Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Processing of Relevant Nearest-Neighbor Queries

Novel Web technologies and resulting applications have led to a participatory data ecosystem that, when utilized properly, will lead to more rewarding services. In this work, we investigate the case of Location-Based Services, specifically how to improve the typical location-based Point-of-Interest (POI) request processed as a k-Nearest-Neighbor query. This work introduces Links-of-Interest (LOI) between POIs as a means to increase the relevance and overall result quality of such queries. By analyzing user-contributed content in the form of travel blogs, we establish the overall popularity of an LOI, that is, how frequently the respective POI pair was visited and is mentioned in the same context. Our contribution is a query-processing method for so-called k-Relevant Nearest Neighbor (k-RNN) queries that considers spatial proximity in combination with LOI information to retrieve close-by and relevant (as judged by the crowd) POIs. Our method is based on intelligently combining indices for spatial data (a spatial grid) and for relevance data (a graph) during query processing. Using landmarks as a means to prune the search space in the Relevance Graph, we improve the proposed methods. Using in addition A*-directed search, the query performance can be further improved. An experimental evaluation using real and synthetic data establishes that our approach efficiently solves the k-RNN problem.
Memory stabilization with targeted reactivation during human slow-wave sleep

It is believed that neural representations of recent experiences become reactivated during sleep, and that this process serves to stabilize associated memories in long-term memory. Here, we initiated this reactivation process for specific memories during slow-wave sleep. Participants studied 50 object-location associations with object-related sounds presented concurrently. For half of the associations, the related sounds were re-presented during subsequent slow-wave sleep while participants underwent functional MRI. Compared with control sounds, related sounds were associated with increased activation of right parahippocampal cortex. Postsleep memory accuracy was positively correlated with sound-related activation during sleep in various brain regions, including the thalamus, bilateral medial temporal lobe, and cerebellum. In addition, postsleep memory accuracy was also positively correlated with pre- to postsleep changes in parahippocampal–medial prefrontal connectivity during retrieval of reactivated associations. Our results suggest that the brain is differentially activated by studied and unstudied sounds during deep sleep and that the thalamus and medial temporal lobe are involved in establishing the mnemonic consequences of externally triggered reactivation of associative memories.
Feature point tracking combining the Interacting Multiple Model filter and an efficient assignment algorithm

An algorithm for feature point tracking is proposed. The Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) filter is used to estimate the state of a feature point. The problem of data association, i.e. establishing which feature point to use in the state estimator, is solved by an assignment algorithm. A track management method is also developed. In particular a track continuation method and a track quality indicator are presented. The evaluation of the tracking system on real sequences shows that the IMM filter combined with the assignment algorithm outperforms the Kalman filter, used with the Nearest Neighbour (NN) filter, in terms of data association performance and robustness to sudden feature point manoeuvre.
Intrarater and Interrater Reliability of the Dynamic Gait Index in Persons With Parkinson`s Disease

Clinical measures that quantify falling risk factors are needed for the accurate evaluation of patients and to plan an intervention strategy. The purpose of this study was to examine the test-retest and inter-rater reliability of the dynamic gait index (DGI) for persons with Parkinson`s disease (PD). A total of 22 idiopathic PD patients were recruited from rehabilitation hospital, Korea in this study. The DUE was assessed in two sessions that were, three days apart. We also measured Berg balance test (BBT) and geriatric depression scale (GDS) for concurrent validity with DGI Intrarater and interrater reliability (.96 and .98 respectively) for DGI were high, indicating good agreement. The DGI was showed a good positive correlation with the BBS (r=.852), but not GDS (r=-.462), Intrarater and interrater reliability of DGI were high in people with PD. The DGI could be a reliable measure to evaluate functional postural control during gait activities in the PD population, and the ability of DGI to detect real change is acceptable in research and clinical settings.
Human corneal epithelial cell adhesion to laminins.

