Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phonemic restoration in developmental dyslexia

The comprehension of fluent speech in one's native language requires that listeners integrate the detailed acoustic-phonetic information available in the sound signal with linguistic knowledge. This interplay is especially apparent in the phoneme restoration effect, a phenomenon in which a missing phoneme is “restored” via the influence of top-down information from the lexicon and through bottom-up acoustic processing. Developmental dyslexia is a disorder characterized by an inability to read at the level of one's peers without any clear failure due to environmental influences. In the current study we utilized the phonemic restoration illusion paradigm to examine individual differences in phonemic restoration across a range of reading ability, from very good to dyslexic readers. Results demonstrate that restoration occurs less in those who have high scores on measures of phonological processing. Based on these results, we suggest that the processing or representation of acoustic detail may not be as reliable in poor and dyslexic readers, with the result that lexical information is more likely to override acoustic properties of the stimuli. This pattern of increased restoration could result from a failure of perceptual tuning, in which unstable representations of speech sounds result in the acceptance of non-speech sounds as speech. An additional or alternative theory is that degraded or impaired phonological processing at the speech sound level may reflect architecture that is overly plastic and consequently fails to stabilize appropriately for speech sound representations. Therefore, the inability to separate speech and noise may result as a deficit in separating noise from the acoustic signal.
Error Probabilities for Spread-Spectrum Packet Radio with Convolutional Codes and Viterbi Decoding

The use of convolutional coding in packet radio systems introduces problems in evaluating performance, since the errors out of the decoder are not independent. A new bound on the packet error probability out of a Viterbi decoder may be used to evaluate these systems. We present results on the packet error probability for frequency-hop and direct-sequence spread spectrum systems. In addition, we show that the assumption of independent errors out of the decoder also gives an upper bound.
Improved forward and inverse analyses of saturated‐unsaturated flow toward a well in a compressible unconfined aquifer

We present an analytical solution for flow to a partially penetrating well in a compressible unconfined aquifer that allows inferring its saturated and unsaturated hydraulic properties from drawdowns recorded in the saturated and/or unsaturated zone. We improve upon a previous such solution due to Tartakovsky and Neuman (2007) by (1) adopting a more flexible representation of unsaturated zone constitutive properties and (2) allowing the unsaturated zone to have finite thickness. Both solutions account for horizontal as well as vertical flows throughout the system. We investigate the effects of unsaturated zone constitutive parameters and thickness on drawdowns in the saturated and unsaturated zones as functions of position and time; demonstrate the development of significant horizontal hydraulic gradients in the unsaturated zone in response to pumping; validate our solution against numerical simulations of drawdown in a synthetic aquifer having unsaturated properties described by the van Genuchten‐Mualem constitutive model; use our solution to analyze drawdown data from a pumping test conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey at Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and compare our estimates of van Genuchten‐Mualem parameters with laboratory values obtained for similar materials in the area.
The manipulability: a new index for quantifying movement capacities of upper extremity

In this work, it is proposed to evaluate the upper-limb movements through a global index of performance borrowed from the field of robotics: the manipulability. For a given posture, this index quantifies the set of velocities that can be achieved at the wrist in all the Cartesian directions. The manipulability can be represented by an ellipsoid from which the volume and shape related parameters can be derived. During a reach to grasp movement, the ellipsoid obtained from experiment presented a flattened shape along the forearm longitudinal axis and an increased volume as the arm was extended. From this study, it is concluded that: (1) the ellipsoid volume reflects well the ability to generate speed at the wrist which is effectively maximal for an extended posture; (2) if maximal velocity is an important parameter it might be advisable to primarily move the hand perpendicularly to the forearm longitudinal axis. Practitioner Summary: The interest of manipulability indices is that they evaluate globally a posture of the upper-limb in relation to a given task. This original parameter could help to design environments or devices in order that the adopted postures maximise one particular aspect of the performance, i.e. the velocity of the hand.
The Rigid Amphipathic Fusion Inhibitor dUY11 Acts through Photosensitization of Viruses

ABSTRACT Rigid amphipathic fusion inhibitors (RAFIs) are lipophilic inverted-cone-shaped molecules thought to antagonize the membrane curvature transitions that occur during virus-cell fusion and are broad-spectrum antivirals against enveloped viruses (Broad-SAVE). Here, we show that RAFIs act like membrane-binding photosensitizers: their antiviral effect is dependent on light and the generation of singlet oxygen (1O2), similar to the mechanistic paradigm established for LJ001, a chemically unrelated class of Broad-SAVE. Photosensitization of viral membranes is a common mechanism that underlies these Broad-SAVE.
PPAR-γ2 Pro12Ala Variant Is Associated with Greater Insulin Sensitivity in Childhood Obesity

