Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust {MISO Transmit} Optimization under Outage-Based QoS Constraints in Two-Tier Heterogeneous Networks

To improve wireless heterogeneous network service via macrocell and femtocells that share certain spectral resources, {this paper studies} the transmit beamforming design for femtocell base station (FBS), {equipped with multiple antennas}, under an outage-based quality-of-service (QoS) constraint at the {single-antenna} femtocell user equipment characterized by its signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. {Specifically}, we {focus on} the practical case of {imperfect} downlink {multiple-input single-output (MISO)} channel state information (CSI) at the FBS due to limited CSI feedback or CSI estimation errors. By characterizing the CSI uncertainty probabilistically, we formulate an outage-based robust beamforming design. This nonconvex optimization problem can be relaxed into a convex semidefinite programming problem, which reduces to a power control problem when all CSI vectors are independent {and} identically distributed. We also investigate the performance gap between the optimal transmission strategy (that allows maximum transmission degrees of freedom (DoF) equal to the number of transmit antennas) and the proposed optimal beamforming design (with the DoF equal to one) and provide some feasibility conditions, followed by their performance evaluation and trade-off through simulation results.
Automated seismic waveform location using Multichannel Coherency Migration (MCM)—II. Application to induced and volcano-tectonic seismicity

Locating microseismic events is essential for many areas of seismology including volcano and earthquake monitoring and reservoir engineering. Due to the large number of microseismic events in these settings, an automated seismic location method is required to perform real time seismic monitoring. The measurement environment requires a precise and noise-resistant event location method for seismic monitoring. In this paper, we apply Multichannel Coherency Migration (MCM) to automatically locate microseismic events of induced and volcano-tectonic seismicity using sparse and irregular monitoring arrays. Compared to other migration-based methods, in spite of the often sparse and irregular distribution of the monitoring arrays, the MCM can show better location performance and obtain more consistent location results with the catalogue obtained by manual picking. Our MCM method successfully locates many triggered volcano-tectonic events with local magnitude smaller that 0, which demonstrates its applicability on locating very small earthquakes. Our synthetic event location example at a carbon capture and storage site shows that continuous and coherent drilling noise in industrial settings will pose great challenges for source imaging. However, automatic quality control techniques including filtering in the frequency domain and weighting are used to automatically select high quality data, and can thus effectively reduce the effects of continuous drilling noise and improve source imaging quality. The location performance of the MCM method for synthetic and real microseismic datasets demonstrates that the MCM method can perform as a reliable and automatic seismic waveform analysis tool to locate microseismic events.
Against the odds: a case study of recovery from coma after devastating prognosis

To demonstrate the possibility for hidden rehabilitation potential even following most severe brain injury and the uncertainty of current prognosis factors for coma and unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, we detail the rehabilitation of J. W. , after coma from traumatic brain injury. Originally, with many negative prognosis factors and several medical complications, prognosis was devastating. But, with continuing treatment, J. W. improved to a high level of independence in everyday life. This shows the need for rehabilitation research to further specify the “prognostic power” of various combinations of prognosis factors, so that practitioners can come to accurate single‐case recommendations when both positive and negative predictors are present.
Effects of Simulated Altitude on Maximal Oxygen Uptake and Inspiratory Fitness

