Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exercise-induced flow limitation, dynamic hyperinflation and exercise capacity in patients with bronchial asthma

It is known that, in stable asthmatics at rest, tidal expiratory flow limitation (EFL) and dynamic hyperinflation (DH) are seldom present. This study investigated whether stable asthmatics develop tidal EFL and DH during exercise with concurrent limitation of maximal exercise work rate (WRmax). A total of 20 asthmatics in a stable condition and aged 32±13 yrs (mean±sd) with a forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) of 101±21% of the predicted value were studied. Only three patients exhibited an FEV1 below the normal limits. On a first visit, patients performed a symptom-limited incremental (20 W·min−1) bicycle exercise test. On the second visit, the occurrence of EFL (using the negative expiratory pressure technique) and DH (via reduction in inspiratory capacity) were assessed at rest and when cycling at 33, 66 and 90% of their predetermined WRmax. FEV1 was measured to detect exercise-induced asthma, 5 and 15 min after stopping exercise at 90% WRmax. Only one patient showed EFL at rest, whereas 13 showed EFL and DH during exercise. In these 13 asthmatics, exercise capacity was significantly reduced (WRmax 75±9% pred) compared to the seven non-EFL patients (WRmax 95±13% pred). Moreover, a significant correlation of WRmax (% pred) to the change in inspiratory capacity (percentage of resting value) from rest to 90% WRmax was found. Tidal EFL during exercise was not associated with exercise-induced asthma, which was detected in only three patients. In conclusion, tidal expiratory flow limitation and dynamic hyperinflation during exercise are common in stable asthmatics with normal spirometric results and without exercise-induced asthma, and may contribute to reduction in exercise capacity.
Listening Subjects: Music, Psychoanalysis, Culture

In "Listening Subjects", David Schwarz uses psychoanalytic techniques to probe the visceral experiences of music listeners. Using classical, popular, and avant-garde music as texts, Schwarz addresses intriguing questions: why do bodies develop goose bumps when listening to music and why does music sound so good when heard 'all around'. By concentrating on music as cultural artefact, "Listening Subjects" shows how the historical conditions under which music is created affect the listening experience. Schwarz applies the ideas of post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theorists Slavoj Zizek, Julia Kristeva, and Kaja Silverman to an analysis of diverse works.In a discussion of John Adams' opera Nixon in China, he presents music listening as a fantasy of being enclosed in a second skin of enveloping sound. He looks at the song cycles of Franz Schubert as an examination and expression of epistemological doubts at the advent of modernism, and traverses fantasy 'space' in his exploration of the white noise at the end of the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Schwarz also considers the psychosexual undercurrent in Peter Gabriel's "Intruder" and the textual and ideological structures of German Oi Musik.Concluding with a reading of two compositions by Diamanda Gales, he reveals how some performances can simultaneously produce terror and awe, abjection and rage, pleasure and displeasure. This multi-layered study transcends other interventions in the field of musicology, particularly in its groundbreaking application of literary theory to popular and classical music. Schwarz's theory of listening blends music history and theory, psychoanalysis, cultural contexts, technology, and the body - all concepts that inform the kinetic representation of sounds called 'music'. "Listening Subjects" will be a valuable text for students and scholars of musicology, psychoanalytic theory, and popular culture.
Comparison of convolutional neural network models for food image classification

According to some estimates of World Health Organization (WHO), in 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Overall, about 13% of the world's adult population (11% of men and 15% of women) were obese. 39% of adults aged 18 years and over (38% of men and 40% of women) were overweight. The worldwide prevalence of obesity more than doubled between 1980 and 2014. The purpose of this study is to design a convolutional neural network model and provide a food dataset collection to distinguish the nutrition groups which people take in daily life. For this aim, both two pretrained models Alexnet and Caffenet were finetuned and a similar structure was trained with dataset. Food images were generated from Food-11, FooDD, Food100 datasets and web archives. According to the test results, finetuned models provided better results than trained structure as expected. However, trained model can be improved by using more training examples and can be used as specific structure for classification of nutrition groups.
Using the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB) in Individuals With Traumatic Brain Injury

