Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DDCO: Discovery of Deep Continuous Options for Robot Learning from Demonstrations

An option is a short-term skill consisting of a control policy for a specified region of the state space, and a termination condition recognizing leaving that region. In prior work, we proposed an algorithm called Deep Discovery of Options (DDO) to discover options to accelerate reinforcement learning in Atari games. This paper studies an extension to robot imitation learning, called Discovery of Deep Continuous Options (DDCO), where low-level continuous control skills parametrized by deep neural networks are learned from demonstrations. We extend DDO with: (1) a hybrid categorical-continuous distribution model to parametrize high-level policies that can invoke discrete options as well continuous control actions, and (2) a cross-validation method that relaxes DDO's requirement that users specify the number of options to be discovered. We evaluate DDCO in simulation of a 3-link robot in the vertical plane pushing a block with friction and gravity, and in two physical experiments on the da Vinci surgical robot, needle insertion where a needle is grasped and inserted into a silicone tissue phantom, and needle bin picking where needles and pins are grasped from a pile and categorized into bins. In the 3-link arm simulation, results suggest that DDCO can take 3x fewer demonstrations to achieve the same reward compared to a baseline imitation learning approach. In the needle insertion task, DDCO was successful 8/10 times compared to the next most accurate imitation learning baseline 6/10. In the surgical bin picking task, the learned policy successfully grasps a single object in 66 out of 99 attempted grasps, and in all but one case successfully recovered from failed grasps by retrying a second time.
Prevention of healthcare associated infections

This chapter provides the most up-to-date advice on infection prevention and control (IPC) of the four most common healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). These are: surgical site infections; infection associated with peripheral IV line/cannula and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs); catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI); and hospital-acquired and ventilator-acquired pneumonias (VAP). The chapter examines and summarizes various key elements and discusses implementation of HAI care bundles and high impact interventions which are necessary to reduce these infections.
Factors affecting swamp buffalo production in Songkhram wet land, Nakhon Phanom province, Thailand

The current study was conducted to find out the factors affecting to swamp buffalo production in Songkhram wet land area (consisting of 3 districts: Si Songkhram, Tha Uthen, and Na Wa Districts), Nakhon Phanom province, Thailand. The data were collected from 370 farmers and analyzed by using Chi-square to test association of the studied factors between farm groups (Group I: farmers who produced the swamp for fancy buffaloes and showing, and Group II: farmers who produced the buffaloes for power work and meat production) in the study population. The results showed that many factors that affected to buffalo production, such as source of knowledge used for buffalo production, patterns of buffalo production, kinds of land, objectives for buffalo production, record keeping, types of roughage, person who suggest to select buffalo, mating systems, changing sire, information for considering for replacement dams selection, age at first mating, and problem and obstacle related to the achievement of swamp buffalo production (P 0.05). This information implied the need of increasing efficiency of buffalo production, and also improvement of knowledge, understanding and chance in sire selection of the farmers.
Transferring the purine 2-amino group from guanines to adenines in DNA changes the sequence-specific binding of antibiotics.

The proposition that the 2-amino group of guanine plays a critical role in determining how antibiotics recognise their binding sites in DNA has been tested by relocating it, using tyrT DNA derivative molecules substituted with inosine plus 2,6-diaminopurine (DAP). Irrespective of their mode of interaction with DNA, such GC-specific antibiotics as actinomycin, echinomycin, mithramycin and chromomycin find new binding sites associated with DAP-containing sequences and are excluded from former canonical sites containing I.C base pairs. The converse is found to be the case for a group of normally AT-selective ligands which bind in the minor groove of the helix, such as netropsin: their preferred sites become shifted to IC-rich clusters. Thus the binding sites of all these antibiotics strictly follow the placement of the purine 2-amino group, which accordingly must serve as both a positive and negative effector. The footprinting profile of the 'threading' intercalator nogalamycin is potentiated in DAP plus inosine-substituted DNA but otherwise remains much the same as seen with natural DNA. The interaction of echinomycin with sites containing the TpDAP step in doubly substituted DNA appears much stronger than its interaction with CpG-containing sites in natural DNA.
Regulation of BRCA1 Transcription by Specific Single-Stranded DNA Binding Factors

