Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Directed Network Motifs in Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Directed network motifs are the building blocks of complex networks, such as human brain networks, and capture deep connectivity information that is not contained in standard network measures. In this paper we present the first application of directed network motifs in vivo to human brain networks, utilizing recently developed directed progression networks which are built upon rates of cortical thickness changes between brain regions. This is in contrast to previous studies which have relied on simulations and in vitro analysis of non-human brains. We show that frequencies of specific directed network motifs can be used to distinguish between patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and normal control (NC) subjects. Especially interesting from a clinical standpoint, these motif frequencies can also distinguish between subjects with mild cognitive impairment who remained stable over three years (MCI) and those who converted to AD (CONV). Furthermore, we find that the entropy of the distribution of directed network motifs increased from MCI to CONV to AD, implying that the distribution of pathology is more structured in MCI but becomes less so as it progresses to CONV and further to AD. Thus, directed network motifs frequencies and distributional properties provide new insights into the progression of Alzheimer’s disease as well as new imaging markers for distinguishing between normal controls, stable mild cognitive impairment, MCI converters and Alzheimer’s disease.
Last Glacial climate reconstruction by exploring glacier sensitivity to climate on the southeastern slope of the western Nyaiqentanglha Shan, Tibetan Plateau

ABSTRACT Improvements in understanding glacial extents and chronologies for the southeastern slope of the western Nyaiqentanglha Shan on the Tibetan Plateau are required to understand regional climate changes during the Last Glacial cycle. A two-dimensional numerical model of mass balance, based on snow–ice melting factors, and of ice flow for mountain glaciers is used to assess the glacier sensitivity to climatic change in a catchment of the region. The model can reproduce valley glaciers, wide-tongued glaciers and a coalescing glacier within step temperature lowering and precipitation increasing experiments. The model sensitivity experiments also indicate that the dependence of glacier growth on temperature and/or precipitation is nonlinear. The model results suggest that the valley glaciers respond more sensitively to an imposed climate change than wide-tongued and coalescing glaciers. Guided by field geological evidence of former glacier extent and other independent paleoclimate reconstructions, the model is also used to constrain the most realistic multi-year mean temperatures to be 2.9–4.6°C and 1.8–2.5°C lower than present in the glacial stages of the Last Glacial Maximum and middle marine oxygen isotope stage 3, respectively.
Compressive wide-band spectrum sensing

We present a compressive wide-band spectrum sensing scheme for cognitive radios. The received analog signal at the cognitive radio sensing receiver is transformed in to a digital signal using an analog-to-information converter. The autocorrelation of this compressed signal is then used to reconstruct an estimate of the signal spectrum. We evaluate the performance of this scheme in terms of the mean squared error of the power spectrum density estimate and the probability of detecting signal occupancy.
InfoSleuth: agent-based semantic integration of information in open and dynamic environments

The goal of the InfoSleuth project at MCC is to exploit and synthesize new technologies into a unified system that retrieves and processes information in an ever-changing network of information sources. InfoSleuth has its roots in the Carnot project at MCC, which specialized in integrating heterogeneous information bases. However, recent emerging technologies such as internetworking and the World Wide Web have significantly expanded the types, availability, and volume of data available to an information management system. Furthermore, in these new environments, there is no formal control over the registration of new information sources, and applications tend to be developed without complete knowledge of the resources that will be available when they are run. Federated database projects such as Carnot that do static data integration do not scale up and do not cope well with this ever-changing environment. On the other hand, recent Web technologies, based on keyword search engines, are scalable but, unlike federated databases, are incapable of accessing information based on concepts. In this experience paper, we describe the architecture, design, and implementation of a working version of InfoSleuth. We show how InfoSleuth integrates new technological developments such as agent technology, domain ontologies, brokerage, and internet computing, in support of mediated interoperation of data and services in a dynamic and open environment. We demonstrate the use of information brokering and domain ontologies as key elements for scalability.
Mountain fronts, base-level fall, and landscape evolution: Insights from the southern Rocky Mountains

