Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic organization of digital music documents: sheet music and audio

This thesis presents work towards automatic organization and synchronization of scanned sheet music and digitized audio recordings in the scenario of a digital music library. The organization targeted in the project of this thesis includes the segmentation of sheet music books and audio CD collections into individual songs or movements, mapping the resulting segments to corresponding records in a database of metadata, and temporally synchronizing the sheet music documents and audio recordings that belong to the same piece of music on a bar-wise level. Building up a digital music library with a large collection of digitized sheet music and audio recordings requires automated methods for organizing the data, because a manual organization is too expensive and time-consuming. In this thesis, a complete workflow addressing the practical issues that arise in building up and maintaining a digital music library for synchronized sheet music and audio recordings is presented. Algorithms and approaches for the automatic organization of music documents are proposed and evaluated. We introduce a software application to be used by library employees for the import of new data and editing of existing records that integrates the proposed automatic methods. This application, furthermore, allows semi-automatic or manual interaction where automatic approaches are not yet reliable enough to meet the high quality standards that are expected in a library environment. A prototypical user interface for users of the digital library is presented that allows for applications making explicit use of the synchronization between sheet music books and audio CD collections.
TCRζ mRNA with an Alternatively Spliced 3′-Untranslated Region Detected in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Patients Leads to the Down-Regulation of TCRζ and TCR/CD3 Complex 1

The reduction or absence of TCR ζ-chain (ζ) expression in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients is thought to be related to the pathogenesis of SLE. Recently, we reported the predominant expression of ζ mRNA containing an alternatively spliced 3′-untranslated region (3′UTR; ζmRNA/as-3′UTR) and a reduction in the expression of ζ mRNA containing the wild-type 3′UTR (ζmRNA/w-3′UTR) in T cells from SLE patients. Here we show that AS3′UTR mutants (MA5.8 cells deficient in ζ protein that have been transfected with ζmRNA/as-3′UTR) exhibit a reduction in the expression of TCR/CD3 complex and ζ protein on their cell surface as well as a reduction in the production of IL-2 after stimulation with anti-CD3 Ab compared with that in wild-type 3′UTR mutants (MA5.8 cells transfected with ζmRNA/w-3′UTR). Furthermore, the real-time PCR analyses demonstrated that the half-life of ζmRNA/as-3′UTR in AS3′UTR mutants (3 h) was much shorter than that of ζmRNA/w-3′UTR in wild-type 3′UTR mutants (15 h). Thus, the lower stability of ζmRNA/as-3′UTR, which is predominant in SLE T cells, may be responsible for the reduced expression of the TCR/CD3 complex, including ζ protein, in SLE T cells.
Resolving tag ambiguity

Tagging is an important way for users to succinctly describe the content they upload to the Internet. However, most tag-suggestion systems recommend words that are highly correlated with the existing tag set, and thus add little information to a user's contribution. This paper describes a means to determine the ambiguity of a set of (user-contributed) tags and suggests new tags that disambiguate the original tags. We introduce a probabilistic framework that allows us to find two tags that appear in different contexts but are both likely to co-occur with the original tag set. If such tags can be found, the current description is considered "ambiguous" and the two tags are recommended to the user for further clarification. In contrast to previous work, we only query the user when information is most needed and good suggestions are available. We verify the efficacy of our approach using geographical, temporal and semantic metadata, and a user study. We built our system using statistics from a large (100M) database of images and their tags.
Metric Perturbation Resilience

We study the notion of perturbation resilience introduced by Bilu and Linial (2010) and Awasthi, Blum, and Sheffet (2012). A clustering problem is $\alpha$-perturbation resilient if the optimal clustering does not change when we perturb all distances by a factor of at most $\alpha$. We consider a class of clustering problems with center-based objectives, which includes such problems as k-means, k-median, and k-center, and give an exact algorithm for clustering 2-perturbation resilient instances. Our result improves upon the result of Balcan and Liang (2016), who gave an algorithm for clustering $1+\sqrt{2}\approx 2.41$ perturbation resilient instances. Our result is tight in the sense that no polynomial-time algorithm can solve $(2-\varepsilon)$-perturbation resilient instances unless NP = RP, as was shown by Balcan, Haghtalab, and White (2016). We show that the algorithm works on instances satisfying a slightly weaker and more natural condition than perturbation resilience, which we call metric perturbation resilience.
Chloroquine induces activation of nuclear factor‐κB and subsequent expression of pro‐inflammatory cytokines by human astroglial cells