ABSTRACT Since the majority of high-grade breast cancers express reduced levels of BRCA1 mRNA, we investigated the factors regulating BRCA1 transcription. Factors with specific affinity for the previously identified positive regulatory region (PRR) in the BRCA1 promoter were purified from whole-cell extracts. Identified proteins included replication protein A and a series of related factors with affinity for the sense strand of PRR. A subset of the identified factors activated the BRCA1 promoter. Identification of these families of proteins regulating the BRCA1 promoter represents an important step in the comprehension of the mechanisms responsible for breast cancer development.
Independent Activity of the Homologous Small Regulatory RNAs AbcR1 and AbcR2 in the Legume Symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti

The legume symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti expresses a plethora of small noncoding RNAs (sRNAs) whose function is mostly unknown. Here, we have functionally characterized two tandemly encoded S. meliloti Rm1021 sRNAs that are similar in sequence and structure. Homologous sRNAs (designated AbcR1 and AbcR2) have been shown to regulate several ABC transporters in the related α-proteobacteria Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Brucella abortus. In Rm1021, AbcR1 and AbcR2 exhibit divergent unlinked regulation and are stabilized by the RNA chaperone Hfq. AbcR1 is transcribed in actively dividing bacteria, either in culture, rhizosphere or within the invasion zone of mature alfalfa nodules. Conversely, AbcR2 expression is induced upon entry into stationary phase and under abiotic stress. Only deletion of AbcR1 resulted into a discrete growth delay in rich medium, but both are dispensable for symbiosis. Periplasmic proteome profiling revealed down-regulation of the branched-chain amino acid binding protein LivK by AbcR1, but not by AbcR2. A double-plasmid reporter assay confirmed the predicted specific targeting of the 5′-untranslated region of the livK mRNA by AbcR1 in vivo. Our findings provide evidences of independent regulatory functions of these sRNAs, probably to fine-tune nutrient uptake in free-living and undifferentiated symbiotic rhizobia.
Image salient object detection with refined deep features via convolution neural network

Abstract. Recent advances in saliency detection have used deep learning to obtain high-level features to detect salient regions. These advances have demonstrated superior results over previous works that use handcrafted low-level features for saliency detection. We propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to learn high-level features for saliency detection. Compared to other methods, our method presents two merits. First, when performing features extraction, apart from the convolution and pooling step in our method, we add restricted Boltzmann machine into the CNN framework to obtain more accurate features in intermediate step. Second, in order to avoid manual annotation data, we add deep belief network classifier at the end of this model to classify salient and nonsalient regions. Quantitative and qualitative experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods.
[Body mass index in shift workers: relation to diet and physical activity].

UNLABELLED Many studies investigated adverse effects of rotating shift work, deriving from modifications of circadian rhythms and alimentary behaviours. This may cause the disregulation of glycolipidic metabolism and of insulin secretion, and the development of central obesity. We conducted the present study in order to assess the differences in body mass index (BMI) between day and shift workers, in relation to diet quality and physical activity. DESIGN AND METHODS The study included 341 male subjects (165 day workers and 176 shift workers). Body weight, height, BMI, waist and hip circumferences were measured. Physical activity and diet quality were assessed by self-reported questionnaires. RESULTS Shift workers had higher BMI than day workers (27.6 +/- 3.9 vs 26.7 +/- 3.6), and this correlation persisted after adjustment for age. The diet quality was better in shift workers and the level of physical activity was similar in the two groups. DISCUSSION The results of this study indicate that shift work is an independent risk factors in the development of overweight and central obesity. In fact, although the diet quality was even better in shift workers, and the level of physical activity was similar between day and shift workers, we found that shift workers had higher BMI.
Multiple Casualty Terror Events: The Anesthesiologist's Perspective