Purpose/Objective: The NIH Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological Behavior and Function Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB) is a common data element for use in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study evaluates its sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing individuals with complicated mild, moderate, or severe TBI, and provides support for the construct validity of the NIHTB-CB in individuals with TBI. Research Method: One hundred eighty-two individuals with TBI (n = 83 complicated mild/moderate; n = 99 severe) completed the NIHTB-CB and neuropsychological criterion measures. Complete data were obtained on 158 participants. A control sample of 158 individuals without known neurological impairment was extracted from the NIHTB-CB normative sample. Multivariate analyses of variance determined the sensitivity of the NIHTB-CB measures to TBI and injury severity (complicated mild/moderate TBI, severe TBI, and controls) on the demographically corrected NIHTB-CB composite scores and seven subtests. A descriptive analysis of the sensitivity of each subtest was conducted. Finally, correlations between NIHTB-CB measures and criterion tests assessed convergent and discriminant validity. Results: Multivariate analyses indicated that there was a main effect for group (complicated mild/moderate vs. severe vs. controls) for fluid scores in the NIHTB-CB as opposed to only marginally significant results for the verbal scores. Moderate to strong relationships were found between the NIHTB-CB measures and their corresponding neuropsychological measures (convergent validity), whereas much smaller correlations were found between measures of different cognitive domains (discriminant validity). Conclusions: Findings provide evidence of construct validity and the clinical utility of the NIHTB-CB in individuals with TBI.
The Inluence of Cultural Identity and Intergroup Contact on Adolescents' Evaluations of Arab-Jewish Peer Relationships

Title of Document: THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL IDENTITY AND INTERGROUP CONTACT ON ADOLESCENTS’ EVALUATIONS OF ARABJEWISH PEER RELATIONSHIPS Alaina Faye Brenick, Ph.D., 2009 Directed By: Professor Melanie Killen, Human Development Recent research has documented the negative intergroup attitudes between Jewish and Arab youth and adults in the Middle East (Bar-Tal & Teichman, 2005; Brenick et al., 2007; Cole et al., 2003), yet little is known about how these negative intergroup biases manifest in the same cultural communities removed from the daily stress and tension of an intractable conflict, and living in the U.S. Moreover, while negative intergroup tensions between Jews and Arabs and, cultural stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination towards Muslim and Arab groups have increased in the U.S. (Alliance of Civilizations, 2006; Sheridan, 2006), they may still benefit from increased opportunities to engage in intergroup contact, which has been shown to reduce intergroup prejudice (see Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005). However, these attitudes have yet to receive much empirical scrutiny in the developmental literature. The present study investigated age related changes in the influence of intergroup contact and cultural identification on evaluations of Arab-Jewish intergroup friendships. The focus of this study was on how Jewish-American, Arab-American, and unaffiliated (e.g., non-Jewish, non-Arab) American adolescents evaluate exclusion and inclusion in peer situations between Jewish and Arab youth in the peer, home, and community contexts. This study surveyed 953 ninth and twelfth graders (36 Arab participants, 306 Jewish participants, and 591 unaffiliated participants (259 in the Jewish comparison group and 332 in the Arab comparison group). Overall, all participants were primarily rejecting of intergroup exclusion, more so when the exclusion was based on cultural group membership than when no reason for the exclusion was specified. Further, males were more accepting of the intergroup exclusion and more accepting of including an ingroup member as compared to females. Context effects emerged revealing that intergroup exclusion was considered most acceptable in the community context and the least acceptable in the friendship context. The interactive influence of intergroup contact and cultural identification demonstrated that high levels of intergroup contact and high levels of identity commitment predicted less accepting ratings of intergroup exclusion, whereas high levels of intergroup contact and high levels of identity exploration, led to more accepting ratings of intergroup exclusion. These interactions varied by cultural group. THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL IDENTITY AND INTERGROUP CONTACT ON ADOLESCENTS’ EVALUATIONS OF ARAB-JEWISH PEER RELATIONSHIPS
Functional comparison of mouse CIRE/mouse DC-SIGN and human DC-SIGN

Abstract CIRE/mDC-SIGN is a C-type lectin we originally identified as a molecule differentially expressed by mouse dendritic cell (DC) populations. Immunostaining with a CIRE/mDC-SIGN-specific mAb revealed that CIRE/mDC-SIGN is indeed on the surface of some CD4+, CD4−8− DCs and plasmacytoid pre-DCs, but not on CD8+ DCs. It has been proposed that CIRE/mDC-SIGN is the functional orthologue of human DC-SIGN (hDC-SIGN), a molecule that both enhances T cell responses and facilitates antigen uptake. We assessed if CIRE/mDC-SIGN and hDC-SIGN exhibit functional similarities. CIRE/mDC-SIGN is down-regulated upon activation, but unlike hDC-SIGN, incubation with IL-4 and IL-13 did not enhance CIRE/mDC-SIGN expression, indicating differences in gene regulation. Like hDC-SIGN, CIRE/mDC-SIGN bound mannosylated residues. However, we could detect no role for CIRE/mDC-SIGN in T cell–DC interactions and the protein did not bind to pathogens known to interact with hDC-SIGN, including Leishmania mexicana, cytomegalovirus, HIV and lentiviral particles bearing the Ebolavirus glycoprotein. The binding of CIRE/mDC-SIGN to hDC-SIGN ligands was not rescued when CIRE/mDC-SIGN was engineered to express the stalk region of hDC-SIGN. We conclude that there are significant differences in the fine specificity of the C-type lectin domains of hDC-SIGN and CIRE/mDC-SIGN and that these two molecules may not be functional orthologues.
Photogrammetric Modeling and Image-based Rendering for Rapid Virtual Environement Creation

