Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Glimpse into Babel: An Analysis of Multilinguality in Wikidata

Multilinguality is an important topic for knowledge bases, especially Wikidata, that was build to serve the multilingual requirements of an international community. Its labels are the way for humans to interact with the data. In this paper, we explore the state of languages in Wikidata as of now, especially in regard to its ontology, and the relationship to Wikipedia. Furthermore, we set the multilinguality of Wikidata in the context of the real world by comparing it to the distribution of native speakers. We find an existing language maldistribution, which is less urgent in the ontology, and promising results for future improvements.
High strain-rate shear response of polycarbonate and polymethyl methacrylate

The high strain rate response of polycarbonate (PC) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) are measured using a split Hopkinson torsion bar for shear strain rates Ẏ from 500 s-1 to 2200 s-1, and temperatures in the range —100°C to 200°C. The yield and fracture behaviours are compared with previous data and existing theories for Ẏ < I s-1. We find that PC yields in accordance with the Eyring theory of viscous flow, for temperatures between the beta transition temperature Tβ ≈ — 100°C and the glass transition temperature Tg = 147°C. At lower temperatures, T < Tβ , backbone chain motion becomes frozen and the shear yield stress is greater than the Eyring prediction. Strain softening is an essential feature of yield of PC at all strain rates employed. Poly methyl methacrylate fractures before yield in the high strain rate tests for T < 80°C, which is close to the glass transition temperature Tg120°C. It is found that the fracture stress for both materials obeys a thermal activation rate theory of Eyring type. Fracture is thought to be nucleation controlled, and is due to the initiation and break down of a craze at the fracture stress τf. Examination of the fracture surfaces reveals that failure is by the nucleation and propagation of inclined mode I microcracks which link to form a stepped fracture surface. This reveals that failure is by tensile cracking and not by a thermal instability in the material. The process of shear localization is fundamentally different from that shown by steel and titanium alloys.
Concentration Independent Modulation of Local Micromechanics in a Fibrin Gel

Methods for tuning extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics in 3D cell culture that rely on increasing the concentration of either protein or cross-linking molecules fail to control important parameters such as pore size, ligand density, and molecular diffusivity. Alternatively, ECM stiffness can be modulated independently from protein concentration by mechanically loading the ECM. We have developed a novel device for generating stiffness gradients in naturally derived ECMs, where stiffness is tuned by inducing strain, while local mechanical properties are directly determined by laser tweezers based active microrheology (AMR). Hydrogel substrates polymerized within 35 mm diameter Petri dishes are strained non-uniformly by the precise rotation of an embedded cylindrical post, and exhibit a position-dependent stiffness with little to no modulation of local mesh geometry. Here we present the device in the context of fibrin hydrogels. First AMR is used to directly measure local micromechanics in unstrained hydrogels of increasing fibrin concentration. Changes in stiffness are then mapped within our device, where fibrin concentration is held constant. Fluorescence confocal imaging and orbital particle tracking are used to quantify structural changes in fibrin on the micro and nano levels respectively. The micromechanical strain stiffening measured by microrheology is not accompanied by ECM microstructural changes under our applied loads, as measured by confocal microscopy. However, super-resolution orbital tracking reveals nanostructural straightening, lengthening, and reduced movement of fibrin fibers. Furthermore, we show that aortic smooth muscle cells cultured within our device are morphologically sensitive to the induced mechanical gradient. Our results demonstrate a powerful cell culture tool that can be used in the study of mechanical effects on cellular physiology in naturally derived 3D ECM tissues.
Visual Odometry : Part II: Matching, Robustness, Optimization, and Applications

Part II of the tutorial has summarized the remaining building blocks of the VO pipeline: specifically, how to detect and match salient and repeatable features across frames and robust estimation in the presence of outliers and bundle adjustment. In addition, error propagation, applications, and links to publicly available code are included. VO is a well understood and established part of robotics. VO has reached a maturity that has allowed us to successfully use it for certain classes of applications: space, ground, aerial, and underwater. In the presence of loop closures, VO can be used as a building block for a complete SLAM algorithm to reduce motion drift. Challenges that still remain are to develop and demonstrate large-scale and long-term implementations, such as driving autonomous cars for hundreds of miles. Such systems have recently been demonstrated using Lidar and Radar sensors [86]. However, for VO to be used in such systems, technical issues regarding robustness and, especially, long-term stability have to be resolved. Eventually, VO has the potential to replace Lidar-based systems for egomotion estimation, which are currently leading the state of the art in accuracy, robustness, and reliability. VO offers a cheaper and mechanically easier-to-manufacture solution for egomotion estimation, while, additionally, being fully passive. Furthermore, the ongoing miniaturization of digital cameras offers the possibility to develop smaller and smaller robotic systems capable of ego-motion estimation.
Discriminating Meaningful Web Tables from Decorative Tables Using a Composite Kernel

