Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ASAP: Scalable Identification and Counting for Contactless RFID Systems

The growing importance of operations such as identification, location sensing and object tracking has led to increasing interests in contact less Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems. Enjoying the low cost of RFID tags, modern RFID systems tend to be deployed for large-scale mobile objects. Both the theoretical and experimental results suggest that when tags are mobile and with large numbers, two classical MAC layer collision-arbitration protocols, slotted ALOHA and Tree-traversal, do not satisfy the scalability and time-efficiency requirements of many applications. To address this problem, we propose Adaptively Splitting-based Arbitration Protocol (ASAP), a scheme that provides low-latency RFID identification and has stable performance for massive RFID networks. Theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation show that ASAP outperforms most existing collision-arbitration solutions. ASAP is efficient for both small and large deployment of RFID tags, in terms of time and energy cost. Hence it can benefit dynamic and large-scale RFID systems.
Characteristic gene expression profile of primary human cerebral endothelial cells

Endothelial cells of blood vessels forming the interphase between systemic circulation and tissues are crucial for maintenance of homeostasis and organ‐related functions. Recent experiments support organ‐specific endothelial differentiation and suggest differential gene expression patterns in endothelial cells. Here, we compared gene expression in primary human cerebral endothelial cells (HCEC), which are major constituents of the blood brain barrier (BBB), with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) by using cDNA array analysis of 375 genes. Under basal culture conditions, 35 genes were expressed only in HCEC, whereas 20 gene transcripts were detected only in HUVEC. A total of 78 genes were expressed in both endothelial cell types partly with distinct expression levels. Genes expressed by cerebral endothelial cells are important in vasculo‐ and angiogenesis (VEGF, erbB1) and immunoregulation (OSM‐Rβ, decorin, IL‐6) or have growth‐supporting properties (brain‐derived neurotrophic factor, stem cell factor, transforming growth factor‐β). The differential gene expression profiles were confirmed at the protein level of cell cultures (ELISA, immunoblotting) and human tissues (immunohistochemistry). Identification and further functional characterization of genes specifically expressed by cerebral endothelial cells will have important impact on our understanding of endothelial function at the BBB.
Metabolic Syndrome Is Associated With Aortic Stiffness in Untreated Essential Hypertension

Metabolic syndrome is a powerful predictor of cardiovascular disease in hypertension, and large-artery stiffness is increasingly recognized as a cardiovascular risk factor. We hypothesized that the adverse prognostic significance of the metabolic syndrome in hypertension might be explained in part by its association with aortic stiffness. A total of 169 newly diagnosed, never treated, nondiabetic patients with essential hypertension (men 55%, 48±11 years) were classified by the presence (n=45) or absence (n=124) of the metabolic syndrome. All patients underwent aortic and upper limb pulse wave velocity determination by means of an applanation tonometry-based method. Aortic pulse wave velocity had a direct correlation with office and 24-hour systolic pressure (r=0.42 and 0.31, respectively), as well as with waist circumference (r=0.35, all P<0.001), but not with body mass index (r=0.10, P=not significant). Aortic pulse wave velocity was higher in the subgroup with the metabolic syndrome (10.0±2.7 versus 8.8±2.1 m/s; P=0.003), whereas upper limb velocity did not differ in the 2 groups (8.6±1.4 versus 8.7±1.5 m/s; P=not significant). In a multiple regression, aortic pulse wave velocity was independently associated with age, systolic blood pressure, and the metabolic syndrome. Only diastolic BP independently predicted upper limb pulse wave velocity. We conclude that in untreated hypertension, the metabolic syndrome is independently associated with a higher aortic, but not upper limb, pulse wave velocity. Central, but not general, adiposity is an important determinant of aortic stiffness in hypertension.
Thermal effect of illumination on microsurgical transfer of free flaps: Experimental study and clinical implications

