Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Expressive Power of Overlapping Architectures of Deep Learning

Expressive efficiency refers to the relation between two architectures A and B, whereby any function realized by B could be replicated by A, but there exists functions realized by A, which cannot be replicated by B unless its size grows significantly larger. For example, it is known that deep networks are exponentially efficient with respect to shallow networks, in the sense that a shallow network must grow exponentially large in order to approximate the functions represented by a deep network of polynomial size. In this work, we extend the study of expressive efficiency to the attribute of network connectivity and in particular to the effect of "overlaps" in the convolutional process, i.e., when the stride of the convolution is smaller than its filter size (receptive field). To theoretically analyze this aspect of network's design, we focus on a well-established surrogate for ConvNets called Convolutional Arithmetic Circuits (ConvACs), and then demonstrate empirically that our results hold for standard ConvNets as well. Specifically, our analysis shows that having overlapping local receptive fields, and more broadly denser connectivity, results in an exponential increase in the expressive capacity of neural networks. Moreover, while denser connectivity can increase the expressive capacity, we show that the most common types of modern architectures already exhibit exponential increase in expressivity, without relying on fully-connected layers.
Measurement of Walking Ground Reactions in Real-Life Environments: A Systematic Review of Techniques and Technologies

Monitoring natural human gait in real-life environments is essential in many applications, including quantification of disease progression, monitoring the effects of treatment, and monitoring alteration of performance biomarkers in professional sports. Nevertheless, developing reliable and practical techniques and technologies necessary for continuous real-life monitoring of gait is still an open challenge. A systematic review of English-language articles from scientific databases including Scopus, ScienceDirect, Pubmed, IEEE Xplore, EBSCO and MEDLINE were carried out to analyse the ‘accuracy’ and ‘practicality’ of the current techniques and technologies for quantitative measurement of the tri-axial walking ground reactions outside the laboratory environment, and to highlight their strengths and shortcomings. In total, 679 relevant abstracts were identified, 54 full-text papers were included in the paper and the quantitative results of 17 papers were used for meta-analysis and comparison. Three classes of methods were reviewed: (1) methods based on measured kinematic data; (2) methods based on measured plantar pressure; and (3) methods based on direct measurement of ground reactions. It was found that all three classes of methods have competitive accuracy levels with methods based on direct measurement of the ground reactions showing highest accuracy while being least practical for long-term real-life measurement. On the other hand, methods that estimate ground reactions using measured body kinematics show highest practicality of the three classes of methods reviewed. Among the most prominent technical and technological challenges are: (1) reducing the size and price of tri-axial load-cells; (2) improving the accuracy of orientation measurement using IMUs; (3) minimizing the number and optimizing the location of required IMUs for kinematic measurement; (4) increasing the durability of pressure insole sensors, and (5) enhancing the robustness and versatility of the ground reactions estimation methods to include pathological gaits and natural variability of gait in real-life physical environment.
DIE-RNA: A Reproducible Strategy for the Digestion of Normal and Injured Pancreas, Isolation of Pancreatic Cells from Genetically Engineered Mouse Models and Extraction of High Quality RNA

