Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1 and Its Cofactor Vitronectin Stabilize Arterial Thrombi After Vascular Injury in Mice

Background —The origin and contribution of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and its cofactor vitronectin (VN) to arterial thrombosis/thrombolysis in vivo is controversial. Methods and Results —Ferric chloride was used to induce carotid artery injury in 97 wild-type (WT), 84 PAI-1−/−, and 84 VN−/− mice. Complete thrombotic occlusion was observed in 70% of PAI-1−/− mice versus 92% of WT (P <0.001) and 87% of VN−/− (P =0.015) mice. In vessels that occluded, mean times to occlusion were significantly longer in PAI-1−/− than in WT or VN−/− mice. The initial thrombotic response of VN−/− mice was similar to that of WT mice, but their thrombi were unstable and frequently embolized. As a result, the patency rate of carotid vessels 30 minutes after injury was as high in VN−/− mice (36%) as in PAI-1−/− mice (which demonstrate progressive thrombolysis) and significantly higher than that of WT mice (12%;P =0.013). Histochemical and reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction studies revealed an early upregulation of PAI-1 mRNA and protein expression in the thrombus and the vessel wall, which persisted for ≥1 week. VN protein also accumulated after injury, but VN mRNA levels remained low at all times. Conclusions —PAI-1 and VN participate in the thrombotic response to arterial injury by preventing premature thrombus dissolution and embolization. The accumulation of PAI-1 in the thrombus/vessel wall after injury may result, at least in part, from local synthesis, whereas the VN protein appears to be derived from plasma.
Clinical and Economic Impacts of Latanoprost 0.005% in First-Line Treatment of Open-Angle Glaucoma and Ocular Hypertension in France

Purpose To assess the cost-effectiveness of treatment strategies that utilize first-line latanoprost compared to those based on initial beta-blocker therapy in patients with open-angle glaucoma (OAG) or ocular hypertension (OH) in France. Methods The study was based on a decision-analytic model that was populated with data from a retrospective chart review. A hypothetical cohort of patients newly diagnosed with OAG and/or OH was assessed over a period of 2 and 3 years. For each treatment strategy 10,000 patients were assumed. Results First-line latanoprost therapy was significantly more effective than initial treatment with a beta-blocker, providing more days of intraocular pressure (IOP) control primarily due to its longer time until initial treatment failure. Latanoprost's higher acquisition cost was largely offset by reductions in costs associated with surgical procedures. The additional cost for latanoprost was estimated at approximately € 41 and € 27 over 2 and 3 years, respectively. The incremental cost per day of IOP control when latanoprost was used as first-line strategy compared to the first-line beta-blocker strategy was € 0.82 and € 0.36 over 2 and 3 years, respectively. Conclusions These results provide compelling evidence that first-line latanoprost therapy can provide superior clinical outcomes at a small additional cost in actual clinical practice.
Is lying ever justifiable? The effect of group membership on the perceived acceptance of lying

The aim of this study was to investigate what the effect of the in-group versus out–group categorization is on the acceptance of lying. We expected that the acceptance of lying was greater when people told a lie to a member of the out-group than when they told a lie to a member of the in-group. These expectancies where all based on group norms and in-group favoritism. Eighty-five people filled in the survey used for this study. They were all coupled with a person from either the in-, out- or an unaffiliated group. The linking to another person was not real, the participants were told afterwards. The participants were presented with different statements, which were based on different aspects of the acceptance of lying. The acceptance of lying was split into two part: the process of lying, consisting of a moral and a prudential domain, and the intention of lying. While the moral domain was focused on sympathy and respect for the other, the prudential domain focused on the self and its gaining of power by lying. The intention of lying laid its focus more on how difficult people find it to tell the lie against the other and if they intended to tell the lie if they had the choice. The results imply that the group membership of the recipient of the lie does not have any effect on the acceptance of lying with the teller of the lie. The manipulation check showed that the participants were not significantly influenced by the survey the way we wanted them to. Because the manipulation check was not successful, we cannot be certain that the results of this study are correct.
Weighted slope one predictors revisited

