Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential requirements for myeloid leukemia IFN-&ggr; conditioning determine graft-versus-leukemia resistance and sensitivity

The graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) is potent against chronic phase chronic myelogenous leukemia (CP-CML), but blast crisis CML (BC-CML) and acute myeloid leukemias (AML) are GVL resistant. To understand GVL resistance, we studied GVL against mouse models of CP-CML, BC-CML, and AML generated by the transduction of mouse BM with fusion cDNAs derived from human leukemias. Prior work has shown that CD4+ T cell–mediated GVL against CP-CML and BC-CML required intact leukemia MHCII; however, stem cells from both leukemias were MHCII negative. Here, we show that CP-CML, BC-CML, and AML stem cells upregulate MHCII in alloSCT recipients. Using gene-deficient leukemias, we determined that BC-CML and AML MHC upregulation required IFN-&ggr; stimulation, whereas CP-CML MHC upregulation was independent of both the IFN-&ggr; receptor (IFN-&ggr;R) and the IFN-&agr;/&bgr; receptor IFNAR1. Importantly, IFN-&ggr;R–deficient BC-CML and AML were completely resistant to CD4- and CD8-mediated GVL, whereas IFN-&ggr;R/IFNAR1 double-deficient CP-CML was fully GVL sensitive. Mouse AML and BC-CML stem cells were MHCI+ without IFN-&ggr; stimulation, suggesting that IFN-&ggr; sensitizes these leukemias to T cell killing by mechanisms other than MHC upregulation. Our studies identify the requirement of IFN-&ggr; stimulation as a mechanism for BC-CML and AML GVL resistance, whereas independence from IFN-&ggr; renders CP-CML more GVL sensitive, even with a lower-level alloimmune response.
Improving the performance of the World Wide Web over wireless networks

The World Wide Web has become the largest source of Internet traffic, but it was not designed for wireless networks. This paper discusses some of the problems encountered when using the Web over wireless networks and describes solutions to those problems. By designing a multithreaded proxy server that prefetches documents to clients, reduces the resolution of large bitmaps, and communicates with clients using a new protocol, the multiple hypertext transfer protocol, we have reduced document load time by over 30%.
GOOAL: a Graphic Object Oriented Analysis Laboratory

Our goal is to enable rapid production of static and dynamic object models from natural language description of problems. Rapid modeling is achieved through automation of analysis tasks. This automation captures the cognitive schemes analysts use to build their models of the world through the use of a precise methodology. The methodology is based on the use of proposed technique called role posets, and a semi-natural language (called 4W). Original problem statements are automatically translated to 4W language. The produced sentences then, are analyzed with role posets to produce static model views. Finally the 4W sentences are used to generate dynamic views of the problem. This set of methods maximizes analysis process agility, promotes reusability and constitutes a valuable tool in the learning process of object thinking. The prototype tool: "GOOAL" (Graphic Object Oriented Analysis Laboratory) receives a natural language (NL) description of a problem and produces the object models taking decisions sentence by sentence. The user realizes the consequences of the analysis of every sentence in real time. Unique features of this tool are the underlying methodology and the production of dynamic object models.
Effects of storage aging on the cure kinetics of T700/BMI prepregs for advanced composites

The effects of room temperature aging on the cure kinetics of a bismaleimide (BMI) matrix prepreg have been characterized by different time and storage conditions. The study has focused on the stability of BMI matrix carbon fiber prepregs, when exposed to controlled environmental conditions before being used in composite manufacturing. The effects of aging on reactivity, glass transition temperature, and process window have been investigated by differential scanning calorimetrer through dynamic and isothermal tests. A theoretical kinetic model for epoxy matrix prepregs, developed in previous studies, has been applied to the cure of both aged and virgin BMI matrix. The model is able to satisfactorily describe the effect of processing variables such as temperature and degree of cure during the curing of the composite under different conditions (curing temperature and heating rate). The effects of diffusion-controlled phenomena on the cure kinetics, associated with changes in glass transition temperature as a function of the degree of cure, have been taken into account in the formulation of an nth-order kinetic model. POLYM. COMPOS. , 2008. © 2008 Society of Plastics Engineers
Triangular Mesh Generation for a Real-structure Scan Data in 3D Space

With the wide application of the areal structured light scanner, the triangulation of the area-structure point cloud become the main bottleneck of the process. Since a one-to-one relationship is maintained between the image pixel and the data point in the area-structure point cloud, the information of the image implicating the certain topology structure can be merged into the point cloud. In order to improve the search speed, a hash table is applied to store the point cloud. A 2D diagonal criterion is derived from the circle criterion, and after introduction of the deformation degree, this criterion can be extended to the 3D space. If the deformation degree is less than a certain threshold, the 3D diagonal criterion can be used, otherwise, the smoothness criterion need to be employed. The proposed algorithm is capable of handling surfaces with complex topology, non-convex boundaries and various interior holes. Experimental results are demonstrated that it is highly efficient compared with other existing algorithms.
Performance limitations for SISO LTI plants controlled over SNR constrained channels

