Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Longitudinal changes in tear fluid lipidome brought about by eyelid-warming treatment in a cohort of meibomian gland dysfunction[S]

Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) is a leading cause of evaporative dry eye and ocular discomfort characterized by an unstable tear film principally attributed to afflicted delivery of lipids to the ocular surface. Herein, we elucidated longitudinal tear lipid alterations associated with disease alleviation and symptom improvement in a cohort of MGD patients undergoing eyelid-warming treatment for 12 weeks. Remarkably, eyelid-warming resulted in stark reductions in lysophospholipids (P < 0.001 for lyso-plasmalogen phosphatidylethanolamine, lysophosphatidylcholine, and lysophosphatidylinositol), as well as numerous PUFA-containing diacylglyceride species in tears, accompanied by significant increases in several PUFA-containing phospholipids. These changes in tear lipidomes suggest that eyelid-warming leads to diminished activity of tear phospholipases that preferentially target PUFA-containing phospholipids. In addition, treatment led to appreciable increases (P < 0.001) in O-acyl-ω-hydroxy-FAs (OAHFAs), which are lipid amphiphiles critical to the maintenance of tear film stability. Longitudinal changes in the tear lipids aforementioned also significantly (P < 0.05) correlated with reduced rate of ocular evaporation and improvement in ocular symptoms. The foregoing data thus indicate that excess ocular surface phospholipase activity detrimental to tear film stability could be alleviated by eyelid warming alone without application of steroids and identify tear OAHFAs as suitable markers to monitor treatment response in MGD.
Strategies to Prevent Cholera Introduction during International Personnel Deployments: A Computational Modeling Analysis Based on the 2010 Haiti Outbreak

Background Introduction of Vibrio cholerae to Haiti during the deployment of United Nations (UN) peacekeepers in 2010 resulted in one of the largest cholera epidemics of the modern era. Following the outbreak, a UN-commissioned independent panel recommended three pre-deployment intervention strategies to minimize the risk of cholera introduction in future peacekeeping operations: screening for V. cholerae carriage, administering prophylactic antimicrobial chemotherapies, or immunizing with oral cholera vaccines. However, uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of these approaches has forestalled their implementation by the UN. We assessed how the interventions would have impacted the likelihood of the Haiti cholera epidemic. Methods and Findings We developed a stochastic model for cholera importation and transmission, fitted to reported cases during the first weeks of the 2010 outbreak in Haiti. Using this model, we estimated that diagnostic screening reduces the probability of cases occurring by 82% (95% credible interval: 75%, 85%); however, false-positive test outcomes may hamper this approach. Antimicrobial chemoprophylaxis at time of departure and oral cholera vaccination reduce the probability of cases by 50% (41%, 57%) and by up to 61% (58%, 63%), respectively. Chemoprophylaxis beginning 1 wk before departure confers a 91% (78%, 96%) reduction independently, and up to a 98% reduction (94%, 99%) if coupled with vaccination. These results are not sensitive to assumptions about the background cholera incidence rate in the endemic troop-sending country. Further research is needed to (1) validate the sensitivity and specificity of rapid test approaches for detecting asymptomatic carriage, (2) compare prophylactic efficacy across antimicrobial regimens, and (3) quantify the impact of oral cholera vaccine on transmission from asymptomatic carriers. Conclusions Screening, chemoprophylaxis, and vaccination are all effective strategies to prevent cholera introduction during large-scale personnel deployments such as that precipitating the 2010 Haiti outbreak. Antimicrobial chemoprophylaxis was estimated to provide the greatest protection at the lowest cost among the approaches recently evaluated by the UN.
Heat-shock dependent oligomeric status alters the function of a plant-specific thioredoxin-like protein, AtTDX

We found that Arabidopsis AtTDX, a heat-stable and plant-specific thioredoxin (Trx)-like protein, exhibits multiple functions, acting as a disulfide reductase, foldase chaperone, and holdase chaperone. The activity of AtTDX, which contains 3 tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) domains and a Trx motif, depends on its oligomeric status. The disulfide reductase and foldase chaperone functions predominate when AtTDX occurs in the low molecular weight (LMW) form, whereas the holdase chaperone function predominates in the high molecular weight (HMW) complexes. Because deletion of the TPR domains results in a significant enhancement of AtTDX disulfide reductase activity and complete loss of the holdase chaperone function, our data suggest that the TPR domains of AtTDX block the active site of Trx and play a critical role in promoting the holdase chaperone function. The oligomerization status of AtTDX is reversibly regulated by heat shock, which causes a transition from LMW to HMW complexes with concomitant functional switching from a disulfide reductase and foldase chaperone to a holdase chaperone. Overexpression of AtTDX in Arabidopsis conferred enhanced heat shock resistance to plants, primarily via its holdase chaperone activity.
A Fault-Tolerant Dynamic Fetch Policy for SMT Processors in Multi-Bus Environments