Chloroquine, an antimalarial lysosomotropic base, is known for its anti‐inflammatory effects and therefore used for treatment of autoimmune diseases. Given its anti‐inflammatory effects, it has been under clinical trials to modify neurodegenerative processes. In this study, we examined whether chloroquine has an anti‐inflammatory effect in the CNS by determining the in vitro effects of chloroquine on LPS‐induced expression of cytokines by glial cells. We observed that (i) chloroquine augmented LPS‐induced expression of pro‐inflammatory cytokines such as lymphotoxin (LT)‐β, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)‐α, interleukin (IL)‐1α, IL‐1β and IL‐6 in human astroglial cells, while the same treatment suppressed LPS‐induced expression of cytokines in monocytic and microglial cells; (ii) chloroquine alone induced expression of pro‐inflammatory cytokines in a dose‐ and time‐dependent manner in astroglial cells; (iii) other lysosomotropic agents such as ammonium chloride and bafilomycin A1 had minimal effects on cytokine expression; and (iv) chloroquine induced the activation of nuclear factor‐kappa B in astroglial cells, which is a required component of chloroquine induction of cytokines. These results suggest that chloroquine may evoke either anti‐ or pro‐inflammatory responses in the CNS depending on the cellular context.
14 th International Conference on Endothelin Endothelin therapeutics in cancer : Where are we ?

Rosanò L, Bagnato A. Endothelin therapeutics in cancer: Where are we? Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 310: R469–R475, 2016. First published January 28, 2016; doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00532. 2015. —In human cancers, the autocrine and paracrine loop mediated by the aberrantly activation of endothelin-1 (ET-1) receptor (ET-1R) elicits pleiotropic effects, preferentially mediated by the scaffold protein -arrestin 1 ( -arr1), on tumor cells and on the host microenvironment, providing a strong rationale for targeting ET-1 receptors. This review describes the most up-to-date preclinical and clinical results obtained by using ET-1 therapeutics. The previous negative clinical results of ET-1 therapeutics should not prevent us from setting the standard of this class of drugs for future well-designed clinical trials. The preclinical data obtained with the dual ETAR and ETBR antagonist macitentan indicate that this molecule, which targets cancer cells and tumor-associated microenvironmental elements, could be a cancer therapeutic option. The field of ET-1 therapeutics will be improved in the next decade, facilitated by the new knowledge on the genomic landscape of the human stroma and tumor, and by the low invasive approaches based on liquid biopsies for the discovery of predictive biomarkers. The information obtained from preclinical studies in patient-derived models and from the Cancer Genome Atlas will set the scene of precision medicine for cancer. Results from these studies are expected to open the possibility that ET-1R antagonists might be more efficacious as molecular cancer therapeutics, able to hamper the functional -arr1-dependent signaling complexes, either alone or coupled with new targeted approaches.
Brain Computer Interface Based on the Flash Onset and Offset Visual Evoked Potentials

Severe motor disabilities can limit one’s ability in communication, especially for patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), severe cerebral palsy, head trauma, multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophies who are incapable of conveying their intentions (locked-in syndrome) to the external environment. For the last several decades, a considerable amount of research effort has been devoted towards the development of novel communication techniques which are independent of peripheral nerves and muscles. One promising method is the use of neural activities, for example, electroencephalography (EEG) or intracortical neural activities, arising from the human brain, as control or communication signals. Such techniques are referred to as ‘brain computer interfaces’ (BCIs) (Wolpaw et al., 2000). Several EEG-based BCI systems have been developed with elaborately designed paradigms to induce endogenous or exogenous neuroelectric signals which were detected and translated into control signals for communication purposes. Endogenous BCI communicates with environments independent of sensatory responses or muscles which enable users to control external environments directly. For examples, Pfurtscheller et al. (2000) measured sensorimotor mu rhythms during subject’s imagery movements and achieved a high recognition rate of 90%; Blankertz et al. (2007) constructed Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) with high ITR (>35 bits/min) based on detections of the modulations of sensorimotor rhythms due to motor imagery; Birbaumer et al. (1999) developed a Thought Translation Device (TTD) to measure slow cortical potentials (SCPs) for a binary selection task; Mason & Birch (2000) designed an asynchronous detector to control a binary switch by using the detected motor-related potentials (MRPs) filtered within 1-4 Hz. However, the ITRs of endogenous BCIs are relatively low (between 5 and 25 bits/min) because the performance of translation algorithm in extracting reliable features can be easily degraded by the undesired characteristics of neuroelectric signals, such as artifacts, task-unrelated EEG, and large variability in latencies. Besides, the subjects participated in the endogenous BCIs usually require extensive training for generating specific patterns. The exogenous BCIs, on the contrary, require parts of user’s sensation ability involved in a stimulating environment to induce sensatory neurophysiological activities, such as P300-based (Donchin et al., 2000; Meinicke et al., 2003), VEP (visual evoked potential)-based (Lee et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2006; Sutter, 1992), SSVEP (steady-state visual evoked potential)-based (Cheng et al., 2002; Cheng
Multiplicative Noise Removal via a Learned Dictionary

