Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anhedonia and individual differences in orbitofrontal cortex sulcogyral morphology

Three types of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) sulcogyral patterns that have been identified in the population, and the distribution of these three types in clinically diagnosed schizophrenic patients has been found to be distinct from the normal population. Schizophrenia is associated with increased levels of social and physical anhedonia. In this study, we asked whether variation in anhedonia in a neurologically normal population is associated with altered sulcogyral pattern frequency. OFC sulcogyral type was classified and anhedonia was measured in 58 normal young adults, and the relationship between OFC sulcogyral type and anhedonia was explored. In line with other studies conducted in chronic schizophrenia, individuals with higher levels of physical anhedonia demonstrated atypical sulcogyral patterns. Individuals with higher physical anhedonia showed a reduced incidence of Type I OFC and an increased incidence of Type II OFC in the left hemisphere compared to individuals with lower physical anhedonia. These findings support the notion that Type I OFC sulcogyral pattern is protective of anhedonia compared to Type II, even in individuals that are not schizophrenic. Overall, these results support the view that symptoms and neural indices typically associated with neuropsychiatric disorders actually reflect quantitative traits that are continuously distributed throughout the general population. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3873–3881, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Conjugate electrospinning of continuous nanofiber yarn of poly(L-lactide)/nanotricalcium phosphate nanocomposite

The continuous nanofiber yarns of poly(L-lactide) (PLLA)/nano-β-tricalcium phosphate (n-TCP) composite are prepared from oppositely charged electrospun nanofibers by conjugate electrospinning with coupled spinnerets. The morphology and mechanical properties of PLLA/n-TCP nanofiber yarns are characterized by scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, and electronic fiber strength tester. The results show that PLLA/n-TCP nanofibers are aligned well along the longitudinal axis of the yarn, and the concentration of PLLA plays a significant role on the diameter of the nanofibers. The thicker yarn of PLLA/n-TCP composite with the weight ratio of 10/1 has been produced by multiple conjugate electrospinning using three pairs of spinnerets, and the yarn has tensile strength of 0.31cN/dtex. A preliminary study of cell biocompatibility suggests that PLLA/n-TCP nanofiber yarns may be useable scaffold materials. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2008
RiskPol: A Risk Assessment Framework for Preventing Attribute-Forgery Attacks to ABAC Policies

Recently, attribute-based access control (ABAC) has emerged as a convenient paradigm for specifying, enforcing and maintaining rich and flexible authorization policies, leveraging attributes originated from multiple sources, e.g., operative systems, software modules, remote services, etc. However, attackers may try to bypass ABAC policies by compromising such sources to forge the attributes they provide, e.g., by deliberately manipulating the data contained within those attributes at will, in an effort to gain unintended access to sensitive resources as a result. In such a context, performing a proper risk assessment of ABAC policies, taking into account their enlisted attributes as well as their corresponding sources, becomes highly convenient to overcome zero-day security incidents or vulnerabilities, before they can be later exploited by attackers. With this in mind, we introduce RiskPol, an automated risk assessment framework for ABAC policies based on dynamically combining previously-assigned trust scores for each attribute source, such that overall scores at the policy level can be later obtained and used as a reference for performing a risk assessment on each policy. In this paper, we detail the general intuition behind our approach, its current status, as well as our plans for future work.
MicroRNA 26b promotes colorectal cancer metastasis by downregulating phosphatase and tensin homolog and wingless‐type MMTV integration site family member 5A

Invasion and metastasis are crucially important factors in the survival of malignant tumors. Epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an early step in metastatic progression and the presence of cancer stem cells is closely related to tumor survival, proliferation, metastasis, and recurrence. Herein we report that ectopic overexpression of microRNA 26b (miR‐26b) in colorectal cancer (CRC) cell lines promoted EMT and stem cell‐like phenotypes in vitro. Furthermore, miR‐26b directly targeted and suppressed multiple tumor suppressors, including phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) and wingless‐type MMTV integration site family member 5A (WNT5A). Notably, miR‐26b is markedly upregulated in tumor samples from patients with lymphatic metastases. These results indicate that miR‐26b promotes CRC metastasis by downregulating PTEN and WNT5A, and may represent a therapeutic target for metastatic CRC.
Centered learning model in omni-directional controller of neural oscillator based biped locomotion

