Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The dermal-epidermal junction of human skin contains a novel laminin variant

We report the identification of a novel laminin variant that appears to be unique to a subset of epithelial basement membranes. The variant contains two chains electrophoretically and immunologically identical to the B1 and B2 chains. Epitopes contained in the laminin A chain are absent from the molecule, and a 190-kD chain substitutes for the A chain. V8 protease analysis and Western blotting studies indicate that the variant 190-kD chain shows structural and immunological similarity to the 200-kD chain of kalinin. Rotary shadowing analysis indicates that the 190-kD chain contributes a large globular structure to the variant long arm, but lacks the short arm contributed to laminin by the A chain. The variant is produced by cultured skin explants, human keratinocytes and a squamous cell carcinoma line, and is present in human amniotic fluid. Polyclonal antibodies raised to kalinin, a recently characterized novel component of anchoring filaments, and mAb BM165 which recognizes a subunit of kalinin (Rousselle et al., 1991) cross react with the variant under nonreducing conditions. Immunohistological surveys of human tissues using the crossreacting antikalinin antiserum indicate that the distribution of this laminin variant is at least restricted to anchoring filament containing basement membranes. We propose the name K-laminin for this variant.
Postconcussion Symptoms in Patients with Injury-Related Chronic Pain

Background. Postconcussion symptoms (PCSs)—such as fatigue, headache, irritability, dizziness, and impaired memory—are commonly reported in patients who have mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBIs). Evaluation of PCS after MTBI is proposed to have a diagnostic value although it is unclear whether PCS are specific to MTBI. After whiplash injuries, patients most often complain of headaches and neck pain; the other PCS are not as closely evaluated. In patients with chronic pain because of other injuries, the presence of PCS is unclear. This study aimed to describe the frequency of PCS in patients with injury-related pain and to examine the relationships between PCS, pain, and psychological factors. Methods. This study collected data using questionnaires addressing PCS (Rivermead Postconcussion Questionnaire, RPQ), pain intensity (Visual Analogue Scale), depression, anxiety (Hospital, Anxiety, and Depression Scale), and posttraumatic stress (Impact of Event Scale). Results. Fatigue (90.7%), sleep disturbance (84.9%), headache (73.5%), poor concentration (88.2%), and poor memory (67.1%) were some of the most commonly reported PCS. Significant relationships were found between PCS and posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. Conclusion. To optimize treatment, it is important to assess each patient's PCS, the mechanism of injury, and factors such as posttraumatic stress and depression.
Generative modeling for continuous non-linearly embedded visual inference

Many difficult visual perception problems, like 3D human motion estimation, can be formulated in terms of inference using complex generative models, defined over high-dimensional state spaces. Despite progress, optimizing such models is difficult because prior knowledge cannot be flexibly integrated in order to reshape an initially designed representation space. Nonlinearities, inherent sparsity of high-dimensional training sets, and lack of global continuity makes dimensionality reduction challenging and low-dimensional search inefficient. To address these problems, we present a learning and inference algorithm that restricts visual tracking to automatically extracted, non-linearly embedded, low-dimensional spaces. This formulation produces a layered generative model with reduced state representation, that can be estimated using efficient continuous optimization methods. Our prior flattening method allows a simple analytic treatment of low-dimensional intrinsic curvature constraints, and allows consistent interpolation operations. We analyze reduced manifolds for human interaction activities, and demonstrate that the algorithm learns continuous generative models that are useful for tracking and for the reconstruction of 3D human motion in monocular video.
Widespread Paleopolyploidy in Model Plant Species Inferred from Age Distributions of Duplicate Genes

It is often anticipated that many of today's diploid plant species are in fact paleopolyploids. Given that an ancient large-scale duplication will result in an excess of relatively old duplicated genes with similar ages, we analyzed the timing of duplication of pairs of paralogous genes in 14 model plant species. Using EST contigs (unigenes), we identified pairs of paralogous genes in each species and used the level of synonymous nucleotide substitution to estimate the relative ages of gene duplication. For nine of the investigated species (wheat [Triticum aestivum], maize [Zea mays], tetraploid cotton [Gossypium hirsutum], diploid cotton [G. arboretum], tomato [Lycopersicon esculentum], potato [Solanum tuberosum], soybean [Glycine max], barrel medic [Medicago truncatula], and Arabidopsis thaliana), the age distributions of duplicated genes contain peaks corresponding to short evolutionary periods during which large numbers of duplicated genes were accumulated. Large-scale duplications (polyploidy or aneuploidy) are strongly suspected to be the cause of these temporal peaks of gene duplication. However, the unusual age profile of tandem gene duplications in Arabidopsis indicates that other scenarios, such as variation in the rate at which duplicated genes are deleted, must also be considered.
Power Analysis Of Embedded Software: A First Step Towards Software Power Minimization