Recommender systems are used to help people in specific life choices, like what items to buy, what news to read or what movies to watch. A relevant work in this context is the Slope One algorithm, which is based on the concept of differential popularity between items (i.e., how much better one item is liked than another). This paper proposes new approaches to extend Slope One based predictors for collaborative filtering, in which the predictions are weighted based on the number of users that co-rated items. We propose to improve collaborative filtering by exploiting the web of trust concept, as well as an item utility measure based on the error of predictions based on specific items to specific users. We performed experiments using three application scenarios, namely Movielens, Epinions, and Flixter. Our results demonstrate that, in most cases, exploiting the web of trust is benefitial to prediction performance, and improvements are reported when comparing the proposed approaches against the original Weighted Slope One algorithm.
Three Guidelines of Online Learning for Large-Scale Visual Recognition

In this paper, we would like to evaluate online learning algorithms for large-scale visual recognition using state-of-the-art features which are preselected and held fixed. Today, combinations of high-dimensional features and linear classifiers are widely used for large-scale visual recognition. Numerous so-called mid-level features have been developed and mutually compared on an experimental basis. Although various learning methods for linear classification have also been proposed in the machine learning and natural language processing literature, they have rarely been evaluated for visual recognition. Therefore, we give guidelines via investigations of state-of-the-art online learning methods of linear classifiers. Many methods have been evaluated using toy data and natural language processing problems such as document classification. Consequently, we gave those methods a unified interpretation from the viewpoint of visual recognition. Results of controlled comparisons indicate three guidelines that might change the pipeline for visual recognition.
Segmenting the senior travel market by means of travel motivation - Insights from a mature market (Switzerland)

The paper reports on the segmentation of Swiss senior travellers on the basis of their travel motivation. Switzerland is considered a mature market which is why this country serves as a role model for future travel behaviour. In contrast to previous studies, which identified up to six clusters, the results reveal that in the case analysed there are three clusters. Two of them partially represent a life cycle concept: TIME HONOURED BON VIVANTS (phase 1; towards the end of a professional life), and GRIZZLED EXPLORERS (phase 2; from the start of a retired life). These two segments are complemented by RETRO TRAVELLERS, which incorporate many characteristics of the previous two but differentiate themselves in terms of education as well professional positions.
Research Success with Senior High School Students

The objective of this research project was to identify what factors motivated different types of students in different content areas to complete assigned research projects successfully. Information was collected through student journals, interviews with students and teachers, and observation. Preliminary findings identified access to information, task perception and understanding, the research purpose, and time as factors that appeared to encourage students to complete their research and develop confidence in their ability to create meaning. This work adds the important component of student experience and voice to earlier research concerning motivation and student information literacy.
Multi-robot cooperative sensing and localization

This paper presents a novel method for mobile robot localization based on multi-robot cooperative sensing. A multi-robot cooperative localization scheme is proposed using visual detection and sensor data fusion. The visual detection system employs a stereo vision module for both observing other robots and obtaining environmental information. Each mobile robot is able to recognize its teammates by using the vision system. The localization error is reduced through the proposed sensor fusion algorithm. The cooperative localization algorithm consists of two stages: serial fusion and parallel fusion. Serial fusion aims to identify the positional uncertainty of an observed robot while parallel fusion reduces its positional error based on Kalman filtering. The multi-robot cooperative localization system has been realized through the server-client architecture. Experimental results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
Security Aspects in Radio Frequency Identification Systems

Radio frequency identification technology is becoming ubiquitous, and as an unfortunate side effect, more and more authentication solutions come with more security issues. In former contributions, the authors introduced a solely hash-based secure authentication algorithm that is capable of providing protection against most of the well-known attacks and performs exceptionally well even in very large systems. The authors gave a theoretical analysis of Simple Lightweight Authentication Protocol (SLAP) protocol from security and performance point of view. This chapter gives a detailed examination of small computational capacity systems from the point of view of security. The authors define the model of attacker and the well-known attacks which can be achieved in these kinds of environments. Furthermore, the chapter gives a summary of the significant RFID authentication protocols which are found in literature. The authors present several lightweight authentication protocols and some novel elliptic curve cryptography based methods. Besides, the chapter illustrates the SLAP protocol’s performance characteristics with measurements carried out in a simulation environment and compares with the theoretical results. The authors show the effects of numerous attacks and the system’s different parameters on the authentication time. Finally, the chapter examines the performance and security characteristics of two other protocols chosen from the literature in order to compare to SLAP algorithm and give proper explanation for the differences between them.
Max-Margin-Based Discriminative Feature Learning

