Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of a lower-body exoskeleton device on metabolic cost and gait biomechanics during load carriage

This study investigated the effects on metabolic cost and gait biomechanics of using a prototype lower-body exoskeleton (EXO) to carry loads. Nine US Army participants walked at 1.34 m/s on a 0% grade for 8 min carrying military loads of 20 kg, 40 kg and 55 kg with and without the EXO. Mean oxygen consumption (VO2) scaled to body mass and scaled to total mass were significantly higher, by 60% and 41% respectively, when the EXO was worn, compared with the control condition. Mean [Vdot]O 2 and mean [Vdot]O 2 scaled to body mass significantly increased with load. The kinematic and kinetic data revealed significant differences between EXO and control conditions, such as walking with a more flexed posture and braking with higher ground reaction force at heel strike when wearing the EXO. Study findings demonstrate that the EXO increased users' metabolic cost while carrying various loads and altered their gait biomechanics compared with conventional load carriage. Statement of Relevance: An EXO designed to assist in load bearing was found to raise energy expenditure substantially when tested by soldiers carrying military loads. EXO weight, weight distribution and design elements that altered users' walking biomechanics contributed to the high energy cost. To realise the potential of EXOs, focus on the user must accompany engineering advances.
Intensive Short‐Term Dynamic Psychotherapy of treatment‐resistant depression: a pilot study

This pilot study examined the effectiveness of Intensive Short‐term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) in treatment‐resistant depression (TRD). Ten patients with TRD were provided a course of ISTDP. Clinician and patient symptom and interpersonal measures were completed every 4 weeks, at termination, and in follow‐up. Medication, disability, and hospital costs were compared before and after treatment. After an average of 13.6 sessions of therapy, all mean measures reached the normal range, with effect sizes ranging from 0.87 to 3.3. Gains were maintained in follow‐up assessments. Treatment costs were offset by cost reductions elsewhere in the system. This open study suggests that ISTDP may be effective with this challenging patient group. A randomized, controlled trial and qualitative research are warranted to evaluate this treatment further and to examine its possible therapeutic elements. Depression and Anxiety 23:449–452, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Genes associated with the formation of germ cells from embryonic stem cells in cultures containing different glucose concentrations

In a previous study, we established a system for visualizing the development of germ cells from mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells in culture using knock‐in ES clones in which visual reporter genes were expressed from the mouse vasa homolog, Mvh. While assessing various culture conditions, we found that germ‐cell formation was markedly depressed in low glucose medium. Using a repeated polymerase chain reaction (PCR) subtraction method, we identified genes that were differentially expressed in low versus high glucose media. Three genes that were predominantly expressed in high glucose medium, thioredoxin‐interacting protein (Txnip), pituitary tumor‐transforming gene 1 (Pttg), and RuvB‐like protein 2 (RuvBl2), were further investigated. These genes were also found to be highly expressed in adult and embryonic gonads, and RuvBl2 in particular, which encodes an ATP‐dependent DNA helicase, was specifically detected in the spermatocytes and spermatids of the adult testis as well as in primordial germ cells. Furthermore, using a green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusion construct, we found that RuvBl2 was expressed in both the nucleus and cytoplasm of testicular germ cells. These findings suggest a possible relationship between glucose metabolism and germ‐cell development. Mol. Reprod. Dev. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A model of pathways to artificial superintelligence catastrophe for risk and decision analysis

Abstract An artificial superintelligence (ASI) is an artificial intelligence that is significantly more intelligent than humans in all respects. Whilst ASI does not currently exist, some scholars propose that it could be created sometime in the future, and furthermore that its creation could cause a severe global catastrophe, possibly even resulting in human extinction. Given the high stakes, it is important to analyze ASI risk and factor the risk into decisions related to ASI research and development. This paper presents a graphical model of major pathways to ASI catastrophe, focusing on ASI created via recursive self-improvement. The model uses the established risk and decision analysis modelling paradigms of fault trees and influence diagrams in order to depict combinations of events and conditions that could lead to AI catastrophe, as well as intervention options that could decrease risks. The events and conditions include select aspects of the ASI itself as well as the human process of ASI research, development and management. Model structure is derived from published literature on ASI risk. The model offers a foundation for rigorous quantitative evaluation and decision-making on the long-term risk of ASI catastrophe.
The Berkeley 3D Object Dataset

