Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Energy-Driven Design Methodology for Distributing DSP Applications across Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network (WSN) applications have been studied extensively in recent years. Such applications involve resource-limited embedded sensor nodes that have small size and low power requirements. Based on the need for extended network lifetimes in WSNs in terms of energy use, the energy efficiency of computation and communication operations in the embedded sensor nodes becomes critical. Digital signal processing (DSP) applications typically require intensive data processing operations. They are difficult to apply directly in resource-limited WSNs because their operational complexity can strongly influence the network lifetime. In this paper, we present a design methodology for modeling and implementing DSP applications applied to wireless sensor networks. This methodology explores efficient modeling techniques for DSP applications, including acoustic sensing and data processing; derives formulations of energy-driven partitioning for distributing such applications across wireless sensor networks; and develops efficient heuristic algorithms for finding partitioning results that maximize the network lifetime. A case study involving a speech recognition system demonstrates the capabilities of our proposed methodology.
Verification of the Three-Step Model in Assessing the Pathogenicity of Mismatch Repair Gene Variants

In order to assess whether variations affecting DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes are pathogenic and hence predisposing to Lynch syndrome (LS), a three‐step assessment model has been proposed. Where LS is suspected based on family history, STEP1 is dedicated to the identification of the causative MMR gene and the variation within it. Thereafter, in STEP2 of the assessment model, the effect of the variation on the function of the protein is assessed in an in vitro MMR and in silico assays. Where LS cannot be confirmed or ruled out in STEP2, the more specific biochemical laboratory assays such as analyzing the effect of the variation on expression, localization, and interaction of the protein are required in STEP3. Here, we verified the proposed three‐step assessment model and its ability to distinguish pathogenic MMR variations from variants of uncertain significance (VUS) by utilizing the clinical as well as the laboratory and in silico data of 37 MLH1, 26 MSH2, and 11 MSH6 variations. The proposed model was shown to be appropriate and proceed logically in assessing the pathogenicity of MMR variations. In fact, for MMR deficient MSH2 and MLH1 variations the first two steps seem to be sufficient as STEP3 provides no imperative information concerning the variant pathogenicity. However, the importance of STEP3 is seen in the assessment of MMR proficient variations showing discrepant in silico results as their pathogenicity cannot be confirmed or ruled out after STEP2. MSH6 variations may be applicable to the model if appropriate selection in terms of ruling out MLH1 and MSH2 variations and MLH1 promoter hypermethylation is ensured prior to the completion of STEP2. In conclusion, taking into consideration the susceptibility gene the three‐step model can be utilized in an appropriate and efficient manner to determine the pathogenicity of MMR gene variations. Hum Mutat 32:107–115, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Strong approximations for time-varying infinite-server queues with non-renewal arrival and service processes

ABSTRACT In real stochastic systems, the arrival and service processes may not be renewal processes. For example, in many telecommunication systems such as internet traffic where data traffic is bursty, the sequence of inter-arrival times and service times are often correlated and dependent. One way to model this non-renewal behavior is to use Markovian Arrival Processes (MAPs) and Markovian Service Processes (MSPs). MAPs and MSPs allow for inter-arrival and service times to be dependent, while providing the analytical tractability of simple Markov processes. To this end, we prove fluid and diffusion limits for MAPt/MSPt/∞ queues by constructing a new Poisson process representation for the queueing dynamics and leveraging strong approximations for Poisson processes. As a result, the fluid and diffusion limit theorems illuminate how the dependence structure of the arrival or service processes can affect the sample path behavior of the queueing process. Finally, our Poisson representation for MAPs and MSPs is useful for simulation purposes and may be of independent interest.
Bayesian Backfitting

We propose general procedures for posterior sampling from additive and generalized additive models. The procedure is a stochastic generalization of the well-known backfitting algorithm for fitting additive models. One chooses a linear operator (“smoother”) for each predictor, and the algorithm requires only the application of the operator and its square root. The procedure is general and modular, and we describe its application to nonparametric, semiparametric and mixed models.
Social origins, school type and higher education destinations

