Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geometric control of vascular networks to enhance engineered tissue integration and function

Tissue vascularization and integration with host circulation remains a key barrier to the translation of engineered tissues into clinically relevant therapies. Here, we used a microtissue molding approach to demonstrate that constructs containing highly aligned “cords” of endothelial cells triggered the formation of new capillaries along the length of the patterned cords. These vessels became perfused with host blood as early as 3 d post implantation and became progressively more mature through 28 d. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that the neovessels were composed of human and mouse endothelial cells and exhibited a mature phenotype, as indicated by the presence of alpha-smooth muscle actin–positive pericytes. Implantation of cords with a prescribed geometry demonstrated that they provided a template that defined the neovascular architecture in vivo. To explore the utility of this geometric control, we implanted primary rat and human hepatocyte constructs containing randomly organized endothelial networks vs. ordered cords. We found substantially enhanced hepatic survival and function in the constructs containing ordered cords following transplantation in mice. These findings demonstrate the importance of multicellular architecture in tissue integration and function, and our approach provides a unique strategy to engineer vascular architecture.
Topology-aware space-time network coding

Space-Time Network Coding (STNC) is a time division multiple access (TDMA)-based scheme that combines network coding and space-time coding by allowing relays to combine the information received from different sources during the transmission phase and to forward the combined signal to a destination in the relaying phase. However, STNC schemes require all the relays to overhear the signal transmitted from all the sources in the network and also a large number of time-slots to achieve full diversity in a multipoint-to-multipoint transmission, which is particularly challenging for large cellular networks. In this paper, we exploit a basic knowledge of the network topology, i.e. the knowledge of the base stations overheard by other base stations and users, to reduce drastically the number of time-slots. Our results show that our scheme is able to increase the spectral efficiency with a marginal decrease of the spatial diversity compared to traditional STNC.
A DDoS-Oriented Distributed Defense Framework Based on Edge Router Feedbacks in Autonomous Systems

Distributed defense of distributed denial of service (DDoS) is one of the main research areas in DDoS recently. It is preferred to be conducted as the control-based defense. However, some existed methods have their respective disadvantages, such as efficiency, privacy. Therefore, a DDoS-oriented distributed defense framework based on the edge router feedbacks in autonomous systems (AS) is proposed to thwart the attack traffic in the boundary of AS near to the attacking sources. In the attacks, by measuring its ingress traffic rate the victim sends the feedbacks to the edge routers, as a result that malicious traffic is effectively filtered in AS boundary. The experiments show that the distributed defense framework can effectively guarantee the survival rate of legitimate flows and protect the victims in AS from DDoS.
Thrombus aspiration with export catheter in ST elevation myocardial infarction.

BACKGROUND Many thrombectomy devices have failed to confirm initial promising results during primary angioplasty. This may be due to device complexity and operator experience. The objective of this study was to assess the safety and efficacy of the EXPORT catheter for thrombus aspiration in patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). METHODS EXPORT catheter was used in patients with STEMI and angiographic evidence of thrombus in vessels with a reference diameter > or =1.5 mm. Direct stenting and glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors were liberally employed to optimize angiographic and clinical results. Epicardial and myocardial angiographic parameters, in-hospital major adverse cardiac events (MACE, i.e., cardiac death, myocardial infarction, target vessel revascularization) were assessed. RESULTS EXPORT catheter was used in 129 patients without any device-related complications. Angiographic analysis following thrombus aspiration revealed a significant improvement in TIMI frame count (P = 0.0001), myocardial perfusion (P = 0.0001), TIMI thrombus grade (P = 0.0001), and TIMI flow (P = 0.0001). Stent implantation did not significantly improve myocardial perfusion, TIMI thrombus grade, or TIMI flow, but improved TIMI frame count, minimal lumen, and reference vessel diameter. When compared to a historical STEMI control group not undergoing thrombus aspiration, our EXPORT population showed significant improvements in reperfusion parameters. In-hospital MACE were uncommon (4.5%) despite high-risk patient characteristics. CONCLUSIONS Our study demonstrates that routine use of EXPORT catheter in patients with STEMI and coronary thrombosis is feasible, safe, and associated with significant improvements in flow-related angiographic parameters. The relative simplicity of this approach makes it an attractive option in this challenging situation.
The Quantum Locker Puzzle