Human being has different walking behavior in each walking direction and walking speed. This paper proposed learning model of omni directional bio-inspired humanoid locomotion which is generating different walking behavior in different walking provision. Step length in sagittal and coronal direction, and degree of turning are considered parameters in walking provision. In proposed omni-directional walking model, interconnection structures which are composed by 16 neurons where 1 leg is represented by 4 joints and 1 joint is represented by 2 motor neurons are optimized by using NSGA-II in order to acquire walking behavior in certain walking provision. Several optimized interconnection data with different walking provisions are generated in optimization processes. Learning models are proposed for solving non-linearity of relationship between walking input and walking output representing the synaptic weight of interconnection structure, where one learning model representing one walking parameter. Furthermore, by using optimized model, walking behavior can be generated with unscaled walking provision. Smooth walking transition with low error of desired walking provision was proved based on several experiments in physical computer simulation.
Antimicrobial Stewardship Program Implementation of a Quality Improvement Intervention Using Real-Time Feedback and an Electronic Order Set for the Management of Staphylococcus aureus Bacteremia

Antimicrobial stewardship programs can optimize the management of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia by integrating information technology and microbiology laboratory resources. This study describes our experience implementing an intervention consisting of real-time feedback and the use of an electronic order set for the management of S. aureus bacteremia. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2018;39:346–349
Brain activity and connectivity in response to negative affective stimuli: Impact of dysphoric mood and sex across diagnoses

Negative affective stimuli elicit behavioral and neural responses which vary on a continuum from adaptive to maladaptive, yet are typically investigated in a dichotomous manner (healthy controls vs. psychiatric diagnoses). This practice may limit our ability to fully capture variance from acute responses to negative affective stimuli to psychopathology at the extreme end. To address this, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to examine the neural responses to negative valence/high arousal and neutral valence/low arousal images as a function of dysphoric mood and sex across individuals (n = 99) who represented traditional categories of healthy controls, major depressive disorder, bipolar psychosis, and schizophrenia. Observation of negative (vs. neutral) stimuli elicited blood oxygen‐level dependent responses in the following circuitry: periaqueductal gray, hypothalamus (HYPO), amygdala (AMYG), hippocampus (HIPP), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and greater connectivity between AMYG and mPFC. Across all subjects, severity of dysphoric mood was associated with hyperactivity of HYPO, and, among females, right (R) AMYG. Females also demonstrated inverse relationships between severity of dysphoric mood and connectivity between HYPO ‐ R OFC, R AMYG ‐ R OFC, and R AMYG ‐ R HIPP. Overall, our findings demonstrated sex‐dependent deficits in response to negative affective stimuli increasing as a function of dysphoric mood state. Females demonstrated greater inability to regulate arousal as mood became more dysphoric. These findings contribute to elucidating biosignatures associated with response to negative stimuli across disorders and suggest the importance of a sex‐dependent lens in determining these biosignatures. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3733–3744, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Distributed list coloring: how to dynamically allocate frequencies to mobile base stations