The isolation of ribonucleic acid (RNA) suitable for gene expression studies is challenging in the pancreas, due to its high ribonuclease activity. This is even more complicated during pancreatitis, a condition associated with inflammation and fibrosis. Our aim was to implement a time-effective and reproducible protocol to isolate high quality RNA from specific pancreatic cell subtypes, in normal and inflammatory conditions. We used two genetically engineered mouse models (GEMM), Ela-CreER/YFP and Sox9-CreER/YFP, to isolate acinar and ductal cells, respectively. To induce pancreatitis, mice received a caerulein treatment (125 μg/kg) for 8 and 72 h. We alternatively used EGTA and calcium buffers that contain collagenase P (0.6 mg/mL) to rapidly digest the pancreas into individual cells. Most of the cells from normal and injured pancreas were single-dissociated, exhibited a round morphology and did not incorporate trypan blue dye. Cell suspensions from Ela- and Sox9-CreER/YFP pancreas were then sorted by flow cytometry to isolate the YFP-positive acinar and ductal cells, respectively. Sorted cells kept a round shape and emitted fluorescence detected by the 38 HE green fluorescence filter. RNA was isolated by column-based purification approach. The RNA integrity number (RIN) was high in sorted acinar cell fractions treated with or without caerulein (8.6 ± 0.17 and 8.4 ± 0.09, respectively), compared to the whole pancreas fraction (4.8 ± 1.1). Given the low number of sorted ductal cells, the RIN value was slightly lower compared to acini (7.4 ± 0.4). Quantitative-PCR experiments indicated that sorted acinar and ductal cells express the specific acinar and ductal markers, respectively. Additionally, RNA preparations from caerulein-treated acinar cells were free from significant contamination with immune cell RNA. We thus validated the DIE (Digestion, Isolation, and Extraction)-RNA tool as a reproducible and efficient protocol to isolate pure acinar and ductal cells in vivo and to extract high quality RNA from these cells.
Patterns of Gene Expression in Western Corn Rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) Neonates, Challenged with Cry34Ab1, Cry35Ab1 and Cry34/35Ab1, Based on Next-Generation Sequencing

With Next Generation Sequencing technologies, high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNAseq) was conducted to examine gene expression in neonates of Diabrotica virgifera virgifera (LeConte) (Western Corn Rootworm, WCR) challenged with individual proteins of the binary Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal proteins, Cry34Ab1 and Cry35Ab1, and the combination of Cry34/Cry35Ab1, which together are active against rootworm larvae. Integrated results of three different statistical comparisons identified 114 and 1300 differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) in the Cry34Ab1 and Cry34/35Ab1 treatment, respectively, as compared to the control. No DETs were identified in the Cry35Ab1 treatment. Putative Bt binding receptors previously identified in other insect species were not identified in DETs in this study. The majority of DETs (75% with Cry34Ab1 and 68.3% with Cry34/35Ab1 treatments) had no significant hits in the NCBI nr database. In addition, 92 DETs were shared between Cry34Ab1 and Cry34/35Ab1 treatments. Further analysis revealed that the most abundant DETs in both Cry34Ab1 and Cry34/35Ab1 treatments were associated with binding and catalytic activity. Results from this study confirmed the nature of these binary toxins against WCR larvae and provide a fundamental profile of expression pattern of genes in response to challenge of the Cry34/35Ab1 toxin, which may provide insight into potential resistance mechanisms.
The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): an update on the enrolled sample of index children in 2019

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a prospective population-based study. Initial recruitment of pregnant women took place in 1990-1992 and the health and development of the index children from these pregnancies and their family members have been followed ever since. The eligible sampling frame was constructed retrospectively using linked recruitment and health service records. Additional offspring that were eligible to enrol in the study have been welcomed through major recruitment drives at the ages of 7 and 18 years; and through opportunistic contacts since the age of 7. This data note provides a status update on the recruitment of the index children since the age of 7 years with a focus on enrolment since the age of 18, which has not been previously described. A total of 913 additional G1 (the cohort of index children) participants have been enrolled in the study since the age of 7 years with 195 of these joining since the age of 18. This additional enrolment provides a baseline sample of 14,901 G1 participants who were alive at 1 year of age.
Synchrotron X-Ray Study on Crack Prevention in AlN Crystals Grown on Gradually Decomposing SiC Substrates

We report on the growth method and the structural characterization of freestanding AlN crystals. An AlN layer is grown on a gradually decomposing SiC substrate yielding a freestanding crack free 2H single crystal with dislocation density 5×104 cm–2 and without grain boundaries as confirmed by synchrotron radiation phase contrast imaging and topography data. Wafers of 600–1000 μm thick and up to 15 mm in diameter are obtained. The thermal stress distribution in a conventional AlN/SiC structure is discussed. Theoretical estimates show that cracking of AlN layers is a natural result of their growth on undecomposed SiC substrates.
Fast multistep finite control set model predictive control for transient operation of power converters

