Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wheeze in Preschool Age Is Associated with Pulmonary Bacterial Infection and Resolves after Antibiotic Therapy

Background Neonates with airways colonized by Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae or Moraxella catarrhalis are at increased risk for recurrent wheeze which may resemble asthma early in life. It is not clear whether chronic colonization by these pathogens is causative for severe persistent wheeze in some preschool children and whether these children might benefit from antibiotic treatment. We assessed the relevance of bacterial colonization and chronic airway infection in preschool children with severe persistent wheezing and evaluated the outcome of long-time antibiotic treatment on the clinical course in such children. Methodology/Principal Findings Preschool children (n = 42) with severe persistent wheeze but no symptoms of acute pulmonary infection were investigated by bronchoscopy and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). Differential cell counts and microbiological and virological analyses were performed on BAL samples. Patients diagnosed with bacterial infection were treated with antibiotics for 2–16 weeks (n = 29). A modified ISAAC questionnaire was used for follow-up assessment of children at least 6 months after bronchoscopy. Of the 42 children with severe wheezing, 34 (81%) showed a neutrophilic inflammation and 20 (59%) of this subgroup had elevated bacterial counts (≥104 colony forming units per milliliter) suggesting infection. Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Moraxella catarrhalis were the most frequently isolated species. After treatment with appropriate antibiotics 92% of patients showed a marked improvement of symptoms upon follow-up examination. Conclusions/Significance Chronic bacterial infections are relevant in a subgroup of preschool children with persistent wheezing and such children benefit significantly from antibiotic therapy.
Assessing the longevity of online videos: A new insight of a video's quality

Recommending valuable videos to viewers is always crucial to an online video website and its related third parties. More particularly, what features and methods to be selected to assess the quality of online videos is still an on-going research topic. Unlike previous work attempted to evaluate a video only by its view count (a.k.a. popularity), this article proposes an additional scoring mechanism to capture a video's long-lasting value (a.k.a. longevity) to assist the judgment of its quality. Generally speaking, a longevous video tends to be watched frequently and therefore is considered to be more valuable. We introduce the concept of latent social impulses and the necessity of using them while measuring a video's longevity. When deriving latent social impulses, we view the video website as a digital signal filter and formulate the task as a least squares problem. The proposed longevity computation is based on the derived social impulses, and we use experiments to directly show that the computed longevity scores are able to capture overlooked information by popularity measure. Unfortunately, the required information to derive social impulses is not always public, which makes a third party unable to directly evaluate all videos' longevities. To solve this problem, we formulate a semi-supervised learning task by using part of videos having known longevity scores to predict the unknown longevity scores, and we propose a Gaussian Random Markov model with Loopy Belief Propagation to solve it. The conducted experiments on YouTube demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly improve the prediction results comparing to baseline models.
Cell Injury , Repair , Aging and Apoptosis Fingolimod ( FTY 720 ) Enhances Remyelination Following Demyelination of Organotypic Cerebellar Slices

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An new efficient evolutionary approach for dynamic optimization problems

To improve the efficiency of the currently known evolutionary algorithms for dynamic optimization problems, we have proposed a novel variable representation allows static evolutionary optimization approaches to be extended to efficiently explore global and better local optimal areas in dynamic fitness landscapes. It represents a single individual as three real-valued vectors (x,σ,r)∈ Rn × Rn × R2 in the evolutionary search population. The first vector x corresponds to a point in the n-dimensional search space (an object variable vector), the second vector describes the search step of x, while the third vector r represents the dynamic fitness value and the dynamic tendency of the individual x in the dynamic environment. σ and r are the control variables (also called strategy variables), which allow self-adaptation. The object variable vector x is operated by different genetic strategies according to its corresponding σ and r. As a case study, we have integrated the new variable representation into Evolution Strategy (ES), yielding an Dynamic Optimization Evolution Strategy (DOES). DOES is experimentally tested with 5 benchmark dynamic problems. The results all demonstrate that DOES outperforms other ES on dynamic optimization problems.
Augmenting vehicular 3G users through inter-vehicle communications

Vehicular 3G (third-generation cellular system) users often need to download files from the Internet through the 3G data network, which is crucial in many application scenarios such as digital map update or location-based advertisement. Although the 3G brings larger coverage and instant access to data transfer, it may also incur high cost. We observe that many applications of vehicular 3G users can actually tolerate certain data access latency. In addition, inter-vehicle communications have been practical and can be exploited for inter-vehicle data delivery. Based on these observations, we propose to augment vehicular 3G users by data sharing through inter-vehicle communications. We formulate an optimization problem. The objective is to minimize the cost of 3G data communications, meanwhile maximizing the success probability of downloading all 3G user data. The two-hop transmission process and the bandwidth limitation in vehicular network are both modeled in the optimization problem. To lower the cost of 3G and meet the delivery ratio and delay constraints of data, one single-stage and one multi-stage algorithms are proposed for selection of seed vehicles (who download the data via 3G channel). We have evaluated our algorithm with simulations with real vehicular traces and the results show that our algorithms reduce the 3G cost and achieve good performance of data downloads.
A Reformulation of the Arora-Rao-Vazirani Structure Theorem