PURPOSE To analyze alpha-integrin mediated adhesion of human corneal epithelial cells to placental and EHS laminin isoforms. METHODS Western blot analysis was used to partially characterize commercially available preparations of laminin isolated from the mouse EHS sarcoma and from human placenta. Using the human corneal epithelial cell line HCE-T, adhesion to laminin isoforms and fibronectin was determined using a colorimetric adhesion assay. alpha-integrin sub-unit modulation of corneal epithelial cell interaction with laminin isoforms was analyzed using immunofluorescence microscopy and adhesion assays incorporating functional blocking antibodies. RESULTS In short-term adhesion assays, the preferred substrate for HCE-T attachment is placental laminin. Immunofluorescence microscopy reveals that alpha-integrin protein localization patterns are not significantly different in HCE-T interacting with EHS or placental laminin. However, in short-term assays alpha3 integrin plays a major role, and alpha2 integrin a minor role, in mediating HCE-T adhesion to laminin. alpha6 integrin does not appear to mediate adhesion to either substrate. CONCLUSIONS These studies demonstrate that human corneal epithelial cells are capable of rapid adhesion to, and enhanced spreading on, laminin isoforms not characteristically resident in the adult corneal basement membrane. This characteristic of human corneal epithelium may explain, at least in part, why amniotic membrane transplantation is proving to be clinically useful for human ocular surface reconstruction.
Magneto-dielectric properties of ferrites and ferrite/ferroelectric multiferroic composites

Ni-Zn ferrites, with the general formula Ni1-xZnxFe2O4 (x = 0.0, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0), CoFe2O4, BaTiO3 and PbZr0.52Ti0. 48O3 powders were synthesized by auto-combustion method. The composites were prepared by mixing the appropriate amounts of individual phases, pressing and conventional sintering. X-ray analysis, for individual phase and composites, indicated the formation of crystallized structure of NiZnFe2O4, BaTiO3 and PbZr0.52Ti0. 48O3 without the presence of secondary phases or any impurities. SEM analyses indicated a formation of uniform grain distribution for ferromagnetic and ferroelectric phases and formation of two types of grains, polygonal and rounded, respectively. Magneto-dielectric effect was exhibited in all samples because of the applied stress occurring due to the piezomagnetic effect and the magnetic field induced the variation of the dielectric constant. For all samples the dielectric constant was higher in applied magnetic field. At the low frequency, the dispersion of dielectric losses appeared, while at the higher frequency the value of tan ? become constant (Maxwell-Wagner relaxation). Investigation of J-E relation between leakage and electric field revealed that both nickel zinc ferrite and composites have three different regions of conduction: region with ohmic conduction mechanism, region with the trap-controlled space charge limited current mechanism and region with space charge limited current mechanism.
Simultaneous multislice (SMS) imaging techniques

Simultaneous multislice imaging (SMS) using parallel image reconstruction has rapidly advanced to become a major imaging technique. The primary benefit is an acceleration in data acquisition that is equal to the number of simultaneously excited slices. Unlike in‐plane parallel imaging this can have only a marginal intrinsic signal‐to‐noise ratio penalty, and the full acceleration is attainable at fixed echo time, as is required for many echo planar imaging applications. Furthermore, for some implementations SMS techniques can reduce radiofrequency (RF) power deposition. In this review the current state of the art of SMS imaging is presented. In the Introduction, a historical overview is given of the history of SMS excitation in MRI. The following section on RF pulses gives both the theoretical background and practical application. The section on encoding and reconstruction shows how the collapsed multislice images can be disentangled by means of the transmitter pulse phase, gradient pulses, and most importantly using multichannel receiver coils. The relationship between classic parallel imaging techniques and SMS reconstruction methods is explored. The subsequent section describes the practical implementation, including the acquisition of reference data, and slice cross‐talk. Published applications of SMS imaging are then reviewed, and the article concludes with an outlook and perspective of SMS imaging. Magn Reson Med 75:63–81, 2016. © 2015 The Authors. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society of Medicine in Resonance.
National Institutes of Health consensus development conference statement: Management of hepatitis B