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Full-field optical coherence microscopy

distinct spectral regions, centered at 750 nm and 1250 nm using two different cameras and a halogen lamp as illumination source. The principle of operation is explained and the system characteristics are reported in details, including the detection sensitivity and spatial resolution. Some limitations of the technique due to sample motion are studied theoretically and experimentally. A few images of biological samples are shown to illustrate the imaging capabilities.
A Position-Aware Language Modeling Framework for Extractive Broadcast News Speech Summarization

Extractive summarization, a process that automatically picks exemplary sentences from a text (or spoken) document with the goal of concisely conveying key information therein, has seen a surge of attention from scholars and practitioners recently. Using a language modeling (LM) approach for sentence selection has been proven effective for performing unsupervised extractive summarization. However, one of the major difficulties facing the LM approach is to model sentences and estimate their parameters more accurately for each text (or spoken) document. We extend this line of research and make the following contributions in this work. First, we propose a position-aware language modeling framework using various granularities of position-specific information to better estimate the sentence models involved in the summarization process. Second, we explore disparate ways to integrate the positional cues into relevance models through a pseudo-relevance feedback procedure. Third, we extensively evaluate various models originated from our proposed framework and several well-established unsupervised methods. Empirical evaluation conducted on a broadcast news summarization task further demonstrates performance merits of the proposed summarization methods.
Predictors of fitness to drive in people with Parkinson disease

Objective: To develop an efficient clinical screening battery to accurately predict the fitness to drive in people with Parkinson disease (PD). Methods: This prospective study included 80 participants: 40 patients with PD and 40 healthy age- and sex-matched control subjects. All participants were assessed using a driving simulator, a driving history survey, and the Clinical Dementia Rating. The patients with PD also underwent a clinical test battery and an evaluation of fitness to drive performed by an official center, which included visual, cognitive, and on-road tests. A two-class decision from this driving assessment center was the main outcome measure. Results: A screening battery assessing four clinical variables (disease duration, contrast sensitivity, Clinical Dementia Rating, and motor part of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale) provided the best model (R2 = 0.52) to predict the fitness to drive and correctly classified 36 (90%) of the patients with PD as pass or fail (sensitivity = 91%, specificity = 90%). The Test Ride for Investigating Practical fitness to drive (TRIP) driving simulator score discriminated significantly between drivers with PD and their healthy peers (p = 0.0008). When the TRIP driving simulator score was added to the clinical model, the total explained variance increased (R2 = 0.60) and correctly classified 39 (97.5%) of drivers with PD into the pass/fail category (sensitivity = 91%, specificity = 100%). Conclusions: A short clinical screening battery that measures disease duration, contrast sensitivity, cognitive and motor functions can predict fitness to drive in people with Parkinson disease with a high degree of accuracy. GLOSSARY: ADL = activities of daily living; CDR = Clinical Dementia Rating; CS = contrast sensitivity; DBS = deep brain stimulator; ESS = Epworth Sleepiness Scale; IQR = interquartile range (Q1–Q3); NA = not applicable; PD = Parkinson disease; rb = biserial correlation coefficient; rrb = rank biserial correlation coefficient; rs = Spearman rank correlation coefficient; TRIP = Test Ride for Investigating Practical fitness to drive; UFOV = useful field of view; UPDRS II = Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale, activities of daily living; UPDRS III = Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale, motor scale; w = Wilcoxon rank sum test.
Not All Dialogues are Created Equal: Instance Weighting for Neural Conversational Models