Mountain ranges in the southern Rocky Mountains, fi rst uplifted during the early Cenozoic Laramide orogeny, have followed separate landscape evolutionary pathways in the late Cenozoic. We present a model that reconstructs the post-Laramide tectonic and geomorphic history of Sierra Nacimiento and the Taos Range, two nearly adjacent rift-fl ank ranges in north-central New Mexico that serve to illustrate the various processes shaping landscapes across the southern Rocky Mountains. The Sierra Nacimiento landscape refl ects the exhumation of hard Precambrian rocks from beneath a softer Phanerozoic sedimentary cover. The exhumation is continuous, but not steady, being driven by distal base-level fall. Downstream diverging river terraces in the Jemez River valley on the eastern fl ank of Sierra Nacimiento and late Pliocene to Holocene fl uvial deposits on the western Sierra Nacimiento piedmont document the base-level fall. The timing and contemporary rates of incision from these river systems suggest that exhumation is being propagated from south to north as knickzones work their way headward from the Rio Grande. In contrast, the Taos Range landscape refl ects alternating active stream incision and aggradation astride, and throttled by, an active range-front normal fault. The distinction between the exhumation-dominated and tectonic-dominated mountain front is best quantifi ed by analyses of fi rst-order stream gradients and a watershed metric we call the drainage basin volume to drainage basin area ratio (R va ). Gradients of fi rst-order streams in the exhumation-dominated Sierra Nacimiento have a mode of 6.8 degrees, signifi cantly less than the 17.7 degrees obtained from a comparable data set of Taos Range fi rstorder streams. The distinct stream gradient and R va populations hint at an important change in the processes shaping hillslopes and low-order channels, which is supported by the lack of slope-clearing landslides in the Sierra Nacimiento landscape and the presence of such landslides in the Taos Range. Analogue and numeric models fi nd that steep, rugged, faceted topography associated with tectonically active mountain fronts like the Taos Range can only be produced and maintained by creep and landslides where the sediment fl ux scales as a power law with respect to average hillslope or low-order channel gradient. Here, the fi ngerprint of active tectonics is recorded by both high R va values and steep modal channel gradients. By comparison, the Sierra Nacimiento landscape is shaped primarily by creep where the sediment fl ux has a linear relationship to average hillslope and low-order channel gradient. In this situation, the signatures of distal base-level fall are low R va values and relatively gentle modal channel gradients.
Cerebellar and posterior fossa malformations in patients with autism‐associated chromosome 22q13 terminal deletion

The 22q13.3 deletion causes a neurodevelopmental syndrome, also known as Phelan‐McDermid syndrome (MIM #606232), characterized by developmental delay and severe delay or absence of expressive speech. Two patients with hemizygous chromosome 22q13.3 telomeric deletion were referred to us when brain‐imaging studies revealed cerebellar vermis hypoplasia (CBVH). To determine whether developmental abnormalities of the cerebellum are a consistent feature of the 22q13.3 deletion syndrome, we examined brain‐imaging studies for 10 unrelated subjects with 22q13 terminal deletion. In seven cases where the availability of DNA and array technology allowed, we mapped deletion boundaries using comparative intensity analysis with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarrays. Approximate deletion boundaries for three additional cases were derived from clinical or published molecular data. We also examined brain‐imaging studies for a patient with an intragenic SHANK3 mutation. We report the first brain‐imaging data showing that some patients with 22q13 deletions have severe posterior CBVH, and one individual with a SHANK3 mutation has a normal cerebellum. This genotype–phenotype study suggests that the 22q13 deletion phenotype includes abnormal posterior fossa structures that are unlikely to be attributed to SHANK3 disruption. Other genes in the region, including PLXNB2 and MAPK8IP2, display brain expression patterns and mouse mutant phenotypes critical for proper cerebellar development. Future studies of these genes may elucidate their relationship to 22q13.3 deletion phenotypes. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Poppr: an R package for genetic analysis of populations with clonal, partially clonal, and/or sexual reproduction