Hepatitis B is a major cause of liver disease worldwide, ranking as a substantial cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The development and use of a vaccine for hepatitis B virus (HBV) has resulted in a substantial decline in the number of new cases of acute hepatitis B among children, adolescents, and adults in the United States. However, this success has not yet been duplicated worldwide, and both acute and chronic HBV infection continue to represent important global health problems. Seven treatments are currently approved for adult patients with chronic HBV infection in the United States: interferon, pegylated interferon, lamivudine, adefovir dipivoxil, entecavir, telbivudine, and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate. Interferonand lamivudine have been approved for children with HBV infection. Although available randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) show encouraging short-term results—demonstrating the favorable effect of these agents on such intermediate markers of disease as HBV DNA level, liver enzyme tests, and liver histology—limited rigorous evidence exists demonstrating the effect of these therapies on important long-term clinical outcomes, such as the development of hepatocellular carcinoma or a reduction in deaths. Questions therefore remain about which groups of patients benefit from therapy and at which point in the course of disease this therapy should be initiated.
Cytoskeletal components of the vertebrate neuromuscular junction: vinculin, alpha-actinin, and filamin

We have used immunocytochemical methods to investigate the cytoskeletal constituents of the vertebrate neuromuscular junction. Specific, affinity-purified antibodies to three cytoskeletal proteins, vinculin, alpha-actinin, and filamin, bound to neuromuscular junctions in sections of normal rat, mouse, chick, and Xenopus muscles. All three antibodies bound to the synaptic regions of denervated rat muscle fibers, indicating that the proteins recognized by these antibodies are associated with postsynaptic structures. The three proteins are present at the neuromuscular junction in muscle fibers of embryonic and neonatal animals, and therefore, may play an important role in its differentiation.
Approximating optimization problems using EAs on scale-free networks

It has been experimentally observed that real-world networks follow certain topological properties, such as small-world, power-law etc. To study these networks, many random graph models, such as Preferential Attachment, have been proposed. In this paper, we consider the deterministic properties which capture power-law degree distribution and degeneracy. Networks with these properties are known as scale-free networks in the literature. Many interesting problems remain NP-hard on scale-free networks. We study the relationship between scale-free properties and the approximation-ratio of some commonly used evolutionary algorithms. For the Vertex Cover, we observe experimentally that the (1+1) EA always gives the better result than a greedy local search, even when it runs for only 𝒪(nlog(n)) steps. We give the construction of a scale-free network in which a multi-objective algorithm and a greedy algorithm obtain optimal solutions, while the (1+1) EA obtains the worst possible solution with constant probability. We prove that for the Dominating Set, Vertex Cover, Connected Dominating Set and Independent Set, the (1+1) EA obtains constant-factor approximation in expected run time 𝒪(nlog(n)) and 𝒪(n4) respectively. Whereas, GSEMO gives even better approximation than (1+1) EA in expected run time 𝒪(n3) for Dominating Set, Vertex Cover and Connected Dominating Set on such networks.
Biomechanical evaluation of the impact of various facet joint lesions on the primary stability of anterior plate fixation in cervical dislocation injuries: a cadaver study: Laboratory investigation.