In a well-known paper[ARV], Arora, Rao and Vazirani obtained an O(sqrt(log n)) approximation to the Balanced Separator problem and Uniform Sparsest Cut. At the heart of their result is a geometric statement about sets of points that satisfy triangle inequalities, which also underlies subsequent work on approximation algorithms and geometric embeddings. In this note, we give an equivalent formulation of the Structure theorem in [ARV] in terms of the expansion of large sets in geometric graphs on sets of points satisfying triangle inequalities.
Improved "TEO" feature-based automatic stress detection using physiological and acoustic speech sensors

The acoustic pressure microphone has served as the primary instrument for collecting speech data for automatic speech recognition systems. The acoustic microphone suffers from limitations, such as sensitivity to background noise and relatively far proximity to speech production organs. Alternative speech collection sensors may serve to enhance the effectiveness of automatic speech recognition systems. In this study, we first consider an experimental evaluation of the TEO-CB-AutoEnv feature in an actual law enforcement training scenario. We consider feature relation to stress level assessment over time. Next, we explore the use of the physiological microphone, a gel-based device placed next to the vocal folds on the outside of the throat used to measure vibrations of the vocal tract and minimize background noise, as we investigate the effectiveness of a TEO-CB-AutoEnv-based automatic stress recognition system. We employ both acoustic and physiological sensors as stand-alone speech data collection devices as well as consider both sensors concurrently. For the latter, we devise a weighted composite decision scheme using both the acoustic and physiological microphone data that yields relative average error rate reductions of 32% and 6% versus sole employment of acoustic and physiological microphone data, respectively, in a realistic stressful environment.
A domain-specific modeling approach for gestural interaction

Natural interaction is gaining widespread use, but more tools and techniques are required to fully support the takeup of gestural interaction. This research focus on providing an expressive an extensible framework and an executable domain-specific modeling language for specifying gestural interaction with real or virtual objects. The main targeted domains are virtual reality for gaming applications and home automation.
P2Prec: a Recommendation Service for P2P Content Sharing Systems

In this paper, we propose P2Prec, a recommendation service for P2P content sharing systems that exploits users' social data. The key idea is to recommend to a user high quality documents in a specific topic using ratings of friends (or friends of friends) who are expert in that topic. To manage users' social data, we rely on Friend-Of-A-Friend (FOAF) descriptions. P2Prec has a hybrid P2P architecture to work on top of any P2P content sharing system. It combines efficient DHT indexing to manage the users' FOAF files with gossip robustness to disseminate the topics of expertise between friends. In our experimental evaluation, using the CiteSeer dataset, we show that P2Prec has the ability to get the maximum recall with very good performance. Furthermore, it increases recall and precision by a factor of 2 compared with centralized solutions.
Prospects of Return: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Germany

Abstract This study examines the factors that influence refugees’ decision to return to their country of origin. The research employs exploratory factor analysis and linear regression to investigate the individual-level factors that influence these decisions. Data for the analyses come from a structured survey on 889 Syrian refugees in five different German cities in late 2015. Findings indicate that refugees with higher levels of education are more likely to consider return, given that their country of origin adopts democracy. The decisions of those who experience direct threats to their safety, however, are influenced primarily by the restoration of stability.
Survival and HLA-B*57 in HIV/HCV Co-Infected Patients on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART)

Background and aims HLA class I alleles, in particular HLA-B*57, constitute the most consistent host factor determining outcomes in untreated HCV- and HIV-infection. In this prospective cohort study, we analysed the impact of HLA class I alleles on all-cause mortality in patients with HIV-, HCV- and HIV/HCV- co-infection receiving HAART. Methods In 2003 HLA-A and B alleles were determined and patients were prospectively followed in 3-month intervals until 2013 or death. HLA-A and B alleles were determined by strand-specific oligonucleotide hybridisation and PCR in 468 Caucasian patients with HCV- (n=120), HIV- (n=186) and HIV/HCV-infection (n=162). All patients with HIV-infection were on HAART. In each patient group, HLA class I-associated survival was analysed by Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis. Results At recruitment the proportion of patients carrying a HLA-B*57 allele differed between HIV- (12.9%) and HCV-infection (4.2%). Kaplan Meier analysis revealed significantly increased mortality in HLA-B*57-positive patients with HIV-infection (p=0.032) and HIV/HCV-co-infection (p=0.004), which was apparently linked to non-viral infections. Cox logistic regression analysis confirmed HLA-B*57 (p=0.001), serum gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (p=0.003), serum bilirubin (p=0.022) and CD4 counts (p=0.041) as independent predictors of death in HIV-infected patients. Conclusion Differences in the prevalence of HLA-B*57 at study entry between HIV- and HCV- infected patients may reflect immune selection in the absence of antiviral therapy. When patients were treated with HAART, however, HLA-B*57 was associated with increased mortality and risk to die from bacterial infections and sepsis, suggesting an ambiguous role of HLA-B*57 for survival in HIV/HCV infection depending on the circumstances.
High Interferon-γ Uniquely in Vδ1 T Cells Correlates with Markers of Inflammation and Axonal Damage in Early Multiple Sclerosis

