Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plasticity of the Human Olfactory System: The Olfactory Bulb

In the last years, an increasing interest has been paid to the olfactory system, particularly to its abilities of plasticity and its potential continuous neurogenesis throughout adult life. Although mechanisms underlying adult neurogenesis have been largely investigated in animals, to some degree they remain unclear in humans. Based on human research findings, the present review will focus on the olfactory bulb as an evidence of the astonishing plasticity of the human olfactory system.
Effect of changing the material and device's properties on the performance of polysilicon-based MicroActuators

In this paper, the performance of polysilicon electrothermal actuators (Chevron-type, fabricated with the PolyMEMS-INAOE® technology) when the material properties and device geometry are varied, is analyzed. These micro-actuators operating under Joule heating can generate a mechanical displacements ranging in a few tens of micrometers. These devices can delivering a mechanical force in the range of milliNewtons (mN) and are very attractive due to high efficient mechanical response and fully compatible with standard integrated silicon circuitry. Based on analytical and simulation models, the overall mechanical performance was analyzed when some of the polysilicon properties were varied. During the electrothermal performance, the mechanical displacement was experimentally measured. Comparing simulated, analytical and experimental approaches, a good phenomenological agreement is confirmed.
Gel-aided sample preparation (GASP)—A simplified method for gel-assisted proteomic sample generation from protein extracts and intact cells

We describe a “gel‐assisted” proteomic sample preparation method for MS analysis. Solubilized protein extracts or intact cells are copolymerized with acrylamide, facilitating denaturation, reduction, quantitative cysteine alkylation, and matrix formation. Gel‐aided sample preparation has been optimized to be highly flexible, scalable, and to allow reproducible sample generation from 50 cells to milligrams of protein extracts. This methodology is fast, sensitive, easy‐to‐use on a wide range of sample types, and accessible to nonspecialists.
Fickian-Based Empirical Approach for Diffusivity Determination in Hollow Alginate-Based Microfibers Using 2D Fluorescence Microscopy and Comparison with Theoretical Predictions

Hollow alginate microfibers (od = 1.3 mm, id = 0.9 mm, th = 400 µm, L = 3.5 cm) comprised of 2% (w/v) medium molecular weight alginate cross-linked with 0.9 M CaCl2 were fabricated to model outward diffusion capture by 2D fluorescent microscopy. A two-fold comparison of diffusivity determination based on real-time diffusion of Fluorescein isothiocyanate molecular weight (FITC MW) markers was conducted using a proposed Fickian-based approach in conjunction with a previously established numerical model developed based on spectrophotometric data. Computed empirical/numerical (Dempiricial/Dnumerical) diffusivities characterized by small standard deviations for the 4-, 70- and 500-kDa markers expressed in m2/s are (1.06 × 10−9 ± 1.96 × 10−10)/(2.03 × 10−11), (5.89 × 10−11 ± 2.83 × 10−12)/(4.6 × 10−12) and (4.89 × 10−12 ± 3.94 × 10−13)/(1.27 × 10−12), respectively, with the discrimination between the computation techniques narrowing down as a function of MW. The use of the numerical approach is recommended for fluorescence-based measurements as the standard computational method for effective diffusivity determination until capture rates (minimum 12 fps for the 4-kDa marker) and the use of linear instead of polynomial interpolating functions to model temporal intensity gradients have been proven to minimize the extent of systematic errors associated with the proposed empirical method.
A Survey on Temporal Coherence Methods in Real-Time Rendering

Nowadays, there is a strong trend towards rendering to higher-resolution displays and at high frame rates. This development aims at delivering more detail and better accuracy, but it also comes at a signiﬁcant cost. Although graphics cards continue to evolve with an ever-increasing amount of computational power, the processing gain is counteracted to a high degree by increasingly complex and sophisticated pixel computations. For real-time applications, the direct consequence is that image resolution and temporal resolution are often the ﬁrst candidates to bow to the performance constraints (e.g., although full HD is possible, PS3 and XBox often render at lower resolutions). In order to achieve high-quality rendering at a lower cost, one can exploit temporal coherence (TC). The underlying observation is that a higher resolution and frame rate do not necessarily imply a much higher workload, but a larger amount of redundancy and a higher potential for amortizing rendering over several frames. In this state-of-the-art report, we investigate methods that make use of this principle and provide practical and theoretical advice on how to exploit temporal coherence for performance optimization. These methods not only allow incorporating more computationally intensive shading effects into many existing applications, but also offer exciting opportunities for extending high-end graphics applications to lower-spec consumer-level hardware. To this end, we ﬁrst introduce the notion and main concepts of TC, including an overview of historical methods. We then describe a key data structure, the so-called reprojection cache , with several supporting algorithms that facilitate reusing shading information from previous frames, and ﬁnally illustrated its usefulness in various applications.
Newton regularizations for impedance tomography: a numerical study