Modern microprocessors get more and more susceptible to transient faults, e.g. caused by high-energetic particles due to high integration, clock frequencies, temperature and decreasing voltage supplies. A newer method to speed up contemporary processors at small space increase is simultaneous multithreading (SMT). With the introduction of SMT, instruction fetch- and issue policies gained importance. SMT processors are able to simultaneously fetch and issue instructions from multiple instruction streams. In this work, we focus on how dynamic bus arbitration and scheduling of hardware threads within the processors front-end can help to dynamically adjust fault coverage and performance. The novelties which help to reach this goal are: a multi-bus-scheduling scheme which can be used to tolerate permanent bus faults and single event disturbances (SEDs). The second novelty can be used in conjunction with the first: a dynamic fetch scheduling algorithm for a simultaneous multithreaded processor, leading to the introduction of dynamic multithreading. Dynamically multithreaded processors are able to switch between different SMT fetch policies, thus enabling a graceful degradation of the processors front-end
Wnt Signaling: Multiple Pathways, Multiple Receptors, and Multiple Transcription Factors*

Signaling pathways are an ever present force in every animal’s life. During development, these pathways provide critical cell-cell communication required to coordinate the activities of vast numbers of cells. In adulthood, similar communication mechanisms are utilized to achieve tissue homeostasis and regeneration. Regulation of signaling is crucial; too much or too little activity from a given signal transduction pathway can cause devastating results such as developmental defects or, later in life, disease. The Wnts comprise a large family of highly conserved growth factors that are responsible for important developmental and homeostatic processes throughout the animal kingdom (for a more comprehensive review see Ref. 1). Their implication in a wide array of developmental events and human diseases has made Wnts and their signaling pathways the subject of intense investigation over the last two decades. This has never been truer than in the past few years, when the association of Wnt signaling with stem cell fate has added fuel to an already active field. Membership in the Wnt family is defined by amino acid sequence rather than functional properties. It is therefore not too surprising that Wnts have been associated with a number of different activities and downstream signaling pathways. Although the majority of work in the field to date has focused on -catenin-dependent, or canonical, Wnt signaling, examples continue to accumulate in which Wnts and/or other key components of the canonical signaling cascade participate in -catenin-independent processes (reviewed in Ref. 2). In this review, we will focus largely on the canonical pathway, paying particular attention to recent insights. We will then touch on some developments in -catenin-independent signaling and discuss some issues that may be important to all Wnts, regardless of the signal they generate.
Propofol restores TRPV1 sensitivity via a TRPA1-, nitric oxide synthase-dependent activation of PKCε

We previously demonstrated that the intravenous anesthetic, propofol, restores the sensitivity of transient receptor potential vanilloid channel subtype‐1 (TRPV1) receptors via a protein kinase C epsilon (PKCε)‐dependent and transient receptor potential ankyrin channel subtype‐1 (TRPA1)‐dependent pathway in sensory neurons. The extent to which the two pathways are directly linked or operating in parallel has not been determined. Using a molecular approach, our objectives of the current study were to confirm that TRPA1 activation directly results in PKCε activation and to elucidate the cellular mechanism by which this occurs. F‐11 cells were transfected with complimentary DNA (cDNA) for TRPV1 only or both TRPV1 and TRPA1. Intracellular Ca2+ concentration was measured in individual cells via fluorescence microscopy. An immunoblot analysis of the total and phosphorylated forms of PKCε, nitric oxide synthase (nNOS), and TRPV1 was also performed. In F‐11 cells containing both channels, PKCε inhibition prevented the propofol‐ and allyl isothiocyanate (AITC)‐induced restoration of TRPV1 sensitivity to agonist stimulation as well as increased phosphorylation of PKCε and TRPV1. In cells containing TRPV1 only, neither agonist induced PKCε or TRPV1 phosphorylation. Moreover, NOS inhibition blocked propofol‐and AITC‐induced restoration of TRPV1 sensitivity and PKCε phosphorylation, and PKCε inhibition prevented the nitric oxide donor, SNAP, from restoring TRPV1 sensitivity. Also, propofol‐and AITC‐induced phosphorylation of nNOS and nitric oxide (NO) production were blocked with the TRPA1‐antagonist, HC‐030031. These data indicate that the AITC‐ and propofol‐induced restoration of TRPV1 sensitivity is mediated by a TRPA1‐dependent, nitric oxide synthase‐dependent activation of PKCε.
Mask design for pinhole-array-based hand-held light field cameras with applications in depth estimation

