Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PRODUCTION STRATEGY OF FUNCTIONAL FOODS OF ANIMAL ORIGIN Marenjak 1 , T. S., I. Delaš 2 , I. Štoković 3 , N. Poljičak-Milas 1

SUMMARY The procedures implemented in the production of functional foods of animal origin should be based on the scientifically verified new knowledge comprising the entire food chain. Possible physiological and psychological effects of such foods on humans should not be neglected. Although the human genome did not change since the Palaeolithic, however the nutritional habits and way of life of modern people have changed significantly and subsequently led to the development of various chronic degenerative diseases. Fatty acids, in particular n-3 unsaturated acids, are important, biologically active molecules characterised by a series of positive effects in the prevention and improvement of both human and animal health. Some of the modes of increasing the intake of n-3 unsaturated fatty acids include the increase of content of these fatty acids in feed fed to farm animals or in rearing of animals of more advantageous genotype. Irrespective of the method used for increasing the intake of advantageous fatty acids, care should always be taken about the animal welfare and health, because of different basic needs of animals under stress for individual nutritive components, among which n-3 unsaturated fatty acids are especially important. This paper presents some of possible methods for increasing the content of n-3 unsaturated fatty acids in meat and other products of animal origin, which could meet the criteria set for the functional foods.
Diagnostic dry bone histology in human paleopathology

Paleopathology is the study of trauma and disease as may be observed in ancient (human) remains. In contrast to its central role in current medical practice, microscopy plays a rather modest role in paleopathology. This is at least partially due to the differences between fresh and decomposed (i.e., skeletonized or “dry bone”) tissue samples. This review discusses these differences and describes how they affect the histological analysis of paleopathological specimens. First, we provide a summary of some general challenges related to the histological analysis of palaeopathological specimens. Second, the reader is introduced in bone tissue histology and bone tissue dynamics. The remainder of the paper is dedicated to the diagnostic value of dry bone histology. Its value and limitations are illustrated by comparing several well‐studied paleopathological cases with similar contemporary, clinical cases. This review illustrates that due to post‐mortem loss of soft tissue, a limited number of disorders display pathognomonic features during histological analysis of skeletonized human remains. In the remainder of cases, histology may help to narrow down the differential diagnosis or is diagnostically unspecific. A comprehensive, multidisciplinary diagnostic approach therefore remains essential. Clin. Anat. 29:831–843, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Line following for an autonomous sailboat using potential fields method

Artificial potential fields method is a widely used algorithm for path planning of autonomous terrestrial robots. In this paper, this method is applied for the local path planning of an autonomous sailboat robot. Environment and specific sailboat navigation constraints (upwind and downwind no-go zones) are represented by local potentials built around the boat location and periodically updated to take into account changes of the wind direction and obstacles' position. A line of sight (LOS) based potential is used to guarantee that the vehicle stays inside a band around the direct route between two consecutive way points. A new repulsive potential with a speed-dependent component is also presented in order to get smoother obstacle avoidance trajectories.
Development and Validation of a Risk Score for Age-Related Macular Degeneration: The STARS Questionnaire.

Purpose To develop and validate a risk score for AMD based on a simple self-administered questionnaire. Methods Risk factors having shown the most consistent associations with AMD were included in the STARS (Simplified Théa AMD Risk-Assessment Scale) questionnaire. Two studies were conducted, one in Italy (127 participating ophthalmologists) and one in France (80 participating ophthalmologists). During 1 week, participating ophthalmologists invited all their patients aged 55 years or older to fill in the STARS questionnaire. Based on fundus examination, early AMD was defined by the presence of soft drusen and/or pigmentary abnormalities and late AMD by the presence of geographic atrophy and/or neovascular AMD. Results The Italian and French samples consisted of 12,639 and 6897 patients, respectively. All 13 risk factors included in the STARS questionnaire showed significant associations with AMD in the Italian sample. The area under the receiving operating characteristic curve for the STARS risk score, derived from the multivariate logistic regression in the Italian sample, was 0.78 in the Italian sample and 0.72 in the French sample. In both samples, less than 10% of patients without AMD were classified at high risk, and less than 13% of late AMD cases were classified as low risk, with a more intermediate situation in early AMD cases. Conclusions STARS is a new, simple self-assessed questionnaire showing good discrimination of risk for AMD in two large European samples. It might be used by ophthalmologists in routine clinical practice or as a self-assessment for risk of AMD in the general population.
Passivity Analysis and Passification of Discrete-Time Hybrid Systems

