Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What's on TV? Detecting age-related neurodegenerative eye disease using eye movement scanpaths

Purpose: We test the hypothesis that age-related neurodegenerative eye disease can be detected by examining patterns of eye movement recorded whilst a person naturally watches a movie. Methods: Thirty-two elderly people with healthy vision (median age: 70, interquartile range [IQR] 64–75 years) and 44 patients with a clinical diagnosis of glaucoma (median age: 69, IQR 63–77 years) had standard vision examinations including automated perimetry. Disease severity was measured using a standard clinical measure (visual field mean deviation; MD). All study participants viewed three unmodified TV and film clips on a computer set up incorporating the Eyelink 1000 eyetracker (SR Research, Ontario, Canada). Eye movement scanpaths were plotted using novel methods that first filtered the data and then generated saccade density maps. Maps were then subjected to a feature extraction analysis using kernel principal component analysis (KPCA). Features from the KPCA were then classified using a standard machine based classifier trained and tested by a 10-fold cross validation which was repeated 100 times to estimate the confidence interval (CI) of classification sensitivity and specificity. Results: Patients had a range of disease severity from early to advanced (median [IQR] right eye and left eye MD was −7 [−13 to −5] dB and −9 [−15 to −4] dB, respectively). Average sensitivity for correctly identifying a glaucoma patient at a fixed specificity of 90% was 79% (95% CI: 58–86%). The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve was 0.84 (95% CI: 0.82–0.87). Conclusions: Huge data from scanpaths of eye movements recorded whilst people freely watch TV type films can be processed into maps that contain a signature of vision loss. In this proof of principle study we have demonstrated that a group of patients with age-related neurodegenerative eye disease can be reasonably well separated from a group of healthy peers by considering these eye movement signatures alone.
Alternating ditransitives in English : a corpus-based study

This thesis is a large-scale investigation of ditransitive constructions and their alternants in English. Typically both constructions involve three participants: participant A transfers an element B to participant C. A speaker can linguistically encode this type of situation in one of two ways: by using either a double object construction or a prepositional paraphrase. This study examines this syntactic choice in the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), a fully tagged and parsed corpus incorporating both spoken and written English. After a general introduction, chapter 2 reviews the different grammatical treatments of the constructions. Chapter 3 discusses whether indirect objects have to be considered necessary complements or optional adjuncts of the verb. I then examine the tension between rigid classification and authentic (corpus) data in order to demonstrate that the distinction between complements and adjuncts evidences gradient categorisation effects. This study has both a linguistic and a methodological angle. The overall design and methodology employed in this study are discussed in chapter 4. The thesis considers a number of variables that help predict the occurrence of each pattern. The evaluation of the variables, the determination of their significance, and the measurement of their contribution to the model involve reliance on statistical methods (but not statistical software packages). Chapters 5, 6, and 7 review pragmatic factors claimed to influence a speaker’s choice of construction, among them the information status and the syntactic ‘heaviness’ of the constituents involved. The explanatory power and coverage of these factors are experimentally tested independently against the corpus data, in order to highlight several features which only emerge after examining authentic sources. Chapter 8 posits a novel method of bringing these factors together; the resulting model predicts the dative alternation with almost 80% accuracy in ICE-GB. Conclusions are offered in chapter 9.
Homicide in Singapore

In this study of homicide in Singapore, case records were examined of 75 accused (72 men and 3 women), 8 (10.6 per cent) of whom showed evidence of mental abnormality. The majority of the normal accused were young, between 15–24 years, compared with most of the abnormal accused who were between 25–34 years. Alcohol intoxication was noted in 24 per cent of cases and EEG abnormality in one case. The most popular weapon used was a sharp instrument and there was only one death from gunshot wounds. Most of the victims of the normal accused were strangers (78 per cent) but 6 out of the 10 victims of the abnormal accused were relatives, friends or neighbours.
Organic Cation Transporter 1 Is Responsible for Hepatocellular Uptake of the Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Pazopanib