In a 28-mo period 14 multiple-casualty terror events occurred in Jerusalem, challenging the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine of the city's sole Level 1 trauma center. We performed a retrospective review of the response of the department to evaluate staff activities, resource use (emergency department, operating rooms, and intensive care unit [ICU]), and patient flow. A total of 1062 people were injured in the 14 multi-casualty terror incidents. The emergency department treated 355 victims; 108 of them were hospitalized, and 58 underwent surgery during the first 8 h. Only two surgeries were performed during the first hour, and the average time to the first surgery was 124 min. Fifty-one patients were admitted to the ICU an average of 5.5 h after the terror event. After a terrorist act, multiple, simultaneous efforts were required of the anesthesiology department, including taking part in the initial resuscitation in the emergency department, anesthetizing victims for surgery and angiographies, and caring for them in the recovery room and ICU. Therefore, anesthesiology departments are greatly impacted by such events and must plan for them to maximize the use of available personnel and to have the appropriate equipment and supplies available.
How (much) do flowers vary? Unbalanced disparity among flower functional modules and a mosaic pattern of morphospace occupation in the order Ericales

The staggering diversity of angiosperms and their flowers has fascinated scientists for centuries. However, the quantitative distribution of floral morphological diversity (disparity) among lineages and the relative contribution of functional modules (perianth, androecium and gynoecium) to total floral disparity have rarely been addressed. Focusing on a major angiosperm order (Ericales), we compiled a dataset of 37 floral traits scored for 381 extant species and nine fossils. We conducted morphospace analyses to explore phylogenetic, temporal and functional patterns of disparity. We found that the floral morphospace is organized as a continuous cloud in which most clades occupy distinct regions in a mosaic pattern, that disparity increases with clade size rather than age, and that fossils fall in a narrow portion of the space. Surprisingly, our study also revealed that among functional modules, it is the androecium that contributes most to total floral disparity in Ericales. We discuss our findings in the light of clade history, selective regimes as well as developmental and functional constraints acting on the evolution of the flower and thereby demonstrate that quantitative analyses such as the ones used here are a powerful tool to gain novel insights into the evolution and diversity of flowers.
Robust Estimation of Parametric Yield under Limited Descriptions of Uncertainty

Reliable prediction of parametric yield for a specific design is difficult; a significant reason is the reliance of the yield estimation methods on the hard-to-measure distributional properties of the process data. Existing methods are inadequate when dealing with real-life distributions of process and environmental parameters, and limited availability of parameter data during early design. This paper proposes a robust technique for full-chip parametric yield estimation; the proposed work is based on the rigorous notions of non-parametric robust statistics which permits estimation based on the knowledge of the range and the limited number of moments (e.g. mean and variance) of the parameter distributions. Fully or partially specified process and environmental parameters can be described by robust representations, and used to estimate probabilistic bounds for leakage dissipation. The proposed approach is applied to estimating the chip-level parametric yield. The experimental results show that the robust estimation algorithm improves the total leakage estimate by 5-13% at the 99 percentile across distinct frequency bins, compared to using only the intervals of partially-specified parameters
Blurred line between chemotactic chase and phagocytic consumption: an immunophysical single-cell perspective