For discrete-time hybrid systems in piecewise affine or piece-wise polynomial (PWP) form, this note proposes sufficient passivity analysis and synthesis criteria based on the computation of piecewise quadratic or PWP storage functions. By exploiting linear matrix inequality techniques and sum of squares decomposition methods, passivity analysis and synthesis of passifying controllers can be carried out through standard semidefinite programming packages, providing a tool particularly important for stability of interconnected heterogeneous dynamical systems.
Integrating Multibeam Backscatter Angular Response, Mosaic and Bathymetry Data for Benthic Habitat Mapping

Multibeam echosounders (MBES) are increasingly becoming the tool of choice for marine habitat mapping applications. In turn, the rapid expansion of habitat mapping studies has resulted in a need for automated classification techniques to efficiently map benthic habitats, assess confidence in model outputs, and evaluate the importance of variables driving the patterns observed. The benthic habitat characterisation process often involves the analysis of MBES bathymetry, backscatter mosaic or angular response with observation data providing ground truth. However, studies that make use of the full range of MBES outputs within a single classification process are limited. We present an approach that integrates backscatter angular response with MBES bathymetry, backscatter mosaic and their derivatives in a classification process using a Random Forests (RF) machine-learning algorithm to predict the distribution of benthic biological habitats. This approach includes a method of deriving statistical features from backscatter angular response curves created from MBES data collated within homogeneous regions of a backscatter mosaic. Using the RF algorithm we assess the relative importance of each variable in order to optimise the classification process and simplify models applied. The results showed that the inclusion of the angular response features in the classification process improved the accuracy of the final habitat maps from 88.5% to 93.6%. The RF algorithm identified bathymetry and the angular response mean as the two most important predictors. However, the highest classification rates were only obtained after incorporating additional features derived from bathymetry and the backscatter mosaic. The angular response features were found to be more important to the classification process compared to the backscatter mosaic features. This analysis indicates that integrating angular response information with bathymetry and the backscatter mosaic, along with their derivatives, constitutes an important improvement for studying the distribution of benthic habitats, which is necessary for effective marine spatial planning and resource management.
Automaticity and Control in Prospective Memory: A Computational Model

Prospective memory (PM) refers to our ability to realize delayed intentions. In event-based PM paradigms, participants must act on an intention when they detect the occurrence of a pre-established cue. Some theorists propose that in such paradigms PM responding can only occur when participants deliberately initiate processes for monitoring their environment for appropriate cues. Others propose that perceptual processing of PM cues can directly trigger PM responding in the absence of strategic monitoring, at least under some circumstances. In order to address this debate, we present a computational model implementing the latter account, using a parallel distributed processing (interactive activation) framework. In this model PM responses can be triggered directly as a result of spreading activation from units representing perceptual inputs. PM responding can also be promoted by top-down monitoring for PM targets. The model fits a wide variety of empirical findings from PM paradigms, including the effect of maintaining PM intentions on ongoing response time and the intention superiority effect. The model also makes novel predictions concerning the effect of stimulus degradation on PM performance, the shape of response time distributions on ongoing and prospective memory trials, and the effects of instructing participants to make PM responses instead of ongoing responses or alongside them. These predictions were confirmed in two empirical experiments. We therefore suggest that PM should be considered to result from the interplay between bottom-up triggering of PM responses by perceptual input, and top-down monitoring for appropriate cues. We also show how the model can be extended to simulate encoding new intentions and subsequently deactivating them, and consider links between the model’s performance and results from neuroimaging.
Vascular angiotensin-converting enzyme expression regulates local angiotensin II.

We tested the hypothesis that changes in angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene expression can regulate the rate of local vascular angiotensin II (Ang II) production. We perfused isolated rat hindlimbs with an artificial medium and infused renin and Ang I via the perfusate. Ang I and II were measured by radioimmunoassay. We then increased ACE gene expression and ACE levels in the rat aorta by producing two-kidney, one clip (2K1C) hypertension for 4 weeks. Gene expression was measured by RNAse protection assay, and ACE activity in the vessel wall was measured by the Cushman-Cheung assay. Angiotensin I infusion at 1, 10, 100, and 1000 pmol/mL led to 371 +/- 14 (+/-SEM), 3611 +/- 202, 44,828 +/- 1425, and 431,503 +/- 16,439 fmol/mL Ang II released, respectively, from the hindlimbs (r = .98, P < .001). Thus, the conversion rate did not change across four orders of magnitude, and the system was not saturable under these conditions. In 2K1C hindlimbs, Ang I infusion (0.5 pmol/mL) resulted in increased Ang II generation (157 +/- 16 versus 123 +/- 23 fmol/mL, P = .014 at minute 10) compared with controls. ACE gene expression and ACE activity were increased in 2K1C hindlimbs compared with controls (36 +/- 4 versus 17 +/- 1 mU/mg protein, P < .001). Ang II degradation in the two groups did not differ. To investigate the conversion of locally generated Ang I, we infused porcine renin (0.5 milliunits per mL) into 2K1C and control hindlimbs. Despite markedly higher Ang I release in sham-operated than in 2K1C rats (71 +/- 8 versus 37 +/- 6 pmol/mL, P = .008 at minute 12), Ang II was only moderately increased (36 +/- 3 versus 25 +/- 6 pmol/mL, P = .12 at minute 12). This difference between 2K1C rats and controls reflected a higher rate of conversion in 2K1C rats. Thus, Ang I conversion in the rat hindlimb is linear over a wide range of substrate concentrations and occurs at a fixed relationship. Nevertheless, increased ACE gene expression and ACE activity in the vessel wall lead to an increase in the conversion of Ang I to Ang II. We conclude that local ACE gene expression and ACE activity can influence the local rate of Ang II production.
Differential niche dynamics among major marine invertebrate clades