Pazopanib is an orally active tyrosine kinase inhibitor that exhibits hepatotoxicity in some patients. Despite the clinical importance of its hepatic distribution, the transporter(s) responsible for hepatic uptake of pazopanib in humans remain undetermined. To characterize its hepatic uptake mechanism, we screened the effects of several transporter inhibitors, including tetrapentylammonium (TPeA) for organic cation transporters (OCTs) and cyclosporin A (CsA) for organic anion-transporting polypeptides (OATPs), on both plasma disappearance and hepatic distribution of pazopanib in mice after its i.v. administration. Among the inhibitors, TPeA largely reduced hepatic distribution and plasma clearance of pazopanib, whereas CsA showed only partial reduction. Pazopanib uptake by isolated mouse hepatocytes was similarly reduced by these inhibitors, suggesting that OCTs play a major role in the overall hepatic uptake of pazopanib in mice. In human embryonic kidney cell line HEK293 cells stably transfected with human OCT1, pazopanib uptake was significantly higher than that in vector-transfected cells. Moreover, pazopanib uptake by OCT1 became saturated and was inhibited by TPeA, but not by CsA, confirming that pazopanib is also a substrate of human OCT1. Importantly, OCT1-mediated uptake of a typical OCT1 substrate metformin was inhibited by pazopanib with an IC50 value of 0.253 µM, indicating that pazopanib has the potential for clinically relevant inhibition of human OCT1. Finally, pazopanib was taken up by cryopreserved human pooled hepatocytes in a time-dependent manner, and this uptake was largely reduced by TPeA but only partially reduced by CsA. Thus, the present findings suggest that OCT1 is responsible for hepatocellular uptake of pazopanib.
Pretransplant Infusion of Donor B Cells Enhances Donor-Specific Skin Allograft Survival

Pretransplant donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) has been shown to enhance donor-specific allograft survival in rodents, primates and humans. However, the cell subset that is critical for the DLI effect and the mechanisms involved remain elusive. In this study, we monitored donor cell subsets after DLI in a murine MHC class I Ld-mismatched skin transplantation model. We found that donor B cells, but not DCs, are the major surviving donor APCs in recipients following DLI. Infusing donor B, but not non-B, cells resulted in significantly enhanced donor-specific skin allograft survival. Furthermore, mice that had received donor B cells showed higher expression of Ly6A and CD62L on antigen-specific TCRαβ+CD3+CD4−CD8−NK1.1− double negative (DN) regulatory T cells (Tregs). B cells presented alloantigen to DN Tregs and primed their proliferation in an antigen-specific fashion. Importantly, DN Tregs, activated by donor B cells, showed increased cytotoxicity toward anti-donor CD8+ T cells. These data demonstrate that donor B cells can enhance skin allograft survival, at least partially, by increasing recipient DN Treg-mediated killing of anti-donor CD8+ T cells. These findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms underlying DLI-induced transplant tolerance and suggest that DN Tregs have great potential as an antigen-specific immune therapy to enhance allograft survival.
CMOS Broadband Programmable Gain Active Balun With 0.5-dB Gain Steps

This paper presents a CMOS broadband programmable gain active balun (PGAB) that demonstrates seven digitally controlled gains with 0.5-dB gain steps separately for plus and minus output ports. The PGAB was designed and fabricated in a 130-nm RFCMOS process. For the maximum gain state, the measured gains of the plus and minus ports are 0.0 and 1.1 dB at 2 GHz. The operating frequency range is from 1.0 to 8.0 GHz by 0.3-dB gain step error, and it is from 1 to 13.0 GHz by 3-dB gain attenuation. For the maximum gain state, the measured amplitude imbalance and phase imbalance from 1 to 16 GHz are less than 1.4 dB and 4.1 °, respectively. The measured input return losses are better than 13.5 dB, and the output return losses are better than 18.5 dB for all controlled gain states from 1 to 16 GHz. The measured IP1dB at 7 GHz is 6.1 dBm. The measured noise figures for the plus and minus ports from 2 to 14 GHz are less than 11.2 and 10.2 dB, respectively. The supply voltages are 3.0 and 1.5 V, and the measured power consumption is 93 mW. The core area of the fabricated integrated circuit is 0.38 mm × 0.36 mm.
TREM-1 Deficiency Can Attenuate Disease Severity without Affecting Pathogen Clearance

Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1 (TREM-1) is a potent amplifier of pro-inflammatory innate immune reactions. While TREM-1-amplified responses likely aid an improved detection and elimination of pathogens, excessive production of cytokines and oxygen radicals can also severely harm the host. Studies addressing the pathogenic role of TREM-1 during endotoxin-induced shock or microbial sepsis have so far mostly relied on the administration of TREM-1 fusion proteins or peptides representing part of the extracellular domain of TREM-1. However, binding of these agents to the yet unidentified TREM-1 ligand could also impact signaling through alternative receptors. More importantly, controversial results have been obtained regarding the requirement of TREM-1 for microbial control. To unambiguously investigate the role of TREM-1 in homeostasis and disease, we have generated mice deficient in Trem1. Trem1−/− mice are viable, fertile and show no altered hematopoietic compartment. In CD4+ T cell- and dextran sodium sulfate-induced models of colitis, Trem1−/− mice displayed significantly attenuated disease that was associated with reduced inflammatory infiltrates and diminished expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Trem1−/− mice also exhibited reduced neutrophilic infiltration and decreased lesion size upon infection with Leishmania major. Furthermore, reduced morbidity was observed for influenza virus-infected Trem1−/− mice. Importantly, while immune-associated pathologies were significantly reduced, Trem1−/− mice were equally capable of controlling infections with L. major, influenza virus, but also Legionella pneumophila as Trem1+/+ controls. Our results not only demonstrate an unanticipated pathogenic impact of TREM-1 during a viral and parasitic infection, but also indicate that therapeutic blocking of TREM-1 in distinct inflammatory disorders holds considerable promise by blunting excessive inflammation while preserving the capacity for microbial control.
Stabilization of linear systems with limited information

