Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-view learning for high dimensional data classification

Facing to the high dimensional data, how to deal them well is the most difficult problem in the field of machine learning, pattern recognition and the relative fields. In this paper, we propose a new semi-supervised multi-view learning method, which partition or select the abundant attributes (called attribute partition or attribute selection) into subsets. We consider each subset as a view and on each subset train a classifier to label the unlabeled examples. Based on the ensemble learning, we combine their predictions to classify the unlabeled examples. The semi-supervised learning idea is that to make use of the large number unlabeled example to modify the classifiers iteratively. Experiments on UCI datasets show that this method is feasible and can improve the efficiency. Both theoretical analysis and experiments show that the proposed method has excellent accuracy and speed of classification.
Changing the P300 Brain Computer Interface

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are now feasible for use as an alternative control option for those with severe motor impairments. The P300 component of the evoked potential has proven useful as a control signal. Individuals do not need to be trained to produce the signal, and it is fairly stable and has a large evoked potential. Even with recent signal classification advances, on-line experiments with P300-based BCIs remain far from perfect. We present two potential methods for improving control accuracy. Experimental results in an evoked potential BCI, used to control items in a virtual apartment, show a reduced response exists when items are accidentally controlled. The presence of a P300-like signal in response to goal items means that it can be used for automatic error correction. Preliminary results from an interface experiment using three different button configurations for a yes/no BCI task show that the configuration of buttons may affect on-line signal classification. These results will be discussed in light of the special considerations needed when working with an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient.
Diversity and Seasonal Variability of β-Proteobacteria in Biofilms of Polluted Rivers: Analysis by Temperature Gradient Gel Electrophoresis and Cloning

ABSTRACT The β-subgroup of the Proteobacteria has been shown to be important in aquatic habitats and was investigated in depth here by molecular 16S rRNA techniques in biofilms of the Elbe River and its polluted tributary, the Spittelwasser River. The bacterial 16S rRNA genes were cloned from each site, screened for β-proteobacterial clones and sequenced. River biofilm clones from both rivers grouped into 9 clusters (RBFs). RBFs 1, 2, and 3 fell into the recently described βI cluster of cosmopolitan freshwater bacteria, where they represented new species related to Rhodoferax, Aquaspirillum, and Hydrogenophaga. RBFs 4 to 7 affiliated with Aquabacterium commune, Ideonella dechloratans, and Sphaerotilus natans, respectively. The two remaining RBFs were uncultivated clusters, one of them being distantly related to Gallionella ferruginea. Seasonal changes in the relative intensity of the β-proteobacterial 16S rRNA genes of biofilms harvested monthly for 1 year were determined by specific amplification and separation by temperature gradient gel electrophoresis (TGGE). Bands were identified by comparison of clones to community fingerprints by TGGE. Eight of 13 identified bands were shared by both habitats but showed different relative abundance and seasonal variability in the two rivers, probably caused by differences in temperature and pollutants. The data indicate new not-yet-cultivated clusters of river biofilm organisms, some of them probably distributed globally. They confirm the importance of certain known freshwater genera in river biofilms. The high phylogenetic resolution obtained by clone library analysis combined with the high temporal resolution obtained by TGGE suggest that the observed microdiversity in the river biofilm clone libraries might be caused by phylogenetically closely related microbial populations which are adapted to ecological parameters.
Finding the Efficient Frontier of a Bi-Criteria, Spatially Explicit, Harvest Scheduling Problem

This article evaluates the performance of five traditional methods and one new method of generating the efficient frontier for a bi-criteria, spatially explicit harvest scheduling problem. The problem is to find all possible efficient solutions, thus defining the trade-offs between two objectives: (1) maximizing the net present value of the forest and (2) maximizing the minimum area over the planning horizon in large, mature forest patches. The methods for generating the efficient frontier were tested using a hypothetical forest consisting of 50 stands. The methods were compared based on the number of efficient solutions each method can identify and on how quickly the solutions were identified. The potential to generalize these algorithms to 3- or n-criteria cases is also assessed. Three of the traditional approaches, the - constraining; the triangles method, the decomposition algorithm based on the Tchebycheff metric; and the new, proposed method are capable of generating all or most of the efficient solutions. However, the triangles and the new method far outperformed the other approaches in terms of solution time. The new method, called alpha-delta, appears to be the simplest to generalize to the tri-criteria case. FOR . S CI. 52(1):93-107.
Low-power anti-aging zero skew clock gating