Aerobic exercise at altitude has shown an increase in maximal oxygen uptake. Similar effects have been replicated by way of simulated altitude training, which have influenced various advances in the field of exercise science. Elevation Training Masks© (ETM) claim to stimulate cardiorespiratory fitness improvements similar to training at altitude, however, there is little research to support this claim. The purpose of this study was to research the effect that a hypoxia-inducing mask would have on cardiorespiratory fitness and pulmonary function through the use of a high intensity interval training (HIIT) running program. Seventeen subjects were randomized into either the control group, without the mask, or experimental group, with the mask, and participated in a 6-week HIIT protocol of 4 sessions per week. Each session included a warm up, followed by intervals of running at 80% of their heart rate reserve (HRR) for 90 seconds and followed by 3 minutes of active rest at 50–60% of HRR. A total of 6 intervals were completed per session. Within subjects, there was a significant increase in predicted VO2max (F(1,17)=7.376, P<. 05). However, there was no significant difference in predicted VO2max between the control and experimental groups (F(1, 17)=3.669, p= . 075). Forced inspiratory vital capacity demonstrated no significant difference within subjects (F(1, 17)= . 073, p > . 05), or between the two groups (F(1, 17)= 3.724, p= . 073). Similar to the VO2max results, forced vital capacity demonstrated a significant increase within subjects (F(1, 17)=6.201, p<. 05), but there was no significant difference between the control and experimental groups (F(1,17)=3.562, p= . 079). Although the between groups data was not significant, there was a greater increase in the experimental group wearing the ETM compared to the control group not wearing the mask for all 3 variables. Data suggest that HIIT training can be a viable method of improving VO2max and pulmonary function however, training masks such as the ETM may not lead to greater overall improvements.
Reconstruction of central cortical surface from brain MRI images: Method and application

Reconstruction of the geometric central surface of the human cerebral cortex is an important means to study the structure and function of the brain cortex. In this paper, we propose a novel method based on an elastic deformable transform vector field to drive a deformable model for the reconstruction of the central surface of the brain cortex. In addition, simulated brain cortexes are generated to evaluate this method. We report the evaluation results obtained from ten subjects to show the effectiveness of our approach. We applied the central cortical surface reconstruction method and the hybrid cortical surface registration method to detect simulated brain atrophy. Our results indicate that the central cortical surface has much better sensitivity in detecting simulated atrophy than traditionally used inner or outer cortical surfaces
Enhanced Expression of Rab27A Gene by Breast Cancer Cells Promoting Invasiveness and the Metastasis Potential by Secretion of Insulin-Like Growth Factor-II

In addition to the functions of transporting melanosome in melanocytes and releasing contents of lytic granules in CTLs, Rab27A was recently shown to be involved in exocytosis of insulin and chromaffin granules in endocrine cells; it was also reported to be expressed in an exceptionally broad range of specialized secretory cells. As autocrine and paracrine cytokines are essential for invasion and metastasis in some solid tumors, blocking them may be an effective strategy to prevent tumor dissemination. In the present study, we show that Rab27A is associated with invasive and metastatic potentials of human breast cancer cells. The overexpression of Rab27A protein redistributed the cell cycle and increased the invasive and metastatic abilities in breast cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo. We also certified that Rab27A conferred the invasive and metastatic phenotypes on breast cancer cells by promoting the secretion of insulin-like growth factor-II (IGF-II), which regulates the expression of p16, vascular endothelial growth factor, matrix metalloproteinase-9, cathepsin D, cyclin D1, and urokinase-type plasminogen activator. These data provide functional evidence that Rab27A acts as a novel mediator of invasion and metastasis promotion in human breast cancer cells, at least in part, through regulating the secretion of IGF-II, suggesting that synergistic suppression of Rab27A and IGF-II activities holds a promise for preventing breast cancer invasion and metastasis. (Mol Cancer Res 2008;6(3):372–82)
Fuzzy-logic-based hybrid locomotion mode classification for an active pelvis orthosis: Preliminary results

In this paper, we present a fuzzy-logic-based hybrid locomotion mode classification method for an active pelvis orthosis. Locomotion information measured by the onboard hip joint angle sensors and the pressure insoles is used to classify five locomotion modes, including two static modes (sitting, standing still), and three dynamic modes (level-ground walking, ascending stairs, and descending stairs). The proposed method classifies these two kinds of modes first by monitoring the variation of the relative hip joint angle between the two legs within a specific period. Static states are then classified by the time-based absolute hip joint angle. As for dynamic modes, a fuzzy-logic based method is proposed for the classification. Preliminary experimental results with three able-bodied subjects achieve an off-line classification accuracy higher than 99.49%.
Pak1 as a Novel Therapeutic Target for Antihypertrophic Treatment in the Heart