Information extraction from world wide web has been paid great attention to. Since a table is a well-organized and summarized knowledge expression for a domain, it is of great importance to extract information from the tables. However, many tables in web pages are used not to transfer information but to decorate the pages. Therefore, it is one of the most critical tasks in web table mining to discriminate the meaningful tables from the decorative ones. The main obstacle of this task comes from the difficulty of generating relevant features for the discrimination. This paper proposes a novel method to discriminate them using a composite kernel which combines a parse tree kernel and a linear kernel. Since a web table is represented as a parse tree by a HTML parser, the parse tree kernel can be naturally used in determining the similarity between trees, and the linear kernel with content features is used to make up for the weak points of the parse tree kernel. The support vector machines with the composite kernel distinguish with high accuracy the meaningful tables from the decorative ones. A series of experiments show that the proposed method achieves the state-of-the-art performance.
Abnormal action potentials associated with the Shaker complex locus of Drosophila.

Intracellular recordings of action potentials were made from the cervical giant axon in Shaker (Sh) mutants and normal Drosophila. The mutants showed abnormally long delays in repolarization. The defect is not due to abnormal Ca(2+) channels, because it persists in the presence of Co(2+), a Ca(2+)-channel blocker. On the other hand, the K(+)-channel blocker 4-aminopyridine causes a similar effect in normal animals, suggesting that the Sh mutant may have abnormal K(+) conductance. Gene-dosage analysis of Sh shows that the defect is not due to underproduction of an otherwise normal molecule; it may be due to an abnormal molecule produced by the mutated gene. Gel electrophoresis failed to detect an abnormal protein, suggesting that, if Sh codes for a nervous system protein, it is rare. Genetic analysis of the Sh locus indicates three regions. Mutations or chromosome breaks in the two flanking regions cause Sh mutant physiology; the central region shows a "haplolethal effect"-i.e., heterozygous females are lethal.
Worse Clinical Outcomes in Acute Myocardial Infarction Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Relevance to Impaired Endothelial Progenitor Cells Mobilization

Background Although the clinical outcome of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is well established to be worse than for non-diabetic patients, the reasons for this remain unclear. We hypothesized that this may be related to impairment of bone marrow-derived endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) mobilization. Methodology/Principal Findings We observed short term bone marrow EPCs mobilization and long term clinical outcomes in 62 AMI patients with or without T2DM and investigated EPCs levels as well as bone marrow pathway changes in a rat model of diabetes after AMI. Patients with T2DM exhibited a delay (peak time diabetics vs. non-diabetics: day 7 vs. day 5) and a decrease in EPCs mobilization (diabetics vs. non-diabetics: 285±56/106 mononuclear cells (MNCs) vs. 431±88/106 MNCs, p<0.05) within one month after AMI. Plasma levels of VEGF and SDF-1α as well as of hsCRP were higher in T2DM patients. Over a mean of 2.26 years follow-up, T2DM patients exhibited a pronounced decrease in LVEF as well as an increase in clinical events. Glucose (HR 2.01, 95% CI 1.42–2.85, p = 0.008), first day EPC (HR 0.974, 95% CI 0.952–0.997, p = 0.02) and seven day EPCs (HR 0.966, 95% CI 0.945–0.988, p = 0.003) were independent prognostic variables for cardiovascular mortality. In a diabetic rat model of AMI, decreased circulating EPCs was accompanied by lower expression of phospho-Akt, phospho-eNOS, HIF, MMP-9 and MMP-9 activity in the bone marrow as well as impaired cardiac function, angiogenesis and increased left ventricle remodeling. Conclusions/Significance Bone marrow EPCs mobilization is delayed and reduced in diabetes, with impaired HIF/p-Akt/p-eNOS/MMP-9 signaling. This is likely to contribute to the deterioration in cardiac function and worsened clinical outcome seen in patients with T2DM.
Nano-zinc oxide damages spatial cognition capability via over-enhanced long-term potentiation in hippocampus of Wistar rats

This study focused on the effects of zinc oxide nanoparticles (nano-ZnO) on spatial learning and memory and synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus of young rats, and tried to interpret the underlying mechanism. Rats were randomly divided into four groups. Nano-ZnO and phosphate-buffered saline were administered in 4-week-old rats for 8 weeks. Subsequently, performance in Morris water maze (MWM) was determined, and then long-term potentiation (LTP) and depotentiation were measured in the perforant pathway to dentate gyrus (DG) in anesthetized rats. The data showed that, (1) in MWM, the escape latency was prolonged in the nano-ZnO group and, (2) LTP was significantly enhanced in the nano-ZnO group, while depotentiation was barely influenced in the DG region of the nano-ZnO group. This bidirectional effect on long-term synaptic plasticity broke the balance between stability and flexibility of cognition. The spatial learning and memory ability was attenuated by the alteration of synaptic plasticity in nano-ZnO-treated rats.
An efficient, low-complexity audio coder delivering multiple levels of quality for interactive applications