Neural conversational models require substantial amounts of dialogue data to estimate their parameters and are therefore usually learned on large corpora such as chat forums or movie subtitles. These corpora are, however, often challenging to work with, notably due to their frequent lack of turn segmentation and the presence of multiple references external to the dialogue itself. This paper shows that these challenges can be mitigated by adding a weighting model into the architecture. The weighting model, which is itself estimated from dialogue data, associates each training example to a numerical weight that reflects its intrinsic quality for dialogue modelling. At training time, these sample weights are included into the empirical loss to be minimised. Evaluation results on retrieval-based models trained on movie and TV subtitles demonstrate that the inclusion of such a weighting model improves the model performance on unsupervised metrics.
The diffuse nature of Strömgren spheres

In this Letter, we argue that the standard analytical derivations of properties of HII regions, such as the speed, shape and asymptotic position of ionisation fronts require a more precise treatment. These derivations use the on the spot approxi- mation ,w hich in e ffect ignores the diffuse component of the radiation field. We show that, in fact, HII regions are diffusion dominated. This has as a result that the morphology of inhomogeneous HII regions will be drastically different, because shad- owing effects have a less profound impact on the apparent shape. Moreover, it will have influence on the propagation speed of ionisation fronts. We quantify our claims by analytically deriving the internal radiation structure of HII regions, taking diffusion fully into account for several different cosmologically relevant density distributions.
RIPK1 mediates a disease-associated microglial response in Alzheimer’s disease

Significance Dysfunction of microglia plays a fundamental role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common form of dementia. However, there is a lack of knowledge about targets that can be safely manipulated for modulating microglia for the treatment of AD. The presence of a unique subtype of disease-associated microglia (DAM) has recently been implicated in mediating pathogenesis of AD. However, the mechanism that promotes the development of DAM is unclear, nor is it known how DAM may modulate the progression of AD. This study demonstrates that RIPK1-dependent transcription promotes DAM and lysosomal defects to mediate the accumulation of amyloid plaques in AD. Thus, targeting RIPK1 may provide an important therapeutic strategy for the treatment of AD. Dysfunction of microglia is known to play an important role in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we investigated the role of RIPK1 in microglia mediating the pathogenesis of AD. RIPK1 is highly expressed by microglial cells in human AD brains. Using the amyloid precursor protein (APP)/presenilin 1 (PS1) transgenic mouse model, we found that inhibition of RIPK1, using both pharmacological and genetic means, reduced amyloid burden, the levels of inflammatory cytokines, and memory deficits. Furthermore, inhibition of RIPK1 promoted microglial degradation of Aβ in vitro. We characterized the transcriptional profiles of adult microglia from APP/PS1 mice and identified a role for RIPK1 in regulating the microglial expression of CH25H and Cst7, a marker for disease-associated microglia (DAM), which encodes an endosomal/lysosomal cathepsin inhibitor named Cystatin F. We present evidence that RIPK1-mediated induction of Cst7 leads to an impairment in the lysosomal pathway. These data suggest that RIPK1 may mediate a critical checkpoint in the transition to the DAM state. Together, our study highlights a non-cell death mechanism by which the activation of RIPK1 mediates the induction of a DAM phenotype, including an inflammatory response and a reduction in phagocytic activity, and connects RIPK1-mediated transcription in microglia to the etiology of AD. Our results support that RIPK1 is an important therapeutic target for the treatment of AD.
How The Arts Can Help Tangible Interaction Design: A Critical Re-Orientation

There is a long history of creative encounters between tangible interface design and the Arts. However, in comparison with media art, tangible interaction seems to be quite anchored into many of the traditional methodologies imported from human–computer interaction (HCI). How can the Arts help tangible interaction design? Building on Soren Pold’s Interface Aesthetics, a re-orientation of the role of the artist towards a critical examination of our research medium—tangible interaction—is proposed. In this essay, the benefits of incorporating artistic research and its methodologies into our field are described. With these methodologies it is possible to better assess experiential aspects of interaction—a relevant attribute which traditional HCI approaches cannot afford. In order to inform our community, three examples of critical artworks are comparatively studied and discussed.
Coincidence of Moderately Elevated N-Terminal Pro–B-Type Natriuretic Peptide, Endothelial Progenitor Cells Deficiency and Propensity to Exercise-Induced Myocardial Ischemia in Stable Angina