Several genetic variants of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ2 (PPAR-γ2), a molecule known to be involved in transcription of target genes, have been identified. Pro12Ala, a missense mutation in exon 2 of the gene, is highly prevalent in Caucasian populations. Conflicting conclusions about the association between this mutation and complex traits such as obesity, insulin sensitivity, and T2DM have been reported. We have investigated the association of PPAR-γ2 Pro12Ala polymorphism with measures of insulin sensitivity in a population of Italian obese children (n = 200; mean age, 10.38 ± 2.8 y) in whom clinical and biochemical analyses were performed. To estimate the insulin sensitivity status, the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) was calculated in all subjects. The effect of the Pro12Ala polymorphism on quantitative variables was tested using multiple linear regression analysis. The frequency of Ala carriers was 17%, similar to that reported in other adult Caucasian populations. The X12Ala (either Pro12Ala or Ala12Ala) genotype was associated with significantly lower fasting insulin levels compared with Pro/Pro (p = 0.008). Consistent with this finding, significantly lower HOMA-IR was observed in X12Ala carriers (p = 0.023). In conclusion, our observations demonstrate that the X12Ala variant is significantly associated with greater insulin sensitivity in childhood obesity. Because obesity is one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, obese children, who are presumably at a higher risk, may be protected from these diseases by the phenotypic effect of the Ala 12 allele on insulin resistance.
Targeted KRAS Mutation Assessment on Patient Tumor Histologic Material in Real Time Diagnostics

Background Testing for tumor specific mutations on routine formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues may predict response to treatment in Medical Oncology and has already entered diagnostics, with KRAS mutation assessment as a paradigm. The highly sensitive real time PCR (Q-PCR) methods developed for this purpose are usually standardized under optimal template conditions. In routine diagnostics, however, suboptimal templates pose the challenge. Herein, we addressed the applicability of sequencing and two Q-PCR methods on prospectively assessed diagnostic cases for KRAS mutations. Methodology/Principal Findings Tumor FFPE-DNA from 135 diagnostic and 75 low-quality control samples was obtained upon macrodissection, tested for fragmentation and assessed for KRAS mutations with dideoxy-sequencing and with two Q-PCR methods (Taqman-minor-groove-binder [TMGB] probes and DxS-KRAS-IVD). Samples with relatively well preserved DNA could be accurately analyzed with sequencing, while Q-PCR methods yielded informative results even in cases with very fragmented DNA (p<0.0001) with 100% sensitivity and specificity vs each other. However, Q-PCR efficiency (Ct values) also depended on DNA-fragmentation (p<0.0001). Q-PCR methods were sensitive to detect ≤1% mutant cells, provided that samples yielded cycle thresholds (Ct) <29, but this condition was met in only 38.5% of diagnostic samples. In comparison, FFPE samples (>99%) could accurately be analyzed at a sensitivity level of 10% (external validation of TMGB results). DNA quality and tumor cell content were the main reasons for discrepant sequencing/Q-PCR results (1.5%). Conclusions/Significance Diagnostic targeted mutation assessment on FFPE-DNA is very efficient with Q-PCR methods in comparison to dideoxy-sequencing. However, DNA fragmentation/amplification capacity and tumor DNA content must be considered for the interpretation of Q-PCR results in order to provide accurate information for clinical decision making.
Building a sense-distinguished multilingual lexicon from monolingual corpora and bilingual lexicons

Both lexical translation and knowledge-based translation systems require sense-distinguished translation lexicons, yet such lexicons are expensive to create manually. However, the abundance of untagged monolingual corpora and the availability of bilingual, machinereadable dictionaries (MRDs) suggest an opportunity. Our PanLexicon system takes advantage of these resources to automatically construct a sensedistinguished multilingual lexicon. The challenge for PanLexicon is that free, bilingual MRDs do not make sense distinctions, and often have spotty coverage. PanLexicon uses word contexts from monolingual corpora to guide it in finding translation sets – sets of words that share the same word sense across multiple languages. By maintaining word sense distinctions, PanLexicon finds translations between language pairs that are not supported by any of its bilingual source dictionaries. PanLexicon runs in time linear in the size of its input, and thus scales readily to large numbers of
Seasonality and comparative dynamics of six childhood infections in pre-vaccination Copenhagen