In this brief, we propose a new max-margin-based discriminative feature learning method. In particular, we aim at learning a low-dimensional feature representation, so as to maximize the global margin of the data and make the samples from the same class as close as possible. In order to enhance the robustness to noise, we leverage a regularization term to make the transformation matrix sparse in rows. In addition, we further learn and leverage the correlations among multiple categories for assisting in learning discriminative features. The experimental results demonstrate the power of the proposed method against the related state-of-the-art methods.
Predicting Professions through Probabilistic Model under Social Context

In this paper, we investigate the problem of predicting people's professions under social context. Previous work considering clothing information as well as fore/background context preliminarily proves the feasibility of predicting professions. In this paper, we discuss this problem in a more general case -- multiple people in one photo with arbitrary poses, and argue that with appropriately built partial body features, spatial relations, and background context, more appealing results are achieved by a probabilistic model. We conduct experiments on 14 representative professions with over 7000 images, and demonstrate the model's superiority with impressive results.
The Global Carbon Metabolism Regulator Crc Is a Component of a Signal Transduction Pathway Required for Biofilm Development by Pseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT The transition from a planktonic (free-swimming) existence to growth attached to a surface in a biofilm occurs in response to environmental factors, including the availability of nutrients. We show that the catabolite repression control (Crc) protein, which plays a role in the regulation of carbon metabolism, is necessary for biofilm formation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Using phase-contrast microscopy, we found that a crc mutant only makes a dispersed monolayer of cells on a plastic surface but does not develop the dense monolayer punctuated by microcolonies typical of the wild-type strain. This is a phenotype identical to that observed in mutants defective in type IV pilus biogenesis. Consistent with this observation, crc mutants are defective in type IV pilus-mediated twitching motility. We show that this defect in type IV pilus function is due (at least in part) to a decrease inpilA (pilin) transcription. We propose that nutritional cues are integrated by Crc as part of a signal transduction pathway that regulates biofilm development.
Article Title: Mutations in Shaking-b Prevent Electrical Synapse Formation in the Drosophila Giant Fiber System

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Public perspectives on biospecimen procurement: what biorepositories should consider.

PURPOSE Human biospecimens are central to biobanking efforts, yet how members of the public think about biobank procurement strategies is not well understood. This study aimed to explore public perspectives toward the procurement of residual clinical material versus "direct" procurement strategies such as the drawing of blood. METHODS Members of the public residing in and beyond the biobank catchment area of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics were randomly selected to participate in focus groups and a telephone survey. RESULTS The majority of survey participants (75%, n=559) found both residual and direct procurement strategies equally workable. Small proportions preferred either residual (15%; n=117) or direct (5%; n=40) procurement. Focus group participants (n=48) could identify benefits to both procurement strategies, but raised concerns about possible donor inconvenience/discomfort and reduced biospecimen accrual in the case of direct procurement. Residual procurement raised concerns about lower-quality samples being procured without full donor awareness. CONCLUSION Biobanks should consider that members of the public in their research programs may be willing to make specimen donations regardless of whether a residual or direct procurement strategy is employed. Limiting patient discomfort and inconvenience may make direct procurement strategies more acceptable to some members of the public. Ensuring donor awareness through effective informed consent may allay public concerns about the indirectness of donating clinical biospecimens.
Early inflected infinitives and late V-to-C movement

