Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Object-Space Painterly Rendering for WebGL

We produce painterly images of 3D models by covering them in a particle system of brush strokes. Strokes move along with the original object, producing smooth animations. Strokes are rendered in multiple layers; higher layers show detail and appear in areas of high specular value. Strokes orient and curve themselves along edges and towards centers of light. We have avoided the use of the painter’s algorithm or 2D post-processing.
An Overlooked Role of High School Athletics: The Formation of Social Capital through Parent Involvement.

This paper describes the positive value of high-school athletics in the formation of social capital. Social capital is described as the resources available to actors that result from their interaction within a social network. Athletics provide many opportunities for parent-to-parent and parent-to-school personal interactions that have the potential of benefiting all within the school community. To secure data for this study, a multiple case-study approach was chosen. Three schools--one Catholic, one religious non-Catholic school, and one public school, all of which were relatively close in proximity--were selected for the study. Multiple sources of data were utilized, including school documents, interviews with key informants, faculty interviews or focus groups, parent surveys, aggregate student-achievement scores, and observer notes. The interview data from all three schools indicated that the sports programs were important in bringing parents onto campus for an event in which they could interact. This interaction is often face-to-face, sustained, and frequent enough (sports fund raisers, sports banquets, sports events) to allow for the formation of social capital. The social capital thus generated by this interaction becomes a valuable resource for all within the school community. (RJM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** SCOPE OF INTEREST,NOTICE The ERIC Facility has assigned this document for prOcessing to: In OUf judgment, this document is also of interest to the Clearinghouses noted to the right. Indexing should reflect their special points of view. An Overlooked Role of High School Athletics: c.1 The Formation of Social Capital through Q Parent Involvement Wayne S. Fritch University of California at Riverside U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDU ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of.view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Wayne S. Fritch \11 42072 Abbott Lane Hemet, CA 92544 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Paper presented in a Roundtable Discussion at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association Montreal, Canada 2 Telephone: (909) 925-5548 Email: wsf@pe.net
Robot-assisted epicardial ablation of the pulmonary veins: is a completed isolation necessary?

AIMS To study the feasibility and electrophysiological efficacy of minimally invasive beating heart ablation of the pulmonary veins (PVs) via a robot-assisted single-sided approach. BACKGROUND PV isolation by minimally invasive epicardial ablation may offer a new treatment for patients with lone atrial fibrillation (AF). However, complete PV isolation has been shown to be difficult to obtain. METHODS AND RESULTS In 14 mongrel dogs, robot-assisted epicardial microwave ablation was performed on the beating heart by a single-sided right chest approach. Isolation of all PVs was performed in two steps to study the effect of an incomplete and a complete isolation on AF. AF was studied by random and burst pacing. Incremental pacing was performed to study conduction characteristics across the lesions. Opening of the pericardial reflections, introduction of the catheter and ablation were robotically feasible by a single-sided approach in 11 dogs. The AF duration decreased from 6.6+/-4.1 to 1.3+/-0.8 s (P=0.03) and 1.6+/-1.6 s (P=0.04 compared with control) after incomplete and completed isolation of the PVs. The AF cycle length increased from 134+/-5 to 141+/-5 and 145+/-8 ms (P=0.03) after incomplete and complete isolation, respectively. Several incomplete lesions showed 2:1 exit and/or entrance block during incremental pacing. After complete isolation, AF was no longer inducible from the PVs. CONCLUSION Epicardial PV isolation can be successfully performed by a single-sided robot-assisted approach. The effect of PV ablation on AF is not an all or none phenomenon. Incomplete isolation already decreases AF duration and lengthens the AF cycle length. However, complete isolation is necessary to prevent AF induction by triggering from the isolated area.
Relation of serum cholesterol, lipid, serotonin and tryptophan levels to severity of depression and to suicide attempts.

OBJECTIVE To determine if there is a relation to low serum cholesterol, lipoprotein, serotonin or tryptophan levels in patients with depression who have recently attempted suicide. DESIGN Biochemical and behavioural study. SETTING Inpatient and outpatient treatment at the Instituto Mexicano de Psiquiatría. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-three patients with a diagnosis of major depressive episode. Eighteen of these patients had attempted suicide in the month before the start of the study; 15 patients had never attempted suicide. OUTCOME MEASURES Serum levels of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), triglycerides, serotonin (5-HT) and tryptophan. Scores on Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Carroll Depression Rating Scale, Beck Hopelessness Scale and Beck Suicide Attempt Severity Scale. RESULTS There were no significant differences between patients who had attempted suicide and those who had not in terms of serum cholesterol, HDL, LDL and triglyceride levels. Serum levels of 5-HT and tryptophan were significantly lower in patients with depression who had a recent suicide attempt than in those patients who had never attempted suicide. A comparison of patients not taking antidepressant medication found serum 5-HT levels to be more than 3 times lower in those patients with a recent suicide attempt than in patients with no history of suicide attempt. CONCLUSIONS The study found no difference in lipid profiles between patients who had attempted suicide and those who had not. Low serum levels of 5-HT may increase the risk of suicide attempt in patients who are depressed.
A novel indoor positioning method based on key reference RFID tags