Abstract : For realistic simulations, architecture is one of the most important elements to model and render photorealistically. Current techniques of converting architectural plans or survey data to CAD models are labor intensive, and methods for rendering such models are generally not photorealistic. In this work, we present a new approach for modeling and rendering existing architectural scenes from a sparse set of still photographs. For modeling, we use photogrammetric modeling techniques to recover the geometric representation of the architecture. The photogrammetric modeling approach presented in this paper is effective, robust and powerful because it fully exploits structural symmetries and constraints which are characteristic of architectural scenes. For rendering, we use view-dependent texturing mapping, a method for compositing multiple images of a scene to create renderings from novel views. Lastly, we present a software package, named Facade, which uses the techniques described to recover the geometry and appearance of architectural scenes directly from a sparse set of photographs.
Computational Support for Play Testing Game Sketches

Early-stage game prototypes need to be informative without requiring excessive commitments. Paper prototypes are frequently used as a way of trying out core mechanics while leaving them easy to change. Play testing on even these early-stage prototypes can give an idea of how the rules play out and whether the game is fun and engaging. Recently, researchers have proposed using automated analysis of games to discover additional properties of games, such as exploits and other gameplay issues. We propose a lightweight game-sketching approach to give designers access to insight derived from both human and machine play testing. Using our system, BIPED, a designer specifies a game's mechanics and maps them to a set of board-game-like primitives. Games created with BIPED can be played interactively on a computer as well as automatically analyzed, giving designers two complementary sources of design backtalk. In this paper, we describe the language designers may use to sketch games, how they might use our tool in the two modes of play testing, and how the prototypes are computationally realized. Additionally, we study using our system to prototype a game and examine it in human and machine play tests.
Likelihood-based inference for Matérn type-III repulsive point processes

In a repulsive point process, points act as if they are repelling one another, leading to underdispersed configurations when compared to a standard Poisson point process. Such models are useful when competition for resources exists, as in the locations of towns and trees. Bertil Matérn introduced three models for repulsive point processes, referred to as types I, II, and III. Matérn used types I and II, and regarded type III as intractable. In this paper an algorithm is developed that allows for arbitrarily accurate approximation of the likelihood for data modeled by the Matérn type-III process. This method relies on a perfect simulation method that is shown to be fast in practice, generating samples in time that grows nearly linearly in the intensity parameter of the model, while the running times for more naive methods grow exponentially.
Based on ant colony algorithm for cloud management platform resources scheduling

With the development of Cloud Services, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) become a part of our daily life. And this paper is based on cloud management platform architecture which is in the testing phase. According to the experiment, we found a new way to solve the resources optimization problem about the resource scheduling of cloud management platform, and obtained satisfactory results. It indicated that ant colony algorithm could play a essential role in the problem about the resource scheduling of cloud management platform.
Discovery and Characterization of Novel Tryptophan Hydroxylase Inhibitors That Selectively Inhibit Serotonin Synthesis in the Gastrointestinal Tract

5-Hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) (5-HT) is a neurotransmitter with both central and peripheral functions, including the modulation of mood, appetite, hemodynamics, gastrointestinal (GI) sensation, secretion, and motility. Its synthesis is initiated by the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH). Two isoforms of TPH have been discovered: TPH1, primarily expressed in the enterochromaffin cells of the gastrointestinal tract, and TPH2, expressed exclusively in neuronal cells. Mice lacking Tph1 contain little to no 5-HT in the blood and GI tract while maintaining normal levels in the brain. Because GI 5-HT is known to play important roles in normal and pathophysiology, we set out to discover and characterize novel compounds that selectively inhibit biosynthesis of GI 5-HT. Here, we describe two of a series of these inhibitors that are potent for TPH activity both in biochemical and cell-based assays. This class of compounds has unique properties with respect to pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effects on GI serotonin production. Similar to the Tph1 knockout results, these TPH inhibitors have the ability to selectively reduce 5-HT levels in the murine GI tract without affecting brain 5-HT levels. In addition, administration of these compounds in a ferret model of chemotherapy-induced emesis caused modest reductions of intestinal serotonin levels and a decreased emetic response. These findings suggest that GI-specific TPH inhibitors may provide novel treatments for various gastrointestinal disorders associated with dysregulation of the GI serotonergic system, such as chemotherapy-induced emesis and irritable bowel syndrome.
The marriage matching problem with information limited by social networks

The shape of sexual networks (who has slept with whom) is of key interest to public health officials and epidemiologists. Networks connected by a few central actors suggest targeted interventions (e.g. HIV testing at clubs), while broadly connected networks suggest blanket approaches. Because network data analysis requires high response rates and clear community boundaries, very little empirical research has been done, and what has been done is in environments with clear boundaries, like schools (Bearman et al., 2004). At least among youth in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data (Add Health), sexual history networks take the shape of a “spanning tree,” i.e. many people are connected through a single large component. Bearman et al. (2004) suggests that the mechanism generating this sexual network is random mixing with homophilous preferences and a taboo on dating one’s ex’s ex’s ex. However, there is evidence suggesting that a different mechanism might be at work: romantic relationships form over social networks. If that is the case, the spanning tree may be specific to youth who form relationships in environments with closed boundaries and tightly connected friendship networks.
mRNA expression signature of Gleason grade predicts lethal prostate cancer.