The degree to which organisms retain their environmental preferences is of utmost importance in predicting their fate in a world of rapid climate change. Notably, marine invertebrates frequently show strong affinities for either carbonate or terrigenous clastic environments. This affinity is due to characteristics of the sediments as well as correlated environmental factors. We assessed the conservatism of substrate affinities of marine invertebrates over geological timescales, and found that niche conservatism is prevalent in the oceans, and largely determined by the strength of initial habitat preference. There is substantial variation in niche conservatism among major clades with corals and sponges being among the most conservative. Time-series analysis suggests that niche conservatism is enhanced during times of elevated nutrient flux, whereas niche evolution tends to occur after mass extinctions. Niche evolution is not necessarily elevated in genera exhibiting higher turnover in species composition.
Uncertainty in Signal Estimation and Stochastic Weighted Viterbi Algorithm: A Unified Framework to Address Robustness in Speech Recognition and Speaker Verification

Robustness to noise and low-bit rate coding distortion is one of the main problems faced by automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speaker verification (SV) systems in real applications. Usually, ASR and SV models are trained with speech signals recorded in conditions that are different from testing environments. This mismatch between training and testing can lead to unacceptable error rates. Noise and low-bit rate coding distortion are probably the most important sources of this mismatch. Noise can be classified into additive or convolutional if it corresponds, respectively, to an additive process in the linear domain or to the insertion of a linear transmission channel function. On the other hand, low-bit rate coding distortion is produced by coding – decoding schemes employed in cellular systems and VoIP/ToIP. A popular approach to tackle these problems attempts to estimate the original speech signal before the distortion is introduced. However, the original signal cannot be recovered with 100% accuracy and there will be always an uncertainty in noise canceling. Due to its simplicity, spectral subtraction (SS) (Berouti et al., 1979; Vaseghi & Milner, 1997) has widely been used to reduce the effect of additive noise in speaker recognition (Barger & Sridharan, 1997; Drygajlo & El-Maliki, 1998; Ortega & Gonzalez, 1997), despite the fact that SS loses accuracy at low segmental SNR. Parallel Model Combination (PMC) (Gales & Young,1993) was applied under noisy conditions in (Rose et. al.,1994) where high improvements with additive noise were reported. Nevertheless, PMC requires an accurate knowledge about the additive corrupting signal, whose model is estimated using appreciable amounts of noise data which in turn imposes restrictions on noise stationarity, and about the convolutional distortion that needs to be estimated a priori (Gales, 1997). Rasta filtering (Hermansky et al., 1991) and Cepstral Mean Normalization (CMN) can be very useful to cancel convolutional distortion (Furui, 1982; Reynolds, 1994; van Vuuren, 1996) but, if the speech signal is also corrupted by additive noise, these techniques lose
A Model for Competence and Integrity in Variable Payoff Games

Agents often have to trust one another when engaging in joint actions. In many cases, no single design team has the authority to assure that agents cooperate. Trust is required when agents hold potentially different values or conflicting goals. This paper presents a framework and some initial experiments for decomposing agent reputation within a multi-agent society into two characteristics: competence and integrity. The framework models competence as the probability of successfully carrying out an intended action. Integrity is modeled as a rational commitment to maintaining a reputation, based on the agent’s assessment of the game’s discount rate. We show that a simple, one-level-deep recursive model—given accurate knowledge of self and the other agent’s competence and integrity (commitment to reputation)—outperforms titfor-tat and other standard strategies in evolutionary round-robin iterated prisoner’s dilemma tournaments. This indicates that the approach taken here warrants further investigation using more realistic and com-
Compressive Channel Estimation and Tracking for Large Arrays in mm-Wave Picocells