We show that the coarsest, or least dense, quantizer that quadratically stabilizes a single input linear discrete time invariant system is logarithmic, and can be computed by solving a special linear quadratic regulator problem. We provide a closed form for the optimal logarithmic base exclusively in terms of the unstable eigenvalues of the system. We show how to design quantized state-feedback controllers, and quantized state estimators. This leads to the design of hybrid output feedback controllers. The theory is then extended to sampling and quantization of continuous time linear systems sampled at constant time intervals. We generalize the definition of density of quantization to the density of sampling and quantization in a natural way, and search for the coarsest sampling and quantization scheme that ensures stability. Finally, by relaxing the definition of quadratic stability, we show how to construct logarithmic quantizers with only finite number of quantization levels and still achieve practical stability of the closed-loop system.
Seeing through the Human Reporting Bias: Visual Classifiers from Noisy Human-Centric Labels

When human annotators are given a choice about what to label in an image, they apply their own subjective judgments on what to ignore and what to mention. We refer to these noisy "human-centric" annotations as exhibiting human reporting bias. Examples of such annotations include image tags and keywords found on photo sharing sites, or in datasets containing image captions. In this paper, we use these noisy annotations for learning visually correct image classifiers. Such annotations do not use consistent vocabulary, and miss a significant amount of the information present in an image, however, we demonstrate that the noise in these annotations exhibits structure and can be modeled. We propose an algorithm to decouple the human reporting bias from the correct visually grounded labels. Our results are highly interpretable for reporting "what's in the image" versus "what's worth saying. " We demonstrate the algorithm's efficacy along a variety of metrics and datasets, including MS COCO and Yahoo Flickr 100M.We show significant improvements over traditional algorithms for both image classification and image captioning, doubling the performance of existing methods in some cases.
Dielectric breakdown phenomena in Al2O3 filled DGEBA/MDA/SN composite system

Dielectric breakdown phenomena by electrical treeing deterioration was investigated in the new epoxy resin system DGEBA/MDA/SN filled with Al2O3. As the filler content increased, the maximum electric field at breakdown increased and then decreased with increase of defects such as voids, impurities and delamination or peeling between filler and matrix. As the electrode separation increased, the breakdown voltage increased, but the breakdown strength decreased and then saturated to 17 kV/mm. Also, the maximum electric field at the tip when the system was failed increased. The electrical tree initiated from the side of the needle electrode was not from the tip where the reinforced field is the highest. The electrical tree was blocked by the filler. The interface condition of filler and polymer matrix played an important role in the electrical treeing resistance. The final breakdown phenomena showed fan-type crack as observed in the non-filled system.
Integrase-Mediated Recombination of the veb1 Gene Cassette Encoding an Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase

The veb1 gene cassette encodes the extended spectrum β-lactamase, VEB-1 that is increasingly isolated from worldwide Gram-negative rods. Veb1 is commonly inserted into the variable region of different class 1 integrons in which it is always associated with a downstream-located aadB gene cassette encoding an aminoglycoside adenylyltransferase. In Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the majority of veb1-containing integrons also carry an insertion sequence, IS1999 that is inserted upstream of the veb1 gene cassette and disrupts the integron specific recombination site, attI1. Investigation of the recombination properties of the sites surrounding veb1 revealed that insertion of IS1999 reduces significantly the recombination frequency of attI1 and that veb1 attC is not efficient for recombination in contrast to aadB attC. Subsequent sequence optimisation of veb1 attC by mutagenesis, into a more consensual attC site resembling aadB attC, successfully improved recombination efficiency. Overall, this work gives some insights into the organisation of veb1-containing integrons. We propose that IS1999 and the nature of veb1 attC stabilize the veb1 gene cassette environment likely by impairing recombination events upstream or downstream of veb1, respectively.
On classifying processes

for all processes not in G. Of course, if gn is a classification in a pointwise sense then it is a classification in probability, but a classification in probability is not necessarily a classification in a pointwise sense. For the class M k of k-step mixing Markov chains of fixed order k, there is a pointwise classification of the type we have just described. (For mixing Markov chains, see Proposition 1.2.10 in Shields 1996.) It was carried out in detail for independent processes by Bailey (1976). (Actually, he proved the result only for independent processes and indicated how to generalize his result for the class of Mk.) For the class Mmix U 0 Mk of mixing Markov chains of any order, Bailey showed that no such classification exists. See Omstein and Weiss (1990) for further results on this kind of question. Our concern in this paper is with the class of finitarily Markovian processes which is defined as follows. Let {Xn}1 be a stationary and ergodic binary time series. A one-sided stationary time series
Assessing agreement of observer- and self-annotations in spontaneous multimodal emotion data

