Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bounds for Linear Multi-Task Learning

We give dimension-free and data-dependent bounds for linear multi-task learning where a common linear operator is chosen to preprocess data for a vector of task specific linear-thresholding classifiers. The complexity penalty of multi-task learning is bounded by a simple expression involving the margins of the task-specific classifiers, the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the selected preprocessor and the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the covariance operator for the total mixture of all task distributions, or, alternatively, the Frobenius norm of the total Gramian matrix for the data-dependent version. The results can be compared to state-of-the-art results on linear single-task learning.
Registration and Fusion of Multi-Spectral Images Using a Novel Edge Descriptor

In this work we propose a fully end-to-end approach for multi-spectral image registration and fusion. Our fusion method combines images from different spectral channels into a single fused image using approaches for low and high frequency signals. A prerequisite of fusion is the geometric alignment between the spectral bands, commonly referred to as registration. Unfortunately, common methods for image registration of a single spectral channel might prove inaccurate on images from different modalities. For that end, we introduce a new algorithm for multi-spectral image registration, based on a novel edge descriptor of feature points. Our method achieves an accurate alignment allowing us to further fuse the images. It is experimentally shown to produce a high quality of multi-spectral image registration and fusion under challenging scenarios.
Opportunistic scheduling with partial channel information in OFDMA/FDD systems

Opportunistic scheduling (OS) is one of key techniques to increase the spectral efficiency in wireless packet-based systems by providing a multi-user diversity gain. However, when the OS is employed in orthogonal frequency division multiple access/frequency division duplex (OFDMA/FDD) systems, it may have implementation problems due to the need of a large amount of feedback information on the channel state information (CSI). To alleviate this implementation problem, we propose OS schemes that use partial CSI. The performance of the proposed OS schemes is verified by computer simulation. Simulation results show that the use of partial CSI can remarkably reduce the feedback signaling but-den without significant performance degradation compared to the use of full CSI, making it quite practical to real applications.
INFLUENCE OF EXOGENOUS APPLICATION OF BRASSINOSTEROID ON GROWTH AND MINERAL NUTRIENTS OF WHEAT (TRITICUM AESTIVUM L.) UNDER SALINE CONDITIONS

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a novel group of plant growth regulators which regulate growth and development of plants. BRs application is also effective in ameliorating the adverse effects of abiotic stresses including salt stress. A pot experiment was conducted to assess the influence of exogenous application of BRs as a foliar spray on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) growth and pattern of nutrient accumulation under control or saline conditions. 24-epibrassinolide (24-epiBL) was foliarly applied @ 0 (water spray), 0.0125, 0.025, and 0.0375 mg L -1 on two wheat cultivars viz., S24 and MH-97. Two salinity treatments 0 (control) and 150 mmol L -1 of NaCl were also applied in full strength Hoagland’s nutrient solution. Exogenous application of 24-epiBL increased plant biomass under both saline and non-saline conditions, but it had a non-significant effect on leaf Na + , K + , Ca 2+ , and Cl - contents or K + /Na + ratios while in roots a similar pattern was observed but only for root K + and K + /Na + ratios. Overall, exogenous application of BRs as foliar spray improved growth of wheat plants under saline and non-saline conditions, but it did not have any prominent effect on accumulation of different mineral nutrients in the two cultivars examined.
Building feature extraction via a deterministic approach: application to real high resolution SAR images

Interpretation of high resolution SAR (synthetic aperture radar) images is still a hard task, especially when man-made objects crowd the scene under detection. This paper contributes to the analysis of this kind of data by adopting an approach, based on a scattering model, for the retrieval of buildings height from real SAR images and presenting first numerical results.
PCR-Restriction Enzyme Analysis for Detection ofCandida DNA in Blood from Febrile Patients with Hematological Malignancies

ABSTRACT Blood samples were drawn daily from 72 patients who had hematological malignancies, neutropenia, and fever and who had failed to respond to broad-spectrum antibiotics. Each sample was used for conventional fungal blood cultures and for detection and identification of Candida DNA by a PCR method with subsequent restriction enzyme analysis (REA) recently developed in our laboratory. The PCR method was able to detect five CFU of Candida spp. per ml of blood, and subsequent REA of the amplicons allowed the identification of the Candida species most commonly implicated in cases of candidiasis. Thirty-one patients were PCR-REA positive, and four of these patients were also culture positive. The ultimate diagnosis for 13 of these patients and 1 patient who was PCR-REA negative was disseminated candidiasis (confirmed by clinical data, multiple cultures, histology, autopsy, and/or ultrasonographic evidence of hepatosplenic candidiasis). The molecular method is significantly more sensitive than conventional fungal blood cultures and has a high negative predictive value (97.5%) for the development of disseminated candidiasis in neutropenic patients.
The Role of Experiential Avoidance in Trauma, Substance Abuse, and Other Experiences