Multiplicative noise removal is a challenging image processing problem, and most existing methods are based on the maximum a posteriori formulation and the logarithmic transformation of multiplicative denoising problems into additive denoising problems. Sparse representations of images have shown to be efficient approaches for image recovery. Following this idea, in this paper, we propose to learn a dictionary from the logarithmic transformed image, and then to use it in a variational model built for noise removal. Extensive experimental results suggest that in terms of visual quality, peak signal-to-noise ratio, and mean absolute deviation error, the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Visual evoked potentials to change in coloration of a moving bar

In our previous study we found that it takes less time to detect coloration change in a moving object compared to coloration change in a stationary one (Kreegipuu etal., 2006). Here, we replicated the experiment, but in addition to reaction times (RTs) we measured visual evoked potentials (VEPs), to see whether this effect of motion is revealed at the cortical level of information processing. We asked our subjects to detect changes in coloration of stationary (0°/s) and moving bars (4.4 and 17.6°/s). Psychophysical results replicate the findings from the previous study showing decreased RTs to coloration changes with increase of velocity of the color changing stimulus. The effect of velocity on VEPs was opposite to the one found on RTs. Except for component N1, the amplitudes of VEPs elicited by the coloration change of faster moving objects were reduced than those elicited by the coloration change of slower moving or stationary objects. The only significant effect of velocity on latency of peaks was found for P2 in frontal region. The results are discussed in the light of change-to-change interval and the two methods reflecting different processing mechanisms.
Relationship between Shyness and Loneliness among Chinese Adolescents: Social Support as Mediator

We examined the mediating role of social support in the relationship between shyness and loneliness among 618 Chinese adolescents, by administering the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3). The results showed that a higher level of shyness was associated with a lower level of social support and a higher level of loneliness, and loneliness was negatively correlated with social support. The mediation analysis result indicated that social support partially mediated the relationship between shyness and loneliness. Thus, reducing shy feelings and enhancing social support may be preventive measures to help relieve adolescents’ feelings of loneliness.
A microminiature solid-state capacitive blood pressure transducer with improved sensitivity.

A microminiature pressure transducer is described utilizing a variable air capacitor driven by a pressure-sensitive deflectible silicon membrane as the detection mechanism. Silicon integrated circuit technology is used throughout for economical batch fabrication of the device. Prototype devices have been fabricated and initial test results under static pressure conditions are reported. Equivalent gauge factors of over 500 for this variable capacitance device are about a factor of 5-10 better than the best theoretically designed silicon strain gauges in the size range necessary for catheter insertion. Temperature independence and increased linearity are also important advantages of this variable capacitance sensor head.
MRD-based Word Sense Disambiguation: Further Extending Lesk

This paper reconsiders the task of MRDbased word sense disambiguation, in extending the basic Lesk algorithm to investigate the impact onWSD performance of different tokenisation schemes, scoring mechanisms, methods of gloss extension and filtering methods. In experimentation over the Lexeed Sensebank and the Japanese Senseval2 dictionary task, we demonstrate that character bigrams with sense-sensitive gloss extension over hyponyms and hypernyms enhances WSD performance.
Robotic implementation of classical and Operant Conditioning as a single STDP learning process

A robot is presented whose behavior is based on two fundamental types of learning in the animal world: Classical Conditioning (CC) and Operant Conditioning (OC). It is shown how both share Spike-Timing-Dependent-Plasticity (STDP) as learning process for a Spiking Neural Network (SNN). STDP was implemented on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) with very low-demanding resources, using an adaptation of the Synapto-dendritic Kernel Adapting Neuron (SKAN) model. Moreover, it is shown how a 3-way version of STDP is needed to allow for OC. The robot was designed to use the CC and OC neuronal architectures proposed in this paper and was tested in a dynamic environment, which consisted of a maze with changing features. It was successful in presenting both types of learning. This paper thus validates an architecture with an important potential for very large scale time-dependent parallel data analysis, with high capacity of adaptation in a dynamic environment.
Acetylation Stimulates the Epithelial Sodium Channel by Reducing Its Ubiquitination and Degradation*