Aim: To assess endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) counts, a novel prognostic marker, in relation to classical adverse outcome predictors–N-terminal pro–B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), impaired left ventricular (LV) relaxation and exercise-induced ischemia–in stable coronary artery disease (CAD) with preserved LV systolic function. Methods: We studied 30 non-diabetic men with one-vessel CAD, LV ejection fraction ≥ 60% and normal LV diastolic function (n = 16) or impaired LV relaxation (by ultrasound including tissue Doppler) (n = 14), and 14 non-CAD controls matched for risk profile and medication. CD34+/kinase-insert domain receptor (KDR)+ cells (CD34+/KDR+ cells), a leukocytes subpopulation enriched for EPC, were enumerated by flow cytometry. Results: CAD patients with abnormal LV relaxation exhibited significantly elevated NT-proBNP and decreased CD34+/KDR+ cells vs. CAD with regular diastolic function and non-CAD controls. An inverse NT-proBNP–CD34+/KDR+ cells relationship was precipitated by the clustering of high resting NT-proBNP and low CD34+/KDR+ cells in the subjects with a lower Duke treadmill score. Conclusions: Propensity to symptomatic exertional ischemia may underlie the coincidence of moderately elevated NT-proBNP and EPC deficiency in stable angina. Additionally, chronic subclinical ischemia can also be involved in these associations. These might result from BNP overexpression in the ischemic myocardium and a hypothetical exhaustion of the bone marrow capacity to mobilize EPC at multiple ischemic episodes, thus contributing to NT-proBNP prognostic effect irrespective of hemodynamic factors.
Increase in maternal death-related venous thromboembolism during pregnancy in Japan (2010-2013).

BACKGROUND The aim of the present work was to understand the current circumstances of maternal-death-related venous thromboembolism (MD-VTE) in Japan. We retrospectively investigated the characteristics of cases of MD-VTE, and compared past and present rates of occurrence. METHODS AND RESULTS We examined the Japanese data for MD-VTE in 2010-2013, and compared it with that from 1991-1992. MD-VTE occurred in 17 women in 1991-1992, and in 13 women in 2010-2013. The maternal mortality ratio of MD-VTE was 0.7 per 100,000 in 1991-1992 and 0.4 per 100,000 in 2010-2013. Both the maternal mortality ratio and rate of MD-VTE in 2010-2013 deceased significantly compared with 1991-1992 (P<0.05). However, the number of cases of MD-VTE during pregnancy was 6 among 13 women (41%) in 2010-2013, but 1 in 17 women (6%) in 1991-1992, showing an increase (P<0.05). In the present study, cesarean delivery was more frequently associated with MD-VTE. CONCLUSIONS MD-VTE overall has decreased within the past 20 years in Japan. But, MD-VTE during pregnancy in 2010-2013 increased relative to 1991-1992. Future guidelines for prevention of VTE may need to extend beyond the perioperative period to decrease the incidence of MD-VTE.
The heterogeneity in GABAA receptor-mediated IPSC kinetics reflects heterogeneity of subunit composition among inhibitory and excitatory interneurons in spinal lamina II