Experiential avoidance (EA) is a process in which a person attempts to avoid, dismiss, or change experiences such as emotions, behaviors, and thoughts. EA is associated with a number of psychological disorders and is generally harmful to psychological well-being. Various studies have explored the role of EA as a mediator, while others have studied EA as a moderator. The current study aimed to further understand and broaden the knowledge of the role of EA in regard to trauma, substance abuse, aggression, and impulsivity by examining relationships between these variables with EA as a mediator and as a moderator. Experientially avoidant behaviors (i.e., substance abuse, aggression, and impulsivity) were related to higher levels of EA. EA was found to partially mediate the relationship between the number of traumatic experiences and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, as well as the relationship between substance abuse and PTSD. EA was also found to moderate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and aggression. Findings from the present study as well as its limitations and future directions for research are discussed.
DUSP6, a tumor suppressor, is involved in differentiation and apoptosis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Dual-specificity phosphatase 6 (DUSP6), a specific negative feedback regulator of phosphorylated extracellular signal-regulated kinase, was found to play an important role in numerous types of solid tumors as a tumor suppressor. In this study, 64.2% (61/95) of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) specimens studied exhibited reduced DUSP6 protein expression, compared with 91% (81/89) of normal esophageal specimens that displayed moderate or strong DUSP6 protein expression in tissue microarray analysis. In total, 36.8% (7/19) of the tumor biopsies displayed at least two-fold downregulation of DUSP6 compared with their paired normal counterparts, by qPCR. Significant loss of DUSP6 was observed in EC9706 and KYSE150 ESCC cell lines by immunoblotting assay. Low DUSP6 protein expression was significantly associated with pathological grade in ESCC by immunohistochemistry (P<0.05). Treatment with 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine restored DUSP6 expression in the two ESCC cell lines, and the expression varied according to the drug concentration. Methylation-specific PCR analysis showed methylation-specific products in the two ESCC cell lines. We observed significant differences in the early and total apoptotic proportion between the control and experimental groups of the two ESCC cell lines and their transfectants (P<0.001) by annexin/propidium iodide assay. The presence of cleaved PARP product, a marker of caspase-mediated apoptosis, expressed in the two pCMV-DUSP6 transfectants in marked contrast to the parental and pCMV-transfected EC9706 and KYSE150 cells, was observed by immunoblotting. Overall, our results support the role of DUSP6 as a novel candidate tumor suppressor gene in ESCC, which may be a potential prognostic marker for ESCC.
A New-Generation Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) Is Superior to Quaiac-based Test in Detecting Colorectal Neoplasia Among Colonoscopy Referral Patients.

AIM To compare a new-generation fecal immunochemical test (FIT) with the leading guaiac-based test in detection of fecal occult blood (FOB) in colonoscopy-referral patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS A cohort of 300 patients referred for colonoscopy was examined by two different tests for FOB: ColonView quick test (CV) (FIT test for haemoglobin (Hb) and haemoglobin/haptoglobin (Hb/Hp) complex) and HemoccultSENSA (HS) (quaiac test for Hb). Three fecal samples were tested and all subjects were examined by diagnostic colonoscopy with biopsy verification. The test was interpreted positive if any of the three samples tested positive for Hb (HS test) and either Hb or Hb/Hp complex (CV test). The performance indicators (sensitivity (SE), specificity (SP), positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) and area under the curve (AUC)) were calculated for both tests using three endpoints (adenoma (A), adenoma/carcinoma (A/AC) and carcinoma (AC)), collectively and were stratified according to tumor site. The two tests were compared regarding their sensitivity/specificity balance (AUC), using the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) comparison test. RESULTS Colonoscopy (and biopsies) disclosed normal results in 85 (27.2%) subjects, A in 91 cases (30.3%) and AC in 95 (31.7%) patients. For the combined A+AC endpoint, the HS test had SE of 58.3% and SP of 96.5% (AUC=0.774), while the CV test had 97.2% SE and 85.8% SP (AUC=0.916) (p=0.0001). For the A endpoint, the difference between HS and CV was even more significant, AUC=0.637 and AUC=0.898, respectively (p=0.0001). In CV test, the Hb/Hp complex was 15% (93% vs. 78%) and 8% (96% vs. 88%) more sensitive than Hb alone, for the A and A+AC endpoints, respectively. Being more stable than Hb in the feces, the Hb/Hp complex detected 100% of the tumors in the proximal colon, as contrasted to only 41.2% and 52.9% by the Hb of HS and CV test, respectively (p=0.0001). CONCLUSIONS With its 100% SE and 95.3% SP for proximal colon neoplasia, as well as 98.2% SE and 95.3% SP for the distal neoplasia, ColonView is superior to current FIT tests on the market, recently shown to exhibit pooled SE of 79% and pooled SP of 94% for colorectal cancer (CRC) in a comprehensive meta-analysis. With these exceptional performance indicators, ColonView quick test should be the test-of-choice for CRC screening.
Service intangibility and its implications for the work coordination of primary healthcare multi-professional teams in Brazil.

