Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Circulatory model studies of external cardiac assist by counterpulsation.

A hydraulic model of the circulatory system was used to study external cardiac assist (ECA) as a noninvasive, synchronous, counterpulsative aid to the failing heart. Four different modes of external pressurisation of the legs were compared. (1) In uniform compression, a spatially-uniform pressure is applied simultaneously to the entire length of the leg. (2) In graded compression, a decreasing pressure is applied simultaneously from foot to groin. (3) In sequential compression, a wave of compression is applied, at uniform pressure level, from foot to groin. (4) In graded-sequential compression, the gradation of pressure and wave-like application are combined. Depressurisation was either to atmospheric pressure or to a vacuum. For each mode tests were made with broad ranges of pressure and timing parameters. “Optimal” combinations of these were selected for comparisons among the modes. The effectiveness of cardiac assist was assessed in terms of (i) the augmentation of mean diastolic pressure, signifying increased coronary perfusion; and (ii) the lowering of mean systolic pressure, signifying reduced left ventricular oxygen requirements. Measurements of regional volume flow rates and of cross-sectional area of the leg artery provided additional insights. All four external cardiac assist modes produced substantial augmentation of mean diastolic pressure. The simplest mode, namely, uniform compression, was however the least effective in this respect. The graded, sequential, and graded-sequential modes were all better, in ascending order. These results are explained haemodynamically in terms of the tendency of a uniformly-pressurised collapsible vessel to form an occlusive flow-limiting throat at its downstream (proximal) end. Nonuniform compression is the means by which this phenomenon may be avoided. Application of vacuum during depressurisation further increased the diastolic augmentation for every external cardiac assist mode. The changes in mean systolic pressure produced by ECA were much smaller than the changes in mean diastolic pressure. In general, the modes with greater diastolic augmentation also had relatively higher mean systolic pressures. With depressurisation to atmosphere, application of external cardiac assist increased the mean systolic pressure slightly, relative to the unassisted condition. However, depressurisation to 6.7 or 13.3 kPa (50 or 100 mmHg) vacuum resulted in either a reduction or virtually no change of mean systolic pressure, relative to the unassisted condition.
Agec: An execution-semantic clone detection tool

Agec is a semantic code-clone detection tool from Java bytecode, which (1) applies a kind of abstract interpretation to bytecode as a static analysis, in order to generate n-grams of possible execution traces, (2) detects the same n-grams from distinct places of the bytecode, and (3) then reports these n-grams as code clones. The strengths of the tool are: static analysis (no need for test cases), detection of clones of deeply nested invocations, and Map-Reduce ready detection algorithms for scalability.
Social Stress Increases Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Pathology in a Normotensive Rat Model

Territorial stress (TS) elevates blood pressure (BP) in several mammalian species. However, cardiovascular pathology following chronic stress has not been consistently shown in a non‐genetic hypertension model. Therefore, the hypothesis tested was that social stress would directly increase: BP, collagen deposition in coronary and mesenteric arteries, and myocardial fibrosis. Wistar–Kyoto (WKY) male rats, four weeks of age, were divided into one of three groups: controls (n = 9), territorial stress (TS, n = 12), and social isolation followed by territorial stress (SITS, n = 11). Blood pressure was measured biweekly, and blood samples biweekly for serum testosterone, corticosterone, epinephrine and norepinephrine. Blood pressure significantly increased in the TS (130 mmHg, p < 0.05) and SITS (150 mmHg, p < 0.05) groups, compared to controls (120 mmHg, ANOVA, F = 6.7, p < 0.001). Coronary collagen was increased 47% in the TS group and 90% in the SITS group compared to controls ( p < 0.05). The coronary wall/lumen ratio increased significantly (45%, p < 0.05) in the SITS group compared to the controls. Myocardial fibrosis was increased 27% in the TS group and 74% in the SITS group compared to controls ( p < 0.05). In conclusion, stress treatments increased BP and cardiac pathology in a normotensive rat strain.
Signalling through the type 1 insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF1R) interacts with canonical Wnt signalling to promote neural proliferation in developing brain