This paper presents performance limitations in the control of single-input single-output (SISO) linear time-invariant (LTI) plants over signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constrained channels. Our main result is a closed form characterization of the minimal stationary plant output variance when the controller has access to plant output measurements and the channel is placed between the controller and the actuator. We explicitly quantify the effects of plant dynamical features, namely unstable poles, non-minimum phase zeros, and frequency response, as well as the effects of channel feedback, on the best achievable performance. Our results shed light into the interplay between optimal performance and SNR constraints.
Automatic Medical Knowledge Acquisition Using Question-Answering

We aim at proposing a rule generation approach to automatically acquire structured rules that can be used in decision support systems for drug prescription. We apply a question-answering engine to answer specific information requests. The rule generation is seen as an equation problem, where the factors are known items of the rule (e.g., an infectious disease, caused by a given bacteria) and solutions are answered by the engine (e.g., some antibiotics). A top precision of 0.64 is reported, which means, for about two third of the knowledge rules of the benchmark, one of the recommended antibiotic was automatically acquired by the rule generation method. These results suggest that a significant fraction of the medical knowledge can be obtained by such an automatic text mining approach.
Accessing XML documents : the INEX initiative

This document reports on the work carried out during INEX 2004, the evaluation initiative for the evaluation of XML retrieval. We discuss the main track of the initiative, the ad hoc track, and two tracks, the interactive track and the heterogenous track, all of them crucial for investigating more effective, usable and realistic access to XML-based digital libraries.
Towards extracting flickr tag semantics

We address the problem of extracting semantics of tags -- short, unstructured text-labels assigned to resources on the Web -- based on each tag's metadata patterns. In particular, we describe an approach for extracting place and event semantics for tags that are assigned to photos on Flickr, a popular photo sharing website supporting time and location (latitude/longitude) metadata. The approach can be generalized to other domains where text terms can be extracted and associated with metadata patterns, such as geo-annotated web pages.
Increased freezing and decreased positive affect in postinstitutionalized children.

BACKGROUND Early neglect is associated with increased risk of internalizing disorders in humans and with increased fear behavior in animals. When children are adopted out of orphanages in which they experienced institutional neglect, anxiety and depressive disorders often are not seen until adolescence. What has not been examined is whether even young children adopted from institutional care exhibit heightened fear or behavioral inhibition. METHOD Children adopted between 15 and 35 months from institutional care were examined twice during their first year postadoption and compared with children of the same age reared in their birth families. A modified version of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery for Preschoolers was used with the children being exposed to two mechanical toys designed to be highly arousing and fear eliciting. Because children in institutions tend to exhibit low levels of positive affect, the children were also examined during exposure to two positive stimuli. Sessions were videotaped and coded by observers blind to the study purpose. RESULTS Postinstitutionalized children froze more in fear vignettes and were less positive in both fear and positive vignettes than nonadopted children. Group differences did not diminish significantly from the first session to the next, 6 months later. CONCLUSIONS Children exposed to early institutional neglect exhibit emotional biases that are consistent with their previously demonstrated risk for the development of internalizing disorders.
Hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal asthmatic women

Objectives: Assessment of mean 24 h oestradiol (E2) and oestrone (E1) concentration and basic FSH secretion in postmenopausal asthmatic women, before and after HRT use, and to identify any connections between changes in hormone concentrations and patients’ clinical state.
Estimating the Prognosis of Hepatitis C Patients Infected by Transfusion in Canada between 1986 and 1990

Objective. To develop a natural history model for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection to determine allocation of compensatory funds to Canadians who acquired HCV through the blood supply from 1986 through 1990. Methods. A Markov cohort simulation model for HCV prognosis was developed, using content experts, published data, posttransfusion look-back data, and a national survey. Results. The mortality rate in transfusees is high (46% at 10 years), although HCV-related deaths are rare. Only 14% develop-cirrhosis at 20 years (95% confidence interval, 0%–-44%), but 1 in 4 will eventually develop cirrhosis, and 1 in 8 will die of liver disease. Conclusions. This unique application of Markov cohort simulation and epidemiologic methods provides a state-of-the-art estimate ofHCVprognosis and has allowed compensation decisions to be based on the best available evidence.
Towards Elastic Multi-Tenant Database Replication with Quality of Service