Many microbial, fungal, or oomcyete populations violate assumptions for population genetic analysis because these populations are clonal, admixed, partially clonal, and/or sexual. Furthermore, few tools exist that are specifically designed for analyzing data from clonal populations, making analysis difficult and haphazard. We developed the R package poppr providing unique tools for analysis of data from admixed, clonal, mixed, and/or sexual populations. Currently, poppr can be used for dominant/codominant and haploid/diploid genetic data. Data can be imported from several formats including GenAlEx formatted text files and can be analyzed on a user-defined hierarchy that includes unlimited levels of subpopulation structure and clone censoring. New functions include calculation of Bruvo’s distance for microsatellites, batch-analysis of the index of association with several indices of genotypic diversity, and graphing including dendrograms with bootstrap support and minimum spanning networks. While functions for genotypic diversity and clone censoring are specific for clonal populations, several functions found in poppr are also valuable to analysis of any populations. A manual with documentation and examples is provided. Poppr is open source and major releases are available on CRAN: http://cran.r-project.org/package=poppr. More supporting documentation and tutorials can be found under ‘resources’ at: http://grunwaldlab.cgrb. oregonstate.edu/.
User identification in cyber-physical space: a case study on mobile query logs and trajectories

User identification across domains draws lots of research effort in recent years. Although most of existing works focus on user identification in a single space, in this paper, we first try to identify users by fusing their activities in cyber space and physical space, which helps us obtain a comprehensive understanding about users' online behaviours as well as offline visitation. Out profound insight to tackle this problem is that we can build a connection between the cyber space and the physical space with the stable location distribution of IP addresses. Thus, we propose a novel framework for user identification in cyber-physical space, which consists of three key steps: 1) modeling the location distribution of each IP address; 2) computing the co-occurrence with an inverted index to reduce the space and time cost; and 3) a learning-to-rank tactic to fuse user's features shared in both spaces to improve the accuracy. We conduct experiments to identify individual users from mobile query logs (generated in cyber space) and trajectory data (generated in physical space) to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our framework.
An Enterprise Architecture Alignment Measure for Telecom Service Development

The increasing complexity of modern Information Services (IS) makes necessary to carry on review activities. For many companies, these reviews take place within the framework of the Enterprise Architecture, which aims at sharing components among applications within the IS. These reviews can for instance help the architects in detecting alignment problems between an analysis model and a design model constrained by the enterprise data model. We propose an automatic approach, relying on Model Driven Engineering (MDE), to measure such an alignment. We propose a set of measures which are formally defined using a classical axiomatization approach. We describe how these measures can be implemented with MDE techniques. We finally illustrate their use for the France-Telecom IS of telecom services.
PROSAC: a submillimeter array survey of low-mass protostars - II. The mass evolution of envelopes, disks, and stars from the class 0 through I stages

Context. The key question about early protostellar evolution is how matter is accreted from the large-scale molecular cloud, through the circumstellar disk onto the central star. Aims. We constrain the masses of the envelopes, disks, and central stars of a sample of low-mass protostars and compare the results to theoretical models for the evolution of young stellar objects through the early protostellar stages. Methods. A sample of 20 Class 0 and I protostars has been observed in continuum at (sub)millimeter wavelengths at high angular resolution (typically 2 �� ) with the submillimeter array. Using detailed dust radiative transfer models of the interferometric data, as well as single-dish continuum observations, we have developed a framework for disentangling the continuum emission from the envelopes and disks, and from that estimated their masses. For the Class I sources in the sample HCO + 3–2 line emission was furthermore observed with the submillimeter array. Four of these sources show signs of Keplerian rotation, making it possible to determine the masses of the central stars. In the other sources the disks are masked by optically thick envelope and outflow emission. Results. Both Class 0 and I protostars are surrounded by disks with typical masses of about 0.05 M� , although significant scatter is seen in the derived disk masses for objects within both evolutionary stages. No evidence is found for a correlation between the disk .
Modeling TCP Window Evolution Process with both Discrete and Fluid Models

Fluid model and discrete-packet model are two approaches to model TCP, where different loss processes are used in different models. In this paper, we present both a discrete SMP model and a fluid model to model the TCP window evolution process. Loss process is I.I. D. in the SMP model, and is a poisson process with window size dependent arrival rate in the fluid model. Analysis shows that the discrete SMP model approaches to the fluid model as 0 p → , which sets up a connection between discrete-packet models and fluid models. It allows us to understand the relationship between several existing fluid models and discrete-packet models, especially the relationship between different loss processes. In addition, we analyze the impact of maximum window size limitation ( lim W ) to the throughput, and a simple relation between the lim W and average window size ( aver W ) is obtained. Finally, a set of experiment is conducted over the real Internet and in simulation to validate the model. Keywords—TCP window evolution process, SMP, Fluid
C9orf72 and UNC13A are shared risk loci for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia: A genome‐wide meta‐analysis

Substantial clinical, pathological, and genetic overlap exists between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). TDP‐43 inclusions have been found in both ALS and FTD cases (FTD‐TDP). Recently, a repeat expansion in C9orf72 was identified as the causal variant in a proportion of ALS and FTD cases. We sought to identify additional evidence for a common genetic basis for the spectrum of ALS‐FTD.
Civic education: do liberals do it better?