Recently, an efficient optimization strategy based on the sphere decoding algorithm (SDA) has been proposed to solve the optimal control problem underlying direct model predictive control (MPC) formulations with long horizons. However, as will be elucidated in this work, this optimization algorithm presents some limitations during transient operation of power converters, which increase the execution time required to obtain the optimal solution. To overcome this issue, the present work presents an improved version of the SDA for direct MPC that is not affected by transient operations of the power converter. The key novelty of the proposal is to reduce the execution time of the SDA when the system is in a transient by projecting the unconstrained optimal solution onto the envelope of the original finite control set. As evidenced by the simulation results, the proposed SDA is able to quickly compute the optimal solution for the long-horizon direct MPC during both steady-state and transient operation of the power converter.
Sea level rise, spatially uneven and temporally unsteady: Why the U.S. East Coast, the global tide gauge record, and the global altimeter data show different trends

Impacts of ocean dynamics on spatial and temporal variations in sea level rise (SLR) along the U.S. East Coast are characterized by empirical mode decomposition analysis and compared with global SLR. The findings show a striking latitudinal SLR pattern. Sea level acceleration consistent with a weakening Gulf Stream is maximum just north of Cape Hatteras and decreasing northward, while SLR driven by multidecadal variations, possibly from climatic variations in subpolar regions, is maximum in the north and decreasing southward. The combined impact of sea level acceleration and multidecadal variations explains why the global mean SLR obtained from ~20 years of altimeter data is about twice the century‐long global SLR obtained from tide gauge data. The sea level difference between Bermuda and the U.S. coast is highly correlated with the transport of the Atlantic Overturning Circulation, a result with implications for detecting past and future climatic changes using tide gauge data.
Adiposity and hyperleptinemia during the first trimester among pregnant women with preeclampsia

Background Leptin levels start increasing from the early stages of pregnancy, irrespective of the maternal body mass index. Leptin levels are increased in pregnant women with preeclampsia (PE) and may precede the clinical onset of the disease, with peaks occurring around 28 weeks of gestation. This study was aimed at determining whether serum leptin concentration and body fat percentage are significantly altered during the first trimester in pregnancies that subsequently develop PE and whether such changes are useful in predicting the disease. Materials and methods This was a prospective longitudinal study conducted among pregnant women in Ho municipality. A cohort of 314 pregnant women was monitored from the first antenatal visit to delivery period at the Volta Regional Hospital, Ho, Ghana. Maternal serum leptin and lipid profile were analyzed and body fat percentage determined during first trimester. Body mass index was also calculated. Results First trimester serum leptin level (P<0.0001) and body fat percentage (P<0.0001) were significantly higher in those who developed PE than those who did not; while triglycerides (P=0.8600), total cholesterol (P=0.5620), high-density lipoprotein (P=0.5880), low-density lipoprotein (P=0.4870) and very low-density lipoprotein (P=0.6540) did not show any significant difference between those with PE and those without PE. Conclusion Leptin levels are increased significantly during the first trimester of pregnancy in obese women with PE, and these increases precede the onset of PE.
Filamin A interacting protein 1-like expression inhibits progression in colorectal cancer

Filamin A interacting protein 1-like (FILIP1L) expression, which is decreased in various cancers, may inhibit carcinogenesis. In this study, we evaluated the effects of FILIP1L on oncogenic behavior and prognosis in colorectal cancer. siRNA-mediated FILIP1L knockdown enhanced tumor cell migration and invasion and inhibited apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in COLO205 cells. pcDNA-myc vector-mediated FILIP1L overexpression suppressed tumor cell migration and invasion and induced apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in HCT116 cells. FILIP1L knockdown enhanced angiogenesis by increasing VEGF-A and HIF-1α levels and decreasing angiostatin level. FILIP1L overexpression suppressed angiogenesis by decreasing VEGF-A and -D l level and increasing angiostatin and endostatin levels. Phosphorylated β-catenin levels decreased and phosphorylated Akt and GSK-3β levels increased following FILIP1L knockdown. FILIP1L overexpression had the opposite effects. FILIP1L expression was associated with reductions in tumor size, cell differentiation, lymphovascular invasion, stage, invasion depth and lymph node metastasis, and with longer overall survival. Mean Ki-67 labeling indexes and microvessel density values were lower in FILIP1L-positive tumors than in FILIP1L-negative tumors. These results indicate that FILIP1L suppresses tumor progression by inhibiting cell proliferation and angiogenesis in colorectal cancer.
Association Between Peripheral Adipokines and Inflammation Markers: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis

Obesity‐induced inflammation potentially promotes a variety of chronic conditions. This study aimed to summarize cross‐sectional associations between adipose tissue‐derived hormones (leptin and adiponectin) and inflammatory biomarkers (C‐reactive protein [CRP], interleukin [IL]‐6, and tumor necrosis factor [TNF]‐α) by means of meta‐analysis.
Optic nerve regeneration in the mouse is a complex trait modulated by genetic background

Purpose The present study is designed to identify the influences of genetic background on optic nerve regeneration using the two parental strains (C57BL/6J and DBA/2J) and seven BXD recombinant inbred mouse strains. Methods To study regeneration in the optic nerve, Pten was knocked down in the retinal ganglion cells using adenoassociated virus (AAV) delivery of shRNA, and a mild inflammatory response was induced with an intravitreal injection of zymosan with CPT-cAMP. The axons of the retinal ganglion cells were damaged by optic nerve crush (ONC). Following a 12-day survival period, regenerating axons were labeled by cholera toxin B, and 2 days later, the regenerating axons within the optic nerve were examined. The number of axons at 0.5 mm and 1 mm from the crush site were counted. In addition, we measured the distance that five axons had grown down the nerve and the longest distance a single axon reached. Results The analysis revealed a considerable amount of differential axonal regeneration across the seven BXD strains and the parental strains. There was a statistically significant difference (p=0.014 Mann–Whitney U test) in the regenerative capacity in the number of axons reaching 0.5 mm from a low of 236.1±24.4 axons in the BXD102 mice to a high of 759.8±79.2 axons in the BXD29 mice. There were also statistically significant differences (p=0.014 Mann–Whitney U test) in the distance axons traveled. Looking at a minimum of five axons, the shortest distance was 787.2±46.5 µm in the BXD102 mice, and the maximum distance was 2025.5±223.3 µm in the BXD29 mice. Conclusions Differences in genetic background can have a profound effect on axonal regeneration causing a threefold increase in the number of regenerating axons at 0.5 mm from the crush site and a 2.5-fold increase in the distance traveled by at least five axons in the damaged optic nerve.
Can you Find a Face in a HEVC Bitstream?

Finding faces in images is one of the most important tasks in computer vision, with applications in biometrics, surveillance, human-computer interaction, and other areas. In our earlier work, we demonstrated that it is possible to tell whether or not an image contains a face by only examining the HEVC syntax, without fully reconstructing the image. In the present work we move further in this direction by showing how to localize faces in HEVC-coded images, without full reconstruction. We also demonstrate the benefits that such approach can have in privacy-friendly face localization.
Numerical Investigation on Interruption in the Welding Process Used in Shipbuilding

Interruptions in the welding process in shipbuilding are unavoidable because of complex geometry and human fatigue. This article presents an uncoupled three-dimensional finite element (FE) modeling technique for bead-on-plate welding and an interruption in the welding process for low carbon and high notch toughness steel plate typically used in shipbuilding. The goal of the FE model was to successfully predict the effect of various time delays in the welding interruption on the residual stress distributions. The FE results are compared with the experimental results for the validation of the model. The experimental work was completed using the neutron diffraction method. The element birth-and-death algorithm was used in ANSYS® to simulate the filler metal deposition. A double ellipsoid heat source was used to simulate the heat source of the weld pool. The FE model considers the temperature-dependent nonlinear material properties and uses the temperature-dependent combined coefficient of heat loss. The study found that weld interruptions in the welding process change the residual stress patterns and cause an increase in the maximum longitudinal tensile residual stresses. However, the maximum longitudinal compressive stress reduces as a result of interruptions in the weld process. This study found that a weld interruption duration of approximately 2 minutes is optimum for both fatigue and buckling strength. This study also analyzed the effect of preheat on longitudinal residual stress distribution and concluded that a suitable short time lag without any preheat is equivalent to preheat after a long welding interval.
Variations in mortality after emergency laparotomy: the first report of the UK Emergency Laparotomy Network.