To what extent and why do social origins matter for access to higher education, including access to elite universities? What is the role of private and selective schooling? This paper uses the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to analyse the trajectories of a generation currently in early middle age. We find that the influence of social origins, especially parental education, remains when both a wide range of cognitive measures and school attainment are controlled. Attending a private school is powerfully predictive of gaining a university degree, and especially a degree from an elite institution, while grammar schooling does not appear to confer any advantage.
Spatiotemporal Expression Patterns and Antibody Reactivity of Taeniidae Endophilin B1

ABSTRACT Larval Taeniidae, such as metacestodes of Taenia solium, Echinococcus granulosus, and Echinococcus multilocularis, produce chronic and fatal helminthic diseases. Proper identification of these zoonotic cestodiases is often challenging and is hampered in some clinical settings. Endophilin B1 plays critical roles in the maintenance of membrane contours and endocytosis. We isolated proteins homologous to endophilin B1 from T. solium, Taenia saginata, and Taenia asiatica. The three Taeniidae endophilin B1 proteins shared 92.9 to 96.6% sequence identity. They harbored a Bin1/amphiphysin/Rvs (BAR) domain and residues for a dimeric interface but lacked a SRC homology 3 (SH3) domain. Endophilin B1 showed a unique immunological profile and was abundantly expressed in the tegumental syncytium of Taeniidae metacestodes and adults. Bacterially expressed recombinant T. solium endophilin B1 (rTsMEndoB1) demonstrated a sensitivity of 79.7% (345/433 cases) for serodiagnosis of larval Taeniidae infections. The protein showed strong immune recognition patterns against sera from patients with chronic neurocysticercosis, cystic echinococcosis, or advanced-stage alveolar echinococcosis. Adult Taeniidae infections exhibited moderate degrees of positive antibody responses (65.7% [23/35 samples]). rTsMEndoB1 showed some cross-reactivity with sera from patients infected with Diphyllobothriidae (23.6% [25/106 samples]) but not with sera from patients with other parasitic diseases or normal controls. The specificity was 91.7% (256/301 samples). The positive and negative predictive values were 93.6% and 73.4%, respectively. Our results demonstrate that Taeniidae endophilin B1 may be involved in the control of membrane dynamics, thus contributing to shaping and maintaining the tegumental curvature. rTsMEndoB1 may be useful for large-scale screening, as well as for individual diagnosis and follow-up surveillance of Taeniidae infections.
A fine-grained sentiment analysis approach for detecting crisis related microposts

Real-time information from microposts like Twitter is useful for applications in the crisis management domain. Currently, that potentially valuable information remains mostly unused by the command staff, mainly because the sheer amount of information cannot be handled efficiently. Sentiment analysis has been shown as an effective tool to detect microposts (such as tweets) that contribute to situational awareness. However, current approaches only focus on two or three emotion classes. But using only tweets with negative emotions for crisis management is not always sufficient. The amount of remaining information is still not manageable or most of the tweets are irrelevant. Thus, a more fine-grained differentiation is needed to identify relevant microposts. In this paper, we show the systematic evaluation of an approach for sentiment analysis on microposts that allows detecting seven emotion classes. A preliminary evaluation of our approach in a crisis related scenario demonstrates the applicability and usefulness.
Naturally Occurring Variation in Trophoblast Invasion as a Source of Novel (Epigenetic) Biomarkers