Abstract Recent research has found that civic education improves the democratic capacity of students and that teachers who employ an ‘open classroom’ approach seem to perform better at accomplishing this goal. We build on behavioural literature suggesting that variation in personality traits across ideology may account for why liberal middle school teachers would be more likely to foster an open classroom climate and as a result do a better job than their conservative counterparts at stimulating in their students’ political knowledge, an important component of democratic capacity. We estimate a series of quasi-experimental multilevel models using data from a survey of American students and teachers. The results indicate that liberal teachers tend to use an open classroom approach more frequently and that the students with the highest levels of political knowledge are in classes taught by liberal teachers. This effect holds up when controlling for individual-level predictors of student knowledge.
Predicting Modulation in Corticomotor Excitability and in Transcallosal Inhibition in Response to Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

Introduction: Responses to neuromodulatory protocols based either on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are known to be highly variable between individuals. In this study, we examined whether variability of responses to anodal tDCS (a-tDCS) could be predicted from individual differences in the ability to recruit early or late indirect waves (I-waves), as reflected in latency differences of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) evoked by TMS of different coil orientation. Methods: Participants (n = 20) first underwent TMS to measure latency of MEPs elicited at different coil orientations (i.e., PA, posterior-anterior; AP, anterior-posterior; LM, latero-medial). Then, participants underwent a-tDCS (20 min @ 2 mA) targeting the primary motor cortex of the contralateral preferred hand (right, n = 18). Individual responses to a-tDCS were determined by monitoring changes in MEP amplitude at rest and in the duration of the contralateral silent period (cSP) and ipsilateral silent period (iSP) during contraction; the latter providing an index of the latency and duration of transcallosal inhibition (LTI and DTI). Results: Consistent with previous reports, individual responses to a-tDCS were highly variable when expressed in terms of changes in MEP amplitude or in cSP duration with ~50% of the participants showing either little or no modulation. In contrast, individual variations in measures of transcallosal inhibition were less variable, allowing detection of significant after-effects. The reduced LTI and prolonged DTI observed post-tDCS were indicative of an enhanced excitability of the transcallosal pathway in the stimulated hemisphere. In terms of predictions, AP-LM latency differences proved to be good predictors of responses to a-tDCS when considering MEP modulation. Conclusion: The present results corroborate the predictive value of latency differences derived from TMS to determine who is likely to express “canonical” responses to a-tDCS in terms of MEP modulation. The results also provide novel suggestive evidencethat a-tDCS can modulate the excitability of the transcallosal pathway of the stimulated hemisphere.
Transfer function models for continuous and discrete multidimensional systems

Continuous multidimensional systems, which are described by partial differential equations are usually discretized by standard methods from numerical mathematics. Here, a general approach for the transfer function description of multidimensional systems is presented. It allows a correct representation of initial and boundary values also for problems with spatially varying coefficients, general boundary conditions, three spatial dimensions and general differentiation operators. In spite of this generality, the resulting discrete systems can be realized with standard signal processing elements and are free of implicit loops.
Virtual communities for elderly healthcare: user-based requirements elicitation

Virtual communities for elderly healthcare have a potential to improve the community building process and to facilitate care services through support for activities, participation and information needs. This paper expounds on this idea by proposing a mobile virtual community (MVC) platform for elderly healthcare based on a services concept. The requirements for this platform are elicited using a method based on in-depth interview sessions with clients and caregivers in a care institution, a workshop with multiple stakeholders, and scenario-based user need analysis. We focus on the technical platform that is intended to fulfil the requirements elicited from this approach. The platform is an extension of our existing MVC platform architecture, based on service-oriented principles. It enables user-tailoring through an adaptable set of mobile and platform services. We describe the platform and discuss its current and novel services as distilled from the requirements elicitation.