To avoid signal interference in mobile communication it is necessary that the channels used by base stations for broadcast communication within their cells are chosen so that the same channel is never concurrently used by two neighboring stations. We model this channel allocation problem as a generalized list coloring problem and we provide two distributed solutions which are also able to cope with crash failures by limiting the size of the network affected by a faulty station in terms of the distance from that station. Our first solution uses a powerful synchronization mechanism to achieve a response time that depends only on /spl Delta/, the maximum degree of the signal interference graph, and a failure locality of 4. Our second solution is a simple randomized solution in which each node can expect to pick f/(4/spl Delta/) colors where f is the size of the list at the node; the response time of this solution is a constant and the failure locality 1. Besides being efficient (their complexity measures involve only small constants), the protocols presented in this work are simple and easy to apply in practice, provided the existence of distributed infrastructure in networks that are in use.
Charged N-terminus of Influenza Fusion Peptide Facilitates Membrane Fusion

Cleavage of hemagglutinin precursor (HA0) by cellular proteases results in the formation of two subunits, HA1 and HA2. The N-terminal fragment of HA2, named a fusion peptide (HAfp), possess a charged, amine N-terminus. It has been shown that the N-terminus of HAfp stabilizes the structure of a helical hairpin observed for a 23-amino acid long peptide (HAfp1-23), whose larger activity than HAfp1-20 has been demonstrated recently. In this paper, we analyze the effect of N-terminal charge on peptide-mediated fusion efficiency and conformation changes at the membrane interface by comparison with the corresponding N-acetylated peptides of 20- and 23-amino acid lengths. We found that higher fusogenic activities of peptides with unmodified amino termini correlates with their ability to form helical hairpin structures oriented perpendicularly to the membrane plane. Molecular dynamics simulations showed that acetylated peptides adopt open and surface-bound conformation more often, which induced less disorder of the phospholipid chains, as compared to species with unmodified amino termini.
A NEW AUTONOMIC CLOSURE FOR LARGE EDDY SIMULATIONS

We present a fundamentally new autonomic subgridscale closure for large eddy simulations (LES) that solves a nonlinear, nonparametric system identification problem instead of using a predefined turbulence model. The autonomic approach expresses the local SGS stress tensor as the most general unknown nonlinear function of the resolvedscale primitive variables at all locations and times using a Volterra series. This series is analogous to a Taylor series expansion in both time and space, and incorporates nonlinear, nonlocal, and nonequilibrium turbulence effects. The series introduces a large number of convolution kernel coefficients that are found by solving an inverse problem to minimize the error in representing known subgrid-scale stresses at a test filter scale. The optimized coefficients are then projected to the LES scale by invoking scale similarity in the inertial range and applying appropriate renormalizations. This new closure approach avoids the need to specify a turbulent constitutive model and instead identifies an optimal model on the fly. Here we present the most general formulation of the new autonomic approach and outline an inverse modeling method for optimizing the coefficients. We then explore truncations of the series expansion and demonstrate the effects of regularization and sampling on the optimal coefficients. Finally, we perform a priori tests of this approach using data from direct numerical simulations of homogeneous isotropic and sheared turbulence. We find substantial improvements over the Dynamic Smagorinsky model, even for a 2nd order time-local truncation of the present closure.
Micropolar fluid squeeze film lubrication of short partial porous journal bearings

Abstract On the basis of Eringen's micropolar fluid theory, a theoretical analysis of hydrodynamic squeeze film behaviour for short partial porous journal bearings lubricated by micropolar fluids is presented in this article. To take into account the micropolar effects because of the lubricant containing additives or suspended particles in a short partial porous journal bearing, the modified Reynolds equation governing the film pressure is derived. Expressions for the squeeze film pressure and load-carrying capacity are obtained. The first-order non-linear equation for the time-height relation is solved numerically by using the Runge—Kutta method. From the results obtained, it is observed that, the effect of micropolar fluid is to increase the load-carrying capacity and to lengthen the squeeze film time as compared to the corresponding Newtonian case. The effect of permeability is to reduce the load-carrying capacity and the squeeze film time as compared to the corresponding solid case.
Hydroxyapatite Coating on Cp-Ti Implants by Biomimetic Method