BACKGROUND In certain service activities, the intangibility of what is being produced hinders the vision of an expected result or product. In multi-professional teams, this difficulty becomes increasingly greater, as participants' perceptions are conditioned to their respective fields of knowledge and different professional experiences. This is a common situation in healthcare services. OBJECTIVE To describe and explain the work coordination process applied by multi-professional teams in order to deal with the intangibility inherent in the healthcare services. METHODS This study involved six multi-professional teams from the public primary healthcare service in Brazil. Interviews and observations of team meetings were carried out, with focus on the critical elements of a coordination process: work plans and routines, roles and responsibilities, knowledge sharing, and a common reference history. RESULTS There is coexistence of two distinct coordination processes being performed in the same work activity: operational coordination, associated with activities that somehow follow standard procedures; and diagnostic coordination, associated with diagnosis construction, alternatives analysis and decision making. CONCLUSIONS The consequences of intangibility can be overcome by mechanisms that enable a common perspective among the participants involved in the productive process, and by the team members' familiarity with each other.
Event-Driven Simulation of Spiking Neurons with Stochastic Dynamics

We present a new technique, based on a proposed event-based strategy (Mattia & Del Giudice, 2000), for efficiently simulating large networks of simple model neurons. The strategy was based on the fact that interactions among neurons occur by means of events that are well localized in time (the action potentials) and relatively rare. In the interval between two of these events, the state variables associated with a model neuron or a synapse evolved deterministically and in a predictable way. Here, we extend the event-driven simulation strategy to the case in which the dynamics of the state variables in the inter-event intervals are stochastic. This extension captures both the situation in which the simulated neurons are inherently noisy and the case in which they are embedded in a very large network and receive a huge number of random synaptic inputs. We show how to effectively include the impact of large background populations into neuronal dynamics by means of the numerical evaluation of the statistical properties of single-model neurons under random current injection. The new simulation strategy allows the study of networks of interacting neurons with an arbitrary number of external afferents and inherent stochastic dynamics.
The Akt kinases: Isoform specificity in metabolism and cancer

The Akt (PKB) protein kinases are critical regulators of human physiology that control an impressive array of diverse cellular functions, including the modulation of growth, survival, proliferation and metabolism. The Akt kinase family is comprised of three highly homologous isoforms: Akt1 (PKBα), Akt2 (PKBβ) and Akt3 (PKBγ). Phenotypic analyses of Akt isoform knockout mice documented Akt isoform specific functions in the regulation of cellular growth, glucose homeostasis and neuronal development. Those studies establish that the functions of the different Akt kinases are not completely overlapping and that isoform-specific signaling contributes to the diversity of Akt activities. However, despite these important advances, a thorough understanding about the specific roles of Akt family members and the molecular mechanisms that determine Akt isoform functional specificity will be essential to elucidate the complexity of Akt regulated cellular processes and how Akt isoform-specific deregulation might contribute to disease states. Here, we summarize recent advances in understanding the roles of Akt isoforms in the regulation of metabolism and cancer, and possible mechanisms contributing to Akt isoform functional specificity.
Assessment of the quadriceps femoris muscle in women after injury induced by maximal eccentric isokinetic exercise with low angular speed.

UNLABELLED The objectives of this study were to propose a model for exercise- induced muscle injury by way of a maximal eccentric isokinetic exercise at low angular speed, and assess the time course of functional recovery of the injured quadriceps femoris muscle from the maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) torque and electrical activity (root mean square - RMS and median frequency - MDF). The effectiveness of the proposed eccentric exercise in inducing injury was assessed from the activity of creatine kinase (CK). In addition, the presence of edema of the quadriceps femoris muscle was assessed by a visual inspection of the intensity of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signal. These measurements were carried out before and after the exercise. Ten healthy women (21.9 ± 1.5) took part in this study. The injury was induced by 4 series of 15 maximal eccentric isokinetic contractions at 5°/s. The MVC torque reduced up to the 4(th) day after the exercise (p < 0.05). The RMS of the vastus medialis oblique (VMO) and the rectus femoris (RF) muscles decreased on the 2(nd) (VMO and RF; p < 0.05) and 3(rd) (RF; p < 0.05) days after. The MDF of the VMO increased immediately after (p < 0.05), whilst the MDF of the RF and VL decreased immediately after (RF; p < 0.05), on the 1(st) (RF and VL; p < 0.05) and on the 2(nd) (VL; p < 0.05) days after. The CK activity increased on the 2(nd) day after (p < 0.05). An increase in the intensity of the MRI signal was observed on the 2(nd) and 7(th) days after. IN CONCLUSION 1- the eccentric exercise with low angular speed was effective in inducing injury, 2- the quadriceps femoris already started its functional recovery, as shown by the MVC torque and electrical activity, in the first week after the exercise, despite the presence of an increase in the intensity of the MRI signal. Key pointsThe low angular speed eccentric exercise was effec-tive in inducing injury of the quadriceps femoris muscle, and could be used as a muscle injury induc-ing model in future studies;The quadriceps femoris muscle injured by eccentric exercise started its functional recovery in the first week after low angular speed eccentric exercise.
Toward a comprehensive and realistic risk evaluation of engineered nanomaterials in the urban water system