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology are gaining much attention for indoor location sensing. LANDMARC was the first attempt utilizing RFID reference tags which make the system adaptable to the environment changes. However, the system suffers from some problems. For example, to further improve the localization accuracy, more reference tags are needed. This means longer latency in tracking a target becauses the system has to visit all reference tags when calculating the coordinates of the target. In this paper, we present a novel method to overcome the above drawbacks. We use the concept of key reference tags to eliminate redundant reference tags of the system in real time location phase. Key reference tags will help to obtain the signal strengh values of all reference tags by searching a database established in off-line data collection phase. Our approach uses less RFID reference tags and will not affect the overall performance.
Breastmilk Is a Novel Source of Stem Cells with Multilineage Differentiation Potential

The mammary gland undergoes significant remodeling during pregnancy and lactation, which is fuelled by controlled mammary stem cell (MaSC) proliferation. The scarcity of human lactating breast tissue specimens and the low numbers and quiescent state of MaSCs in the resting breast have hindered understanding of both normal MaSC dynamics and the molecular determinants that drive their aberrant self‐renewal in breast cancer. Here, we demonstrate that human breastmilk contains stem cells (hBSCs) with multilineage properties. Breastmilk cells from different donors displayed variable expression of pluripotency genes normally found in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). These genes included the transcription factors (TFs) OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, known to constitute the core self‐renewal circuitry of hESCs. When cultured in the presence of mouse embryonic feeder fibroblasts, a population of hBSCs exhibited an encapsulated ESC‐like colony morphology and phenotype and could be passaged in secondary and tertiary clonogenic cultures. While self‐renewal TFs were found silenced in the normal resting epithelium, they were dramatically upregulated in breastmilk cells cultured in 3D spheroid conditions. Furthermore, hBSCs differentiated in vitro into cell lineages from all three germ layers. These findings provide evidence that breastmilk represents a novel and noninvasive source of patient‐specific stem cells with multilineage potential and establish a method for expansion of these cells in culture. They also highlight the potential of these cells to be used as novel models to understand adult stem cell plasticity and breast cancer, with potential use in bioengineering and tissue regeneration. STEM Cells2012;30:2164–2174
Speaking in their Language : An Overview of Major Difficulties Faced by the Libyan EFL Learners in Speaking Skill

Article History The paper received on: 07/07/2014 Accepted after peer-review on: 24/08/2014 Published on: 01/09/2014 Of the four major language skills, speaking is regarded as the most crucial and central one as it enables the learner to establish successful communication in that language, which is often the main aim of learning any foreign language. That is why it forms the focus of attention in any foreign language teaching and learning as failure to master this crucial language skill leads to the failure to establish successful communication. However, mastering this language skill does not go so easily with the EFL learners and particularly for the Arab EFL learners as many factors, including the mother tongue interference, hinder and influence the process of learning and mastering this crucial foreign language skill. The consequent result is that the EFL learners, especially Arab learners, encounter various difficulties while communicating in English and speak the language in their own way with the flavour of their mother tongue, Arabic. This problem of the Libyan EFL learners, encountered while speaking in English, is the subject of investigation in this paper. Various other problems, nature of these problems, sources of these problems and some pedagogical suggestion to overcome these problems are also some of the central topics of discussion in the paper.
Relay Selection for MIMO and Massive MIMO Two-Way Relay Networks

Relay selection strategies help to improve spectral and energy efficiencies, to enhance transmission robustness, or to reduce latency in multi-relay cooperative wireless networks. Two novel relay selection strategies are proposed and analysed here for 1. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) 2. Massive MIMO, amplify-andforward (AF) two-way relay networks (TWRNs). Specifically, they are designed to minimize the overall outage probability or maximize the achievable sum rate. Interestingly, the first strategy amounts to maximizing the minimum of the eigenvalues of the Wishart matrices of the channels from the selected relay to the two user nodes. Counter-intuitively, the latter strategy amounts to maximizing the minimum of the determinant of the same Wishart matrices. The performance of these two strategies is investigated by deriving lower/upper bounds of the overall outage probability and the average sum rate approximations in closed-form. Further, the asymptotic high SNR approximations of the outage probability are derived, and thereby, the achievable diversity-multiplexing trade-off is quantified. Our analysis shows that the transmit power at user nodes can be scaled down proportional to their number of antennas and thus the use of a large scale antennas systems results in significant power savings. Further use of large number of antennas makes relay selection process simple and deterministic. Our results reveal that relay selection indeed significantly increases the sum rate and decreases the outage probability of wireless systems and will be useful for the wireless systems.
Morphology, Molecules, and Monogenean Parasites: An Example of an Integrative Approach to Cichlid Biodiversity