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is the main inorganic component in the human hard tissues, such as bones and teeth. The use of HA in load-bearing orthopedic applications has been extensively studied to achieve a biocompatible coating layer on implant metals. Commercial pure titanium (cp-Ti) is the most commonly used metallic material in the manufacture of orthopedic implants. Uncoated metal surfaces generally show numerous toxic effects to the surrounding tissues. However, coating of the metallic surfaces before implantation may prevent the interference of implant surfaces in biological media and also could accelerate the new bone formation. The present study focused on the coating of HA on cp-Ti implants, using novel biomimetic sol-gel method. The surfaces of cp-titanium substrates were coated with novel biomimetic sol gel (BSG) method under biological conditions (37°C and pH= 7.4). A bone-like apatite with a nanosized and pure HA structure was formed on the substrates under atmospheric pressure. The pre-coating results indicate that the novel biomimetic sol gel method is definitely a promising coating route in case that optimum coating parameters are established in detail.
Transformation of prosody in voice conversion

Voice Conversion (VC) aims to convert one's voice to sound like that of another. So far, most of the voice conversion frameworks mainly focus only on the conversion of spectrum. We note that speaker identity is also characterized by the prosody features such as fundamental frequency (F0), energy contour and duration. Motivated by this, we propose a framework that can perform F0, energy contour and duration conversion. In the traditional exemplar-based sparse representation approach to voice conversion, a general source-target dictionary of exemplars is constructed to establish the correspondence between source and target speakers. In this work, we propose a Phonetically Aware Sparse Representation of fundamental frequency and energy contour by using Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). Our idea is motivated by the facts that CWT decompositions of F0 and energy contours describe prosody patterns in different temporal scales and allow for effective prosody manipulation in speech synthesis. Furthermore, phonetically aware exemplars lead to better estimation of activation matrix, therefore, possibly better conversion of prosody. We also propose a phonetically aware duration conversion framework which takes into account both phone-level and sentence-level speaking rates. We report that the proposed prosody conversion outperforms the traditional prosody conversion techniques in both objective and subjective evaluations.
Patterned Graphene as Source/Drain Electrodes for Bottom‐Contact Organic Field‐Effect Transistors

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have attracted much attention in the past decades because of their potential applications in large-area, flexible, and low-cost electronics. The device performance is not only governed by the intrinsic electrical characteristics of the organic semiconductors, but also dependent on the work function of the source/ drain (S/D) electrodes and the interface contact between the organic semiconductors and the S/D electrodes. Metal S/D electrodes are widely used to fabricate OFETs, although a large contact resistance exists between the organic semiconductor and themetal S/D electrodes, especially for devices with bottom-contact geometry. The selection of S/D electrodes with high carrier injection efficiency and excellent interface properties with organic semiconductors is a current challenge in the quest for improving the performance of OFETs and decreasing the device cost. Graphene is a basic building block of graphite, fullerene, and carbon nanotubes. According to the layer number, graphenes can be distinguished as three types: single-, double-, and few-(3–10) layer graphene. Two-dimensional graphene was obtained only very recently, and it has been the focus of great interest because it could provide an excellent subject for study in condensed-matter physics and material sciences. The unusual and stable structure of this newmaterial makes it a promising candidate for future electronic applications. To date, only three methods – mechanical exfoliation of graphite on SiO2/Si, thermal decomposition of SiC, and oxidation of graphite – have been used to obtain graphene. However, using these ways it is difficult to pattern the graphene layer, which is necessary in order to study the electrical properties. In this Communication, we report a novel approach to preparing and patterning graphene layers on a SiO2/Si substrate and demonstrate that they can be used as an electrode material
A 77-dB Dynamic Range Low-Power Variable-Gain Transimpedance Amplifier for Linear LADAR