Embedded computer systems are characterized by the presence of a dedicated processor and the software that runs on it. Power constraints are increasingly becoming the critical component of the design specification of these systems. At present, however, power analysis tools can only be applied at the lower levels of the design—the circuit or gate level. It is either impractical or impossible to use the lower level tools to estimate the power cost of the software component of the system. This paper describes the first systematic attempt to model this power cost. A power analysis technique is developed that has been applied to two commercial microprocessors—Intel 486DX2 and Fujitsu SPARClite 934. This technique can be employed to evaluate the power cost of embedded software and also be used to search the design space in software power optimization.
Deep Reinforcement Learning with Attention for Slate Markov Decision Processes with High-Dimensional States and Actions

Many real-world problems come with action spaces represented as feature vectors. Although high-dimensional control is a largely unsolved problem, there has recently been progress for modest dimensionalities. Here we report on a successful attempt at addressing problems of dimensionality as high as $2000$, of a particular form. Motivated by important applications such as recommendation systems that do not fit the standard reinforcement learning frameworks, we introduce Slate Markov Decision Processes (slate-MDPs). A Slate-MDP is an MDP with a combinatorial action space consisting of slates (tuples) of primitive actions of which one is executed in an underlying MDP. The agent does not control the choice of this executed action and the action might not even be from the slate, e.g., for recommendation systems for which all recommendations can be ignored. We use deep Q-learning based on feature representations of both the state and action to learn the value of whole slates. Unlike existing methods, we optimize for both the combinatorial and sequential aspects of our tasks. The new agent's superiority over agents that either ignore the combinatorial or sequential long-term value aspect is demonstrated on a range of environments with dynamics from a real-world recommendation system. Further, we use deep deterministic policy gradients to learn a policy that for each position of the slate, guides attention towards the part of the action space in which the value is the highest and we only evaluate actions in this area. The attention is used within a sequentially greedy procedure leveraging submodularity. Finally, we show how introducing risk-seeking can dramatically improve the agents performance and ability to discover more far reaching strategies.
Therapy of von Willebrand Disease

Impressive progress has been made in the treatment of von Willebrand disease. Desmopressin is the drug of choice for mild to moderate type I von Willebrand disease patients in whom adequate hemostatic levels of vWF activity can be achieved. Cryoprecipitate from random donors is no longer an optimal choice because of the risk of transfusion-associated viral infections. In special circumstances, cryoprecipitate from a very small donor pool, particularly if obtained following desmopressin stimulation, remains an attractive alternative because these donors can be intensively screened. This therapy may also be somewhat less expensive than commercial concentrates. Virally attenuated commercial concentrates containing intact vWF multimers are currently the treatment of choice to achieve high levels of vWF for moderate to severe von Willebrand disease and for patients with variants of von Willebrand disease that cannot be adequately treated with desmopressin or for whom desmopressin is contraindicated. It is hoped that concentrates of vWF specifically designed for treatment of von Willebrand disease will prove to be safe and efficacious. Standardized assays of vWF in concentrates need to be established. Although, the optimal treatment product has not been produced, several of the more recently developed products have structures that more closely resemble intact normal plasma vWF and appear promising.
Dynamic extension of typed functional languages

We present a solution to the problem of dynamic extension in statically typed functional languages with type erasure. The presented solution retains the benefits of static checking, including type safety, aggressive optimizations, and native code compilation of components, while allowing extensibility of programs at runtime. Our approach is based on a framework for dynamic extension in a statically typed setting, combining dynamic linking, runtime type checking, first class modules and code hot swapping. We show that this framework is sufficient to allow a broad class of dynamic extension capabilities in any statically typed functional language with type erasure semantics. Uniquely, we employ the full compile-time type system to perform runtime type checking of dynamic components, and emphasize the use of native code extension to ensure that the performance benefits of static typing are retained in a dynamic environment. We also develop the concept of fully dynamic software architectures, where the static core is minimal and all code is hot swappable. Benefits of the approach include hot swappable code and sophisticated application extension via embedded domain specific languages. We instantiate the concepts of the framework via a full implementation in the Haskell programming language: providing rich mechanisms for dynamic linking, loading, hot swapping, and runtime type checking in Haskell for the first time. We demonstrate the feasibility of this architecture through a number of novel applications: an extensible text editor; a plugin-based network chat bot; a simulator for polymer chemistry; and xmonad, an extensible window manager. In doing so, we demonstrate that static typing is no barrier to dynamic extension.
Decision Support Concept to Selection of Wastewater Treatment Plant Location—the Case Study of Town of Kutina, Croatia