During the first trimester of pregnancy fetal trophoblasts invade the maternal decidua, thereby remodeling the maternal spiral arteries. This process of trophoblast invasion is very similar to cancer cell invasion, with multiple signaling pathways shared between the two. Pregnancy-related diseases, e.g., pre-eclampsia, and cancer metastasis start with a decrease or increase in cellular invasion, respectively. Here, we investigate if first trimester placental explants can be used to identify epigenetic factors associated with changes in cellular invasion and their potential use as biomarkers. We show that the outgrowth potential of first trimester explants significantly correlates with promoter methylation of PRKCDBP and MMP2, two genes known to be differentially methylated in both placenta and cancer. The increase in methylation percentage of placental cells coincides with an increase in invasion potential. Subsequently, as a non-invasive marker must be detectable in blood, plasma samples of pregnant and non-pregnant women were analyzed. The MMP2 promoter showed high methylation levels in non-pregnant plasma samples, which decreased in pregnant plasma samples which also contain placental DNA. The decrease in methylated plasma DNA during pregnancy is most likely due to the fractional increase in unmethylated placental DNA. This suggests that the level of unmethylated DNA has the potential to be used as an invasion marker, where higher levels of unmethylated DNA indicate a lower invasion potential of trophoblasts. These proof of principle data provide evidence that human first trimester placental explants are an excellent ex vivo model system to identify (epigenetic) factors and thus potential biomarkers associated with changes in cellular invasion, e.g., to detect pregnancy-related diseases or cancer metastasis. To identify novel biomarkers the next step is to correlate naturally occurring variation in invasion potential to changes in (epigenetic) factors by genome-wide approaches such as massively parallel sequencing.
Thunderclap Headaches: A Focus on Etiology and Diagnostic Evaluation

“Thunderclap headaches” are severe intensity headaches that reach maximum intensity in less than 1 minute. There are numerous etiologies of thunderclap headache, some associated with substantial morbidity and mortality and others with benign outcomes. Evaluation of the patient with thunderclap headache must occur urgently in order to assess for dangerous etiologies such as subarachnoid hemorrhage. When a cause for thunderclap headache is not identified after initial testing that includes brain computed tomography and cerebrospinal fluid evaluation, additional testing is typically indicated to determine the etiology. “Primary thunderclap headache” is diagnosed when a complete evaluation fails to identify a specific cause for thunderclap headache.
Implications of Self-Deception for Self-Reported Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Dispositions and Actual Learning Performance

The authors explored implications of individuals' self-deception (a trait) for their self-reported intrinsic and extrinsic motivational dispositions and their actual learning performance. In doing so, a higher order structural model was developed and tested in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivational dispositions were underlying factors that were each manifested in four distinct propensities that were measured. The authors also tested whether controlling for self-deception influenced predictive relationships. Analyses of data from 429 college students supported the validity of the higher order model and indicated that self-deception was positively related to intrinsic and negatively related to extrinsic motivational dispositions. Self-deception was negatively related, whereas intrinsic and extrinsic motivational dispositions were positively related, to learning performance. Removing the influences of self-deception altered some of the predictive relationships.
Xenotransplantation of human adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells in a rodent model of Huntington’s disease: motor and non-motor outcomes