The inexact Newton iteration REGINN for regularizing nonlinear ill-posed problems consists of two components: the (outer) Newton iteration, stopped by a discrepancy principle, and the inner iteration, which computes the Newton update by solving approximately a linearized system. The second author proved the convergence of REGINN furnished with the conjugate gradients method as inner iteration (Rieder 2005 SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 43 604–22). Amongst others the following feature distinguishes REGINN from other Newton-like regularization schemes: the regularization level for the locally linearized systems can be adapted dynamically incorporating information on the local degree of ill-posedness gained during the iteration. Of course, the potential of this feature can be fully explored only by meaningful numerical experiments in a realistic setting. Therefore, we apply REGINN to the 2D-electrical impedance tomography problem with the complete electrode model. This inverse problem is known to be severely ill-posed. The achieved reconstructions are compared qualitatively and quantitatively with reconstructions from a one-step method which is closely related to the NOSER algorithm (Cheney et al 1990 Int. J. Imag. Syst. Technol. 2 66–75), an often used solver in impedance tomography. Our detailed numerical comparison reveals REGINN to be a competitive solver outperforming the one-step method when noise corrupts the data and/or a moderately large number of electrodes is used.
Metabolism and Regulation of Glycerolipids in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Due to its genetic tractability and increasing wealth of accessible data, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a model system of choice for the study of the genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology of eukaryotic lipid metabolism. Glycerolipids (e.g., phospholipids and triacylglycerol) and their precursors are synthesized and metabolized by enzymes associated with the cytosol and membranous organelles, including endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and lipid droplets. Genetic and biochemical analyses have revealed that glycerolipids play important roles in cell signaling, membrane trafficking, and anchoring of membrane proteins in addition to membrane structure. The expression of glycerolipid enzymes is controlled by a variety of conditions including growth stage and nutrient availability. Much of this regulation occurs at the transcriptional level and involves the Ino2–Ino4 activation complex and the Opi1 repressor, which interacts with Ino2 to attenuate transcriptional activation of UASINO-containing glycerolipid biosynthetic genes. Cellular levels of phosphatidic acid, precursor to all membrane phospholipids and the storage lipid triacylglycerol, regulates transcription of UASINO-containing genes by tethering Opi1 to the nuclear/endoplasmic reticulum membrane and controlling its translocation into the nucleus, a mechanism largely controlled by inositol availability. The transcriptional activator Zap1 controls the expression of some phospholipid synthesis genes in response to zinc availability. Regulatory mechanisms also include control of catalytic activity of glycerolipid enzymes by water-soluble precursors, products and lipids, and covalent modification of phosphorylation, while in vivo function of some enzymes is governed by their subcellular location. Genome-wide genetic analysis indicates coordinate regulation between glycerolipid metabolism and a broad spectrum of metabolic pathways.
Investigating the Role of Free-living Amoebae as a Reservoir for Mycobacterium ulcerans

Background The reservoir and mode of transmission of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer, still remain a mystery. It has been suggested that M. ulcerans persists with difficulty as a free-living organism due to its natural fragility and inability to withstand exposure to direct sunlight, and thus probably persists within a protective host environment. Methodology/Principal Findings We investigated the role of free-living amoebae as a reservoir of M. ulcerans by screening the bacterium in free-living amoebae (FLA) cultures isolated from environmental specimens using real-time PCR. We also followed the survival of M. ulcerans expressing green fluorescence protein (GFP) in Acanthameoba castellanii by flow cytometry and observed the infected cells using confocal and transmission electron microscopy for four weeks in vitro. IS2404 was detected by quantitative PCR in 4.64% of FLA cultures isolated from water, biofilms, detritus and aerosols. While we could not isolate M. ulcerans, 23 other species of mycobacteria were cultivated from inside FLA and/or other phagocytic microorganisms. Laboratory experiments with GFP-expressing M. ulcerans in A. castellani trophozoites for 28 days indicated the bacteria did not replicate inside amoebae, but they could remain viable at low levels in cysts. Transmission electron microscopy of infected A. castellani confirmed the presence of bacteria within both trophozoite vacuoles and cysts. There was no correlation of BU notification rate with detection of the IS2404 in FLA (r = 0.07, n = 539, p = 0.127). Conclusion/Significance This study shows that FLA in the environment are positive for the M. ulcerans insertion sequence IS2404. However, the detection frequency and signal strength of IS2404 positive amoabae was low and no link with the occurrence of BU was observed. We conclude that FLA may host M. ulcerans at low levels in the environment without being directly involved in the transmission to humans.
Generation and analysis of very long address traces