Signalling through the IGF1R [type 1 IGF (insulin-like growth factor) receptor] and canonical Wnt signalling are two signalling pathways that play critical roles in regulating neural cell generation and growth. To determine whether the signalling through the IGF1R can interact with the canonical Wnt signalling pathway in neural cells in vivo, we studied mutant mice with altered IGF signalling. We found that in mice with blunted IGF1R expression specifically in nestin-expressing neural cells (IGF1RNestin−KO mice) the abundance of neural β-catenin was significantly reduced. Blunting IGF1R expression also markedly decreased: (i) the activity of a LacZ (β-galactosidase) reporter transgene that responds to Wnt nuclear signalling (LacZTCF reporter transgene) and (ii) the number of proliferating neural precursors. In contrast, overexpressing IGF-I (insulin-like growth factor I) in brain markedly increased the activity of the LacZTCF reporter transgene. Consistently, IGF-I treatment also markedly increased the activity of the LacZTCF reporter transgene in embryonic neuron cultures that are derived from LacZTCF Tg (transgenic) mice. Importantly, increasing the abundance of β-catenin in IGF1RNestin−KO embryonic brains by suppressing the activity of GSK3β (glycogen synthase kinase-3β) significantly alleviated the phenotypic changes induced by IGF1R deficiency. These phenotypic changes includes: (i) retarded brain growth, (ii) reduced precursor proliferation and (iii) decreased neuronal number. Our current data, consistent with our previous study of cultured oligodendrocytes, strongly support the concept that IGF signalling interacts with canonical Wnt signalling in the developing brain to promote neural proliferation. The interaction of IGF and canonical Wnt signalling plays an important role in normal brain development by promoting neural precursor proliferation.
Viewpoint invariant recovery of visual surfaces from sparse data

A new algorithm is described for the reconstruction of visual surfaces from sparse data. An important aspect of this algorithm is that the surface estimated from the sparse data is approximately invariant with respect to rigid transformation of the surface in three-dimensional space. To form a surface estimate which is invariant with respect to viewpoint the stabilizing information is based on invariant surface characteristics. With appropriate approximations this results in a convex functional which must be minimized. The relationship of this algorithm to several previously proposed reconstruction algorithms is discussed, and several examples are given which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in reconstructing viewpoint invariant surface estimates. <<ETX>>
Nancy Drew: Girls' Literature, Women's Reading Groups, and the Transmission of Literacy

This study focused on a women's reading group that organized for the purpose of discussing popular books from the Nancy Drew collection. Audiotapes of discussions, interviews, and questionnaires provided information that led to an in-depth analysis to address two research questions: How did the participants become engaged in the specific genre of Nancy Drew mysteries? and What can be learned from interactions that were part of the group discussions (in a noninstructional setting) that can inform the field of literacy about the processes and values of such discussions for adult participants' literary engagement? Key findings of the study are that (a) “literacy agents,” such as mothers and aunts, were influential in persuading participants to read Nancy Drew as a child and (b) the discourse patterns of the group, although they were similar in some ways to typical school literature discussions, departed from these patterns at key points. When the participants were collaborative rather than hierarchical in their discussion stances, they constructed unexpected knowledge and expressed divergent views. They also made personal responses, both relevant and tangential to the text, and humorous observations. The implications of these findings for conducting literature discussions in classrooms are explored.
A Theoretical Model for the Comprehensive Assessment of Parenting

This article proposes a theoretical model for the comprehensive assessment of parenting. While the emphasis throughout is on ‘core’ assessments, made in the context of child maltreatment and substitute care, it is intended as a general theory of parenting or care-giving and hence applicable to a wide variety of professional situations. The model is rooted in attachment theory and evolutionary psychology with an overarching use of systemic thinking. First of all, parenting is located within an ecological framework. Then, the care-giving environment is defined by drawing on the empirical, professional and theoretical literature. Central to this model of the care-giving environment is the separation of core dimensions that are fundamental to parenting behaviour—that is, they are an intrinsic part of the behaviour of all parents—from those which modify parenting ability but cannot be reduced to one of the core or fundamental dimensions. A total of seven dimensions are considered together with some relevant assessment procedures. It is envisaged that further work will produce a manual for this, utilizing a variety of current assessment procedures while retaining a systemic framework for analysis and intervention.
Using GFS to Identify Encoding Genomic Loci from Protein Mass Spectral Data

Genome‐based peptide fingerprint scanning (GFS) directly maps several types of protein mass spectral (MS) data to the loci in the genome that may have encoded for the protein. This process can be used either for protein identification or for proteogenomic mapping, which is gene‐finding and annotation based on proteomic data. Inputs to the program are one or more mass spectrometry files from peptide mass fingerprinting and/or tandem MS (MS/MS) along with one or more sequences to search them against, and the output is the coordinates of any matches found. This unit describes the use of GFS and subsequent results analysis. Curr. Protoc. Bioinform. 21:13.9. 1‐13.9. 20. © 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Language model adaptation using latent dirichlet allocation and an efficient topic inference algorithm