Background: The epithelial Na+ channel ENaC plays an important role in epithelial Na+ absorption. Results: Lysine acetylation increased ENaC abundance and current by antagonizing its ubiquitination and degradation. Conclusion: Acetylation regulates ENaC stability. Significance: Lysine modification plays a central role in ENaC regulation, where it may contribute to the control of Na+ homeostasis and blood pressure. The epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC) functions as a pathway for Na+ absorption in the kidney and lung, where it is crucial for Na+ homeostasis and blood pressure regulation. ENaC is regulated in part through signaling pathways that control the ubiquitination state of ENaC lysines. A defect in ubiquitination causes Liddle syndrome, an inherited form of hypertension. Here we determined that α-, β-, and γENaC are also substrates for lysine acetylation. Trichostatin A (TSA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, enhanced ENaC acetylation and increased ENaC abundance in the total cell lysate and at the cell surface. Moreover, TSA increased ENaC current in Fischer rat thyroid and kidney collecting duct epithelia. We found that HDAC7 is expressed in the kidney collecting duct, supporting a potential role for this histone deacetylase in ENaC regulation. HDAC7 overexpression reduced ENaC abundance and ENaC current, whereas ENaC abundance and current were increased by silencing of HDAC7. ENaC and HDAC7 form a complex, as detected by coimmunoprecipitation. We observed a reciprocal relationship between acetylation and ubiquitination; TSA reduced ENaC ubiquitination, whereas HDAC7 increased ubiquitination. By reducing ENaC ubiquitination, TSA decreased the rate of ENaC degradation. Thus, acetylation increases epithelial Na+ absorption by antagonizing ENaC ubiquitination. This stabilizes ENaC, and hence, increases its abundance at the cell surface.
Providing Immediate CD4 Count Results at HIV Testing Improves ART Initiation

BackgroundIn South Africa, CD4 count results are typically available within a week of testing. However, 35%–55% of newly diagnosed HIV-positive patients do not return for their CD4 results and therefore, do not access further care.12 We evaluated the impact of a CD4 count result and patient written information provided immediately after diagnosis on retention in care. MethodsHIV-infected subjects were randomized to 3 arms; receipt of a CD4 result at time of HIV diagnosis, receipt of written information, and standard of care (CD4 collection after 1 week) or standard of care alone. The outcome of interest was enrollment for further care within 1 month for pre-antiretroviral therapy (ART) care or within 3 months for ART initiation. Secondary outcome was time taken from diagnosis to each stage of care pathway. Independent predictors of retention were assessed with multivariate analysis. ResultsThree hundred forty-four patients recruited, of which 64.5% were females with a median age of 30 years (interquartile range: 27–35). Subjects were similar in age, gender, CD4 count, education, and employment status. Providing CD4 results at HIV diagnosis increases the likelihood of reporting for ART initiation (risk ratio = 2.1; 95% confidence interval = 1.39 to 3.17) compared with standard of care. Written information only reduced the time to presentation for pre-ART care although increasing age was associated with retention. There was 49% attrition in the standard of care arms. ConclusionsReceipt of a CD4 count at the time of HIV testing increases ART initiation rates. Point-of-care diagnostics can be used to improve retention, but losses to pre-ART care remain high.
Preclinical Cerebral Network Connectivity Evidence of Deficits in Mild White Matter Lesions

White matter lesions (WMLs) are notable for their high prevalence and have been demonstrated to be a potential neuroimaging biomarker of early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. This study aimed to identify the brain functional and structural mechanisms underlying cognitive decline observed in mild WMLs. Multi-domain cognitive tests, as well as resting-state, diffusion tensor and structural images were obtained on 42 mild WMLs and 42 age/sex-matched healthy controls. For each participant, we examined the functional connectivity (FC) of three resting-state networks (RSNs) related to the changed cognitive domains: the default mode network (DMN) and the bilateral fronto-parietal network (FPN). We also performed voxel-based morphometry analysis to compare whole-brain gray matter (GM) volume, atlas-based quantification of the white matter tracts interconnecting the RSNs, and the relationship between FC and structural connectivity. We observed FC alterations in the DMN and the right FPN combined with related white matter integrity disruption in mild WMLs. However, no significant GM atrophy difference was found. Furthermore, the right precuneus FC in the DMN exhibited a significantly negative correlation with the memory test scores. Our study suggests that in mild WMLs, dysfunction of RSNs might be a consequence of decreased white matter structural connectivity, which further affects cognitive performance.
Distributed stochastic pricing for sum-rate maximization in femtocell networks with random graph and quantized communications

In this paper, we consider a pricing mechanism aimed at maximizing the sum-rate of a femtocell network in a distributed manner, thanks to a limited exchange of information among neighbor femto access points (FAPs). In a femtocell network, coordination among FAPs is possible exploiting the IP-based backhaul link. In particular, we consider the case where the exchange of information among FAPs is quantized and happens through a network graph (typically a sparse graph), whose links fail randomly across iterations. Using results from stochastic approximation theory, we propose a distributed projection based Robbins-Monro (RM) scheme that converges almost surely (a. s.) on a final allocation equilibrium dependent on the mean graph of the network, even in the presence of such imperfect communication scenario. Numerical results show how the system performance reduces due to the effect of link failures, which cause a lower coordination among FAPs to mitigate interference. Nevertheless, supposing to know the probability with which each link fails, we show how to counteract the effect of failures through a proper weighting of the price coefficients received by the neighbor FAPs. The distributed allocation algorithm is then robust to channel imperfections, whose effect is only to slow down the convergence process.