The light source of a modern operating microscope gives a clear operative field, but the possibility of thermal impairment by the strong light is substantial. We aimed to elucidate the potential risk of such strong light on transfer of free flaps and the optimal application of light. First, the thermal effect of clinically used microsurgical illumination was examined by direct irradiation of a thermometer. Secondly, the thermal influence on living tissue of microsurgical light was evaluated using a model of vascularised and non-vascularised pedicled groin flaps in rats. Thirdly, the influence of strong light on the transfer of free flaps was investigated using a model of a free groin flap in rats. Fourthly, histological alteration was investigated by a light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. With direct irradiation of a thermometer, temperatures reached values in excess of 80 °C with maximal xenon light illumination from 20 cm. The mode of illumination significantly influenced the results of free flaps. Prolonged irradiation of the vascular pedicle in particular resulted in an increase in the number of failures, supposedly caused by venous occlusion. Bright illumination contributed to efficient microvascular procedures, but we confirmed its potential risk. Our findings may benefit all surgeons engaged in transfer of free flaps, as potential impairment caused by excessive operative irradiation is prevented simply by recognition of its harm.
Hormone replacement therapy and age-related brain shrinkage: regional effects

Neuroprotective properties of estrogen have been established in animal models, but clinical trials of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) produced contradictory results. We examined the impact of HRT on age-related regional changes in human brain volume. Six brain regions were measured twice, five years apart, in 12 healthy women who took HRT and in matched controls who did not. The controls showed a typical pattern of differential brain shrinkage in the association cortices and the hippocampus with no change in the primary visual cortex. In contrast, women who took HRT showed comparable shrinkage of the hippocampus but no significant shrinkage of the neocortex. Future large scale studies may benefit from applying regional rather than global measures in assessment of brain integrity.
Do dark matter halos explain lensing peaks

We have investigated a recently proposed halo-based model, Camelus, for predicting weak-lensing peak counts, and compared its results over a collection of 162 cosmologies with those from N-body simulations. While counts from both models agree for peaks with $\mathcal{S/N}>1$ (where $\mathcal{S/N}$ is the ratio of the peak height to the r.m.s. shape noise), we find $\approx 50\%$ fewer counts for peaks near $\mathcal{S/N}=0$ and significantly higher counts in the negative $\mathcal{S/N}$ tail. Adding shape noise reduces the differences to within $20\%$ for all cosmologies. We also found larger covariances that are more sensitive to cosmological parameters. As a result, credibility regions in the $\{\Omega_m, \sigma_8\}$ are $\approx 30\%$ larger. Even though the credible contours are commensurate, each model draws its predictive power from different types of peaks. Low peaks, especially those with $2 3)$. Our results confirm the importance of using a cosmology-dependent covariance with at least a 14\% improvement in parameter constraints. We identified the covariance estimation as the main driver behind differences in inference, and suggest possible ways to make Camelus even more useful as a highly accurate peak count emulator.
RFECS: A Random-Forest Based Algorithm for Enhancer Identification from Chromatin State

Transcriptional enhancers play critical roles in regulation of gene expression, but their identification in the eukaryotic genome has been challenging. Recently, it was shown that enhancers in the mammalian genome are associated with characteristic histone modification patterns, which have been increasingly exploited for enhancer identification. However, only a limited number of cell types or chromatin marks have previously been investigated for this purpose, leaving the question unanswered whether there exists an optimal set of histone modifications for enhancer prediction in different cell types. Here, we address this issue by exploring genome-wide profiles of 24 histone modifications in two distinct human cell types, embryonic stem cells and lung fibroblasts. We developed a Random-Forest based algorithm, RFECS (Random Forest based Enhancer identification from Chromatin States) to integrate histone modification profiles for identification of enhancers, and used it to identify enhancers in a number of cell-types. We show that RFECS not only leads to more accurate and precise prediction of enhancers than previous methods, but also helps identify the most informative and robust set of three chromatin marks for enhancer prediction.
NKT Cells and IFN-γ Establish the Regulatory Environment for the Control of Diabetogenic T Cells in the Nonobese Diabetic Mouse1