In advanced CMOS technology, the NBTI (negative bias temperature instability) effect results in delay degradations of PMOS transistors. Further, because of clock gating, PMOS transistors in a clock tree often have different active probabilities, leading to different delay degradations. If the degradation difference is not properly controlled, this clock skew may cause the circuit fails to function at some point later in time. Intuitively, the degradation difference can be eliminated, if we increase the active probability of the low-probability clock gates to ensure the clock gates at the same level always having the same active probability. However, this intuitive method may suffer from large power consumption overhead. In this article, we point out, by carefully planning the transistor-level clock signal propagation path, we can have many clock gates whose active probabilities do not affect the degradation difference. Based on that observation, we propose a critical-PMOS-aware clock tree design methodology to eliminate the degradation difference with minimum power consumption overhead. Benchmark data consistently show our approach achieves very good results in terms of both the NBTI-induced clock skew (i.e., the degradation difference) and the power consumption overhead.
Identification of the Role of miR-142-5p in Alzheimer’s Disease by Comparative Bioinformatics and Cellular Analysis

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease characterized by the formation of amyloid beta (Aβ) or tau protein aggregates, the hallmark of cognitive decline. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as critical factors in neurogenesis and synaptic functions in the central nervous system (CNS). Recent studies have reported alterations in miRNA expression in patients with AD. However, miRNAs associated with AD varied with patient groups or experimental models, suggesting the need for a comparative study to identify miRNAs commonly dysregulated in diverse AD models. Here, we investigated the miRNAs that show dysregulated expression in two different human AD groups and mouse and cellular AD models. After selection of commonly dysregulated miRNAs in these groups, we investigated the pathophysiological significance of miR-142-5p in SH-SY5Y neuronal cells. We found that miR-142-5p was increased upon treatment with Aβ peptide 1–42 (Aβ42). Inhibition of miR-142-5p rescued the Aβ42-mediated synaptic dysfunctions, as indicated by the expression of postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95). Among genes with decreased expression in Aβ42-treated SH-SY5Y cells, the predicted miR-142-5p target genes were significantly related with neuronal function and synapse plasticity. These findings suggest that dysregulation in miR-142-5p expression contributes the pathogenesis of AD by triggering synaptic dysfunction associated with Aβ42-mediated pathophysiology.
The impact of material incentives on response quantity, response quality, sample composition, survey outcome, and cost in online access panels

Two incentive experiments were conducted in different online access panels. Experiment 1 was carried out in a commercial market research panel. It examined whether three different types of promised incentives (redeemable bonus points, money lottery and gift lottery), four different amounts of bonus points or raffled money, and two different denominations of raffled money influenced response quantity, sample composition, response quality and survey outcome. Type of incentive and number of bonus points mildly influenced dropout and sample composition. Moreover, response was higher with bonus points than with the two types of lotteries. Response quality and survey outcome were not affected. Experiment 2 was conducted in a non-profit panel, which holds one half selfselected and one half non-self-selected participants. Incentives were two different amounts of raffled money in two different denominations. Response, dropout, response quality, survey outcome and sample composition were not affected. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, recommendations for employing incentives in online access panels are given.
Vertical Specialization and the Quality of Infrastructure

This paper explores the role of producer services and ICT on international outsourcing. The motivation for outsourcing is to focus on core business and improve efficiency and outsourcing companies usually outsource a number of functions and the efficiency gains depend on the ability for the suppliers to deliver the required quality at the right time. If only one is late or delivers a substandard product, it will delay the entire process or reduce the quality of the final product. The timeliness of delivery and the fulfilment of quality standards depend critically on the availability of producer services. Transport, communication and other logistics services are obvious in this respect, but also services such as testing and technical services contribute to enable suppliers in low-cost countries to enter the outsourcing market. I therefore argue that international outsourcing can best be understood within an analysis framework of many suppliers that are interdependent, and the O-ring theory of production is such a theory. The paper first presents and modifies this model and then explores its predictions in an empirical analysis of the determinants of international vertical specialization as defined by an index developed by Hummels et al. (2001). The index is calculated for a cross-section of 52 countries and 5 sectors and regressed on a number of variables affecting the timeliness of delivery. It is found that vertical specialization is sensitive to trade barriers and infrastructure quality and cost of infrastructural services. The relative importance of trade barriers and various indicators of infrastructure vary between sectors. Vertical specialization in the electronics sector appears to be most sensitive to trade barriers and the density of the telecommunication network. This is also the case for the motor vehicles sector, but the size of the parameters is somewhat lower. The chemicals sector is most sensitive to the restriction on maritime services, while for textiles and clothing the aggregated measure of infrastructure had the highest explanatory power. Only in the electronics sector did the wage level (GDP per capita was used as a proxy) matter for vertical specialization.
Technical option for redirection of flow in the partial anomalous pulmonary veins connection.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT: The authors declare thatthey have conflict of interests; Braile Biomedica® provided all thematerial used and supplied the video images of the operation,presenting its commercial products.1. Sao Jose do Rio Preto Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery Service -Hospital de Base - Sao Jose do Rio Preto Medical School, SP, Brazil.
Mutations That Confer Resistance to Template-Analog Inhibitors of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Type 1 Reverse Transcriptase Lead to Severe Defects in HIV Replication

