these NCs in order for this material to be further developed for application in thin film solar cells. In this work, a thorough investigation of the composition and crystal structure of CuInxGa1−xSe2 NCs synthesized using the hot injection method over the entire composition range (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) has been conducted. Raman spectroscopy of the NCs complements the information derived from x-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). EPMA, which was carried out for the first time, indicates good controllability of the NC Ga/(In + Ga) ratio using this synthesis method. Raman spectroscopy reveals that CuInSe2 NCs are a mixture of chalcopyrite and sphalerite with disordered cations, whereas CuGaSe2 NCs are purely chalcopyrite. The lattice parameters determined from XRD were found to deviate from those calculated using Vegard’s law for all compositions. Hence, it can be deduced that the lattice is distorted in the crystal. The optical and electrochemical band gap of CuInxGa1−xSe2 NCs increases as the Ga content increases. The energy band gap deviates from the theoretical values, which could be related to the contribution from cation disordering and strain. These results help to tailor the opto-electrical properties of semiconductors, which inherently depend on the crystalline quality, strain and composition.
Ocular vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials in healthy pilots and student pilots.

INTRODUCTION Excellent vestibular function (including utricular function) is important for pilots to maintain correct spatial orientation during flight. Vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) recorded from extraocular muscles, the so-called ocular VEMP (oVEMP), can be used to evaluate utricular function. However, oVEMP has not been applied to pilots because of lack of reliable normative data. Hence, this study is designed to establish preliminary normative data for oVEMP induced by air-conducted sound in pilots and student pilots. METHODS There were 62 healthy student pilots (30 male and 32 age-matched female) and 31 healthy male fighter pilots who were recruited as study participants. During binaural air-conducted sound stimulation oVEMP was recorded bilaterally. The latencies of nI and pI, nI-pI interval, peak-to-peak nI-pI amplitude, and asymmetry ratio (AR) of oVEMP in all participants were collected. Meanwhile, the effects of gender and age on oVEMP were also investigated. RESULTS The latencies of nI and pI, nI-pI interval, nI-pI interpeak amplitude, and AR of oVEMP in all participants were 10.35 +/- 0.66 ms, 15.18 +/- 1.07 ms, 4.75 +/- 0.99 ms, 6.75 +/- 4.13 microV, and 13.22 +/- 9.13%, respectively. No significant difference existed between male student pilots and male pilots in terms of oVEMP parameters. The only significant difference was the nI-pI amplitude between age-matched male and female student pilots: 6.96 +/- 3.85 microV for male student pilots and 5.47 +/- 3.10 microV for female student pilots. CONCLUSIONS oVEMP should be interpreted with the AR rather than raw amplitude itself. Each institution should determine its own normal values.
Networks on silicon: combining best-effort and guaranteed services

We advocate a network on silicon (NOS) as a hardware architecture to implement communication between IP cores in future technologies, and as a software model in the form of a protocol stack to structure the programming of NOSs. We claim guaranteed services are essential. In the ETHEREAL NOS they pervade the NOS as a requirement for hardware design, and as foundation for software programming.
Stem Cell-Mediated Intervertebral Disc Regeneration

Currently, degenerative disk disease (DDD) and the subsequent chronic lower back pain that results from it represent a significant source of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The available treatment modalities such as pain therapy and surgical interventions aim to provide symptomatic relief; however, they do not address the underlying pathophysiology of DDD. The disease also has high societal health care costs (Chan et al., 2006; Cassinelli et al, 2001). Many modalities exist for symptomatic treatment of this condition, including bed rest, massage, stretching, strengthening exercises, physical therapy, epidural injections and other pain management therapies, and spinal surgery. Most conservative therapies are
Pipelined Back-Propagation for Context-Dependent Deep Neural Networks

The Context-Dependent Deep-Neural-Network HMM, or CDDNN-HMM, is a recently proposed acoustic-modeling technique for HMM-based speech recognition that can greatly outperform conventional Gaussian-mixture based HMMs. For example, a CD-DNN-HMM trained on the 2000h Fisher corpus achieves 14.4% word error rate on the Hub5’00-FSH speakerindependent phone-call transcription task, compared to 19.6% obtained by a state-of-the-art, conventional discriminatively trained GMM-based HMM. That CD-DNN-HMM, however, took 59 days to train on a modern GPGPU—the immense computational cost of the minibatch based back-propagation (BP) training is a major roadblock. Unlike the familiar Baum-Welch training for conventional HMMs, BP cannot be efficiently parallelized across data. In this paper we show that the pipelined approximation to BP, which parallelizes computation with respect to layers, is an efficient way of utilizing multiple GPGPU cards in a single server. Using 2 and 4 GPGPUs, we achieve a 1.9 and 3.3 times end-to-end speed-up, at parallelization efficiency of 0.95 and 0.82, respectively, at no loss of recognition accuracy.
Imaging T-tubules: dynamic membrane structures for deep functions