In environmental projects, decision-making can be a complex and challenging task due to the in-built existence of compromises between environmental, socio-political, and economic factors. This paper explores a systematic approach to developing a decision support concept that includes the analysis of wastewater treatment problems, knowledge acquisition, and the identification and evaluation of criteria that bring forth an optimal solution to the location selection of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The objective of this research is to develop a decision support concept (DSC) to aid in the planning phases of complex engineering projects, such as the construction of WWTP. The development of the concept starts with an assessment of the issue and an identification of relevant stakeholders accepting their different views and attitudes in an attempt to resolve this issue. The DSC was tested on a real case project—WWTP location selection within the town of Kutina, Croatia. Results indicate that it is possible to develop such a concept based on multicriteria methods on which decision-makers can rely.
Increased-resolution OCT thickness mapping of the human macula: a statistically based registration.

PURPOSE To describe the development of a technique that enhances spatial resolution of retinal thickness maps of the Stratus OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc., Dublin, CA). A retinal thickness atlas (RT-atlas) template was calculated, and a macular coordinate system was established, to pursue this objective. METHODS The RT-atlas was developed from principal component analysis of retinal thickness analyzer (RTA) maps acquired from healthy volunteers. The Stratus OCT radial thickness measurements were registered on the RT-atlas, from which an improved macular thickness map was calculated. Thereafter, Stratus OCT circular scans were registered on the previously calculated map to enhance spatial resolution. RESULTS The developed technique was applied to Stratus OCT thickness data from healthy volunteers and from patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR) or age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Results showed that for normal, or close to normal, macular thickness maps from healthy volunteers and patients with DR, this technique can be an important aid in determining retinal thickness. Efforts are under way to improve the registration of retinal thickness data in patients with AMD. CONCLUSIONS The developed technique enhances the evaluation of data acquired by the Stratus OCT, helping the detection of early retinal thickness abnormalities. Moreover, a normative database of retinal thickness measurements gained from this technique, as referenced to the macular coordinate system, can be created without errors induced by missed fixation and eye tilt.
Sulfate Resistance of Concrete: A New Approach

The objective of this program is to critically review existing performance specifications and test methods on sulfate attack, to provide the technical basis for improved performance standards, and to provide criteria for evaluation, selection, and use of concrete materials for sulfate attack resistance. The approach taken is based on ASTM E 632. In following the procedure described in ASTM E 632, the performance of concrete under sulfate attack needs to be divided into several phenomena and therefore several tests had to be developed. The various phenomena are: • Concrete properties: absorption and diffusion of sulfate (resistance to the ingress of sulfate solutions). • Cement paste properties: chemical reaction between the hydration product and the sulfate ions. In the literature this is referred as chemical attack [2]. • Influence of environmental conditions: type of immersion (constant, partial, or cyclic) and temperature. In the literature, this is referred as physical attack [2]. Therefore the tests that were developed are: • Absorption of water by a concrete specimen. This test was submitted to ASTM and approved in 2004 as ASTM C 1585. • Diffusion of sulfate in saturated specimens. A methodology to modify existing methods is given. • A specimen test to determine the cement’s resistance to sulfate attack, which is three to five times shorter than current tests. • A test to determine the resistance to sulfate attack when a concrete is not totally immersed in the solution. This report also provides guidelines on how to combine the results of all these tests to determine a concrete’s sulfate resistance (see section Approach overview). REFERENCE Ferraris, C. F. ; Stutzman, P.E. , and Snyder, K. A. , Sulfate Resistance of Concrete: A New Approach, RD however, it was active when we started working on this project in 1999. We believe that this standard offers good guidelines to develop accelerated tests.
Assessing Water Consumption Of Barley Cultivation In Thi-qar Province, Iraq

Water footprint, Water scarcity, Water consumption, Crop production, Iraq We assessed the blue and green water consumption for cultivating barley in the Thi-Qar province, Iraq. CROPWAT 8.0 model was used to compute the total crop water use for both crops based on the meteorological data such as rainfall, maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed, sunshine and humidity as well as the soil and crop characteristics. The Penmann-Monteith method has been applied to calculate the evapotranspiration rate. The results showed that the ranges of blue water consumption for barley for10 years were between 761 m3/ton – 2,275 m3/ton. Whereas the green water footprint for the same years was ranged from 47 m3/ton – 1,235 m3/ ton. The results of this study can provide valuable information about water consumption and water availability in the Thi-Qar Province and serve as a guideline to solve or reduce water scarcity problem, thus help the relevant authorities to adopt new water strategies for Thi-Qar Province, Iraq.
Statistical Design of Reverse Dye Microarrays