An adjustable-gain transimpedance amplifier with a wide linear dynamic range, low power consumption, and low input impedance was designed for a pulsed linear laser detection and ranging system. To extend the linear dynamic range within a low power consumption, some specific techniques are presented. A low-power current-mirror amplifier with a level shifter was used to decrease the input impedance and keep it stable. Adjustable transimpedance gain extends the input dynamic range, and a high-pass filter eliminates the influence of dc operating point drift caused by the variable gain. When implemented in 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }\text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> standard CMOS technology, the receiver achieved a high gain of 106 dB with four configurable gain modes, a wide linear output swing of 1 V, an input-referred noise current of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.52~ {\rm p{A}/ \sqrt {Hz}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, and a minimum detectable signal of 400 nA at SNR = 5, leading to a linear dynamic range of 77 dB, and the power consumption in the highest gain mode was 8 mW with a 3.3-V supply.
Infantile-onset Pompe disease with neonatal debut

Rationale: Infantile-onset Pompe disease, also known as glycogen storage disease type II, is a progressive and fatal disorder without treatment. Enzyme replacement therapy with recombinant human acid alpha-glucosidase (GAA) enhances survival; however, the best outcomes have been achieved with early treatment. Patient concerns: We report a case of a newborn with infantile-onset Pompe disease diagnosed in the first days of life who did not undergo universal neonatal screening. The patient was asymptomatic, with a general physical examination revealing only a murmur. The clinical presentation was dominated by the neonatal detection of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, without hypotonia or macroglossia. Diagnoses: Pompe disease was confirmed in the first week of life by GAA activity in dried blood spots, and a GAA genetic study showed the homozygous mutation p.Arg854X. Interventions: Parents initially refused replacement therapy. Outcomes: The patient experienced recurrent episodes of ventricular fibrillation during central line placement and could not be resuscitated. Lessons: Although Pompe disease is rare, and universal screening has not been established, neonatologists should be alerted to the diagnosis of Pompe in the presence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Diagnosis is achieved in a few days with the aid of dried blood spots.
Structurally distinct Mre11 domains mediate MRX functions in resection, end-tethering and DNA damage resistance

Abstract Sae2 cooperates with the Mre11–Rad50-Xrs2 (MRX) complex to initiate resection of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and to maintain the DSB ends in close proximity to allow their repair. How these diverse MRX-Sae2 functions contribute to DNA damage resistance is not known. Here, we describe mre11 alleles that suppress the hypersensitivity of sae2Δ cells to genotoxic agents. By assessing the impact of these mutations at the cellular and structural levels, we found that all the mre11 alleles that restore sae2Δ resistance to both camptothecin and phleomycin affect the Mre11 N-terminus and suppress the resection defect of sae2Δ cells by lowering MRX and Tel1 association to DSBs. As a consequence, the diminished Tel1 persistence potentiates Sgs1-Dna2 resection activity by decreasing Rad9 association to DSBs. By contrast, the mre11 mutations restoring sae2Δ resistance only to phleomycin are located in Mre11 C-terminus and bypass Sae2 function in end-tethering but not in DSB resection, possibly by destabilizing the Mre11–Rad50 open conformation. These findings unmask the existence of structurally distinct Mre11 domains that support resistance to genotoxic agents by mediating different processes.
Transmission Strategy for D2D Terminal with Ambient RF Energy Harvesting

In this paper, we model and analyze a transmission strategy for Device-to-Device (D2D) terminals with ambient radio-frequency (RF) energy harvesting (EH). The D2D transmitters are powered by the ambient RF energy sources, and reuse the frequency bands with cellular users to communicate with corresponding receivers. Due to the duplex- constrain, D2D transmitters adopt time-switching mode for energy harvesting and data transmission. Stochastic geometry framework is used to model the distributions of D2D users and RF energy sources, and the expression for coverage probability of D2D link and cellular uplink are derived. Then we design the optimal harvestratio by maximizing the average coverage probability of D2D link under the constrain of guaranteeing the communication quality of the cellular link. Based on numerical results, the tradeoff between energy harvesting and data transmission is discussed under different system parameters, such as energy source density and D2D user density.