Background— Stress-induced hypertrophic remodeling is a critical pathogenetic process leading to heart failure. Although many signal transduction cascades are demonstrated as important regulators to facilitate the induction of cardiac hypertrophy, the signaling pathways for suppressing hypertrophic remodeling remain largely unexplored. In this study, we identified p21-activated kinase 1 (Pak1) as a novel signaling regulator that antagonizes cardiac hypertrophy. Methods and Results— Hypertrophic stress applied to primary neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs) or murine hearts caused the activation of Pak1. Analysis of NRCMs expressing constitutively active Pak1 or in which Pak1 was silenced disclosed that Pak1 played an antihypertrophic role. To investigate the in vivo role of Pak1 in the heart, we generated mice with a cardiomyocyte-specific deletion of Pak1 (Pak1cko). When subjected to 2 weeks of pressure overload, Pak1cko mice developed greater cardiac hypertrophy with attendant blunting of JNK activation compared with controls, and these knockout mice underwent the transition into heart failure when prolonged stress was applied. Chronic angiotensin II infusion also caused increased cardiac hypertrophy in Pak1cko mice. Moreover, we discovered that the Pak1 activator FTY720, a sphingosine-like analog, was able to prevent pressure overload-induced hypertrophy in wild-type mice without compromising their cardiac functions. Meanwhile, FTY720 failed to exert such an effect on Pak1cko mice, suggesting that the antihypertrophic effect of FTY720 likely acts through Pak1 activation. Conclusions— These results, for the first time, establish Pak1 as a novel antihypertrophic regulator and suggest that it may be a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure.
Isohyetal Maps of Daily Maximum Rainfall for Different Return Periods for the Colombian Caribbean Region

In Colombia, daily maximum multiannual series are one of the main inputs for design streamflow calculation, which requires performing a rainfall frequency analysis that involves several prior steps: (a) requesting the datasets, (b) waiting for the information, (c) reviewing the datasets received for missing or data different from the requested variable, and (d) requesting the information once again if it is not correct. To tackle these setbacks, 318 rain gauges located in the Colombian Caribbean region were used to first evaluate whether or not the Gumbel distribution was indeed the most suitable by performing frequency analyses using three different distributions (Gumbel, Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), and Log-Pearson 3 (LP3)); secondly, to generate daily maximum isohyetal maps for return periods of 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, and 100 years; and, lastly, to evaluate which interpolation method (IDW, spline, and ordinary kriging) works best in areas with a varying density of data points. GEV was most suitable in 47.2% of the rain gauges, while Gumbel, in spite of being widely used in Colombia, was only suitable in 34.3% of the cases. Regarding the interpolation method, better isohyetals were obtained with the IDW method. In general, the areal maximum daily rainfall estimated showed good agreement when compared to the true values.
Functional connectivity-based parcellation and connectome of cortical midline structures in the mouse: a perfusion autoradiography study

Rodent cortical midline structures (CMS) are involved in emotional, cognitive and attentional processes. Tract tracing has revealed complex patterns of structural connectivity demonstrating connectivity-based integration and segregation for the prelimbic, cingulate area 1, retrosplenial dysgranular cortices dorsally, and infralimbic, cingulate area 2, and retrosplenial granular cortices ventrally. Understanding of CMS functional connectivity (FC) remains more limited. Here we present the first subregion-level FC analysis of the mouse CMS, and assess whether fear results in state-dependent FC changes analogous to what has been reported in humans. Brain mapping using [14C]-iodoantipyrine was performed in mice during auditory-cued fear conditioned recall and in controls. Regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) was analyzed in 3-D images reconstructed from brain autoradiographs. Regions-of-interest were selected along the CMS anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral axes. In controls, pairwise correlation and graph theoretical analyses showed strong FC within each CMS structure, strong FC along the dorsal-ventral axis, with segregation of anterior from posterior structures. Seed correlation showed FC of anterior regions to limbic/paralimbic areas, and FC of posterior regions to sensory areas–findings consistent with functional segregation noted in humans. Fear recall increased FC between the cingulate and retrosplenial cortices, but decreased FC between dorsal and ventral structures. In agreement with reports in humans, fear recall broadened FC of anterior structures to the amygdala and to somatosensory areas, suggesting integration and processing of both limbic and sensory information. Organizational principles learned from animal models at the mesoscopic level (brain regions and pathways) will not only critically inform future work at the microscopic (single neurons and synapses) level, but also have translational value to advance our understanding of human brain architecture.
Robust point matching for nonrigid shapes by preserving local neighborhood structures