An innate immune cell can sense a pathogen, either from a distance by recognizing chemoattractant stimuli or by direct physical contact. The pathogen is subsequently neutralized, which usually occurs through its phagocytic internalization. By investigating chemotaxis and phagocytosis from an immunophysical single-cell perspective, it now appears that the demarcation between these two processes is less distinct than originally thought. Several lines of evidence support this notion. First, chemotactic stimulation does not cease at the moment of initial contact between the cell and the pathogenic target. Second, even when classical chemotaxis of neutrophils is suppressed, the early cell response to contact with typical chemoattractant targets, such as zymosan, fungal spores or chemokine-coated particles, can still involve morphological attributes of chemotaxis. Recognizing that the changing morphology of motile cells is inextricably linked to physical cell behavior, this Commentary focuses on the mechanical aspects of the early response of innate immune cells to chemotactic and phagocytic stimuli. On the basis of this perspective, we propose that the combined study of chemotaxis and phagocytosis will, potentially, not only advance our grasp of the mechanisms underlying immune-cell motility but also open new lines of research that will promote a deeper understanding of the innate recognition of pathogens.
ERK Nuclear Translocation Is Dimerization-independent but Controlled by the Rate of Phosphorylation*♦

Upon activation, ERKs translocate from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. This process is required for the induction of many cellular responses, yet the molecular mechanisms that regulate ERK nuclear translocation are not fully understood. We have used a mouse embryo fibroblast ERK1-knock-out cell line expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged ERK1 to probe the spatio-temporal regulation of ERK1. Real time fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy revealed that ERK1 nuclear accumulation increased upon serum stimulation, but the mobility of the protein in the nucleus and cytoplasm remained unchanged. Dimerization of ERK has been proposed as a requirement for nuclear translocation. However, ERK1-Δ4, the mutant shown consistently to be dimerization-deficient in vitro, accumulated in the nucleus to the same level as wild type (WT), indicating that dimerization of ERK1 is not required for nuclear entry and retention. Consistent with this finding, energy migration Förster resonance energy transfer and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy measurements in living cells did not detect dimerization of GFP-ERK1-WT upon activation. In contrast, the kinetics of nuclear accumulation and phosphorylation of GFP-ERK1-Δ4 were slower than that of GFP-ERK1-WT. These results indicate that the differential shuttling behavior of the mutant is a consequence of delayed phosphorylation of ERK by MEK rather than dimerization. Our data demonstrate for the first time that a delay in cytoplasmic activation of ERK is directly translated into a delay in nuclear translocation.
Salt sensitivity in Goldblatt hypertensive rats--role of extracellular fluid volume and renin-angiotensin system.

Effects of a high-salt diet on blood pressure, extracellular fluid volume, and the renin-angiotensin system in rats with the two types of Goldblatt hypertension were examined. Both in one-kidney, one clip (1K1C) rats and in one-kidney, sham-clipped (1K) rats, systolic blood pressures of rats which received a high-salt diet for 4 weeks were higher than those of rats of respective groups on a normal-salt diet, suggesting an increased sensitivity of blood pressure to changes in salt intake. Whereas sodium space was increased in 1K rats on the high-salt 1K1C rats receiving the high-salt did not have significantly increased sodium space. These results suggest that acceleration of 1K1C hypertension with salt load could not be explained only by changes in extracellular fluid volume. In contrast, both in two-kidney, one clip (2K1C) rats and in two-kidney, sham-clipped (2K) rats, the high-salt diet produced no change in blood pressure despite the increase in sodium space, suggesting a decreased salt sensitivity. Although on the normal-salt diet the blood pressure of 2K1C rats tended to correlate with plasma renin activity, on the high-salt diet plasma renin activity was markedly decreased, and then blood pressure highly correlated with sodium space. Accordingly, the lesser salt sensitivity in 2K1C rats is probably attributable to the counterbalance of the suppressed renin-angiotensin system against volume expansion. Evidence presented suggests, therefore, that 1K1C rats have greater salt sensitivity of blood pressure than 2K1C rats. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Use of the Metacognitive English Language Learning Strategies Based on Personality Traits

The present study aims to find out the relationship between use of the Metacognitive English Language Learning Strategies (MELLSs) for learners of English as a foreign language based on personality traits, and the role of personality traits in the prediction of use of such Strategies. Four instruments were used, which were Adapted Inventory for Metacognitive English Language Learning Strategies based on Metacognitive category of Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) of Rebecca L. Oxfords (1990), A Background Questionnaire, NEO-Five Factors Inventory (NEO-FFI), and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Two hundred and thirteen Iranian female university level learners of English language as a university major in Iran, were asked to participate in this research work. The intact classes were chosen. The results show that however, there is a significant relationship between four traits of personality and use of the MELLSs, but personality traits cannot be as a strong predictor with high percent of contribution to predict use of the MELLSs. Index Terms—metacognitive language learning strategies, English learning, personality traits
Bone mineral density and biochemical markers of bone metabolism in ankylosing spondylitis.