The locker puzzle is a game played by multiple players against a referee. It has been previously shown that the best strategy that exists cannot success with probability greater than than 1-ln2 (approximately 0.31), no matter how many players are involved. Our contribution is to show that quantum players can do much better---they can succeed with probability 1. By making the rules of the game significantly stricter, we show a scenario where the quantum players still succeed perfectly, while the classical players win with vanishing probability. Other variants of the locker puzzle are considered, as well as a cheating referee.
Sparse Bayesian learning for efficient visual tracking

This paper extends the use of statistical learning algorithms for object localization. It has been shown that object recognizers using kernel-SVMs can be elegantly adapted to localization by means of spatial perturbation of the SVM. While this SVM applies to each frame of a video independently of other frames, the benefits of temporal fusion of data are well-known. This is addressed here by using a fully probabilistic relevance vector machine (RVM) to generate observations with Gaussian distributions that can be fused over time. Rather than adapting a recognizer, we build a displacement expert which directly estimates displacement from the target region. An object detector is used in tandem, for object verification, providing the capability for automatic initialization and recovery. This approach is demonstrated in real-time tracking systems where the sparsity of the RVM means that only a fraction of CPU time is required to track at frame rate. An experimental evaluation compares this approach to the state of the art showing it to be a viable method for long-term region tracking.
Stabilization by unbounded‐variation noises

In this paper, we claim the availability of deterministic noises for stabilization of the origins of dynamical systems, provided that the noises have unbounded variations. To achieve the result, we first consider the system representations of rough systems based on rough path analysis; then, we provide the notion of asymptotic stability for rough systems to analyze the stability for the systems. In the procedure, we also confirm that the system representations include stochastic differential equations; we also found that asymptotic stability for rough systems is the same property as uniform almost sure asymptotic stability provided by Bardi and Cesaroni. After the discussion, we confirm that there is a case that deterministic noises are capable of making the origin become asymptotically stable for rough systems while stochastic noises do not achieve the same stabilization results. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Automatic Bayesian curve fitting

A method of estimating a variety of curves by a sequence of piecewise polynomials is proposed, motivated by a Bayesian model and an appropriate summary of the resulting posterior distribution. A joint distribution is set up over both the number and the position of the knots defining the piecewise polynomials. Throughout we use reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to compute the posteriors. The methodology has been successful in giving good estimates for ‘smooth’ functions (i.e. continuous and differentiable) as well as functions which are not differentiable, and perhaps not even continuous, at a finite number of points. The methodology is extended to deal with generalized additive models.
A Study: From Electronic Laboratory Notebooks to Generated Queries for Literature Recommendation

Relating one’s research to the vast body of scientific knowledge is a difficult task; the sheer volume of literature makes it difficult to keep up-to-date with scientific developments. Particularly when research is on-going, keeping track of related work is especially important to avoid an unintended duplication of effort. We outline a novel approach to this problem that uses the text in an Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) as a representation of an experimental context in the field of Chemistry. The contribution of this work is to situate the literature recommendation task within the context of the user’s experimental information needs. We find that our approach to transform the ELN text into queries for use with PubMed is able to recover a subset of user bibliographies. We find that alternative methods for query generation that capture both scientific terminology and salient terms in the ELN complement each other.
THE ROLE OF ECOLOGICAL CONSTRAINT IN DRIVING THE EVOLUTION OF AVIAN SONG FREQUENCY ACROSS A LATITUDINAL GRADIENT

Just as features of the physical and biotic environment constrain evolution of ecological and morphological traits, they may also affect evolution of communication systems. Here we analyze constraints on rates of vocal evolution, using a large dataset of New World avian sister taxa. We show that species breeding in tropical forests sing at generally lower frequencies and across narrower bandwidths than species breeding in open habitats, or at high latitudes. We attribute these restrictions on birdsong frequency to the presence of high‐frequency insect noise and greater degradation of high‐frequency sounds in tropical forests. We fit Ornstein–Uhlenbeck models to show that recent evolution of song frequency has been more greatly constrained in tropical forests than elsewhere, that is, songs have shown less tendency to diverge over time in tropical forests, consistent with inferred acoustic restrictions. In addition, we find that song frequency has evolved more rapidly overall at high latitudes in both forest and open habitats. Besides a larger available sound window, other factors contributing to more rapid divergence at high latitudes may include an overall increased intensity of sexual selection, occupation of more divergent habitats, and the presence of fewer competing species.
A new genetic algorithm with self-configuration chromosome to discover optimal fleeing paths in blaze scene