ABSTRACT We isolated two template analog reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitor-resistant mutants of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 RT by using the DNA aptamer, RT1t49. The mutations associated, N255D or N265D, displayed low-level resistance to RT1t49, while high-level resistance could be observed when both mutations were present (Dbl). Molecular clones of HIV that contained the mutations produced replication-defective virions. All three RT mutants displayed severe processivity defects. Thus, while biochemical resistance to the DNA aptamer RT1t49 can be generated in vitro via multiple mutations, the overlap between the aptamer- and template-primer-binding pockets favors mutations that also affect the RT-template-primer interaction. Therefore, viruses with such mutations are replication defective. Potent inhibition and a built-in mechanism to render aptamer-resistant viruses replication defective make this an attractive class of inhibitors.
Assessment of Single-Word Production for Children under Three Years of Age: Comparison of Children with and without Cleft Palate

Background. This study reports comparative phonological assessment results for children with cleft lip and/or palate (CLP) to typically developing peers using an evaluation tool for early phonological skills. Methods. Children without clefts (NC = noncleft) and 24 children with CLP, ages of 18–36 months, were evaluated using the Profile of Early Expressive Phonological Skills (PEEPSs) [1]. Children interacted with toy manipulatives to elicit a representative sample of target English consonants and syllable structures that are typically acquired by children between 18 and 27 months of age. Results. Results revealed significant differences between the two groups with regard to measures of consonant inventory, place of articulation, manner of production, accuracy, and error patterns. Syllable structure did not indicate differences, with the exception of initial consonant clusters. Conclusions. findings provide support for PEEPS as a viable option for single-word assessment of children with CLP prior to 3 years of age.
Effects of Oxytocin and Prosocial Behavior on Brain Responses to Direct and Vicariously Experienced Pain

In this study, we tested the validity of 2 popular assumptions about empathy: (a) empathy can be enhanced by oxytocin, a neuropeptide known to be crucial in affiliative behavior, and (b) individual differences in prosocial behavior are positively associated with empathic brain responses. To do so, we measured brain activity in a double-blind placebo-controlled study of 20 male participants either receiving painful stimulation to their own hand (self condition) or observing their female partner receiving painful stimulation to her hand (other condition). Prosocial behavior was measured using a monetary economic interaction game with which participants classified as prosocial (N = 12) or selfish (N = 6), depending on whether they cooperated with another player. Empathy-relevant brain activation (anterior insula) was neither enhanced by oxytocin nor positively associated with prosocial behavior. However, oxytocin reduced amygdala activation when participants received painful stimulation themselves (in the nonsocial condition). Surprisingly, this effect was driven by “selfish” participants. The results suggest that selfish individuals may not be as rational and unemotional as usually suggested, their actions being determined by their feeling anxious rather than by reason.
Density-Dependent Cladogenesis in Birds

A characteristic signature of adaptive radiation is a slowing of the rate of speciation toward the present. On the basis of molecular phylogenies, studies of single clades have frequently found evidence for a slowdown in diversification rate and have interpreted this as evidence for density dependent speciation. However, we demonstrated via simulation that large clades are expected to show stronger slowdowns than small clades, even if the probability of speciation and extinction remains constant through time. This is a consequence of exponential growth: clades, which, by chance, diversify at above the average rate early in their history, will tend to be large. They will also tend to regress back to the average diversification rate later on, and therefore show a slowdown. We conducted a meta-analysis of the distribution of speciation events through time, focusing on sequence-based phylogenies for 45 clades of birds. Thirteen of the 23 clades (57%) that include more than 20 species show significant slowdowns. The high frequency of slowdowns observed in large clades is even more extreme than expected under a purely stochastic constant-rate model, but is consistent with the adaptive radiation model. Taken together, our data strongly support a model of density-dependent speciation in birds, whereby speciation slows as ecological opportunities and geographical space place limits on clade growth.
Sequential Pattern Mining and Nonmonotonic Reasoning for Intelligent Information Agents