We have identified a population of T lymphocytes in peripheral blood, Vδ1 TCRγδ T lymphocytes, which unexpectedly was uniquely expressing high production of interferon-γ in newly diagnosed, untreated multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. IFN-γ production in this population distinctly correlated to parameters of clinical disease activity, inflammation, and neuronal damage. These Vδ1 T lymphocytes belong to a population of innate T lymphocytes that recognize antigen in the context of CD1d/CD1c and which include reactivity to the myelin glycosphingolipid sulfatide. Importantly, patients treated with natalizumab, blocking leukocyte transmigration to central nervous system, had completely normalized levels of interferon-γ-producing Vδ1 T lymphocytes. A biomarker and early sign of demyelinating disease in MS is much warranted and would help identify immunopathogenesis and prognosis of disease as well as monitor success with adequate treatment. The present study identifies the Vδ1 T lymphocytes as an early marker of MS and a possible link to understanding the disease etiology.
Social Media and Participation in Different Socio-political Contexts: Cases of Estonia and Finland

Today’s young people are engaging in politicized activities and are more attuned to the concerns of their own generation, as opposed to issues more relevant to their parents. Youth political activism takes a less overt and more individualized approach, and young people today are enthusiastic about online participation and engaging in it in different ways. This article adds to the growing discussion that focuses on connections between social media use and non-institutional youth political participation. The article focuses on the meaning that young people attribute to their own social media participation in two countries—Estonia and Finland—taking into account the impact of the wider social context. The empirical part of the study relies on material collected within the framework of the large-scale European project MYPLACE. The in-depth micro-level analysis is primary based on interviews with young people from Estonia and Finland, contextualized by diverse survey data.
Immunocytochemical localization of a neuronal nicotinic receptor: the beta 2-subunit

We have characterized in adult rat the tissue-specific expression of the nicotinic ACh receptor (AChR) beta 2-subunit using antisera raised against fusion protein constructs. Immunohistochemical localization revealed immunoreactivity distributed throughout the neuraxis. Overall, beta 2-like immunoreactivity (beta 2-LI) correlated well with in situ localization of beta 2 transcript in neuronal cell bodies. Particularly strong labeling was detected in the thalamus, and scattered other regions, whereas relatively weak staining was observed in the hypothalamus and amygdala. At the cellular level, beta 2-LI appeared to be exclusively neuronal and concentrated predominantly in perikarya, although strongly positive dendrites (cerebral cortical pyramidal neurons, cerebellar Purkinje cells) and axon terminals (e.g., striatum) were detected. At the ultrastructural level, beta 2-LI was membrane associated, with strong staining observed in endoplasmic reticulum and cytoplasmic transport vesicles. beta 2-LI was rarely detected at synapses. The widespread distribution of beta 2 suggests it may serve as a common subunit in different AChR combinations in various brain regions. Regulation of the expression of beta 2-subunit appears to be relatively unrestrained, with an apparent excess of protein synthesized in the cytoplasm relative to that which ultimately arrives at functional targets in the plasma membrane.
Strong Horse or Paper Tiger: Reputational Effects of War Outcomes

A dosing device is provided for introducing small doses of a liquid contained in a first chamber into a second liquid flowing in a second chamber. The device includes a body traversed by a bore which fluidly connects the chambers to one another and in which slides a push pin mounted on a sliding member and a follower pin mounted freely between the push pin and an abutment bar attached to the sliding member. The sliding member reciprocates parallel to the axis of the bore whereby the follower pin is pushed in one direction by the abutment bar and in the opposite direction by the push pin. A space separating the follower pin from the push pin constitutes the dosing chamber which is displaced between the first and second chambers.
Location Decisions of Foreign Banks and Institutional Competitive Advantage

Familiarity with working in a specific institutional environment compared to its competitors can provide a firm with a competitive advantage, making it invest in specific host countries. We examine whether this notion of institutional competitive advantage drives banks to seek out specific markets. Using detailed, bilateral data of bank ownership for a large number of countries over 1995-2006 and using a first-difference model, we find that institutional competitive advantage importantly drives banks' location decisions. Results are robust to different samples and model specifications, various econometric techniques and alternative measures of institutional quality. This finding has some policy implications, including on the increased cross-border banking among developing countries.
FPGA-Based Parallel Implementation of SURF Algorithm