Abstract Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have been presented as alternative sources of cells to be transplanted into the brain in neurodegenerative disorders. In this regard, the efficacy of hMSCs transplants in reducing motor and non-motor deficits in a quinolinic acid (QA) rat model of Huntington’s disease (HD) was tested in the present study. After unilateral lesions in striatum by QA, the isolated and purified hMSCs from liposuction of healthy male donors were transplanted into the damaged striatum of the rats. The cells were stably transfected with a vector containing TurboGFP and JRed to make it possible to trace them after transplantation. Animals were tested by motor and non-motor function tests at different times after the cell transplantation. The hMSCs survived 7 weeks in the brains. An improvement was observed in behavioral tests such as apomophine-induced rotation, hanging wire, and rotarod for the hMSC-treated rats. Anxiety like behaviors were decreased in hMSCs-treated animals when they were examined using open field, elevated plus maze, light and dark box, and novelty suppressed feeding tests. Compared to QA, the hMSCs treatment decreased motor activities. These results confirmed the potential efficacy of hMSCs in treatment of behavioral defects in HD. Generally, the data demonstrated that xenologous transplantation of hMSCs could be considered as an ideal candidate for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, especially HD.
Insulin as a key autoantigen in the development of type 1 diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is a T‐cell‐mediated autoimmune disease against pancreatic beta cells. T cells target various antigens such as insulin, chromogranin A, glutamic acid decarboxylase and islet‐specific glucose‐6‐phosphatase catalytic subunit‐related protein. Elimination of insulin dramatically prevents diabetes in the non‐obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model and response to insulin occurs prior to that to other antigens. These findings suggest that insulin is a target antigen at the early stage of the disease and is likely to be essential to cause anti‐islet autoimmunity in NOD mice. In this review, we discuss whether insulin is truly essential and is only the single essential autoantigen for NOD mice and potentially for man. Although the ultimate principle is still being addressed, it is certain that T‐cell response to insulin is a major check point to develop type 1 diabetes in NOD mice. Given multiple similarities between diabetes of NOD mice and man, targeting insulin and insulin‐reactive T cells may provide opportunities to develop robust immunotherapies. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Maximising the Degree of User Choice. A Simple Tool to Measure Current Levels of Quality of Life in Urban Environments

In this article, we present a simple methodology based on Max-Neef, Elizalde and Hopenhayn (1991) “human scale development” paradigm to measure current levels of Quality of Life (QoL) for urban environments. In this procedure, fundamental human needs form the study domains. We assess their fulfilment with a set of questions reflecting the subjective dimension of QoL. We sort questions into needs after two consecutive processes: a qualitative one involving local communities and/or expert groups, and a quantitative one involving the definition of weights for each question and per need. Complementarily, we add objective indicators to reflect the objective dimension of QoL. This way, we make possible a comparison between the two dimensions and a definition and computation of an integrative QoL. We argue that this method can be used to define more holistic urban quality indexes to improve decision making processes, policies and plans. It can also be seen as a tool to enhance bottom-up approaches and processes of urban analysis to create more liveable places for the dwellers.
Beyond Personal Webpublishing: An Exploratory Study of Conversational Blogging Practices

Although initially developed as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, weblogs increasingly appear to facilitate conversations. The objective of this study is to identify practices of conversational blogging. This paper presents results of an exploratory qualitative analysis of a weblog-mediated conversation case, focusing on participation rhythm, media choices and specific linking practices. Based on our findings we propose attributes of conversational blogging: linking as conversational glue, tangential conversations and interplays between conversation with self and conversations with others. Finally, future research directions are discussed.
Implementation and operational investigations of bipolar gate drivers

This paper deals with the investigation of simple implementation and design of bipolar gate driver for high side power transistor control. Bipolar gate signals are usually preferred for high switching dynamic control and power device shielding. Nevertheless, bipolar supplies are harder to implement and rely on numerous components that may result in significant reduction of overall converter robustness. An alternative solution is to use unipolar supplies which are more complex but integrable with specific gate driver circuits. The addition of resonant structure gives the possibilities for involving the efficiency of the gate driver and reducing further gate driver supply requirements. The paper presents theses issues based on several gate drivers and their supplies.
VEGF164-mediated Inflammation Is Required for Pathological, but Not Physiological, Ischemia-induced Retinal Neovascularization