In previous work, we experimentally tested knowledge of inflected infinitives in young monolingual speakers of European Portuguese (EP), ages 6 through 12 years of age (Pires, Rothman and Santos 2011a, b). These studies examined morphosyntactic and syntax-semantics interface properties that differentiate non-inflected and inflected infinitives (e.g. Pires 2006), using a grammaticality judgment and a context-picture matching tasks. These experiments were especially apropos in light of previous work on the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) in which it was shown that different syntactic and semantic properties of inflected infinitives emerge extremely late (Pires and Rothman 2009b). Pires and Rothman (2009a,b) concluded that inflected infinitives emerge only after the age of 10-12 in BP not because inflected infinitives are inherently late emerging properties, but rather because they are not abundantly available in BP primary linguistic data until a later age, when children have sufficient exposure to standard BP, where inflected infinitives are productive. Their argument was in line with independent syntactic change arguments that inflected infinitives are being lost in colloquial dialects of BP, akin to the loss of third person clitic pronouns and other structures, as a natural consequence of diachronic change (see Pires 2006 and references therein). It was obvious that if Pires and Rothman’s conclusions were on the right track, the pattern for EP children should be markedly different, considering similar experimental tasks, since there is no question that inflected infinitives are productive across dialects of EP. Pires et al. (2011a,b) results on the acquisition of EP show that children as young as 6 have clear knowledge of the syntax and semantics of inflected infinitives, even if it is not entirely adult-like in specific respects. These results lent support to Pires and Rothman’s (2009 a.b) arguments regarding the source of late emergence in BP, although Pires et al. did not have results from children below age 6 to show the path of development of inflected infinitives when they first emerge in the acquisition of EP. Moreover, since we only examined inflected infinitives as complements of
Survey and Analysis of Cyclostationary Signal Detector Implementations on FPGA

Detecting the presence of primary users and ability to find white spaces in the spectrum are the key enablers of the opportunistic communication. This paper analyzes the trade-offs in cyclostationary-based spectrum sensing algorithm implementations in terms of performance, hardware complexity, and power consumption. The evaluation of the algorithm implementations is performed on field-programmable gate arrays. The analysis presented will provide the designer understanding of dependency between algorithm complexity and power consumption, which is inherently limiting factor of implementation feasibility for cognitive mobile devices.
Thermal ageing of polypropylene film capacitors

Capacitors of metalized polypropylene film from four different manufacturers were aged at the temperature of 100 °C for 600 hours and changes of their capacitance and nonlinearity of the current-voltage characteristic were monitored. It was found that changes of the capacitance were very low. Significant changes were found in nonlinearity of the I-V characteristic of the capacitors. The reason of these changes is discussed and it is explained by changes of PP film metallization and by changes of quality of contacts on the foreheads of the capacitor coil. It was found that properties of capacitors from different producers differ. It was explained by quality of film and technology.
Video-Based Action Recognition Using Rate-Invariant Analysis of Covariance Trajectories

Statistical classification of actions in videos is mostly performed by extracting relevant features, particularly covariance features, from image frames and studying time series associated with temporal evolutions of these features. A natural mathematical representation of activity videos is in form of parameterized trajectories on the covariance manifold, i.e. the set of symmetric, positive-definite matrices (SPDMs). The variable execution-rates of actions implies variable parameterizations of the resulting trajectories, and complicates their classification. Since action classes are invariant to execution rates, one requires rate-invariant metrics for comparing trajectories. A recent paper represented trajectories using their transported square-root vector fields (TSRVFs), defined by parallel translating scaled-velocity vectors of trajectories to a reference tangent space on the manifold. To avoid arbitrariness of selecting the reference and to reduce distortion introduced during this mapping, we develop a purely intrinsic approach where SPDM trajectories are represented by redefining their TSRVFs at the starting points of the trajectories, and analyzed as elements of a vector bundle on the manifold. Using a natural Riemannain metric on vector bundles of SPDMs, we compute geodesic paths and geodesic distances between trajectories in the quotient space of this vector bundle, with respect to the reparameterization group. This makes the resulting comparison of trajectories invariant to their re-parameterization. We demonstrate this framework on two applications involving video classification: visual speech recognition or lip-reading and hand-gesture recognition. In both cases we achieve results either comparable to or better than the current literature.
Learning to chase a ball efficiently and smoothly for a wheeled robot

Target chasing control of autonomous mobile robots is important for both civilian and military applications. Efficiency and stability are two important factors in chasing problem. The robot is expected to chase the target quickly to save time. Besides, the driving velocity and direction of the mobile robot should be changed smoothly to avoid wheel slippage or mechanical damage during the chasing process. In this paper, we propose a method for a wheeled robot to learn a policy to chase a red ball efficiently and smoothly. Without any knowledge of motion strategies, the wheeled robot can be trained to chase its target by learning from the given rewards using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). The motion control of the robot is decided not only by the features of the target, but also by the current state of the robot itself. The reward is set according to Multi-Sensor data of the robot for good chasing performance. We use Double Deep Q-Network (Double DQN) to build our model and have obtained good experimental results in simulation environment.