This paper proposes an efficient, low complexity audio coder based on the SPIHT (set partitioning in hierarchical trees) coding algorithm , which has achieved notable success in still image coding. A wavelet packet transform is used to decompose the audio signal into 29 frequency subbands corresponding roughly to the critical subbands of the human auditory system. A psychoacoustic model, which, for simplicity, is based on MPEG model I, is used to calculate the signal to mask ratio, and then calculate the bit rate allocation among subbands. We distinguish the subbands into two groups: the low frequency group which contains the first 17 subbands corresponding to 0-3.4 kHz, and the high frequency group which contains the remaining high frequency subbands. The SPIHT algorithm is used to encode and decode the low frequency group and a reverse sorting process plus arithmetic coding algorithm is used to encode and decode the high frequency group. The experiment shows that this coder yields nearly transparent quality at bit rates 55-66 kbits/sec, and degrades only gradually at lower rates. The low complexity of this coding system shows its potential for interactive applications with levels of quality from good to perceptually transparent.
Thiol peroxidases mediate specific genome-wide regulation of gene expression in response to hydrogen peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide is thought to regulate cellular processes by direct oxidation of numerous cellular proteins, whereas antioxidants, most notably thiol peroxidases, are thought to reduce peroxides and inhibit H2O2 response. However, thiol peroxidases have also been implicated in activation of transcription factors and signaling. It remains unclear if these enzymes stimulate or inhibit redox regulation and whether this regulation is widespread or limited to a few cellular components. Herein, we found that Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells lacking all eight thiol peroxidases were viable and withstood redox stresses. They transcriptionally responded to various redox treatments, but were unable to activate and repress gene expression in response to H2O2. Further studies involving redox transcription factors suggested that thiol peroxidases are major regulators of global gene expression in response to H2O2. The data suggest that thiol peroxidases sense and transfer oxidative signals to the signaling proteins and regulate transcription, whereas a direct interaction between H2O2 and other cellular proteins plays a secondary role.
Parenchymal Expression of CD86/B7.2 Contributes to Hepatitis C Virus-Related Liver Injury

ABSTRACT Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major global health problem. Hepatic expression of immune costimulatory signaling molecules (e.g., B7) is known to be associated with ongoing liver injury in hepatitis C patients. However, due to the general lack of viral culture systems and adequate animal models, the function of these molecules in disease pathogenesis is poorly understood. To investigate the role of CD86 in HCV-related liver injury, we developed two transgenic mouse lineages with inducible expression of HCV structural proteins and constitutive expression of the costimulatory molecule CD86/B7.2 in the liver. Using a hydrodynamic-based, nonviral delivery protocol, we induced HCV transgene expression in the livers of HCV and CD86 single- and double-transgenic mice. We found that hepatic CD86 expression resulted in increased activation of and cytokine production (e.g., interleukin-2 and gamma interferon) by CD4+ T cells and that the retention of these cells was associated with more pronounced necroinflammatory lesions in the liver. Taken together, these data suggest that augmented, parenchymal antigen presentation conferred by hepatocyte CD86 expression alters homeostasis and effector functions of CD4+ T cells and contributes to liver injury. This study provides an additional rationale for exploring immunomodulation-based therapies that could reduce disease progression in individuals with chronic HCV infection.
Paracetamol for Closure of Patent Ductus Arteriosus.

Paracetamol can be used cautiously as the first line drug in the absence of indomethacin/ibuprofen or when these drugs are contraindicated. Larger studies comparing paracetamol versus indomethacin/ibuprofen in symptomatic PDA may be needed before paracetamol can be accepted as the first line drug in treatment of PDA. It would be worthwhile to also follow-up this cohort to see the neuro-developmental outcomes, and the same should be applicable to future RCTs using paracetamol for closure of PDA.
Endogenous nitric oxide synthase inhibitor: a novel marker of atherosclerosis.

BACKGROUND Exposure to risk factors such as hypertension or hypercholesterolemia decreases the bioavailability of endothelium-derived nitric oxide (NO) and impairs endothelium-dependent vasodilation. Recently, a circulating endogenous NO synthase inhibitor, asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), has been detected in human plasma. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between plasma ADMA and atherosclerosis in humans. METHODS AND RESULTS Subjects (n=116; age, 52+/-1 years; male:female ratio, 100:16) underwent a complete history and physical examination, determination of serum chemistries and ADMA levels, and duplex scanning of the carotid arteries. These individuals had no symptoms of coronary or peripheral artery disease and were taking no medications. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that plasma levels of ADMA were positively correlated with age (P<0.0001), mean arterial pressure (P<0.0001), and Sigma glucose (an index of glucose tolerance) (P=0.0006). Most intriguingly, stepwise regression analysis revealed that plasma ADMA levels were significantly correlated to the intima-media thickness of the carotid artery (as measured by high-resolution ultrasonography). CONCLUSIONS This study reveals that plasma ADMA levels are positively correlated with risk factors for atherosclerosis. Furthermore, plasma ADMA level is significantly correlated with carotid intima-media thickness. Our results suggest that this endogenous antagonist of NO synthase may be a marker of atherosclerosis.
Studies in acoustic training and language modeling using simulated speech data