We investigated inter-observer agreement and the reliability of self-reported emotion ratings (i.e., self-raters judging their own emotions) in spontaneous multimodal emotion data. During a multiplayer video game, vocal and facial expressions were recorded (including the game content itself) and were annotated by the players themselves on arousal and valence scales. In a perception experiment, observers rated a small part of the data that was provided in 4 conditions: audio only, visual only, audiovisual and audiovisual plus context. Inter-observer agreements varied between 0.32 and 0.52 when the ratings were scaled. Providing multimodal information usually increased agreement. Finally, we found that the averaged agreement between the self-rater and the observers was somewhat lower than the inter-observer agreement. Index Terms: emotion, multimodal database, inter-rater agreement, self-reported emotion
Channel Orthogonalization (CO) and its Combination with THP (CO-THP) for Multiuser MIMO Systems

In this paper, a linear Channel Orthogonalization (CO) algorithm with low complexity is presented, which is applicable to systems with an arbitrary number of antennas and users. Unlike other conventional linear methods, CO obtains the orthonormal basis to achieve the precoding matrix by means of using Schmidt Orthogonalization method. Then, the algorithm (CO-THP) combining CO with Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding (THP) is proposed to eliminate the residual interference from any former user in CO. Different from the conventional THP algorithms, CO-THP eliminates all the Multi-User Interference (MUI) without amplifying the noise, which brings it better BER performance. And the combination with THP brings CO a higher capacity than linear scheme BD. Simulation results show the performance advantage obtained by the CO and CO-THP.
α-Lipoic acid attenuates vascular calcification via reversal of mitochondrial function and restoration of Gas6/Axl/Akt survival pathway

Vascular calcification is prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease and leads to increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Although several reports have implicated mitochondrial dysfunction in cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease, little is known about the potential role of mitochondrial dysfunction in the process of vascular calcification. This study investigated the effect of α‐lipoic acid (ALA), a naturally occurring antioxidant that improves mitochondrial function, on vascular calcification in vitro and in vivo. Calcifying vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) treated with inorganic phosphate (Pi) exhibited mitochondrial dysfunction, as demonstrated by decreased mitochondrial membrane potential and ATP production, the disruption of mitochondrial structural integrity and concurrently increased production of reactive oxygen species. These Pi‐induced functional and structural mitochondrial defects were accompanied by mitochondria‐dependent apoptotic events, including release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria into the cytosol, subsequent activation of caspase‐9 and ‐3, and chromosomal DNA fragmentation. Intriguingly, ALA blocked the Pi‐induced VSMC apoptosis and calcification by recovery of mitochondrial function and intracellular redox status. Moreover, ALA inhibited Pi‐induced down‐regulation of cell survival signals through the binding of growth arrest‐specific gene 6 (Gas6) to its cognate receptor Axl and subsequent Akt activation, resulting in increased survival and decreased apoptosis. Finally, ALA significantly ameliorated vitamin D3‐induced aortic calcification and mitochondrial damage in mice. Collectively, the findings suggest ALA attenuates vascular calcification by inhibiting VSMC apoptosis through two distinct mechanisms; preservation of mitochondrial function via its antioxidant potential and restoration of the Gas6/Axl/Akt survival pathway.
A Large Cohort Study Evaluating Risk Factors Associated With Uncontrolled Hypertension

Hypertension is the most common primary diagnosis in the United States. Risks for long‐term consequences such as myocardial infarction, heart failure, stroke, and kidney disease continue to significantly increase as long as hypertension remains uncontrolled. This retrospective cohort study of 661,075 patients identified with uncontrolled hypertension, defined as systolic blood pressure (SBP) ≥140 mm Hg and/or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) ≥90 mm Hg, from a large integrated healthcare organization was conducted to examine multiple patient characteristics to determine their association with uncontrolled hypertension. Multivariate analysis revealed that compared with Caucasians, African Americans (odds ratio [OR], 1.18; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.16–1.20) were significantly associated with uncontrolled hypertension, as were unpartnered populations (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.14–1.17), number of antihypertensive medications prescribed (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.33–1.41), and adherence to most antihypertensive medications. A secondary analysis found an association between uncontrolled blood pressure and Patient Health Questionnaire‐9 (PHQ‐9) score (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.16–1.26). Our findings suggest that the presence of these identified risk factors recommends a commitment to a more aggressive hypertension management program to prevent cardiovascular disease caused by uncontrolled hypertension.