The European COoperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ES1205 on the transfer of Engineered Nano materials from wastewater Treatment and stormwatEr to Rivers (ENTER) aims to create and to maintain a trans European network among scientists. This perspective article delivers a brief overview on the status quo at the beginning of the project by addressing the following aspects on engineered nano materials (ENMs) in the urban systems: (1) ENMs that need to be considered on a European level; (2) uncertainties on production-volume estimations; (3) fate of selected ENMs during waste water transport and treatment; (4) analytical strategies for ENM analysis; (5) ecotoxicity of ENMs, and (6) future needs. These six step stones deliver the derivation of the position of the ES1205 network at the beginning of the projects runtime, by defining six fundamental aspects that should be considered in future discussions on risk evaluation of ENMs in urban water systems.
{{Citation needed}}: the dynamics of referencing in Wikipedia

The extent to which a Wikipedia article refers to external sources to substantiate its content can be seen as a measure of its externally invoked authority. We introduce a protocol for characterising the referencing process in the context of general article editing. With a sample of relatively mature articles, we show that referencing does not occur regularly through an article's lifetime but is associated with periods of more substantial editing, when the article has reached a certain level of maturity (in terms of the number of times it has been revised and its length). References also tend to be contributed by editors who have contributed more frequently and more substantially to an article, suggesting that a subset of more qualified or committed editors may exist for each article.
Joint Sparse Representation of Brain Activity Patterns in Multi-Task fMRI Data

A single-task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment may only partially highlight alterations to functional brain networks affected by a particular disorder. Multivariate analysis across multiple fMRI tasks may increase the sensitivity of fMRI-based diagnosis. Prior research using multi-task analysis in fMRI, such as those that use joint independent component analysis (jICA), has mainly assumed that brain activity patterns evoked by different tasks are independent. This may not be valid in practice. Here, we use sparsity, which is a natural characteristic of fMRI data in the spatial domain, and propose a joint sparse representation analysis (jSRA) method to identify common information across different functional subtraction (contrast) images in data from a multi-task fMRI experiment. Sparse representation methods do not require independence, or that the brain activity patterns be nonoverlapping. We use functional subtraction images within the joint sparse representation analysis to generate joint activation sources and their corresponding sparse modulation profiles. We evaluate the use of sparse representation analysis to capture individual differences with simulated fMRI data and with experimental fMRI data. The experimental fMRI data was acquired from 16 young (age: 19-26) and 16 older (age: 57-73) adults obtained from multiple speech comprehension tasks within subjects, where an independent measure (namely, age in years) can be used to differentiate between groups. Simulation results show that this method yields greater sensitivity, precision, and higher Jaccard indexes (which measures similarity and diversity of the true and estimated brain activation sources) than does the jICA method. Moreover, superiority of the jSRA method in capturing individual differences was successfully demonstrated using experimental fMRI data.
Application of the Canadian test day model

Research based on the concept of using test day (TD) records, rather than 305-day lactations, in genetic evaluations has been ongoing in Canada since the early 1990's (10). Progression from using first lactation TD records to including records from the first three lactations (3,6), from using a fixed regression analysis to a random regression approach (2,6,9,11), and from modelling only the animal genetic effect to also applying the random regression approach to model permanent environmental effects (6), have all stemmed from the research results.
Computation and mutagenesis suggest a right‐handed structure for the synaptobrevin transmembrane dimer

Biological membrane fusion involves a highly precise and ordered set of protein–protein interactions. Synaptobrevin is a key player in this process. Mutagenesis studies of its single transmembrane segment suggest that it dimerizes in a sequence specific manner. Using the computational methods developed for the successful structure prediction of the glycophorin A transmembrane dimer, we have calculated a structural model for the synaptobrevin dimer. Our computational search yields a well‐populated cluster of right‐handed structures consistent with the experimentally determined dimerization motif. The three‐dimensional structure contains an interface formed primarily by leucine and isoleucine side‐chain atoms and has no interhelical hydrogen bonds. The model is the first three‐dimensional picture of the synaptobrevin transmembrane dimer and provides a basis for further focused experimentation on its structure and association thermodynamics. Proteins 2001;45:313–317. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.