We present an effort to perform topic mixture-based language model adaptation using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). We use probabilistic latent semantic analysis (PLSA) to automatically cluster a heterogeneous training corpus, and train an LDAmodel using the resultant topicdocument assignments. Using this LDA model, we then construct topic-specific corpora at the utterance level for interpolation with a background language model during language model adaptation. We also present a novel iterative algorithm for LDA topic inference. Very encouraging results were obtained in preliminary experiments with broadcast news in Mandarin Chinese.
Understanding Communication Between Lesbian Parents and Their Children Regarding Outsider Discourse About Family Identity

Gay fathers and lesbian mothers are aware of the potentially complex implications their family identity may have on their children. They know that they may someday have to deal with their children's concerns about their family being different and have the task of preparing them for the various challenges this difference may present in the larger culture. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the discussion of outsider communication between lesbian parents and their children regarding family identity. The central question guiding the present study was: How do lesbian parents communicate with their children about outsider discourse concerning family identity? Specifically, I explored what the outsiders said to the children concerning family identity, what the messages meant to the lesbian parents, and how lesbian parents discussed outsider communication with their children. Examining these questions allowed me to explore how lesbian parents and their children collectively experience outsider communication and what this means for their family identity. The participants in the present study were 13 lesbian parents who have raised or are raising at least one child with their same-sex partners. Findings and implications of the study are discussed.
Current trends signal an imminent crisis in the simulation of future

Current trends signal an imminent crisis in the simulation of future CMPs (Chip Multiprocessors). Future micro-archi-tectures will offer more and more thread contexts to execute parallel programs, but the execution speed of each thread will not improve at the same pace. CMPs with 10's or even 100's of cores are envisioned. Simulating these future CMPs efficiently without compromising accuracy is a challenge. Slack simulation is a general parallel simulation paradigm which provides flexible trade-offs between simulation accuracy and speed. Simulation threads do not synchronize after every target core cycle as in cycle-by-cycle simulation. Rather a maximum slack (the slack bound) is enforced between the clocks of all simulated cores. A slack simulation may become inaccurate because of simulation violations. Such violations occur when a resource is accessed by two cores in different order in the simulation and in the target system. We introduce and demonstrate techniques to detect violations, to adapt the simulation slack to maintain a target violation rate, and to checkpoint and rollback a slack simulation when violations are detected. We show some simulation performance/accuracy data for a set of five Splash benchmarks in the context of an 8-core CMP with a snooping cache coherence protocol simulated on SlackSim, our universal slack simulation platform.
Network processing in content inspection applications

Shows how NP can be used for complicated tasks including advanced classification of packets. Advanced classification requires the NP to look beyond the layer 3-4 header of the protocol, deep into the session and application layer payload. Dubbed "content inspection", such advanced classification requires specialized high-performance ICs, and a powerful and sophisticated set of tools for programming the ICs. These tools enable users of advanced classifiers to describe protocols using a high-level formal language, and then build classification policy with the help of an API. Complimented by policy verification and system simulation tools, content inspection will bring the required ease of use and processing power into the hands of communication systems designers.
Task 2a: Team KU-CS: Query Coherence Analysis for PRF and Genomics Expansion

Laypeople who are not medical expert may formulate short query using words from their discharge summaries or long query that explain their health conditions. The different query styles should be treated with different query expansion mechanisms. This work is an adaptive query expansion based on the coherence among query terms. To provide users with more readability documents, the document complexity is analiyzed on the word lenght and is used as a re-ranking method. The baseline retrieves using Lucene v.4. 6 with default configuration. Overall retrieval performance of the baseline is better than the adaptive query expansion (P@10, MAP, and NDCG). Since the complexity of document uses only length of word, the readability performance after re-ranking is poorly performing.
Optical 3-D Metric Measurements of Local Vocal Fold Deformation Characteristics in an In Vitro Setup

Understanding vocal fold dynamics presents an essential part in treating voice disorders as it is the prerequisite to appropriate medical therapy. Various physical and numerical models exist for simulation purposes, all relying on simplified material parameters. To improve current approaches, data of realistic tissue behavior, i.e., in natural surroundings, have to be considered in model development. An in vitro setup was proposed for tensile tests combined with an optical method for precise, local and metrical 3-D measurements of distinctive surface points. Compared to previous 3-D reconstruction methods, the accuracy was improved tenfold. Vertically applied forces versus resulting deformation were measured for ten porcine vocal folds. Deformation characteristics of mucosa and the two-layer structure of mucosa and muscle (MM) were investigated at three distinctive locations along the vocal fold edge. The spring rates were represented by an exponential function. For equal deflections, an increasing spring rate from posterior to anterior for MM was measured. For solely mucosa, the spring rate decreased from the posterior to the middle and subsequently increased again. The MM-layer presented a stiffer deformation behavior than mucosa. For deformations higher than 1.5 mm, the spring rates for MM were more than twice as high as for mucosa. The investigations display the importance of considering both multilayers and local differences for the improvement of vocal fold models.
Evaluating the Usefulness and Properties of a Subjective Assessment of Brazilian Portuguese