In type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), T cell-mediated destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic β cells leads to the acute onset of hyperglycemia. The nonobese diabetic mouse model of human T1DM reveals that T cells capable of inducing diabetes can escape normal central tolerance, and can cause T1DM if left unchecked. However, several regulatory T cell subsets can temper autoaggressive T cells, although it remains undetermined when and how, and by which subset, homeostatic control of diabetogenic T cells is normally achieved in vivo. Using a cotransfer model, we find that NKT cells efficiently dampen the action of diabetogenic CD4+ T cells, and do so in an indirect manner by modifying the host environment. Moreover, the NKT cell-containing population modifies the host via production of IFN-γ that is necessary for driving the inhibition of diabetogenic T cells in vivo.
Hemispheric and sex-linked differences in Sylvian fissure morphology: a quantitative approach using volumetric magnetic resonance imaging.

OBJECTIVE In a sample of right-handed adults, volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to reinvestigate hemispheric and sex-linked differences in Sylvian fissure (SF) morphology. BACKGROUND Asymmetries of the SF exist with a predominant leftward asymmetry consistently reported in postmortem studies. These anatomic asymmetries may reflect asymmetric allocation of adjacent opercula, with some investigators positing a relationship with planum temporale asymmetries, as the postcentral SF is more asymmetric than the anterior segment. Sex-related differences have also been reported with reduced asymmetries in women relative to men. METHOD Using in vivo MRI surface renderings, SF asymmetries were studied in a group of consistently right-handed men (n = 12) and women (n = 12). Anterior and postcentral SF lengths were measured. RESULTS Overall, there was a significant leftward asymmetry of the horizontal SF (anterior and postcentral) in men and women. Whereas there was a significant leftward asymmetry of the postcentral SF, there was no significant asymmetry of the anterior SF. There was an increase in the parietal operculum anterior to the posterior ascending ramus (PAR) in the left hemisphere and posterior to the PAR in the right hemisphere when SF asymmetries were leftward, with the length of the anterior parietal operculum positively correlated with postcentral SF length. CONCLUSIONS These findings demonstrate that the SF is asymmetric but that clear sex-related effects do not exist in consistently right-handed subjects.
Antigen Is Required for the Activation of Effector Activities, whereas Interleukin 2 Is Required for the Maintenance of Memory in Ovalbumin-specific, CD8+ Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes

The mechanisms that maintain memory in T cells are not completely understood. We have investigated the role of antigen and interleukin (IL)-2 in the growth and maintenance of CD8+ T cells using a cytolytic T cell line specific for ovalbumin (OVA)257-264 presented by H-2Kb. This line does not secrete IL-4 or IL-2; hence, stimulation with the OVA-transfected EL4 line (E.G7-OVA) does not induce proliferation without addition of exogenous growth factors. Furthermore, this line can be maintained continuously by weekly addition of irradiated, splenic filler cells and IL-2, with or without E.G7-OVA. Although IL-2 induced proliferation of these cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), production of interferon γ and tumor necrosis factor α required stimulation of the CTL with E.G7-OVA. The kinetics of lymphokine secretion after stimulation by E.G7-OVA were the same whether the CTL had been maintained with or without antigen (Ag). In addition, both CTL lines killed E.G7-OVA target cells within 4 h. Thus, the effector functions of these CTLs were rapidly induced by T cell receptor (TCR) occupancy. CTLs cultured with or without Ag also served as memory T cells when parked for 100 d in unirradiated, syngeneic recipients without OVA. In the absence of OVA, the precursor frequency was identical in spleens of normal and β2-microglobulin knockout recipients, but significantly less in IL-2 knockout mice. The decline of memory in the absence of IL-2 supports data from other investigators, suggesting that cell cycling is important to the maintenance of CD8+ T cell memory. These data also suggest that stimulation of OVA-specific CTLs by lymphokines seems to be more important to maintaining memory than stimulation of TCRs by cross-reactive peptides complexed to class I molecules.
A Variant Form of the Human Deleted in Malignant Brain Tumor 1 (DMBT1) Gene Shows Increased Expression in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and Interacts with Dimeric Trefoil Factor 3 (TFF3)