Database systems serving cloud platforms must handle a large number of applications or tenants. Multi-tenancy database has been prevalent for hosting multiple tenants within a single DBMS while enabling effective resource sharing. Providing such performance goals is challenging for providers as they must balance the performance that they can deliver to tenants and the operating costs. In such database systems, a key functionality for service providers is database replication, which is useful for availability, performance, elasticity, and quality of service. This paper presents RepliC, an approach to database replication in the cloud with quality of service, elasticity, and support tomulti-tenancy. In order to evaluate RepliC, some experiments that measure the quality of service and elasticity are presented. Our experiment results confirm that RepliC ensures the quality of service with small SLA violations, while using resources efficiently.
Formalising Harmony Seeking Rules of Morphogenesis

The 15 generative patterns of Alexander’s “Nature of Order” are descriptions of architectural structures that are seen in both buildings and in the natural world. We are investigating various aspects of complex systems, including those relating to structural patterns that may underlie those systems. Here we describe some experiments to generate 2D structures that incorporate those patterns that Alexander describes as Positive Space, the voids that contribute to the overall pattern, and Levels of Scale, a gradation in the size of the pattern’s components. We show some of the results, illustrating that these patterns can be achieved as emergent properties of simple placement algorithms with a generative component.
Moving Objects Tracking in Video by Graph Cuts and Parameter Motion Model

tracking of moving objects in a video sequence is an important task in different domains such as video compression, video surveillance and object recognition. In this paper, we propose an approach for integrated tracking and segmentation of moving objects from image sequences where the camera is in movement. This approach is based on the calculation of minimal cost of a cut in a graph ―Graph Cuts‖ and the 2D parametric motion models estimated between successive images. The algorithm takes advantage of smooth optical flow which is modeled by affine motion and graph cuts in order to reach maximum precision and overcome inherent problems of conventional optical flow algorithms. Our method is simple to implement and effective. Experimental results show the good performance and robustness of the proposed approach.
On Verification & Validation of Neural Network Based Controllers

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used as an alternative to traditional models in the realm of control. Unfortunately, ANN models rarely provide any indication of accuracy or reliability of their predictions. Before ANNs can be used in safety critical applications (aircraft, nuclear plants, etc.), a certification process must be established for ANN based controllers. Traditional approaches to validation of neural networks are mostly based on empirical evaluation through simulation and/or experimental testing. For on-line trained ANNs used in safety critical applications, traditional methods of verification and validation cannot be applied, leaving a wide technological gap, which we attempt to address in this paper. We will describe a layered approach for ANN V&V which includes a V&V software process for pre-trained neural networks, a detailed discussion of numerical issues, and techniques for dynamically measuring and monitoring the confidence of the ANN output.
A Lower Bound on the Euclidean Distance for Fast Nearest Neighbor Retrieval in High-dimensional Spaces

Finding the nearest neighbor among a large collection of high dimensional vectors can be a computationally demanding task. In this paper, we pursue fast vector matching by representing vectors in IR n with lower dimensional projections in IR m , m n. The key to creating and using the representative vectors is a lower bound on the Euclidean distance between arbitrary vectors in IR n based on the submultiplicative property of induced matrix norms. For any non-zero projection matrix A 2 IR m n , the bound is proportional to the distance between the projected vectors. We study other existing bounds involving orthogonal transforms and piecewise constant approximation maps in light of this formulation. Additionally, we address the question of how to optimize the projection matrix given a dataset in order to make the bound as tight as possible. Experimental results on a speech database show that exact nearest neighbor computation can be accelerated by a factor of 5 using the proposed bound.
HIV-associated wasting in the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy: a syndrome of residual HIV infection in monocytes and macrophages?

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) might be influencing the development of wasting in the era of potent antiretroviral therapy. In a retrospective study of 57 subjects, HIV proviral DNA levels in PBMCs were higher in subjects whose body weight decreased by >5% one year after initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy, compared with subjects whose body weight was stable or increased (median HIV proviral DNA load, 8.9 vs. 0.9 copies/10(6) PBMCs; P = . 006).
VLSI Implementation of a 4×4 MIMO-OFDM transceiver with an 80-MHz channel bandwidth

VLSI Implementation for a 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) transceiver is described that targets 1-Gbps data transmission for next-generation wireless LAN systems. The IEEE802.11 Very High Throughput (VHT) Study Group concluded that a signal bandwidth of more than 80 MHz is needed to achieve 1-Gbps throughput in the MAC layer. The proposed architecture is suitable for VLSI implementation that meets this specification and enables real-time processing in a 4×4 MIMO-OFDM configuration. It incorporates a minimum meansquare error (MMSE) MIMO detector that drastically shortens processing latency. Evaluation of a MIMO-OFDM transceiver implemented in CMOS with 128, 256, or 512 OFDM subcarriers showed that the power dissipation ranged from 451 to 577 mW.
A low-power multi-band ECoG/EEG interface IC