OBJECT Injuries of the subaxial cervical spine including facet joints and posterior ligaments are common. Potential surgical treatments consist of anterior, posterior, or anterior-posterior fixation. Because each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, the best treatment is debated. This biomechanical cadaver study compared the effect of different facet joint injuries on primary stability following anterior plate fixation. METHODS Fractures and plate fixation were performed on 15 fresh-frozen intact cervical spines (C3-T1). To simulate a translation-rotation injury in all groups, complete ligament rupture and facet dislocation were simulated by dissecting the entire posterior and anterior ligament complex between C-4 and C-5. In the first group, the facet joints were left intact. In the second group, one facet joint between C-4 and C-5 was removed and the other side was left intact. In the third group, both facet joints between C-4 and C-5 were removed. The authors next performed single-level anterior discectomy and interbody grafting using bone material from the respective thoracic vertebral bodies. An anterior cervical locking plate was used for fixation. Continuous loading was performed using a servohydraulic test bench at 2 N/sec. The mean load failure was measured when the implant failed. RESULTS In the group in which both facet joints were intact, the mean load failure was 174.6 ± 46.93 N. The mean load failure in the second group where only one facet joint was removed was 127.8 ± 22.83 N. In the group in which both facet joints were removed, the mean load failure was 73.42 ± 32.51 N. There was a significant difference between the first group (both facet joints intact) and the third group (both facet joints removed) (p < 0.05, Kruskal-Wallis test). CONCLUSIONS In this cadaver study, primary stability of anterior plate fixation for dislocation injuries of the subaxial cervical spine was dependent on the presence of the facet joints. If the bone in one or both facet joints is damaged in the clinical setting, anterior plate fixation in combination with bone grafting might not provide sufficient stabilization; additional posterior stabilization may be needed.
Design of a Multiresonator Loaded Band-Rejected Ultrawideband Planar Monopole Antenna With Controllable Notched Bandwidth

We present a new multiresonator loaded band-rejected planar monopole antenna for ultrawideband applications. The proposed microstrip-fed antenna is composed of a flared metal plate, a truncated ground plane, and two pairs of folded strips. By applying the resonance nature of the folded strips and the associated cross coupling effects, the proposed antenna demonstrates bandstop-filter-like response with bandwidth controllability at the targeted rejection band. To illustrate the antenna operating mechanism more clearly, an equivalent circuit model consisting of RLC lumped resonators and J-inverters is discussed and extracted. The antenna input admittance calculated with the help of the equivalent circuit model agrees reasonably well with the simulated one obtained by the full-wave simulator. The design concept and the simulated and experimental results including the return losses, radiation patterns, and gain responses versus frequencies are carefully investigated throughout the paper. A parametric study in terms of the bandwidth tunability of the proposed design at the notched band is performed. The effects of the finite size ground plane are studied in this paper as well.
SEQualyzer: interactive tool for quality control and exploratory analysis of high-throughput RNA structural profiling data.

To serve numerous functional roles, RNA must fold into specific structures. Determining these structures is thus of paramount importance. The recent advent of high-throughput sequencing-based structure profiling experiments has provided important insights into RNA structure and widened the scope of RNA studies. However, as a broad range of approaches continues to emerge, a universal framework is needed to quantitatively ensure consistent and high-quality data. We present SEQualyzer, a visual and interactive application that makes it easy and efficient to gauge data quality, screen for transcripts with high-quality information and identify discordant replicates in structure profiling experiments. Our methods rely on features common to a wide range of protocols and can serve as standards for quality control and analyses. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION SEQualyzer is written in R, is platform-independent, and is freely available at http://bme.ucdavis. edu/aviranlab/SEQualyzer CONTACT: saviran@ucdavis.eduSupplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Leveraging Item Connections to Improve Social Recommendations with Ratings and Reviews

Recommender systems aim to provide users with preferred items to tackle the information overload problem in the Web era. Social relations, item connections, and usergenerated reviews on items contain abundant potential information. By combining matrix factorization with latent Dirichlet allocation, we integrate ratings, reviews, user similarity and item similarity in recommender systems. The experimental result on a real-world dataset proves that both item connection and user connection contain useful sources for recommendation, and our model can effectively improve recommendation quality.
The road to VEGAS: guiding the search over neutral networks