Pinhole-array-based hand-held light field cameras can be used to capture 4-dimensional light field data for different applications such as digital refocusing and depth estimation. Our previous experiences suggest the design of the pinhole array mask is very critical to the performance of the camera, and the selection of mask parameters could be very different between applications. In this paper, we derive equations for determining the parameters of pinhole masks. The proposed physically-based model can be applied to cameras of different pixel sizes. The experimental results which match the proposed model are also provided at the end of this paper.
Assistive Technology Competencies of Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments: A Comparison of Perceptions

This study surveyed teachers of students with visual impairments in Texas on their perceptions of a set of assistive technology competencies developed for teachers of students with visual impairments by Smith and colleagues (2009). Differences in opinion between practicing teachers of students with visual impairments and Smith's group of educational experts are presented and discussed.
Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L-like (hnRNPLL) and elongation factor, RNA polymerase II, 2 (ELL2) are regulators of mRNA processing in plasma cells

B cells and plasma cells possess distinct RNA processing environments that respectively promote the expression of membrane-associated Ig by B cells versus the secretion of Ig by plasma cells. Through a combination of transcriptional profiling and screening using a lentiviral short-hairpin RNA interference library, we show that both the splicing factor hnRNPLL and the transcription elongation factor ELL2 modulate the ratio of secreted versus membrane-encoding Ighg2b transcripts in MPC11 plasmacytoma cell lines. hnRNPLL and ELL2 are both highly expressed in primary plasma cells relative to B cells, but hnRNPLL binds Ighg2b mRNA transcripts and promotes an increase in levels of the membrane-encoding Ighg2b isoform at the expense of the secreted Ighg2b isoform, whereas ELL2 counteracts this effect and drives Ig secretion by increasing the frequency of the secreted Ighg2b isoform. As in T cells, hnRNPLL also alters the splicing pattern of mRNA encoding the adhesion receptor CD44, promoting exon inclusion, and decreasing the overall level of CD44 expression. Further characterization of ELL2-dependent transcription by RNA-Seq revealed that ∼12% of transcripts expressed by plasma cells were differentially processed because of the activities of ELL2, including B-cell maturation antigen BCMA, a receptor with a defined role in plasma cell survival. Taken together, our data identify hnRNPLL and ELL2 as regulators of pre-mRNA processing in plasma cells.
Challenges faced by elderly guardians in sustaining the adherence to antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected children in Zimbabwe

Abstract Grandparents throughout sub-Saharan Africa have shown immense courage and fortitude in providing care and support for AIDS-affected children. However, growing old comes with a number of challenges which can compromise the quality of care and support they are able to provide, particularly for children infected by HIV and enrolled on antiretroviral therapy (ART) programmes. For ART to be effective, and for infected children not to develop drug-resistance, a complex treatment regimen must be followed. Drawing on the perspectives of 25 nurses and eight grandparents of HIV-infected children in Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe, we explore some of the challenges faced by grandparents in sustaining children's adherence to ART. These challenges, serving as barriers to paediatric ART, are poverty, immobility, deteriorating memory and poor comprehension of complex treatments. Although older HIV-infected children were found to play an active role in sustaining the adherence to their programme of treatment by contributing to income and food generating activities and reminding their guardians about check-ups and drug administration, such contribution was not available from younger children. There is therefore an urgent need to develop ART services that both take into consideration the needs of elderly guardians and acknowledge and enhance the agency of older children as active and responsible contributors to ART adherence.
Transfer Topic Modeling with Ease and Scalability

The increasing volume of short texts generated on social media sites, such as Twitter or Facebook, creates a great demand for effective and efficient topic modeling approaches. While latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) can be applied, it is not optimal due to its weakness in handling short texts with fast-changing topics and scalability concerns. In this paper, we propose a transfer learning approach that utilizes abundant labeled documents from other domains (such as Yahoo! News or Wikipedia) to improve topic modeling, with better model fitting and result interpretation. Specifically, we develop Transfer Hierarchical LDA (thLDA) model, which incorporates the label information from other domains via informative priors. In addition, we develop a parallel implementation of our model for large-scale applications. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our thLDA model on both a microblogging dataset and standard text collections including AP and RCV1 datasets.
Experimental Identification of Smartphones Using Fingerprints of Built-In Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS)