In previous work on point matching, a set of points is often treated as an instance of a joint distribution to exploit global relationships in the point set. For nonrigid shapes, however, the local relationship among neighboring points is stronger and more stable than the global one. In this paper, we introduce the notion of a neighborhood structure for the general point matching problem. We formulate point matching as an optimization problem to preserve local neighborhood structures during matching. Our approach has a simple graph matching interpretation, where each point is a node in the graph, and two nodes are connected by an edge if they are neighbors. The optimal match between two graphs is the one that maximizes the number of matched edges. Existing techniques are leveraged to search for an optimal solution with the shape context distance used to initialize the graph matching, followed by relaxation labeling updates for refinement. Extensive experiments show the robustness of our approach under deformation, noise in point locations, outliers, occlusion, and rotation. It outperforms the shape context and TPS-RPM algorithms on most scenarios.
Accurate and Fast Simulation of Channel Noise in Conductance-Based Model Neurons by Diffusion Approximation

Stochastic channel gating is the major source of intrinsic neuronal noise whose functional consequences at the microcircuit- and network-levels have been only partly explored. A systematic study of this channel noise in large ensembles of biophysically detailed model neurons calls for the availability of fast numerical methods. In fact, exact techniques employ the microscopic simulation of the random opening and closing of individual ion channels, usually based on Markov models, whose computational loads are prohibitive for next generation massive computer models of the brain. In this work, we operatively define a procedure for translating any Markov model describing voltage- or ligand-gated membrane ion-conductances into an effective stochastic version, whose computer simulation is efficient, without compromising accuracy. Our approximation is based on an improved Langevin-like approach, which employs stochastic differential equations and no Montecarlo methods. As opposed to an earlier proposal recently debated in the literature, our approximation reproduces accurately the statistical properties of the exact microscopic simulations, under a variety of conditions, from spontaneous to evoked response features. In addition, our method is not restricted to the Hodgkin-Huxley sodium and potassium currents and is general for a variety of voltage- and ligand-gated ion currents. As a by-product, the analysis of the properties emerging in exact Markov schemes by standard probability calculus enables us for the first time to analytically identify the sources of inaccuracy of the previous proposal, while providing solid ground for its modification and improvement we present here.
Target Identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Phenotypic Hits Using a Concerted Chemogenomic, Biophysical, and Structural Approach

Mycobacterium phenotypic hits are a good reservoir for new chemotypes for the treatment of tuberculosis. However, the absence of defined molecular targets and modes of action could lead to failure in drug development. Therefore, a combination of ligand-based and structure-based chemogenomic approaches followed by biophysical and biochemical validation have been used to identify targets for Mycobacterium tuberculosis phenotypic hits. Our approach identified EthR and InhA as targets for several hits, with some showing dual activity against these proteins. From the 35 predicted EthR inhibitors, eight exhibited an IC50 below 50 μM against M. tuberculosis EthR and three were confirmed to be also simultaneously active against InhA. Further hit validation was performed using X-ray crystallography yielding eight new crystal structures of EthR inhibitors. Although the EthR inhibitors attain their activity against M. tuberculosis by hitting yet undefined targets, these results provide new lead compounds that could be further developed to be used to potentiate the effect of EthA activated pro-drugs, such as ethionamide, thus enhancing their bactericidal effect.
Decision Trees for Detection of Activity Intensity in Youth with Cerebral Palsy.