We present a 6.4 µW electrocorticography (ECoG)/electroencephalography (EEG) processing integrated circuit (EPIC) with 0.4 µV<inf>rms</inf> noise floor intended for emerging brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. This chip conditions the signal and simultaneously extracts energy in four fully-programmable frequency bands. Functionality is demonstrated by tuning the four bands to important frequency bands used by ECoG/EEG applications: α (8–12Hz), β (18–26Hz), low-γ (30–50Hz) and γ (70–100Hz). Measured results from in-vivo ECoG recording from the primary motor cortex of an awake monkey are presented.
The regulation of synaptic vesicles pools within motor nerve terminals during short-term facilitation and neuromodulation

Acknowledgments: We are very thankful to Dr. Josef Dudel (Physiologishes Institute der Ludwig-MaximilliansUniversität München) for his suggestions during this study. Funding was provided by NSFIBN-0131459 (RLC, KV), a G. Ribble Fellowship for undergraduate studies in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Kentucky (SL), a Undergraduate Research Scholarship awarded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation (SL). Articles in PresS. J Appl Physiol (October 6, 2005). doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00580. 2005
Mohit Tawarmalani Polyhedral Basis , Finite Probability Spaces and Links to Disjunctive Programming

Motivated by our earlier study of convex extensions [25], we define a polyhedral basis over a convex set. We explore properties of polyhedral functions that lead us into studying their relations to convexification and disjunctive programming. In particular, we show that a polyhedral basis is easy to identify for cartesian products of simplices. A special case, that of an n-dimensional hypercube, is of particular interest in this study. In this case, we show that convex and concave envelopes of multilinear sets are derived as a consequence of disjunctive programming and Reformulation Linearization Techniques. We answer in negative an open question whether there exist polynomial functions that will provide convexification processes for general integer programs just as multilinear functions are used to convexify 0-1 programs in the reformulation linearization technique and the lift and project algorithm. The polyhedral functions also correspond to nonlinear rounding ideas and we will explore these in the article. This interpretation allows us to study probabilistic mathematical programs and explore their relation to multilinear programs. More concretely, we demonstrate that a probabilistic mathematical program is equivalent to the lagrangian relaxation of a multilin-ear program. Consequently, we study approximation schemes and demonstrate that rounding schemes often hint at polyhedral basis functions. Some negative results about Lagrangian relaxation are presented. This is a preliminary set of proofs and provides many directions for further work in con-vexification techniques. Some of the results that follow easily are stated without proofs.
Interference estimation with applications to blind multiple-access communication over fading channels

We consider the detection of nonorthogonal multipulse signals on multiple-access fading channels. The generalized maximum-likelihood rule is employed to decode users whose complex fading gains are unknown. We develop geometrical interpretations for the resulting detectors and their corresponding asymptotic efficiencies. The generalized maximum-likelihood detection rule is then applied to find a matched subspace detector for the frequency-selective fading channel, under the assumption of a short coherence time (or long coherence time without the computational power to track the fading parameters). We propose blind implementations of these detectors for nonorthogonal multipulse signaling on both frequency-nonselective and frequency-selective multiple-access fading channels. These blind detectors extend the results of Wang and Poor (see ibid., vol.44, p.677-89, 1998) to multipulse modulation and fast frequency selective fading. For comparison, the minimum mean-squared error decision rules for these channels are derived and blind implementations of their corresponding detectors are developed.
Effect of Probiotic Supplementation on CD4 Cell Count in HIV-Infected Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Progressive decline in CD4 cell counts is associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease progression. Loss of CD4 cells might contribute to gut microbiota alteration and bacterial translocation. Probiotics, by inducing epithelial healing, may promote the restoration of the intestinal CD4+ T-cell population. The aim of this meta-analysis was to systematically review all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of probiotic/prebiotic/synbiotic supplementation on CD4 cell counts in HIV-infected patients. A systematic search of RCTs was conducted through PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases up to August 2015. Effect sizes of eligible studies were pooled using random-effects models (the DerSimonian-Laird estimator). Eleven studies with 14 treatment arms met the inclusion criteria. Pooled analysis showed no significant reduction in CD4 counts (−7.5 mg/l, p = .7) in intervention-treated individuals. Subgroup analysis on potential influencing factors highlighted sex, country of origin, study duration, and the type of intervention as having significant effects on CD4 cell counts. As a whole, the results of this meta-analysis suggested that supplementation with probiotic may not change CD4 counts. However, a significant increase in CD4 counts was seen in females and following synbiotics as opposed to treatment with pro- or prebiotics alone.