We propose and investigate a compressive architecture for estimation and tracking of sparse spatial channels in millimeter (mm) wave picocellular networks. The base stations are equipped with antenna arrays with a large number of elements (which can fit within compact form factors because of the small carrier wavelength) and employ radio frequency (RF) beamforming, so that standard least squares adaptation techniques (which require access to individual antenna elements) are not applicable. We focus on the downlink, and show that “compressive beacons,” transmitted using pseudorandom phase settings at the base station array, and compressively processed using pseudorandom phase settings at the mobile array, provide information sufficient for accurate estimation of the two-dimensional (2D) spatial frequencies associated with the directions of departure of the dominant rays from the base station, and the associated complex gains. This compressive approach is compatible with coarse phase-only control, and is based on a near-optimal sequential algorithm for frequency estimation which approaches the Cramér Rao Lower Bound. The algorithm exploits the geometric continuity of the channel across successive beaconing intervals to reduce the overhead to less than 1% even for very large (32 × 32) arrays. Compressive beaconing is essentially omnidirectional, and hence does not enjoy the SNR and spatial reuse benefits of beamforming obtained during data transmission. We therefore discuss system level design considerations for ensuring that the beacon SNR is sufficient for accurate channel estimation, and that inter-cell beacon interference is controlled by an appropriate reuse scheme.
Longitudinal distribution of slope and sediment characteristics in headland-bay beaches in Cádiz, Spain

ABSTRACT Rodríguez-Polo, S. ; Del Río, L. , and Benavente, J., 2018. Longitudinal Distribution of Slope and Sediment Characteristics in Headland-bay Beaches in Cádiz, Spain. In: Shim, J.-S. ; Chun, I. , and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85, pp. 306–310. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Headland-bay beaches are systems with an asymmetric curved planform that develop downdrift of a natural or artificial coastal headland. These beaches have some common features found along the coasts of the world, presenting a well differentiated zonation. The main objective of this work is to elucidate how parameters such as grain size, sorting and beachface slope in the different zones (shadow, central and distal sectors) determine the final morphology of the beach. For this purpose, twelve headland-bay systems in the coast of Cádiz (South Spain), with contrasting wave and tide regimes, were monitored in order to analyze the longitudinal gradient in slope and sediment distribution. Topographic surveys were conducted and sediment samples were collected and analyzed for grain size. Shore-normal transects were surveyed with a RTK-DGPS (Real Time Kinematics - Differential Global Positioning System) and beach slope was computed on each sector of the beaches. Three sediment samples were taken in each transect, corresponding to the dry beach, the high intertidal zone and the lower intertidal zone. A total of 152 topographic profiles and about 456 sediment samples were analyzed. All this information has allowed to gain insight into how the different parameters vary along the twelve headland-bays, as well as to establish common trends among them and to see how these parameters affect the final morphology of the beach. In a further step, future work will be focused on the detailed analysis of wave processes on each system, in order to more accurately determine the relations between the above parameters and the hydrodynamic regime.
Mean platelet volume in patients with acute coronary syndromes: a supportive diagnostic predictor.

BACKGROUND Platelets and their activity have a crucial role in acute coronary events. Larger platelets are enzymatically and metabolically more active and have a higher potential thrombotic ability as compared with smaller platelets. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is an association between mean platelet volume (MPV) measurement and cardiac Troponin I( cTn I ) in patients admitted with a suspected diagnosis of ACS and to assess the potential diagnostic efficiency of MPV in the diagnostic workup for ACS. MATERIALS AND METHODS After thorough evaluation of 215 eligible patients, 3 ml. Venous blood collected using Becton, Dickinson and company vacutainer and MPV measured within 1-2 hr of sample collection. Sample for cTn I collected at 6 hr and at 12 hrs, if required and level measured using Biosite analyzer. RESULTS Mean platelet volume (MPV) was found to be higher among ACS patients as compared to non ACS, 11.44±1.23 vs 9.91±1.27 fl (p-value<0.001). The NPV of MPV in the diagnostic workup of chest pain suggestive of ACS within 6 hours of presentation were found to be 82.53% . CONCLUSION In this study the MPV is significantly higher in patients with ACS than in those with chest pain of non-cardiac origin and its negative predictive value of 82.53%, it might be useful as an assisting rule-out test in conjunction with other markers in the early prediction of the risk of ACS.
Recruitment of a 19S Proteasome Subcomplex to an Activated Promoter

The 19S proteasome regulatory particle plays a critical role in cellular proteolysis. However, recent reports have demonstrated that 19S proteins play a nonproteolytic role in nucleotide excision repair and transcription elongation. We show by chromatin immunoprecipitation assays that proteins comprising the 19Scomplex are recruited to the GAL1-10 promoter by the Gal4 transactivator upon induction with galactose. This recruited complex does not contain proteins from the 20S proteolytic particle and includes a subset of the 19S proteins. This subset is also specifically retained from an extract by the Gal4 activation domain. These data indicate that in vivo, the base of the 19S complex functions independently of the larger complex and plays a direct, nonproteolytic role in RNA polymerase II transcription.