PURPOSE To develop and test decision tree (DT) models to classify physical activity (PA) intensity from accelerometer output and Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) classification level in ambulatory youth with cerebral palsy (CP) and compare the classification accuracy of the new DT models to that achieved by previously published cut points for youth with CP. METHODS Youth with CP (GMFCS levels I-III) (N = 51) completed seven activity trials with increasing PA intensity while wearing a portable metabolic system and ActiGraph GT3X accelerometers. DT models were used to identify vertical axis (VA) and vector magnitude (VM) count thresholds corresponding to sedentary (SED) (<1.5 METs), light-intensity PA (LPA) (≥1.5 and <3 METs) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) (≥3 METs). Models were trained and cross-validated using the "rpart" and "caret" packages within R. RESULTS For the VA (VA_DT) and VM DT (VM_DT), a single threshold differentiated LPA from SED, whereas the threshold for differentiating MVPA from LPA decreased as the level of impairment increased. The average cross-validation accuracies for the VC_DT were 81.1%, 76.7%, and 82.9% for GMFCS levels I, II, and III. The corresponding cross-validation accuracies for the VM_DT were 80.5%, 75.6%, and 84.2%. Within each GMFCS level, the DT models achieved better PA intensity recognition than previously published cut points. The accuracy differential was greatest among GMFCS level III participants, in whom the previously published cut points misclassified 40% of the MVPA activity trials. CONCLUSIONS The GMFCS-specific cut points provide more accurate assessments of MVPA levels in youth with CP across the full spectrum of ambulatory ability.
Implications of Geographical Factors and Trends of Climatic Factors on Aridity/Humidity Trends

The study aimed to find the implications of geographical factors and trends of climatic factors (precipitation, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation) on aridity index trends at 56 sites in South Korea. Monthly, seasonal, and annual normal aridity index values for the 56 study stations in South Korea were estimated for a 30-year period (1974-2003). The aridity index was estimated as the ratio of precipitation (P) to potential evapotranspiration (PET) (P/PET). Detailed geographical information and multiple linear regression (MLR) analyses were used to assess the implications. The trends of climatic factors had more close implications on aridity index trends than geographical factors. The aridity index changes were driven mainly by changes in precipitation; and the changes in other climatic factors (wind speed, relative humidity, and solar radiation) also showed significant correlations with the aridity index trend. When considering the relative importance of geographical factors (elevation, freshwater area, urbanization, and proximity to the coast) on aridity/humidity trends, the elevation were found to be the most important factor. The changes in precipitation as climatic factor and elevation as geographical factor are turned out to be the most important factors affecting on regional aridity/humidity trends in South Korea.
Biofilm development by clinical isolates of Staphylococcus spp. from retrieved orthopedic prostheses

Background Biofilms are considered the key factor in the development of implant-related infections. However, only a few reports have dealt with the ability of organisms isolated from such infections to develop biofilms in vitro. Methods We evaluated different phenotypic techniques (2 microtiter plate assays and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and genotypic techniques (detection of the ica operon) related to biofilm development by clinical isolates of Staphylococcus spp. Results All 26 strains tested (from 23 specimens) were biofilm producers. Stepanovic test detected biofilm formation in 85% of the strains, microtiter plate assay in 65%, and CLSM in 39%. The ica operon was detected in 73% of all strains (all 13 S. aureus strains and 6 of the 13 coagulase-negative Staphylococcus strains). 7 ica-negative strains were biofilm-positive by phenotypic methods. Interpretation The detection of ica genes could not be related to the phenotypic ability of the strains to develop a biofilm in vitro, so both studies (genetic and phenotypic) are required for a better evaluation of the biofilm-producing ability of clinical strains of Staphylococcus isolated from orthopedic infections.