SURF (Speeded up robust features) detection is used extensively in object detection, tracking and matching. However, due to its high complexity, it is usually a challenge to perform such detection in real time on a general-purpose processor. This paper proposes a parallel computing algorithm for the fast computation of SURF, which is specially designed for FPGAs. By efficiently exploiting the advantages of the architecture of an FPGA, and by appropriately handling the inherent parallelism of the SURF computation, the proposed algorithm is able to significantly reduce the computation time. Our experimental results show that, for an image with a resolution of 640x480, the processing time for computing using SURF is only 0.047 seconds on an FPGA (XC6SLX150T, 66.7 MHz), which is 13 times faster than when performed on a typical i3-3240 CPU (with a 3.4 GHz main frequency) and 249 times faster than when performed on a traditional ARM system (CortexTM-A8, 1 GHz).
All-optical , in-situ histology of neuronal tissue with femtosecond laser pulses

Goal We describe the application of femtosecond laser pulses to image and ablate neuronal tissue for the purpose of automated histology. The histology is accomplished in-situ by serial two-photon imaging of labeled tissue and removal of the imaged tissue with amplified, approximately 100 fs duration pulses, as illustrated schematically in figure 1A. The ablation of tissue with femtosecond, infrared laser pulses requires large optical fluences, in excess of 1 J/cm 2. In the past, such high fluences have been achieved with commercially available ~ 100 MHz laser oscillators with ~ 100 fs pulse duration, whose 1 to 10 nJ pulse energies can be focused to a less than 1 mm 2 spot size with high numerical aperture (i.e., tight focusing) objectives. Such beams have been used for fine-scale ablation of subcellular structures (Tirlapur and Konig, 2002). More typically, femtosecond laser pulses have been amplified with an optical amplifier to obtain pulses with comparable duration and microjoule energies, albeit at repetition rates of only 1 to 10 kHz. These amplified pulses have been used to ablate a wide variety of tissues, In this chapter, we describe the coupling of femtosecond ablation with two photon laser scanning microscopy (TPLSM)
A Prototype for Guideline Checking and Model Transformation in Matlab/Simulink

Nowadays, the software for electronic control units in embedded systems is often developed using a chain of modelbased development tools. For example, in the field of automotive systems often tools like Matlab/Simulink and related code generation tools such as dSPACE TargetLink are used. To ensure that the produced models can be processed as expected by the employed tool chains, i.e., fulfill all requirements of the later process phases, they have to adhere to a large number of often tool specific as well as organization specific guidelines. In this paper, we present a first prototype for a tool which supports the specification and checking of guidelines for the Matlab/Simulink environment. In addition, we discuss first ideas for the specification of guidelines using examples in Matlab/Simulink notation as well as the semi-automatic correction of guideline violations.
Increased intrinsic excitability of lwDR 5-HT neurons 1 1 Increased intrinsic excitability of lateral wing serotonin neurons of the dorsal raphe : 2 a mechanism for selective activation in stress circuits 3 4

24 The primary center of serotonin (5-HT) projections to the forebrain is the 25 dorsal raphe nucleus (DR), a region known for its role in the limbic stress 26 response. The ventromedial subregion of the DR (vmDR) has the highest density 27 of 5-HT neurons and is the major target in experiments that involve the DR. 28 However, studies have demonstrated that a variety of stressors induce activation 29 of neurons that is highest in the lateral wing subregion (lwDR) and includes 30 activation of lwDR 5-HT neurons. Despite the functional role that the lwDR is 31 known to play in stress circuits, little is known about lwDR 5-HT neuron 32 physiology. Whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology in mice revealed that 33 lwDR 5-HT cells have active and passive intrinsic membrane properties that 34 make them more excitable than vmDR 5-HT neurons. In addition, lwDR 5-HT 35 neurons demonstrated faster in vitro firing rates. Finally, within the vmDR there 36 was a positive correlation between rostral position and increased excitability, 37 among several other membrane parameters. These results are consistent with 38 stressor induced patterns of activation of 5-HT neurons that includes, in addition 39 to lwDR neurons, a small subset of rostral vmDR neurons. Thus, increased 40 intrinsic excitability likely forms a major part of the mechanism underlying the 41 propensity to be activated by a stressor. The membrane properties identified in 42 lwDR recordings may thereby contribute to a unique role of lwDR 5-HT neurons 43 Increased intrinsic excitability of lwDR 5-HT neurons 4 in adaptive responses to stress and in the pathobiology of stress-related mood 44 disorders. 45 46 47