Seasonal variation in infection transmission is a key determinant of epidemic dynamics of acute infections. For measles, the best-understood strongly immunizing directly transmitted childhood infection, the perception is that term-time forcing is the main driver of seasonality in developed countries. The degree to which this holds true across other acute immunizing childhood infections is not clear. Here, we identify seasonal transmission patterns using a unique long-term dataset with weekly incidence of six infections including measles. Data on age–incidence allow us to quantify the mean age of infection. Results indicate correspondence between dips in transmission and school holidays for some infections, but there are puzzling discrepancies, despite close correspondence between average age of infection and age of schooling. Theoretical predictions of the relationship between amplitude of seasonality and basic reproductive rate of infections that should result from term-time forcing are also not upheld. We conclude that where yearly trajectories of susceptible numbers are perturbed, e.g. via waning of immunity, seasonality is unlikely to be entirely driven by term-time forcing. For the three bacterial infections, pertussis, scarlet fever and diphtheria, there is additionally a strong increase in transmission during the late summer before the end of school vacations.
Ex vivo evaluation of the ability of four different electronic apex locators to determine the working length in teeth with various foramen diameters.

BACKGROUND The aim of this ex vivo study was to evaluate the accuracy of four electronic apex locators (EALs) to determine the working length in teeth with various foramen diameters. Our previous study revealed that electronically measured canal length was influenced by the root canal diameter. It is not known whether foramen size would interfere with the reading accuracy of an EAL. METHODS A total of 36 extracted human lower single rooted premolar teeth were divided into four groups of nine teeth each. In groups A, B and C, the root canals were instrumented using #10-80, #10-100 and #10-120 K-files, and the tip of size #80, #100 and #120 K-files were permitted to pass through the apical foramen to a length of 1mm, respectively. In group D, the teeth were instrumented using #10-140 K-files and the tip of #140 K-file was permitted to pass through the apical foramen to a length of 5 mm. Thus, the average apical foramen diameters in groups A, B, C and D were approximately 0.82 mm, 1.02 mm, 1.22mm and 1.5 mm, respectively. The teeth were then mounted in 1% agar and four EALs were used: Root ZX, Foramatron D10, Apex NRG and Apit 7. For electronic measurement, sizes #10 and #80, #10 and #100, #10 and #120, and #10 and #140 K-files were used for groups A, B, C and D, respectively. During electronic measurement the canals were flushed with 6% sodium hypochlorite solution. RESULTS Three-way ANOVA and Bonferroni test showed that EAL, file size and foramen size all had a significant influence on the measurement error (P<0.0001), with all the interactions between these three factors being significant (P<0.0001). CONCLUSIONS The four EALs were unreliable to determine the working length of teeth with a wide apical foramen, when using a small size file. The Root ZX and Foramatron D10 showed significantly better scores than the other two EALs and may be more reliable to determine the working length of teeth with a wide apical foramen, if a tight-fit file is used.
Substrates coated with silver nanoparticles as a neuronal regenerative material

Much effort has been devoted to the design of effective biomaterials for nerve regeneration. Here, we report the novel use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) as regenerative agents to promote neuronal growth. We grew neuroblastoma cells on surfaces coated with AgNPs and studied the effect on the development of the neurites during the initiation and the elongation growth phases. We find that the AgNPs function as favorable anchoring sites, and the growth on the AgNP-coated substrates leads to a significantly enhanced neurite outgrowth. Cells grown on substrates coated with AgNPs have initiated three times more neurites than cells grown on uncoated substrates, and two times more than cells grown on substrates sputtered with a plain homogenous layer of silver. The growth of neurites on AgNPs in the elongation phase was enhanced as well. A comparison with substrates coated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) demonstrated a clear silver material-driven promoting effect, in addition to the nanotopography. The growth on substrates coated with AgNPs has led to a significantly higher number of initiating neurites when compared to substrates coated with AuNPs or ZnONPs. All nanoparticle-coated substrates affected and promoted the elongation of neurites, with a significant positive maximal effect for the AgNPs. Our results, combined with the well-known antibacterial effect of AgNPs, suggest the use of AgNPs as an attractive nanomaterial – with dual activity – for neuronal repair studies.
Barrier-Restoring Therapies in Atopic Dermatitis: Current Approaches and Future Perspectives