We continue our study of the use of fabricated data in the investigation of speech recognition algorithms. After reviewing the basic data generation algorithm and some earlier results involving the recognition of fabricated conversational speech data, we go on to describe some new and intriguing experiments concerning on the one hand, training acoustic models from simulated speech data, and on the other, recognizing fabricated data with different amounts of context in the language model. Among other things, we conclude that standard training algorithms are remarkably good at recovering the underlying structure in acoustic models when they are given 30 hours of data generated from those models. We also propose an alternative to perplexity for measuring the quality of a language model — the word error rate on fabricated data — that takes into account the inherent acoustic con-fusability of words.
Normothermic Ex Vivo Perfusion Provides Superior Organ Preservation and Enables Viability Assessment of Hearts From DCD Donors

The shortage of donors in cardiac transplantation may be alleviated by the use of allografts from donation after circulatory death (DCD) donors. We have previously shown that hearts exposed to 30 min warm ischemic time and then flushed with Celsior supplemented with agents that activate ischemic postconditioning pathways, show complete recovery on a blood‐perfused ex vivo working heart apparatus. In this study, these findings were assessed in a porcine orthotopic heart transplant model. DCD hearts were preserved with either normothermic ex vivo perfusion (NEVP) using a clinically approved device, or with standard cold storage (CS) for 4 h. Orthotopic transplantation into recipient animals was subsequently undertaken. Five of six hearts preserved with NEVP demonstrated favorable lactate profiles during NEVP and all five could be weaned off cardiopulmonary bypass posttransplant, compared with 0 of 3 hearts preserved with CS (p < 0.05, Fisher's exact test). In conclusion, DCD hearts flushed with supplemented Celsior solution and preserved with NEVP display viability before and after transplantation. Viability studies of human DCD hearts using NEVP are warranted.
Nonexistence of Complete (st-t/s)-Arcs in Generalized Quadrangles of Order (s, t), I

Let S be a finite generalized quadrangle (GQ) of order (s, t), s? 1? t. A k-arc K is a set of k mutually non-collinear points. For any k-arc of S we have k? st+1; if k=st+1, then K is an ovoid of S. A k-arc is complete if it is not contained in a k? -arc with k? >k. In S. E. Payne and J. A. Thas, Finite Generalized Quadrangles, Pitman, Boston, 1984, it is proved that an (st? m)-arc, where ? 1? m2 can have complete (s2? 1)-arcs. Also, we prove that a GQ of order (s, s2), s? 1, cannot have complete (s3? s)-arcs unless s=2, i.e., S? Q(5, 2), in which case there is a unique example (up to isomorphism).
Characterization of synapsin I fragments produced by cysteine-specific cleavage: a study of their interactions with F-actin

Synapsin I is a neuron-specific phosphoprotein that is concentrated in the presynaptic nerve terminal in association with the cytoplasmic surface of synaptic vesicles. It has been demonstrated to bundle F- actin in a phosphorylation-dependent manner in vitro, a property consistent with its proposed role in linking synaptic vesicles to the cytoskeleton and its involvement in the regulation of neurotransmitter release. Synapsin I is composed of two distinct domains, a COOH terminal, collagenase-sensitive, hydrophilic, and strongly basic tail region, and an NH2 terminal, collagenase-resistant head region relatively rich in hydrophobic amino acids. To elucidate the structural basis for the interactions between synapsin I and F-actin and how it relates to other characteristics of synapsin I, we have performed a structure-function analysis of fragments of synapsin I produced by cysteine-specific cleavage with 2-nitro-5-thiocyanobenzoic acid. The fragments were identified and aligned with the parent molecule using the deduced primary structure of synapsin I and the known phosphorylation sites as markers. We have purified these fragments and examined their interactions with F-actin. Two distinct fragments, a 29- kD NH2-terminal fragment and a 15-kD middle fragment, were shown to contain F-actin binding sites. A 51/54-kD middle/tail fragment retained the F-actin binding and bundling activity of synapsin I, but the isolated tail fragment did not retain either activity. In contrast to phosphorylation of sites two and three in intact synapsin I, which abolishes F-actin bundling activity, phosphorylation of these sites in the middle/tail fragment failed to abolish this activity. In conclusion, three domains of synapsin I appear to be involved in F- actin binding and bundling.