The protein deleted in malignant brain tumors (DMBT1) and the trefoil factor (TFF) proteins have all been proposed to have roles in epithelial cell growth and cell differentiation and shown to be up regulated in inflammatory bowel diseases. A panel of monoclonal antibodies was raised against human DMBT1gp340. Analysis of lung washings and colon tissue extracts by Western blotting in the unreduced state, two antibodies (Hyb213-1 and Hyb213-6) reacted with a double band of 290 kDa in lung lavage. Hyb213-6, in addition, reacted against a double band of 270 kDa in colon extract while Hyb213-1 showed no reaction. Hyb213-6 showed strong cytoplasmic staining in epithelial cells of both the small and large intestine whereas no staining was seen with Hyb213-1. The number of DMBT1gp340 positive epithelial cells, stained with Hyb213-6, was significantly up regulated in inflammatory colon tissue sections from patients with ulcerative colitis (p<0.0001) and Crohn’s disease (p = 0.006) compared to normal colon tissue. Immunohistochemical analysis of trefoil factor TFF1, 2 and 3 showed that TFF1 and 3 localized to goblet cells in both normal colon tissue and in tissue from patients with ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. No staining for TFF2 was seen in goblet cells in normal colon tissue whereas the majority of tissue sections in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease showed sparse and scattered TFF2 positive goblet cells. DMBT1 and TFF proteins did therefore not co-localize in the same cells but localized in adjacent cells in the colon. The interaction between DMBT1gp340 and trefoil TFFs proteins was investigated using an ELISA assay. DMBT1gp340 bound to solid-phase bound recombinant dimeric TFF3 in a calcium dependent manner (p<0.0001) but did not bind to recombinant forms of monomeric TFF3, TFF2 or glycosylated TFF2. This implies a role for DMBT1 and TFF3 together in inflammatory bowel disease.
Multi-pitch estimation of inharmonic signals

This work presents a relaxation-based multi-pitch estimation technique for harmonic signals suffering from inharmonicity. Different from most earlier works, the proposed method does not require a priori knowledge of the number of sources present, nor of their respective number of harmonics, or the inharmonicity structure of the expected deviations. Using a recent group-sparse multi-pitch estimation method to form initial coarse pitch estimates, the number of sources and their harmonics are estimated using a BIC-based formulation, whereafter an iterative, relaxation-based, technique is formed to separately estimate the inharmonicity of each source using a recently proposed robust single-pitch estimation technique. The proposed algorithm is evaluated and compared to other existing methods using both simulated and real audio signals, clearly illustrating the improved performance.
Named Entity Recognition with Stack Residual LSTM and Trainable Bias Decoding

Recurrent Neural Network models are the state-of-the-art for Named Entity Recognition (NER). We present two innovations to improve the performance of these models. The first innovation is the introduction of residual connections between the Stacked Recurrent Neural Network model to address the degradation problem of deep neural networks. The second innovation is a bias decoding mechanism that allows the trained system to adapt to non-differentiable and externally computed objectives, such as the entity-based F-measure. Our work improves the state-of-the-art results for both Spanish and English languages on the standard train/development/test split of the CoNLL 2003 Shared Task NER dataset.
Two subpopulations of human triple-negative thymic cells are susceptible to infection by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 in vitro

Some infants infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) rapidly develop a fatal disease characterized by a severe lymphopenia. To explain the immune dysfunction, we proposed a mechanism by which a nongeneration of CD4+ T cells is caused by HIV-1 infection of thymic cells. To examine this hypothesis, we infected primary triple-negative (TN; phenotypically CD3- CD4- CD8-), CD1a- TN, or CD1a+ TN thymic cell subsets. Our data indicate that by flow cytometry, TN, CD1a- TN, and CD1a+ TN cells remain CD4 negative throughout the culture period. We demonstrated that TN and CD1a+ TN thymic cell subsets are susceptible to HIV-1 as is the entire thymic cell population, whereas CD1a- TN cells are not. A limited number of infected TN cells are expressing HIV-1 but the level of transcription is very high in permissive cells, as detected by in situ hybridization. We then performed blocking experiments on TN cells to examine the mechanism of HIV-1 entry into these cells. CD4 (OKT4a) monoclonal antibody blocks their infection. Finally, infection experiments on two subpopulations of TN cells (CD2+ CD7+ and CD2- CD7-) indicate that infected TN cells may correspond to both immature thymocytes and thymic dendritic cells. These data are of particular interest since infection of thymic stromal cells might result in an impairment of T-cell differentiation, which may explain a nongeneration of functional CD4+ T-cell population in the thymus. This phenomenon may play a role in AIDS pathogenesis, in particular in infants born from seropositive mothers.
A Nearly-Linear Time Framework for Graph-Structured Sparsity