PURPOSE Prostate-specific antigen screening has led to enormous overtreatment of prostate cancer because of the inability to distinguish potentially lethal disease at diagnosis. We reasoned that by identifying an mRNA signature of Gleason grade, the best predictor of prognosis, we could improve prediction of lethal disease among men with moderate Gleason 7 tumors, the most common grade, and the most indeterminate in terms of prognosis. PATIENTS AND METHODS Using the complementary DNA-mediated annealing, selection, extension, and ligation assay, we measured the mRNA expression of 6,100 genes in prostate tumor tissue in the Swedish Watchful Waiting cohort (n = 358) and Physicians' Health Study (PHS; n = 109). We developed an mRNA signature of Gleason grade comparing individuals with Gleason ≤ 6 to those with Gleason ≥ 8 tumors and applied the model among patients with Gleason 7 to discriminate lethal cases. RESULTS We built a 157-gene signature using the Swedish data that predicted Gleason with low misclassification (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.91); when this signature was tested in the PHS, the discriminatory ability remained high (AUC = 0.94). In men with Gleason 7 tumors, who were excluded from the model building, the signature significantly improved the prediction of lethal disease beyond knowing whether the Gleason score was 4 + 3 or 3 + 4 (P = .006). CONCLUSION Our expression signature and the genes identified may improve our understanding of the de-differentiation process of prostate tumors. Additionally, the signature may have clinical applications among men with Gleason 7, by further estimating their risk of lethal prostate cancer and thereby guiding therapy decisions to improve outcomes and reduce overtreatment.
AN INNOVATIVE IMPLEMENTATION TECHNIQUE OF A REAL -TIME SOFT -CORE PROCESSOR

The objective of this project was to experience and develop rapid prototypes of a System-on-chip (SoC) by using a soft-core processor implementation on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The research project described here was a partnership program between Altera Corporation and CSU, Fresno, to enhance the quality of both undergraduate and graduate education in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. As engineering education is changing in response to the major technological changes in Electronics Design Automation (EDA) tools, the Altera Corporation donated the required EDA tools to build an industry-verified Digital Design Environment Laboratory. Presented here is the use of these tools for a reconfigurable hardware-software co-design implementation of embedded systems on a FPGA using the µClinux Real Time Operating System (RTOS). This software-hardware co-design technique is useful for the design of both soft-core and hardcore processors and is ideal for teaching an embeddedsystem design course. This technique allows students to customize the exact set of several Central Processing Unit (CPU) peripherals and the interfaces needed for engineering design applications.
Investigation into Mass Loading Sensitivity of Sezawa Wave Mode-Based Surface Acoustic Wave Sensors

In this work mass loading sensitivity of a Sezawa wave mode based surface acoustic wave (SAW) device is investigated through finite element method (FEM) simulation and the prospects of these devices to function as highly sensitive SAW sensors is reported. A ZnO/Si layered SAW resonator is considered for the simulation study. Initially the occurrence of Sezawa wave mode and displacement amplitude of the Rayleigh and Sezawa wave mode is studied for lower ZnO film thickness. Further, a thin film made of an arbitrary material is coated over the ZnO surface and the resonance frequency shift caused by mass loading of the film is estimated. It was observed that Sezawa wave mode shows significant sensitivity to change in mass loading and has higher sensitivity (eight times higher) than Rayleigh wave mode for the same device configuration. Further, the mass loading sensitivity was observed to be greater for a low ZnO film thickness to wavelength ratio. Accordingly, highly sensitive SAW sensors can be developed by coating a sensing medium over a layered SAW device and operating at Sezawa mode resonance frequency. The sensitivity can be increased by tuning the ZnO film thickness to wavelength ratio.
Action: A Framework for Semantic Annotation of Events in Video

We propose a model for semantic annotation of events, such as weddings or birthday parties, as depicted in video. Our framework consists of an event taxonomy, implemented as a faceted classification, and an event partonomy, implemented using the ABC ontology proposed by Lagoze and Hunter [1]. Our approach enables the annotation of a low-level physical action depicted in video, such as a kiss, to be linked to its higher-level event context (such as the kiss that signifies the conclusion of a Western wedding ceremony).