This is an evaluation of a Brazilian self-assessment test. All questions on the test guide the students to evaluate themselves on their linguistic and socio-cultural skills in Brazilian Portuguese. The main points discussed in this article are (1) an item analysis, (2) the reliability of the test to determine the consistency of the results obtained by the instrument, (3) the construct validity, and (4) the creation of cutscores. Our analysis of the BP self-assessment was supported by the use of descriptive statistics, by a factorial analysis and by a reliability test to determine the psychometrics characteristics of the test. The major claim in this study is that this test is useful, valid and reliable, if used appropriately, especially with an audience of motivated students such as students going abroad, instead of students who take language classes only as a requirement in their school program.
Comparison of open-loop and closed-loop disturbance observers for series elastic actuators

This contribution compares two approaches for applying disturbance observers (DOBs) to the torque control problem of series elastic actuators (SEAs). It is demonstrated that they are in fact equivalent for linear models in terms of their ability to reject disturbances and enforce nominal model dynamics. The closed loop and error transfer functions for the DOB-based approaches are compared to a fully linear plant and a nonlinear plant without DOB. Simulations demonstrate that the DOBs are able to increase the bandwidth of the nonlinear plant significantly, up to that of the linear plant. Furthermore, the DOBs significantly increase the tracking accuracy at low frequencies.
Automatic mining of fruit fly embryo images

We present FEMine, an automatic system for image-based gene expression analysis. We perform experiments on the largest publicly available collection of Drosophila ISH (in situ hybridization) images, showing that our FEMine system achieves excellent performance in classification, clustering, and content-based image retrieval. The major innovation of FEMine is the use of automatically discovered latent spatial "themes" of gene expressions, LGEs, in the whole-embryo context, as opposed to patterns in nearly disjoint portions of an embryo proposed in previous methods.
Students Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Collaborative Strategies for School Counselors.

The school setting can be a difficult place for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The core symptoms of ADHD, which include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, make meeting the curriculum demands of the classroom challenging. That ADHD negatively impacts not only academic performance but also social and emotional functioning is well established (Lee, Lahey, Owens, & Hinshaw, 2008). Given the negative consequences of ADHD, effective school-based interventions are warranted. School counselors are uniquely positioned to implement strategies for children with ADHD to maximize their capacity for learning. This article provides specific strategies that school counselors can provide collaboratively to enhance the academic and social functioning of children with ADHD in school.
Characterization of an Acyltransferase Capable of Synthesizing Benzylbenzoate and Other Volatile Esters in Flowers and Damaged Leaves of Clarkia breweri 1

A cDNA encoding a protein with 456 amino acids whose sequence shows considerable similarity to plant acyltransferases was identified among 750 Clarkia breweri flower expressed sequence tags. The cDNA was expressed in Escherichia coli, and the protein produced was shown to encode the enzyme benzoyl-coenzyme A (CoA):benzyl alcohol benzoyl transferase (BEBT). BEBT catalyzes the formation of benzylbenzoate, a minor constituent of the C. breweri floral aroma, but it also has activity with a number of other alcohols and acyl CoAs. The BEBTgene is expressed in different parts of the flowers with maximal RNA transcript levels in the stigma, and no expression was observed in the leaves under normal conditions. However, BEBT expression was induced in damaged leaves, reaching a maximum 6 h after damage occurred. We also show here that a closely related tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) gene previously shown to be induced in leaves after being challenged by phytopathogenic bacteria also has BEBT activity, whereas the most similar protein to BEBT in the Arabidopsis proteome does not use benzoyl CoA as a substrate and instead can use acetyl CoA to catalyze the formation of cis-3-hexen-1-yl acetate, a green-leaf volatile.
Exploiting Community Behavior for Enhanced Link Analysis and Web Search

Methods for Web link analysis and authority ranking such as PageRank are based on the assumption that a user endorses a Web page when creating a hyperlink to this page. There is a wealth of additional user-behavior information that could be considered for improving authority analysis, for example, the history of queries that a user community posed to a search engine over an extended time period, or observations about which query-result pages were clicked on and which ones were not clicked on after a user saw the summary snippets of the top-10 results. We study enhancements of link analysis methods by incorporating additional user assessments based on query logs and click streams, including negative feedback when a query-result page does not satisfy the user demand or is even perceived as spam. Our methods use various novel forms of Markov models whose states correspond to users and queries in addition to Web pages and whose links also reflect the relationships derived from query-result clicks, query refinements, and explicit ratings.