Existing methods of generating and analyzing traces suffer from a variety of limitations, including complexity, inaccuracy, short length, inflexibility, or applicability only to CISC (complex-instruction-set-computer) machines. The authors use a trace-generation mechanism based on link-time code modification which is simple to use, generates accurate long traces of multiuser programs, runs on a RISC (reduced-instruction-set-computer) machine, and can be flexibly controlled. Accurate performance data for large second-level caches can be obtained by on-the-fly analysis of the traces. A comparison is made of the performance of systems with 512 K to 16 M second-level caches, and it is show that, for today's large programs, second-level caches of more than 4 MB may be unnecessary. It is also shown that set associativity in second-level caches of more than 1 MB does not significantly improve system performance. In addition, the experiments provide insights into first-level and second-level cache line size. <<ETX>>
PRO-C3-Levels in Patients with HIV/HCV-Co-Infection Reflect Fibrosis Stage and Degree of Portal Hypertension

Background Liver-related deaths represent the leading cause of mortality among patients with HIV/HCV-co-infection, and are mainly related to complications of fibrosis and portal hypertension. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the structural changes by the assessment of extracellular matrix (ECM) derived degradation fragments in peripheral blood as biomarkers for fibrosis and portal hypertension in patients with HIV/HCV co-infection. Methods Fifty-eight patients (67% male, mean age: 36.5 years) with HIV/HCV-co-infection were included in the study. Hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG) was measured in forty-three patients. The fibrosis stage was determined using FIB4 -Score. ECM degraded products in peripheral blood were measured using specific ELISAs (C4M, MMP-2/9 degraded type IV collagen; C5M, MMP-2/9 degraded type V collagen; PRO-C3, MMP degraded n-terminal propeptide of type III collagen). Results As expected, HVPG showed strong and significant correlations with FIB4-index (rs = 0.628; p = 7*10−7). Interestingly, PRO-C3 significantly correlated with HVPG (rs = 0.354; p = 0.02), alanine aminotransferase (rs = 0.30; p = 0.038), as well as with FIB4-index (rs = 0.3230; p = 0.035). C4M and C5M levels were higher in patients with portal hypertension (HVPG>5 mmHg). Conclusion PRO-C3 levels reflect liver injury, stage of liver fibrosis and degree of portal hypertension in HIV/HCV-co-infected patients. Furthermore, C4M and C5M were associated with increased portal pressure. Circulating markers of hepatic ECM remodeling might be helpful in the diagnosis and management of liver disease and portal hypertension in patients with HIV/HCV coinfection.
Fuzzy clustering applied to a demand response model in a smart grid contingency scenario

This paper focus on a demand response model analysis in a smart grid context considering a contingency scenario. A fuzzy clustering technique is applied on the developed demand response model and an analysis is performed for the contingency scenario. Model considerations and architecture are described. The demand response developed model aims to support consumers decisions regarding their consumption needs and possible economic benefits.
Dynamic Segregative Genetic Algorithm for Assembly Lines Balancing

This paper presents a segregative genetic algorithm for "I"/U"-shaped assembly line balancing problem. It uses a basic genetic algorithm and a feature function that associates a time profile of the workstations to each chromosome. The similarity based clustering in the feature space induces subpopulations of chromosomes. The segregative genetic algorithm acts both on representation and feature space. A similarity based communication preserves the clustering structure. Each subpopulation completely exploited sends its centroid to an associative tabu search mechanism. Some selected new individuals are used to create clusters that represent unexplored parts of search space. The exhausted subpopulations are replaced by new ones during the evolution. The resulted dynamic segregative genetic algorithm leads to a better trade-off between exploration, made by many clusters, and exploitation, done by the focusing on each subpopulation. Experimental investigations show that the segregative approach is more stable and systematically produces better results than the basic genetic algorithm. A distributed implementation of the segregative approach is presented and its performance is reported.
Modeling Longitudinal Associations between Parenting Practices and Child Externalizing Behavior from Pre-school to Adolescence