The unparalleled biodiversity of Lake Tanganyika (Africa) has fascinated biologists for over a century; its unique cichlid communities are a preferred model for evolutionary research. Although species delineation is, in most cases, relatively straightforward, higher-order classifications were shown not to agree with monophyletic groups. Here, traditional morphological methods meet their limitations. A typical example are the tropheine cichlids currently belonging to Simochromis and Pseudosimochromis. The affiliations of these widespread and abundant cichlids are poorly understood. Molecular work suggested that genus and species boundaries should be revised. Moreover, previous morphological results indicated that intraspecific variation should be considered to delineate species in Lake Tanganyika cichlids. We review the genera Simochromis and Pseudosimochromis using an integrative approach. Besides a morphometric study and a barcoding approach, monogenean Cichlidogyrus (Platyhelminthes: Ancyrocephalidae) gill parasites, often highly species-specific, are used as complementary markers. Six new species are described. Cichlidogyrus raeymaekersi sp. nov., C. muterezii sp. nov. and C. banyankimbonai sp. nov. infect S. diagramma. Cichlidogyrus georgesmertensi sp. nov. was found on S. babaulti and S. pleurospilus, C. franswittei sp. nov. on both S. marginatus and P. curvifrons and C. frankwillemsi sp. nov. only on P. curvifrons. As relatedness between Cichlidogyrus species usually reflects relatedness between hosts, we considered Simochromis monotypic because the three Cichlidogyrus species found on S. diagramma belonged to a different morphotype than those found on the other Simochromis. The transfer of S. babaulti, S. marginatus, S. pleurospilus and S. margaretae to Pseudosimochromis was justified by the similarity of their Cichlidogyrus fauna and the intermediate morphology of S. margaretae. Finally parasite data also supported the synonymy between S. pleurospilus and S. babaulti, a species that contains a large amount of geographical morphological variation.
Surface Lipids as Multifunctional Mediators of Skin Responses to Environmental Stimuli

Skin surface lipid (SSL) film is a mixture of sebum and keratinocyte membrane lipids, protecting skin from environment. Its composition is unique for the high percentage of long chain fatty acids, and of the polyterpenoid squalene, absent in other human tissues, and in non-human Primates sebum. Here, the still incomplete body of information on SSL as mediators of external chemical, physical, and microbial signals and stressors is revised, focusing on the central event of the continuous oxidative modification induced by the metabolic activity of residential and pathological microbial flora, natural or iatrogenic UV irradiation, exposure to chemicals and cosmetics. Once alpha-tocopherol and ubiquinol-10 antioxidant defences of SSL are overcome, oxidation of squalene and cholesterol gives rise to reactive by-products penetrating deeper into skin layers, to mediate local defensive inflammatory, photo-protective, immune reactions or, at higher concentrations, inducing local but also systemic immune depression, ultimately implicating skin cancerogenesis. Qualitative modifications of SSL represent a pathogenetic sign of diagnostic value in dermatological disorders involving altered sebum production, like pytiriasis versicolor, acne, atopic or seborrheic dermatitis, as well as photo-aging. Achievements of nutriceutical interventions aimed at restoring normal SSL composition and homeostasis are discussed, as feasible therapeutic goals and major means of photo-protection.
Bit Error Probability of Space-Shift Keying MIMO Over Multiple-Access Independent Fading Channels

In this paper, we study the performance of space-shift keying (SSK) modulation for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems in the presence of multiple-access interference. More specifically, a synchronous multiuser scenario is considered. The main technical contributions of this paper are given as follows: Two receiver structures based on the maximum-likelihood (ML) criterion of optimality are developed and analytically studied, i.e., single- and multiuser detectors. Accurate frameworks for computing the average bit error probability (ABEP) over independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channels are proposed. Furthermore, simple and easy-to-use lower and upper bounds for performance analysis and system design are introduced. The frameworks account for the near-far effect, which significantly affects the achievable performance in multiple-access environments. In addition, we extend the analysis to generalized SSK (GSSK) modulation, which foresees multiple active antennas at the transmitter. With respect to SSK modulation, GSSK modulation achieves higher data rates at the cost of increased complexity at the transmitter. The performance of SSK and GSSK modulations is compared with that of conventional phase-shift keying (PSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes, and it is shown that SSK and GSSK modulations can outperform conventional schemes for various system setups and channel conditions. In particular, the performance gain of SSK and GSSK modulations increases for increasing values of the target bit rate and of the number of antennas at the receiver. Finally, we put forth the concept of coordinated multipoint (or network MIMO) SSK (CoMP-SSK) modulation as a way of exploiting network cooperation and the spatial-constellation diagram to achieve high data rates. Analytical derivations and theoretical findings are substantiated through extensive Monte Carlo simulations for many setups.
A Multiscale Framework for Spatial Gamut Mapping