MOTIVATION In cDNA microarray experiments all samples are labelled with either Cy3 dye or Cy5 dye. Certain genes exhibit dye bias-a tendency to bind more efficiently to one of the dyes. The common reference design avoids the problem of dye bias by running all arrays 'forward', so that the samples being compared are always labelled with the same dye. But comparison of samples labelled with different dyes is sometimes of interest. In these situations, it is necessary to run some arrays 'reverse'-with the dye labelling reversed-in order to correct for the dye bias. The design of these experiments will impact one's ability to identify genes that are differentially expressed in different tissues or conditions. We address the design issue of how many specimens are needed, how many forward and reverse labelled arrays to perform, and how to optimally assign Cy3 and Cy5 labels to the specimens. RESULTS We consider three types of experiments for which some reverse labelling is needed: paired samples, samples from two predefined groups, and reference design data when comparison with the reference is of interest. We present simple probability models for the data, derive optimal estimators for relative gene expression, and compare the efficiency of the estimators for a range of designs. In each case, we present the optimal design and sample size formulas. We show that reverse labelling of individual arrays is generally not required.
Low-Discrepancy Point Sampling of Meshes for Rendering

A novel point sampling framework for polygonal meshes is presented, based on sampling a mesh according to a density-controlled low-discrepancy distribution. The local sampling density can be controlled by a density func- tional defined by the user, e.g. to preserve local features, or to achieve desired data reduction rates. To sample the mesh, it is cut into a disc topology, and a parametrisation is generated. The parameterised mesh is sampled using a Hilbert curve in the parameter domain, which is adapted to parametric distortions and mapped onto the mesh. 1D sample points along the Hilbert curve are then generated, correcting for parametric distortion and a user- specified local density, to give a density-controlled low-discrepancy sampling of the mesh. After a pre-processing step, the sampling density can be adjusted in real-time. Experiments show that this approach can quickly resample existing meshes with low discrepancy samples. The effectiveness and speed of the approach are demonstrated by applying it to viewpoint dependent rendering, level of detail representation, and interactive remeshing.
Text Compression for Dynamic Document Databases

For compression of text databases, semi-static word-based methods provide good performance in terms of both speed and disk space, but two problems arise. First, the memory requirements for the compression model during decoding can be unacceptably high. Second, the need to handle document insertions means that the collection must be periodically recompressed if compression efficiency is to be maintained on dynamic collections. The authors show that with careful management the impact of both of these drawbacks can be kept small. Experiments with a word-based model and over 500 Mb of text show that excellent compression rates can be retained even in the presence of severe memory limitations on the decoder, and after significant expansion in the amount of stored text.
New Nonuniform Transmission and ADPCM Coding System for Improving Both Signal-to-Noise Ratio and Bit Rate

Here we address the problem of adaptive digital-transmission systems. New systems based on a nonuniform transmission (NUT) principle are proposed, utilizing a recently proposed algorithm for adaptive identification and reconstruction of AR processes subject to missing data. We propose a new adaptive sampling (nonuniform transmission) method combined with the adaptive reconstruction algorithm. A new NUT-ADPCM coding-decoding system is designed. The proposed system is demonstrated for audio-signal compression and compared to the ADPCM G.726 standard. The new system yields improvements in both signal-to-noise ratio and average bit rate.
Stability Improvement of Indirect Matching for Music Information Retrieval

This paper reports improvement of indirect matching, which is a fast CBMIR (content-based music information retrieval) framework proposed in our previous study. Indirect matching achieves fast retrieval by combining offline search with representative queries and online quick similarity estimation based on the results of the offline search. We have found that the retrieval accuracy of indirect matching decreases when representative queries have little variation. This paper proposes a method for selecting representative queries having wide variation. To ensure wide variation between representative queries, the proposed method combines MDS (multi-dimensional scaling) and Ward's clustering. Experimental results have shown that the retrieval accuracy of indirect matching can be stabilized by the proposed method.
The Role of Convection in African Easterly Wave Dynamics

References 1. Berry, G. J., & Thorncroft, C. D. (2012). African easterly wave dynamics in a mesoscale numerical model: The upscale role of convection. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 69(4), 1267-1283. 2. Burpee, R. W. (1972). The origin and structure of easterly waves in the lower troposphere of North Africa. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 29(1), 77-90. 3. Dee, D. P., et al. (2011), The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Q. J. Roy. Met. Soc. , 137, 553–597. 4. Hall, N. M. , Kiladis, G. N. , & Thorncroft, C. D. (2006). Three-dimensional structure and dynamics of African easterly waves. Part II: Dynamical modes. J. Atmos. Sci., 63(9), 2231-2245. 5. Janiga, M. A. , & Thorncroft, C. D. (2013). Regional differences in the kinematic and thermodynamic structure of African easterly waves. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 139(675), 1598-1614. 6. Summary and Conclusions