Atopic dermatitis is a multifactorial, chronic relapsing, inflammatory disease, characterized by xerosis, eczematous lesions, and pruritus. The latter usually leads to an “itch-scratch” cycle that may compromise the epidermal barrier. Skin barrier abnormalities in atopic dermatitis may result from mutations in the gene encoding for filaggrin, which plays an important role in the formation of cornified cytosol. Barrier abnormalities render the skin more permeable to irritants, allergens, and microorganisms. Treatment of atopic dermatitis must be directed to control the itching, suppress the inflammation, and restore the skin barrier. Emollients, both creams and ointments, improve the barrier function of stratum corneum by providing it with water and lipids. Studies on atopic dermatitis and barrier repair treatment show that adequate lipid replacement therapy reduces the inflammation and restores epidermal function. Efforts directed to develop immunomodulators that interfere with cytokine-induced skin barrier dysfunction, provide a promising strategy for treatment of atopic dermatitis. Moreover, an impressive proliferation of more than 80 clinical studies focusing on topical treatments in atopic dermatitis led to growing expectations for better therapies.
Direct Density Ratio Estimation for Large-scale Covariate Shift Adaptation

Covariate shift is a situation in supervised learning where training and test inputs follow different distributions even though the functional relation remains unchanged. A common approach to compensating for the bias caused by covariate shift is to reweight the loss function according to the importance, which is the ratio of test and training densities. We propose a novel method that allows us to directly estimate the importance from samples without going through the hard task of density estimation. An advantage of the proposed method is that the computation time is nearly independent of the number of test input samples, which is highly beneficial in recent applications with large numbers of unlabeled samples. We demonstrate through experiments that the proposed method is computationally more efficient than existing approaches with comparable accuracy. We also describe a promising result for large-scale covariate shift adaptation in a natural language processing task.
High extinction ratio in-fiber polarizer based on a 45/sup /spl deg//-tilted fiber bragg grating

We report an in-fiber polarizer implemented using a 45deg-tilted fiber Bragg grating. Polarization extinction ratio of 28 dB at 1550 nm and HMFW over 80 nm has been demonstrated. When the un-polarized light passes this device, 99.5% of degree of polarization can be achieved
Light Weight Security Architecture for Cluster Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Recent technological advancements and increasing potential applications have led to the use of Wireless Sensor Networks in various fields. Since the sensor nodes are usually deployed in places where there is no human surveillance, these networks are highly vulnerable to various security threats. The memory, power and processing constraints of the sensor nodes pose challenges to developing efficient security algorithms. Although many cryptographic techniques have been proposed to mitigate outside attacks, the securing of networks against inside attacks has not been addressed effectively. In this paper, a novel security system has been proposed to address the overall security requirement for Wireless Sensor Networks. Defense against outside attacks is provided using a cluster-based authentication and key management scheme using Elliptic Curve Cryptography, while inside attacks are taken care by a Hybrid Intrusion Detection System using Bayesian probabilistic model for decision making. The simulation results show the overall effectiveness of the proposed scheme, revealing better performance in terms of resilience to outside attacks, memory capacity, energy efficiency and false alarm rate.
Ant Colony Based Node Disjoint Hybrid Multi-Path Routing for Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Mobile Ad hoc Networks are characterized by multi-hop wireless links, without any infrastructure and frequent node mobility. A class of ant colony based routing protocols has recently gained attention because of their adaptability to the network changes. AntHocNet is ant colony based hybrid algorithm, which combines reactive path setup with proactive path probing, maintenance and improvement. Multi-path routing represents a promising routing method for mobile ad hoc network. Multi-path routing achieves load balancing and is more resilient to route failures. This research introduces node disjoint multi-path property to AntHocNet routing algorithm. A virtual class room is one that can be established by using mobile devices and whose members can be dynamically added or removed. The implementation of virtual class room for lesson handling and query discussion using mobile ad hoc network is analyzed. The data are spread among the N (here N = 3) node disjoint routes from the beginning of the data transmission session. The performance metrics, average end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and load balancing have been analyzed for various pause times. The average end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio have not varied significantly. Optimal load distribution is achieved by spreading the load among different node disjoint routes.
Automated Hierarchy Discovery for Planning in Partially Observable Environments

Planning in partially observable domains is a notoriously difficult problem. However, in many real-world scenarios, planning can be simplified by decomposing the task into a hierarchy of smaller planning problems. Several approaches have been proposed to optimize a policy that decomposes according to a hierarchy specified a priori. In this paper, we investigate the problem of automatically discovering the hierarchy. More precisely, we frame the optimization of a hierarchical policy as a non-convex optimization problem that can be solved with general non-linear solvers, a mixed-integer non-linear approximation or a form of bounded hierarchical policy iteration. By encoding the hierarchical structure as variables of the optimization problem, we can automatically discover a hierarchy. Our method is flexible enough to allow any parts of the hierarchy to be specified based on prior knowledge while letting the optimization discover the unknown parts. It can also discover hierarchical policies, including recursive policies, that are more compact (potentially infinitely fewer parameters) and often easier to understand given the decomposition induced by the hierarchy.