Image reproduction devices, such as displays or printers, can reproduce only a limited set of colors, denoted the color gamut. The gamut depends on both theoretical and technical limitations. Reproduction device gamuts are significantly different from acquisition device gamuts. These facts raise the problem of reproducing similar color images across different devices. This is well known as the gamut mapping problem. Gamut mapping algorithms have been developed mainly using colorimetric pixel-wise principles, without considering the spatial properties of the image. The recently proposed multilevel gamut mapping approach takes spatial properties into account and has been demonstrated to outperform spatially invariant approaches. However, they have some important drawbacks. To analyze these drawbacks, we build a common framework that encompasses at least two important previous multilevel gamut mapping algorithms. Then, when the causes of the drawbacks are understood, we solve the typical problem of possible hue shifts. Next, we design appropriate operators and functions to strongly reduce both haloing and possible undesired over compression. We use challenging synthetic images, as well as real photographs, to practically show that the improvements give the expected results.
Cytoplasmic Dynein and LIS1 Are Required for Microtubule Advance during Growth Cone Remodeling and Fast Axonal Outgrowth

Recent evidence has implicated dynein and its regulatory factors dynactin and LIS1 in neuronal and non-neuronal cell migration. In the current study we sought to test whether effects on neuronal cell motility might reflect, in part, a role for these proteins in the growth cone. In chick sensory neurons subjected to acute laminin treatment dynein, dynactin, and LIS1 were mobilized strikingly and rapidly to the leading edge of the growth cone, where they were seen to be associated with microtubules converging into the laminin-induced axonal outgrowths. To interfere acutely with LIS1 and dynein function and to minimize secondary phenotypic effects, we injected antibodies to these proteins just before axon initiation. Antibody to both proteins produced an almost complete block of laminin-induced growth cone remodeling and the underlying reorganization of microtubules. Penetration of microtubules into the peripheral zone of differentiating axonal growth cones was decreased dramatically by antibody injection, as judged by live analysis of enhanced green fluorescent protein-tubulin and the microtubule tip-associated EB3 (end-binding protein 3). Dynein and LIS1 inhibition had no detectable effect on microtubule assembly but reduced the ability of microtubules to resist retrograde actin flow. In hippocampal neurons dynein, dynactin, and LIS1 were enriched in axonal growth cones at stage 3, and both growth cone organization and axon elongation were altered by LIS1 RNA interference. Together, our data indicate that dynein and LIS1 play a surprisingly prominent role in microtubule advance during growth cone remodeling associated with axonogenesis. These data may explain, in part, the role of these proteins in brain developmental disease and support an important role in diverse aspects of neuronal differentiation and nervous system development.
An Engineered Cardiac Reporter Cell Line Identifies Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Myocardial Precursors

Unlike some organs, the heart is unable to repair itself after injury. Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) grow and divide indefinitely while maintaining the potential to develop into many tissues of the body. As such, they provide an unprecedented opportunity to treat human diseases characterized by tissue loss. We have identified early myocardial precursors derived from hESCs (hMPs) using an α-myosin heavy chain (αMHC)-GFP reporter line. We have demonstrated by immunocytochemistry and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) that reporter activation is restricted to hESC-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs) differentiated in vitro, and that hMPs give rise exclusively to muscle in an in vivo teratoma formation assay. We also demonstrate that the reporter does not interfere with hESC genomic stability. Importantly, we show that hMPs give rise to atrial, ventricular and specialized conduction CM subtypes by qPCR and microelectrode array analysis. Expression profiling of hMPs over the course of differentiation implicate Wnt and transforming growth factor-β signaling pathways in CM development. The identification of hMPs using this αMHC-GFP reporter line will provide important insight into the pathways regulating human myocardial development, and may provide a novel therapeutic reagent for the treatment of cardiac disease.
California Opportunity Indicators: Informing and Monitoring California's Progress Toward Equitable College Access

Research to Make a Difference ACCORD UC/ California Opportunity Indicators: Informing and Monitoring California’s Progress Toward Equitable College Access Jeannie Oakes, Julie Mendoza, David Silver A multi-campus research center harnessing UC’s research expertise to increase the quality and equity of California’s diverse public schools, colleges and universities.