In this paper, a new genetic algorithm with self-configuration chromosomes for optimization is proposed. In legacy approaches, the chromosomes are with a constant structure. Thus, the search driven by genetic algorithm in solution space is not efficient. In this paper, a scheme of configuring chromosome structure is presented. The chromosome structure is adjusted according to the solution space. The proposed scheme is composed of three phases; solution space analysis, chromosome configuration and genetic operation. Through three phases, the chromosome structure is derived from solution space analysis and is adjusted in iterations to approach the optimal solution. The proposed scheme is applied to find the shortest secure path for people in blaze scene. We deploy a wireless sensor network to collect the temperature distribution in a blaze scene. The proposed genetic algorithm will discover the fleeing path from the measured temperature distribution. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme features (1) effectiveness (2) timeliness and (3) reliability. The developed system also benefits the security and safety of people in business buildings.
Fear boosts the early neural coding of faces

Abstract The rapid extraction of facial identity and emotional expressions is critical for adapted social interactions. These biologically relevant abilities have been associated with early neural responses on the face sensitive N170 component. However, whether all facial expressions uniformly modulate the N170, and whether this effect occurs only when emotion categorization is task-relevant, is still unclear. To clarify this issue, we recorded high-resolution electrophysiological signals while 22 observers perceived the six basic expressions plus neutral. We used a repetition suppression paradigm, with an adaptor followed by a target face displaying the same identity and expression (trials of interest). We also included catch trials to which participants had to react, by varying identity (identity-task), expression (expression-task) or both (dual-task) on the target face. We extracted single-trial Repetition Suppression (stRS) responses using a data-driven spatiotemporal approach with a robust hierarchical linear model to isolate adaptation effects on the trials of interest. Regardless of the task, fear was the only expression modulating the N170, eliciting the strongest stRS responses. This observation was corroborated by distinct behavioral performance during the catch trials for this facial expression. Altogether, our data reinforce the view that fear elicits distinct neural processes in the brain, enhancing attention and facilitating the early coding of faces.
Basic auditory processes involved in the analysis of speech sounds

This paper reviews the basic aspects of auditory processing that play a role in the perception of speech. The frequency selectivity of the auditory system, as measured using masking experiments, is described and used to derive the internal representation of the spectrum (the excitation pattern) of speech sounds. The perception of timbre and distinctions in quality between vowels are related to both static and dynamic aspects of the spectra of sounds. The perception of pitch and its role in speech perception are described. Measures of the temporal resolution of the auditory system are described and a model of temporal resolution based on a sliding temporal integrator is outlined. The combined effects of frequency and temporal resolution can be modelled by calculation of the spectro-temporal excitation pattern, which gives good insight into the internal representation of speech sounds. For speech presented in quiet, the resolution of the auditory system in frequency and time usually markedly exceeds the resolution necessary for the identification or discrimination of speech sounds, which partly accounts for the robust nature of speech perception. However, for people with impaired hearing, speech perception is often much less robust.
Physiological Roles for Two Periplasmic Nitrate Reductases in Rhodobacter sphaeroides 2.4.3 (ATCC 17025)

ABSTRACT The metabolically versatile purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides 2.4. 3 is a denitrifier whose genome contains two periplasmic nitrate reductase-encoding gene clusters. This work demonstrates nonredundant physiological roles for these two enzymes. One cluster is expressed aerobically and repressed under low oxygen while the second is maximally expressed under low oxygen. Insertional inactivation of the aerobically expressed nitrate reductase eliminated aerobic nitrate reduction, but cells of this strain could still respire nitrate anaerobically. In contrast, when the anaerobic nitrate reductase was absent, aerobic nitrate reduction was detectable, but anaerobic nitrate reduction was impaired. The aerobic nitrate reductase was expressed but not utilized in liquid culture but was utilized during growth on solid medium. Growth on a variety of carbon sources, with the exception of malate, the most oxidized substrate used, resulted in nitrite production on solid medium. This is consistent with a role for the aerobic nitrate reductase in redox homeostasis. These results show that one of the nitrate reductases is specific for respiration and denitrification while the other likely plays a role in redox homeostasis during aerobic growth.
A compact voltage-controlled transconductor with high linearity