OBJECTIVE To determine (1) bone mineral density (BMD) of the axial and appendicular skeleton in men with moderate and severe ankylosing spondylitis (AS), and (2) associations between BMD and bone metabolism variables. METHODS Nineteen men with AS and 19 healthy male controls were evaluated for osteoporosis by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry in both the hip and the lateral and posterior-anterior (PA) projections of the lumbar spine. Calcium homeostasis was evaluated by measuring minerals, calcitropic hormones, and markers of remodeling. Total testosterone levels were also measured. RESULTS Osteopenia was noted in both the hip and spine of the subjects with AS. The lateral projection of L3 was a more sensitive indicator of the vertebral BMD compared to the PA projection. Calciuin homeostasis and testosterone levels were normal in subjects with AS. In most subjects, markers of bone formation and resorption were normal. CONCLUSION BMD of subjects with AS is decreased, in spite of normal calcium homeostasis and bone remodeling indices.
Conjectures for Large N N = 4 Superconformal Chiral Four Point Functions

1 2-BPS operators belonging to the [0, p, 0] SU4) representation in N = 4 superconformal theories at strong coupling in the large N limit is suggested for any p. It is expressed in terms of the four point integrals defined by integration over AdS 5 and agrees with, and was motivated by, results for p = 2, 3, 4 obtained via the AdS/CFT correspondence. Using crossing symmetry and unitarity, the detailed form is dictated by the requirement that at large N the contribution of long multiplets with twist less than 2p, which do not have anomalous dimensions, should cancel corresponding free field contributions.
An Australian tertiary referral center experience of the management of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension

The objective of this study was to report the outcome of pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) surgery performed for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) at a single tertiary center. The prospective study consisted of 35 patients with surgically amenable CTEPH undergoing PEA between September 2004 and September 2010. The main outcome measures were Functional (New York Heart Association [NYHA] class, 6-Minute Walk Distance), hemodynamic (echocardiography, right heart catheterization, and cardiac MRI), and outcome data (morbidity and mortality). Following PEA, there were significant improvements in NYHA class (pre 2.9±0.7 vs. post 1.3±0.5, P < 0.0001), right ventricular systolic pressure (pre 77.4±24.8 mmHg vs. post 45.1±24.9 mmHg, P = 0.0005), 6-Minute Walk Distance (pre 419.6±109.4 m vs. post 521.6±83.5 m, P = 0.0017), mean pulmonary artery pressure (pre 41.8±15.3 mmHg vs. post 24.7±8.8 mmHg, P = 0.0006), and cardiac MRI indices (end diastolic volume pre 213.8±49.2 mL vs. post 148.1±34.5 mL, P < 0.0001; ejection fraction pre 40.7±9.8 mL vs. post 48.1±8.9 mL, P = 0.0069). The mean cardiopulmonary bypass time was 258.77±26.16 min, with a mean circulatory arrest time of 43.83 ±28.78 min, a mean ventilation time of 4.7±7.93 days (range 0.2–32.7), and a mean intensive care unit stay of 7.22±8.71 days (range 1.1–33.8). Complications included reperfusion lung injury (20%), persistent pulmonary hypertension (17.1%), slow respiratory wean (25.7%), pericardial effusion (11.4%), and cardiac tamponade (5.7%). 1-year mortality post-procedure was 11.4%. Pulmonary endarterectomy can be performed safely with relatively low mortality.