VEGAS (Varying Evolvability-Guided Adaptive Search) is a new methodology proposed to deal with the neutrality property that frequently appears on combinatorial optimization problems. Its main feature is to consider the whole evaluated solutions of a neutral network rather than the last accepted solution. Moreover, VEGAS is designed to escape from plateaus based on the evolvability of solutions, and on a multi-armed bandit by selecting the more promising solution from the neutral network. Experiments are conducted on NK-landscapes with neutrality. Results show the importance of considering the whole identified solutions from the neutral network and of guiding the search explicitly. The impact of the level of neutrality and of the exploration-exploitation trade-off are deeply analyzed.
Pnserpin: A Novel Serine Protease Inhibitor from Extremophile Pyrobaculum neutrophilum

Serine protease inhibitors (serpins) are native inhibitors of serine proteases, constituting a large protein family with members spread over eukaryotes and prokaryotes. However, only very few prokaryotic serpins, especially from extremophiles, have been characterized to date. In this study, Pnserpin, a putative serine protease inhibitor from the thermophile Pyrobaculum neutrophilum, was overexpressed in Escherichia coli for purification and characterization. It irreversibly inhibits chymotrypsin-, trypsin-, elastase-, and subtilisin-like proteases in a temperature range from 20 to 100 °C in a concentration-dependent manner. The stoichiometry of inhibition (SI) of Pnserpin for proteases decreases as the temperature increases, indicating that the inhibitory activity of Pnserpin increases with the temperature. SDS-PAGE (sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis) showed that Pnserpin inhibits proteases by forming a SDS-resistant covalent complex. Homology modeling and molecular dynamic simulations predicted that Pnserpin can form a stable common serpin fold. Results of the present work will help in understanding the structural and functional characteristics of thermophilic serpin and will broaden the current knowledge about serpins from extremophiles.
SAR — A self-adaptive QoS aware network layer framework

Quality of service frameworks in computer networks are sets of mechanisms that run over multiple network equipment with the aim of ensuring network services. Several frameworks have been developed using different approaches, each framework showing advantages but also drawbacks. In order to eliminate these shortcomings, a new organization of the bandwidth is proposed and a new framework for ensuring end-to-end quality of service was developed and implemented. The functionalities and performances of the proposed framework were tested and validated through an experimental methodology, using a software system for developing and testing of quality of services sensitive frameworks and technologies.
Data-driven QoE optimization techniques for multi-user wireless networks

The proliferation of heterogeneous data services and applications, with different communication requirements, has led to the design of Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms to provide service differentiation and, possibly, performance guarantee to a range of classes of applications. In this paper, we propose a data-driven media delivery framework for the optimization of multi-user wireless networks that differs from the classic approaches in the following aspects. First, it goes beyond the QoS paradigm to embrace the Quality of Experience (QoE) approach, which discriminates data streams based on their actual content rather than just their class. Second, it applies cutting-edge cognitive science techniques to automatically learn data models and discover optimization strategies. To substantiate our argumentation, we discuss a couple of use cases regarding the transmission of multimedia content over a wireless link shared by users belonging to different QoE classes of service.
QUALITY ANALYSIS ON RANSAC-BASED ROOF FACETS EXTRACTION FROM AIRBORNE LIDAR DATA

RANSAC algorithm is a robust method for model estimation. It is widely used in the extraction of geometry primitives and 3D model reconstruction. However, there has been relatively little comprehensive evaluation in RANSAC-based approach for plane extraction. In order to provide a reference for improving the quality on RANSAC-based approach for roof facets extraction or segmentation, this paper focuses on the quality analysis on classical RANSAC algorithm. Airborne LIDAR data from the test Area 1 and Area 2 in Vaihingen (German) is used. 33 buildings (4 buildings with flat roofs and 29 buildings with slope roofs) extracted from LIDAR data are taken as input for planes extraction. Based on the characteristics of detected planar surfaces, planes can fall into several categories: non-segmented planes, over-segmented planes, under-segmented planes and spurious planes. Then, several causes for these quality problems are discussed. Some experimental results and analyses show that, considering spatial-domain connectivity, most of the quality problems of classical RANSAC algorithm can be improved. However, there are still many issues requiring in-depth research. Finally, some methods are suggested to solve these problems.