With the explosive growth of information available on the Internet, more effective data mining and data reasoning mechanism is required to process the sheer volume of information. Belief revision logic offers the expressive power to represent information retrieval contexts, and it also provides a sound inference mechanism to model the nonmonotonicity arising in changing retrieval contexts. Contextual knowledge for information retrieval can be extracted via efficient sequential pattern mining. We present a pattern taxonomy extraction model which efficiently performs the task of discovering descriptive frequent sequential patterns by pruning the noisy associations. This paper illustrates a novel approach of integrating the sequential data mining method into the belief revision based adaptive information agents to improve the agents' learning autonomy and prediction power. Initial experiments show that our belief revision logic and sequential pattern mining based intelligent information agents outperform the vector space model based information agents. Our work opens the door to the development of next generation of intelligent information agents to alleviate the information overload problem.
Molecular typing of methicillin-resistant and methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus isolates from Shiraz teaching hospitals by PCR-RFLP of coagulase gene

Background and objectives To investigate coagulase gene polymorphism of MRSA and MSSA isolates from Shiraz teaching hospitals from 2011 to 2012. Materials and Methods A total of 302 isolates of Staphylococcus aureus were collected from clinical specimens in three major teaching hospitals and confirmed on the basis of morphological characteristics and biochemical tests. The isolates were subjected to molecular typing on the basis of coagulase enzyme gene polymorphism by PCR-RFLP. Results There were 27 and 28 different RFLP patterns for AluI and HaeIII restriction enzymes respectively. This study showed that the discriminatory power of coagulase gene typing by Hae III enzyme was more than that of Alu I enzyme. Conclusion PCR-RFLP method is rapid, reproducible, simple and efficient for typing Staphylococcus aureus isolated from clinical specimens. This study showed that Hae III discriminatory power is better than Alu I for typing Staphylococcus aureus isolates.
Estimating Spiking Irregularities Under Changing Environments

Abstract We considered a gammadistribution of interspike intervals as a statistical model for neuronal spike generation. A gamma distribution is a natural extension of the Poisson process taking the effect of a refractory period into account. The model is specified by two parameters: a time-dependent firing rate and a shape parameter that characterizes spiking irregularities of individual neurons. Because the environment changes over time, observed data are generated from a model with a time-dependent firing rate, which is an unknown function. A statistical model with an unknown function is called a semiparametric model and is generally very difficult to solve. We used a novel method of estimating functions in information geometry to estimate the shape parameter without estimating the unknown function. We obtained an optimal estimating function analytically for the shape parameter independent of the functional form of the firing rate. This estimation is efficient without Fisher information loss and better than maximum likelihood estimation. We suggest a measure of spiking irregularity based on the estimating function, which may be useful for characterizing individual neurons in changing environments.
Artifacts in digital radiography.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to discuss flat-panel digital radiography (DR) artifacts to help physicists, radiologists, and radiologic technologists visually familiarize themselves with an expanded range of artifact appearance. CONCLUSION Flat-panel DR is a growing area of general radiography. As a radiology community, we are still becoming familiar with these systems and learning about clinically relevant artifacts and how to avoid them. These artifacts highlight important limitations or potential complications in using flat-panel DR systems.
Model Dependence in Quantification of Spike Interdependence by Joint Peri-Stimulus Time Histogram

Multineuronal recordings have enabled us to examine context-dependent changes in the relationship between the activities of multiple cells. The joint peri-stimulus time histogram (JPSTH) is a much-used method for investigating the dynamics of the interdependence of spike events between pairs of cells. Its results are often taken as an estimate of interaction strength between cells, independent of modulations in the cells' firing rates. We evaluate the adequacy of this estimate by examining the mathematical structure of how the JPSTH quantifies an interaction strength after excluding the contribution of firing rates. We introduce a simple probabilistic model of interacting point processes to generate simulated spike data and show that the normalized JPSTH incorrectly infers the temporal structure of variations in the interaction parameter strength. This occurs because, in our model, the correct normalization of firing-rate contributions is different than that used in Aertsen, Gerstein, Habib, and Palm's (1989) effective connectivity model. This demonstrates that firing-rate modulations cannot be corrected for in a model-independent manner, and therefore the effective connectivity does not represent a universal characteristic that is independent of modulation of the firing rates. Aertsen et al.'s (1989) effective connectivity may still be used in the analysis of experimental data, provided we are aware that this is simply one of many ways of describing the structure of interdependence. We also discuss some measure-independent characteristics of the structure of interdependence.
Self-poisoning. II.

ADDENDUM. -Since submitting this paper our attention has been drawn to a statement by R. L. Batten (Batten, 1965). His impression, based on the same material but admittedly without analysis of the data, was that following the withdrawal of A.T. S. "there was no increase in the number of cases and that those that did develop the disease had it in a milder form. " The results of this study show these impressions to have been erroneous.