The correct identification of smartphones has various applications in the field of security or the fight against counterfeiting. As the level of sophistication in counterfeit electronics increases, detection procedures must become more accurate but also not destructive for the smartphone under testing. Some components of the smartphone are more likely to reveal their authenticity even without a physical inspection, since they are characterized by hardware fingerprints detectable by simply examining the data they provide. This is the case of MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) components like accelerometers and gyroscopes, where tiny differences and imprecisions in the manufacturing process determine unique patterns in the data output. In this paper, we present the experimental evaluation of the identification of smartphones through their built-in MEMS components. In our study, three different phones of the same model are subject to repeatable movements (composing a repeatable scenario) using an high precision robotic arm. The measurements from MEMS for each repeatable scenario are collected and analyzed. The identification algorithm is based on the extraction of the statistical features of the collected data for each scenario. The features are used in a support vector machine (SVM) classifier to identify the smartphone. The results of the evaluation are presented for different combinations of features and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) outputs, which show that detection accuracy of higher than 90% is achievable.
Exploiting clutter: Negative information for enhanced extended object tracking

When tracking an extended object, traditional approaches exploit information only from measurements that are assumed to stem from the target, and discard observations assumed to have been generated elsewhere. However, the fact that these observations were received contains valuable information about where the target is not. This information, which is usually treated as clutter with little value, can also be exploited in order to improve estimation results. This becomes particularly important in situations with low measurement quality or occlusions, where positive observations from the target may be scarce. In these cases, negative observations, which show where the target cannot be, become highly valuable. In this paper, we introduce Silhouette Models, which are able to incorporate information from both types of observations. The benefits of this approach, which include more robust results and resistance to occlusion, are confirmed in the evaluation.
Proposal of path planning for a mobile robot to respect human movements in dynamic environments by using a Human Frequency Map

A mobile robot used in home or office has to not only search the shortest path but also perform the path planning to respect human movement. In this study, several sensors are distributed in the environmental side, and humans walking route is observed. Then, we propose a “Human Frequency Map (HFM)” that is grid map based on the observed human position. By using the HFM, the proposed path planning can minimize the possibility for encountering human by considering the human frequency of a certain time zone and the current position of human. In this paper, we evaluate the usefulness of the information obtained from the HFM for the path planning in the case where the robot follows the specified person while avoiding the other persons.
High-speed regular expression matching engine using multi-character NFA

An approach is presented for high throughput matching of regular expressions (regexes) by first converting them into corresponding non-deterministic finite automata (NFAs) which are then configured onto a FPGA. The key novel feature is a technique that, for any given regex, constructs an NFA that processes multiple characters per clock cycle. An efficient algorithm is proposed that outputs an NFA which processes twice the number of characters as the input one. A technique is also proposed that implements the range match operation (e.g. [a-z]) efficiently. A program has been written that implements above ideas to convert regexes into NFAs specified in a structural hardware design language (HDL), which are then mapped onto a FPGA. Performance is evaluated using real world regexes (Snort ruleset). The results demonstrate the practical utility of the approach. For example, for a set of 2,691 regexes, while the standard 1-character NFA obtains a throughput of 1.25 Gbps, our 4-character NFA achieves a throughput of 3.63 Gbps, while requiring only 20% more LUTs and 6% less flip-flops.
Migration, family dysfunction and psychotic symptoms in children and adolescents

Summary A cross-sectional study of 3426 referred children and adolescents showed that the presence of both migration history and family dysfunction was associated with a fourfold (95% CI 2–9) higher risk of psychotic symptoms compared with the absence of these factors. The relative risk was 2 (95% CI 1–4) for migration history only. Interaction between migration history and family dysfunction accounted for 58% (95% CI 5–91%) of those with psychotic symptoms. These results suggest a relationship between family dysfunction and migration in the development of psychosis.
An interactive decision support system for implementing sustainable relocation strategies for adaptation to climate change: a multi-objective optimisation approach

Global warming may cause low-lying areas to be inundated because of frequent flooding and rising sea levels. It may further intensify dehydration of semi-arid zones. Such environmental impacts may require planned relocation of a section of population and force others to adapt to these evolving situations. In this article, we discuss a multi-objective optimisation approach for deciding what fraction of a population will be relocated to another location and what fraction of it may be retained for effective adaptation to climate change. We consider various costs, people's preferences and priorities of planning objectives in a goal programming model and illustrate the concept with the design of a decision support system for interactive analysis of complex multifaceted environmental decisions.
Successive overrelaxation for support vector machines

Successive overrelaxation (SOR) for symmetric linear complementarity problems and quadratic programs is used to train a support vector machine (SVM) for discriminating between the elements of two massive datasets, each with millions of points. Because SOR handles one point at a time, similar to Platt's sequential minimal optimization (SMO) algorithm which handles two constraints at a time and Joachims' SVMlight which handles a small number of points at a time, SOR can process very large datasets that need not reside in memory. The algorithm converges linearly to a solution. Encouraging numerical results are presented on datasets with up to 10,000,000 points. Such massive discrimination problems cannot be processed by conventional linear or quadratic programming methods, and to our knowledge have not been solved by other methods. On smaller problems, SOR was faster than SVMlight and comparable or faster than SMO.