GABAergic inhibition displays rich functional diversity throughout the CNS, which arises from variations in the nature of inputs, subunit composition, subcellular localization of receptors and synapse geometry, or reuptake mechanisms. In the spinal dorsal horn (SDH), GABAA and glycine receptors play a major role in the control of excitability and accuracy of nociceptive processing. Identifying which components shape the properties of the inhibitory synapses in different cell types is necessary to understand how nociceptive information is integrated. To address this, we used transgenic mice where inhibitory interneurons express GAD65-EGFP. We found that GABAA, but not glycine receptor-mediated evoked IPSCs displayed slower kinetics in EGFP+ vs. EGFP− interneurons. GABAA miniature IPSC decay kinetics showed a large variability in both populations, however the distribution of decays differed between EGFP+ and EGFP− interneurons. The range of mIPSC decay kinetics observed was replicated in experiments using rapid application of GABA on outside-out patches taken from SDH neurons in slices. Furthermore, GABAA decay kinetics were not affected by uptake blockers and were not different in mice lacking δ or α5 subunits, indicating that intrinsic channel properties likely underlie the heterogeneity. To identify whether other α subunits shape the various kinetic properties observed we took advantage of knock-in mice carrying point mutations in either the α1, α2, or α3 subunits rendering Ro 15-4513 a selective agonist at the benzodiazepine modulatory site. We found that α1 and α2 subunit underlie the fast decaying component of IPSCs while the slow component is determined by the α3 subunit. The differential distribution of GABAA subunits at inhibitory synapses thus sculpts the heterogeneity of the SDH inhibitory circuitry. This diversity of inhibitory elements can be harnessed to selectively modulate different components of the spinal nociceptive circuitry for therapeutic interventions.
Semantic Film Preview Classification Using Low-Level Computable Features

This paper presents a framework for the classification of feature films into genres, based on computable visual cues. The authors view the work as a step towards high-level semantic film interpretation, currently using low-level video features and knowledge of ubiquitous cinematic practices. Our current domain of study is the film preview (the commercial advertisements primarily created to attract audiences). A preview often emphasizes the theme of a film and hence provides suitable information for classification. In our approach, we classify movies into four broad categories: Comedies, Action Films, Dramas or Horror Films. Computable video features are combined in a framework with cinematic principles to provide a mapping to the four high-level semantic classes. An unsupervised clustering technique is used to discover the structure of the mapping between the computed features and each film genre. Through experiments, we notably demonstrate the structure that exists between low-level features and high-level film genres.
Cross-sectional study of malocclusion in Spanish children

Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the orthodontic treatment need of the child population of the Valencia region of Spain, employing the DAI and the IOTN, to examine the relations between treatment need, socio-economic data and gender and to assess the diagnostic agreement between the two indices. Study Design: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in a random representative sample of the schoolchild population of the Valencia region of Spain. The sample size was a total of 765 children aged 12 and 15 years at 39 schools. Results: The orthodontic treatment need assessed by the DAI was 21.7% at 12 years of age and 14.1% at 15 years. The orthodontic treatment need assessed by the IOTN DHC was 20.9% at 12 years of age and 12.7% at 15 years. The diagnostic agreement between the DAI and the modified IOTN was moderate, with Kappa scores of 0.426 at 12 years of age and 0.415 for the 15-year-old group. Conclusions: Approximately 20% of the children needed orthodontic treatment. Neither gender nor social class appeared to exert a significant influence on orthodontic treatment need. Key words:Orthodontics, epidemiology, children, malocclusion.
Dengue Virus Type 2 Modulates Endothelial Barrier Function through CD73

Dengue hemorrhagic fever is characterized by a unique vascular leakage syndrome. The mechanisms of endothelial barrier dysfunction in dengue hemorrhagic fever are not well understood. We examined the modulation of endothelial barrier function in dengue virus type 2 (DENV2) infections using primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells. We demonstrated that the increase in endothelial barrier function within 72 hours after DENV2 infection is mediated by type I interferon–dependent CD73 up-regulation. After 72 hours, DENV2 slowed the recovery of endothelial barrier function in response to tumor necrosis factor-α or vascular endothelial growth factor. This phenomenon was likely caused by type I interferon receptor signaling inhibition and lower CD73 levels in DENV2-infected endothelial cells. Our findings suggest that during DENV2 infection, endothelial barrier homeostasis is maintained by a balance between pro-inflammatory and pro-angiogenic cytokines, and type I interferon–dependent CD73 expression and activity.