We introduce a framework for sparsity structures defined via graphs. Our approach is flexible and generalizes several previously studied sparsity models. Moreover, we provide efficient projection algorithms for our sparsity model that run in nearly-linear time. In the context of sparse recovery, we show that our framework achieves an information-theoretically optimal sample complexity for a wide range of parameters. We complement our theoretical analysis with experiments demonstrating that our algorithms also improve on prior work in practice.
Slicing concurrent Java programs

Although many slicing algorithms have been proposed for object oriented programs, no slicing algorithm has been proposed which can be used to handle the problem of slicing concurrent Java programs correctly. We propose a slicing algorithm for concurrent Java programs. To slice concurrent Java programs, we present a dependence based representation called multithreaded dependence graph, which extends previous dependence graphs to represent concurrent Java programs. We also show how static slices of a concurrent Java program can be computed efficiently based on its multithreaded dependence graph.
A Review of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps Research During the Last Decade

This survey makes a review of the most recent applications and trends on fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) over the past decade. FCMs are inference networks, using cyclic digraphs, for knowledge representation and reasoning. Over the past decade, FCMs have gained considerable research interest and are widely used to analyze causal complex systems, which have originated from the combination of fuzzy logic and neural networks. FCMs have been applied in diverse application domains, such as computer science, engineering, environmental sciences, behavioral sciences, medicine, business, information systems, and information technology. Their dynamic characteristics and learning capabilities make them essential for a number of tasks such as modeling, analysis, decision making, forecast, etc. Overall, this paper summarizes the current state of knowledge of the topic of FCMs. It creates an understanding of the topic for the reader by discussing the findings presented in recent research papers. A survey on FCM studies concentrated on FCM applications on diverse scientific areas, where the FCMs emerged with a high degree of applicability, has also been done during the past ten years.
The role of selenium in iodine metabolism in children with goiter.

Possible interactions between selenium and iodine metabolism were investigated in 7- to 16-year-old children with goiter (n = 136) living in southeastern Poland in iodine-deficient areas influenced by a sulfur industry. The Se-iodine interactions in these children were compared to the interactions in children from outside of that region (n = 38). Blood selenium (BSe) concentration and plasma glutathione peroxidase activity were much lower in the study group (64.1 +/- 15.7 microg/L; 111.0 +/- 27.6 U/L) than in the control group (85.3 +/- 19.6 microg/L; 182.4 +/- 35.6 U/L). Almost all of the data [plasma thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) concentration, plasma free thyroxine (fT(4)) concentration] fell within the reference limits. There was no statistically significant difference between the control and the study groups with respect to fT(4) and TSH. However, statistically significant differences of fT(4) and TSH in the study group were revealed between females belonging to the lower (n = 21; fT(4), 16.1 +/- 3.3 pmol/L; TSH, 1.83 +/- 1.05 mU/L) and upper Se quartiles (n = 24; fT(4), 14.5 +/- 2.2 pmol/L; TSH, 1. 26 +/- 0.90 mU/L), p < 0.05. Neither group differed in iodine in urine concentration, age, and body mass index. The difference in fT(4) concentrations can be attributed to an Se deficiency. The relationship exists only for females, which suggests a sex-linked hormonal response to concomitant Se and iodine deficiencies. ImagesFigure 1Figure 2