BACKGROUND Emergency laparotomy is a common intra-abdominal procedure. Outcomes are generally recognized to be poor, but there is a paucity of hard UK data, and reports have mainly been confined to single-centre studies. METHODS Clinicians were invited to join an 'Emergency Laparotomy Network' and to collect prospective non-risk-adjusted outcome data from a large number of NHS Trusts providing emergency surgical care. Data concerning what were considered to be key aspects of perioperative care, including thirty-day mortality, were collected over a 3 month period. RESULTS Data from 1853 patients were collected from 35 NHS hospitals. The unadjusted 30 day mortality was 14.9% for all patients and 24.4% in patients aged 80 or over. There was a wide variation between units in terms of the proportion of cases subject to key interventions that may affect outcomes. The presence of a consultant surgeon in theatre varied between 40.6% and 100% of cases, while a consultant anaesthetist was present in theatre for 25-100% of cases. Goal-directed fluid management was used in 0-63% of cases. Between 0% and 68.9% of the patients returned to the ward (level one) after surgery, and between 9.7% and 87.5% were admitted to intensive care (level three). Mortality rates varied from 3.6% to 41.7%. CONCLUSIONS This study confirms that emergency laparotomy in the UK carries a high mortality. The variation in clinical management and outcomes indicates the need for a national quality improvement programme.
PHANTOM: A Scalable BlockDAG Protocol

In 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto invented the basis for blockchain based distributed ledgers. The core concept of this system is an open and anonymous network of nodes, or miners , which together maintain a public ledger of transactions. The ledger takes the form of a chain of blocks, the blockchain , where each block is a batch of new transactions collected from users. One primary problem with Satoshi’s blockchain is its highly limited scalability. The security of Satoshi’s longest chain rule , more generally known as the Bitcoin protocol , requires that all honest nodes be aware of each other’s blocks very soon after the block’s creation. To this end, the throughput of the system is artiﬁcially suppressed so that each block fully propagates before the next one is created, and that very few “orphan blocks” that fork the chain be created spontaneously. Inthispaper we present PHANTOM, a protocol for transaction conﬁrmation that is secure under any throughput that the network can support. PHANTOM thus does not suffer from the security-scalability tradeoff which Satoshi’s protocol suffers from. PHANTOM utilizes a Directed Acyclic Graph of blocks (a blockDAG ), a generalization of Satoshi’s chain which better supports faster block generation and larger blocks that take longer to propagate. PHANTOM uses a greedy algorithm on the blockDAG to distinguish between blocks mined properly by honest nodes and those that created by non-cooperating nodes who chose to deviate from the mining protocol. Using this distinction, PHANTOM provides a robust full order on the blockDAG in a way that is eventually agreed upon by all honest nodes.
Subsampling for Ridge Regression via Regularized Volume Sampling

Given $n$ vectors $\mathbf{x}_i\in \mathbb{R}^d$, we want to fit a linear regression model for noisy labels $y_i\in\mathbb{R}$. The ridge estimator is a classical solution to this problem. However, when labels are expensive, we are forced to select only a small subset of vectors $\mathbf{x}_i$ for which we obtain the labels $y_i$. We propose a new procedure for selecting the subset of vectors, such that the ridge estimator obtained from that subset offers strong statistical guarantees in terms of the mean squared prediction error over the entire dataset of $n$ labeled vectors. The number of labels needed is proportional to the statistical dimension of the problem which is often much smaller than $d$. Our method is an extension of a joint subsampling procedure called volume sampling. A second major contribution is that we speed up volume sampling so that it is essentially as efficient as leverage scores, which is the main i.i. d. subsampling procedure for this task. Finally, we show theoretically and experimentally that volume sampling has a clear advantage over any i.i. d. sampling when labels are expensive.