TAMS, SEAN T. , M.S., August 2017, Clinical Psychology Modeling Longitudinal Associations between Parenting Practices and Child Externalizing Behavior from Pre-school to Adolescence Director of Thesis: Brian T. Wymbs Child externalizing behavior (i.e., defiance, impulsivity, disruptiveness, aggression, delinquency, and hyperactivity) places children at risk for a broad range of adverse outcomes. Parenting has been implicated as a factor in the expression and maintenance of child externalizing behavior, but limitations exist that hinder the interpretation of findings from prior studies of associations between child externalizing behavior and parenting behavior. The current study used a large, nationally representative dataset that included multiple assessment points across child development and multiple informants and methods of assessment to examine the relationships between child externalizing behavior and parenting practices, including the moderating effect of child gender and elevated ADHD/ODD symptoms. Results of cross-lagged path model analyses revealed reciprocal relationships among child externalizing behavior and effective/ineffective parenting practices, though the pattern of results differed slightly between mothers and fathers. Child gender moderated these relationships such that some associations were stronger for males and others were stronger for females. Elevated ADHD/ODD symptoms did not emerge as a robust moderator, though group differences were identified for one model that was tested. These results underscore the need for early intervention that targets elevated child externalizing behavior and ineffective parenting 4 practices, which may help to foster positive parent-child relationships and mitigate the risk of children with these problems developing more severe, clinically significant externalizing symptoms (e.g., ADHD and/or ODD).
Worse Comes to Worst: Bananas and Panama Disease—When Plant and Pathogen Clones Meet

This article deals with: Bananas: their origin and global rollout; genetic diversity of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense, the causal agent of Panama Disease; Panama Disease: history repeats itself; tropical race 4, a single pathogen clone, threatens global banana production; strategies for sustainable Panama Disease management.
A context-based personalized ratings management system

In an online community of any size, every user garners reputations for different contexts through interactions with other users. When any user in the online community is interested in a certain context, the user would value the opinions of those users of high repute with respect to that context. However, if the online community is of any significant size, a user might not know every other user in the community. Therefore, a reputation brokering mechanism needs to be incorporated so that an interested user would be able to trace paths through other users to the reputable users. From social network theories, there exist centrality measures that can be used to determine the reputation of users in a network based on the number of indegrees and outdegrees. However, different users in the network can have varying tastes and opinions with respect to a given context. Since centrality measures determine the reputation of users based on aggregate opinion, a user who has different tastes from the majority of the other users might not agree with the reputable users selected by the centrality measures. This justifies the need for developing personalized rating systems that are able to personalize for any user a selection of other users that he would regard as highly reputable. In this thesis, two such rating systems are developed and compared against the existing centrality measures. When tested over various dimensions such as network size and network connectivity, there is evidence that the personalized rating systems perform better than the traditional measures of reputation in the selection of reputable individuals. Thesis Supervisor: Peter Szolovits Title: Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Fractional Frequency Reuse in mobile WiMAX

The worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) can use frequency reuse factor 1 as its network deployment, but it may suffer from serious inter-cell interference (ICI) near the cell edge. Fractional frequency reuse (FFR) is introduced to deal with this problem. In this paper, we investigate the application of Fractional frequency reuse in mobile WiMAX system. Characteristics of frequency resource configurations in the mobile WiMAX system are described and a system model of FFR is presented, then the user partition principle and a combination partition scheme are proposed. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme has better results with respect to the conventional schemes.
Neural Networks Classifier for Data Selection in Statistical Machine Translation

Abstract Corpora are precious resources, as they allow for a proper estimation of statistical machine translation models. Data selection is a variant of the domain adaptation field, aimed to extract those sentences from an out-of-domain corpus that are the most useful to translate a different target domain. We address the data selection problem in statistical machine translation as a classification task. We present a new method, based on neural networks, able to deal with monolingual and bilingual corpora. Empirical results show that our data selection method provides slightly better translation quality, compared to a state-of-the-art method (cross-entropy), requiring substantially less data. Moreover, the results obtained are coherent across different language pairs, demonstrating the robustness of our proposal.
Representing 2 D objects . Comparison of several self-organizing networks

Self-organizing networks have been generally considered as topology preserving of an input space. However, following recent definitions of topology preservation, not every self-organizing model has this quality. In this work, we study the topology preservation capability of four different self-organizing models: SelfOrganizing Maps, Growing Cell Structures, Neural Gas and Growing Neural Gas. We use the topographic product to determine if these networks preserve the topological features of several bidimensional objects. We conclude that neuronal gases obtain better results since they can modify the topology of the network during the learning phase. Also, within these, the Growing Neural Gas has a smaller complexity than the Neural Gas, reason why it is candidate to be used in the representation of 2D objects. In future works, we will employ this network to represent 2D objects and to extract geometrical features. Key-Words: Self-Organizing Networks, Topology Representing Networks, Topology Preservation, Topographic Product, Object Representation.
Rate-Diversity-Delay Tradeoff for ARQ Systems over MIMO Block-Fading Channels

We study the effect of power adaptation on the outage diversity of Incremental-redundancy automatic-repeat-request (INR-ARQ) transmission over the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) block-fading channel. In particular, we derive the optimal outage diversity achieved by power adaptation in INR-ARQ systems, and show that power adaptation provides significant gains in outage diversity. We also prove that the optimal outage diversity is achievable with random coding schemes.