A linear CMOS transconductor using triode transistors based on the scheme of flipped voltage follower current sensor (FVFCS) is presented. The transconductor features a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of −72 dB for 1 Vpp differential inputs at 1 MHz. The transconductor dissipates 1.73 mW from a 3.3 V supply and occupies 0.09 mm2 in a 0.5 µm CMOS technology.
Final Year Project Mining HKUCS Graduate Student Data : Extraction , Analysis , and Prediction FINAL REPORT

Educational Data Mining (EDM) is an emerging field that uses statistical and machine learning algorithms to find patterns in massive educational data sets. It is commonly used to solve problems such as predicting admission outcome and student performance. This project applies educational data mining techniques to the admission data of the graduate programs in the Computer Science Department of the University of Hong Kong (HKUCS). The objective of the project is to build a web application with a user-friendly interface that visualizes and analyses admission data using the following algorithms: Decision Tree algorithm, Association Rule algorithm and Logistic Regression algorithm. Based on the admission patterns that are found, the web application suggests a ranked list of candidates for admission decisions.
Some Structural and Security Properties of the Modular Secret Sharing

We mainly study the modular secret sharing over the ring of univariate polynomials over the Galois field. The proposed modular schemes over these rings achieve improvements both in security and applicability compared to classical schemes over the ring of integers. Our threshold schemes are perfect i.e. secure in the sense of information theory and ideal i.e. efficient in the terms of memory storage (the size of the secret is equal to the size of the shares). Then we consider the modular secret sharing schemes with pairwise co-prime moduli over the ring of polynomials and the ring of integers. We give a complete description of the access structures that can be realized by such modular schemes.
One-shot field spotting on colored forms using subgraph isomorphism

This paper presents an approach for spotting textual fields in commercial and administrative colored forms. We proceed by locating these fields thanks to their neighboring context which is modeled with a structural representation. First, informative zones are extracted. Second, forms are represented by graphs. In these graphs, nodes represent colored rectangular shapes while edges represent neighboring relations. Finally, the neighboring context of the queried region of interest is modeled as a graph. Subgraph isomorphism is applied in order to locate this ROI in the structural representation of a whole document. Evaluated on a 130-document image dataset, experimental results show up that our approach is efficient and that the requested information is found even if its position is changed.
Mechanisms of Cisplatin Nephrotoxicity

Cisplatin is a widely used and highly effective cancer chemotherapeutic agent. One of the limiting side effects of cisplatin use is nephrotoxicity. Research over the past 10 years has uncovered many of the cellular mechanisms which underlie cisplatin-induced renal cell death. It has also become apparent that inflammation provoked by injury to renal epithelial cells serves to amplify kidney injury and dysfunction in vivo. This review summarizes recent advances in our understanding of cisplatin nephrotoxicity and discusses how these advances might lead to more effective prevention.
Cumulon: Matrix-Based Data Analytics in the Cloud with Spot Instances

We describe Cumulon, a system aimed at helping users develop and deploy matrix-based data analysis programs in a public cloud. A key feature of Cumulon is its end-to-end support for the so-called spot instances---machines whose market price fluctuates over time but is usually much lower than the regular fixed price. A user sets a bid price when acquiring spot instances, and loses them as soon as the market price exceeds the bid price. While spot instances can potentially save cost, they are difficult to use effectively, and run the risk of not finishing work while costing more. Cumulon provides a highly elastic computation and storage engine on top of spot instances, and offers automatic cost-based optimization of execution, deployment, and bidding strategies. Cumulon further quantifies how the uncertainty in the market price translates into the cost uncertainty of its recommendations, and allows users to specify their risk tolerance as an optimization constraint.
AWTY (are we there yet?): a system for graphical exploration of MCMC convergence in Bayesian phylogenetics

UNLABELLED A key element to a successful Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inference is the programming and run performance of the Markov chain. However, the explicit use of quality assessments of the MCMC simulations-convergence diagnostics-in phylogenetics is still uncommon. Here, we present a simple tool that uses the output from MCMC simulations and visualizes a number of properties of primary interest in a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, such as convergence rates of posterior split probabilities and branch lengths. Graphical exploration of the output from phylogenetic MCMC simulations gives intuitive and often crucial information on the success and reliability of the analysis. The tool presented here complements convergence diagnostics already available in other software packages primarily designed for other applications of MCMC. Importantly, the common practice of using trace-plots of a single parameter or summary statistic, such as the likelihood score of sampled trees, can be misleading for assessing the success of a phylogenetic MCMC simulation. AVAILABILITY The program is available as source under the GNU General Public License and as a web application at http://ceb.scs. fsu.edu/awty.