Hypoxia-induced VEGF governs both physiological retinal vascular development and pathological retinal neovascularization. In the current paper, the mechanisms of physiological and pathological neovascularization are compared and contrasted. During pathological neovascularization, both the absolute and relative expression levels for VEGF164 increased to a greater degree than during physiological neovascularization. Furthermore, extensive leukocyte adhesion was observed at the leading edge of pathological, but not physiological, neovascularization. When a VEGF164-specific neutralizing aptamer was administered, it potently suppressed the leukocyte adhesion and pathological neovascularization, whereas it had little or no effect on physiological neovascularization. In parallel experiments, genetically altered VEGF164-deficient (VEGF120/188) mice exhibited no difference in physiological neovascularization when compared with wild-type (VEGF+/+) controls. In contrast, administration of a VEGFR-1/Fc fusion protein, which blocks all VEGF isoforms, led to significant suppression of both pathological and physiological neovascularization. In addition, the targeted inactivation of monocyte lineage cells with clodronate-liposomes led to the suppression of pathological neovascularization. Conversely, the blockade of T lymphocyte–mediated immune responses with an anti-CD2 antibody exacerbated pathological neovascularization. These data highlight important molecular and cellular differences between physiological and pathological retinal neovascularization. During pathological neovascularization, VEGF164 selectively induces inflammation and cellular immunity. These processes provide positive and negative angiogenic regulation, respectively. Together, new therapeutic approaches for selectively targeting pathological, but not physiological, retinal neovascularization are outlined.
Tolerance of temporal delay in virtual environments

To enhance presence, facilitate sensory motor performance, and avoid disorientation or nausea, virtual-reality applications require the perception of a stable environment. End-end tracking latency (display lag) degrades this illusion of stability and has been identified as a major fault of existing virtual-environment systems. Oscillopsia refers to the perception that the visual world appears to swim about or oscillate in space and is a manifestation of this loss of perceptual stability of the environment. The effects of end-end latency and head velocity on perceptual stability in a virtual environment were investigated psychophysically. Subjects became significantly more likely to report oscillopsia during head movements when end-end latency or head velocity were increased. It is concluded that perceptual instability of the world arises with increased head motion and increased display lag. Oscillopsia is expected to be more apparent in tasks requiring real locomotion or rapid head movement.
CCAAT enhancer binding protein (cid:1) and hepatocyte nuclear factor 3 (cid:1) are necessary and sufficient to mediate dexamethasone-induced up-regulation of alpha 2 HS-glycoprotein/fetuin-A gene expression

Alpha 2 HS-glycoprotein/fetuin-A (Ahsg) is a serum protein preventing soft tissue calciﬁcation. In trauma and inﬂammation, Ahsg is down-regulated and therefore considered a negative acute phase protein. Enhancement of Ahsg expression as a protective serum protein is desirable in several diseases including tissue remodelling after trauma and infection, kidney and heart failure, and cancer. Using reporter gene assays in hepatoma cells combined with electrophoretic mobility shift assays we determined that dexamethasone up-regulates hepatic Ahsg. A steroid response unit at position −146/−119 within the mouse Ahsg promoter mediates the glucocorticoid-induced increase of Ahsg mRNA. It binds the hepatocyte nuclear factor 3 (cid:1) and CCAAT enhancer binding protein (cid:1) (C/EBP-(cid:1) ). The up-regulation is mediated indirectly via glucocorticoid hormone-induced transcriptional up-regulation in C/EBP-(cid:1) protein. A high degree of sequence identity in mouse, rat and human Ahsg promoters suggests that the promoter is similarly up-regulated by dexamethasone in all three species. Therefore, our ﬁndings suggest that glucocorticoids may be used to enhance the level of Ahsg protein circulating in serum.
Higher order modulation and the efficient sampling algorithm for time variant signal

From the sampling theory, if the bandwidth of a signal is small, then the sampling interval can be very large. In this paper, a higher order modulation scheme is proposed to minimize the bandwidth of a signal. Then, combining the proposed high order modulation with the fractional Fourier transform and time-frequency analysis, a new sampling algorithm is presented. The proposed sampling algorithm can minimize the area of a signal in the time-frequency domain and much reduce the number of sampling points. Simulation results show that, when using the proposed sampling algorithm, the amount of data required for recording a signal can be much less. The proposed sampling algorithm is especially efficient for sampling a time variant signal, such as the voice of an animal and the speech signal.