This editorial refers to ‘Emerging mechanisms of T-tubule remodelling in heart failure’ by A. Guo et al . , pp. 204–215, this issue and ‘Ultrastructural uncoupling between T-tubules and sarcoplasmic reticulum in human heart failure’ by H. -B. Zhang, et al . , pp. 269–276, this issue. Extensive intracellular contacts of the endo/sarcoplasmic reticulum (ER/SR) with transverse tubules (TTs) are fundamental for intracellular Ca2+ cycling in cardiac muscle. For this, TTs extend from the cytoplasmic surface deep into the cell, setting up a complex three-dimensional (3D) membrane network, referred to as ‘transverse axial tubular system’ (TATS) ( Figure 1 A ). The TATS extends over several orders of magnitude in size, e.g. from local TT diameters <100 nm to cell-wide continuous networks expanding over 100 μm, in order to provide thousands of subcellular TT contacts with the ER organelle via junctional SR (jSR) contacts in a typical ventricular myocyte (VM). Not surprisingly, approaches to study the TT membrane structures and properties of the TATS network encompass different imaging and physiological methods. However, until recently ultrastructural TT resolution vs. continuous representation of TATS regions had to be traded against each other. Just imagine representative EM studies (smallest field of view, possible resolution ≤1 nm) when compared with confocal fluorescence microscopy of histological samples (field of view of ∼150 × 150 µm at ∼250 nm resolution using ×63 objectives). Meanwhile this methodological gap is addressed by recent super-resolution fluorescence microscopy approaches (see below). 1 Despite apparent gaps between imaging resolution and the nanometric nature of subcellular membrane compartments, conventional fluorescence microscopy is essential to characterize TATS membranes in living samples. In particular, functional imaging studies of isolated cells and two-photon imaging of intact heart tissue have related typical TATS architectures to subcellular functions like Ca2+ release events (sparks) in resting cells (for diastole) or Ca2+ transients …
Neutrophil Extracellular Traps and Its Implications in Inflammation: An Overview

In addition to physical barriers, neutrophils are considered a part of the first line of immune defense. They can be found in the bloodstream, with a lifespan of 6–8 h, and in tissue, where they can last up to 7 days. The mechanisms that neutrophils utilize for host defense are phagocytosis, degranulation, cytokine production, and, the most recently described, neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) production. NETs are DNA structures released due to chromatin decondensation and spreading, and they thus occupy three to five times the volume of condensed chromatin. Several proteins adhere to NETs, including histones and over 30 components of primary and secondary granules, among them components with bactericidal activity such as elastase, myeloperoxidase, cathepsin G, lactoferrin, pentraxin 3, gelatinase, proteinase 3, LL37, peptidoglycan-binding proteins, and others with bactericidal activity able to destroy virulence factors. Three models for NETosis are known to date. (a) Suicidal NETosis, with a duration of 2–4 h, is the best described model. (b) In vital NETosis with nuclear DNA release, neutrophils release NETs without exhibiting loss of nuclear or plasma membrane within 5–60 min, and it is independent of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the Raf/MERK/ERK pathway. (c) The final type is vital NETosis with release of mitochondrial DNA that is dependent on ROS and produced after stimuli with GM-CSF and lipopolysaccharide. Recent research has revealed neutrophils as more sophisticated immune cells that are able to precisely regulate their granular enzymes release by ion fluxes and can release immunomodulatory cytokines and chemokines that interact with various components of the immune system. Therefore, they can play a key role in autoimmunity and in autoinflammatory and metabolic diseases. In this review, we intend to show the two roles played by neutrophils: as a first line of defense against microorganisms and as a contributor to the pathogenesis of various illnesses, such as autoimmune, autoinflammatory, and metabolic diseases.
A Compact Size Feature Set for the Off-Line Signature Verification Problem

With increasing computational power, researchers in the area of off-line signature verification have been able to investigate feature extraction techniques that produce large-dimensional feature vectors. However, a large feature vector is not necessarily associated with high performance. This paper investigates the performance of a small feature set consisting of 33 feature values. In the experiments using Support Vector Machines (SVMs), an average error rate (AER) of 16.80% was obtained together with a low false acceptance rate (FAR) for random forgeries of 0.19%. The significant reduction of the error rate was obtained when the proposed global features were employed, which demonstrates their astonishingly high discriminant power. These results suggest that the use of global features for the off-line signature verification problem is worth further investigation.