Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advances in stem cell therapy for cardiovascular disease (Review)

Cardiovascular disease constitutes the primary cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide, and represents a group of disorders associated with the loss of cardiac function. Despite considerable advances in the understanding of the pathologic mechanisms of the disease, the majority of the currently available therapies remain at best palliative, since the problem of cardiac tissue loss has not yet been addressed. Indeed, few therapeutic approaches offer direct tissue repair and regeneration, whereas the majority of treatment options aim to limit scar formation and adverse remodeling, while improving myocardial function. Of all the existing therapeutic approaches, the problem of cardiac tissue loss is addressed uniquely by heart transplantation. Nevertheless, alternative options, particularly stem cell therapy, has emerged as a novel and promising approach. This approach involves the transplantation of healthy and functional cells to promote the renewal of damaged cells and repair injured tissue. Bone marrow precursor cells were the first cell type used in clinical studies, and subsequently, preclinical and clinical investigations have been extended to the use of various populations of stem cells. This review addresses the present state of research as regards stem cell therapy for cardiovascular disease.
Adaptive Space Deformations Based on Rigid Cells

We propose a new adaptive space deformation method for interactive shape modeling. A novel energy formulation based on elastically coupled volumetric cells yields intuitive detail preservation even under large deformations. By enforcing rigidity of the cells, we obtain an extremely robust numerical solver for the resulting nonlinear optimization problem. Scalability is achieved using an adaptive spatial discretization that is decoupled from the resolution of the embedded object. Our approach is versatile and easy to implement, supports thin‐shell and solid deformations of 2D and 3D objects, and is applicable to arbitrary sample‐based representations, such as meshes, triangle soups, or point clouds.
MULTI-MODALITY IMAGE SIMULATION WITH THE VIRTUAL IMAGING PLATFORM : ILLUSTRATION ON CARDIAC MRI AND ECHOGRAPHY

Index Terms— Image simulation, medical, multi-modality, cardiac, magnetic resonance, echography. This document materializes deliverable D3.4. 1 of French ANR project ANR-09-COSI-03, " Virtual Imaging Platform ". As specified in the project proposal, it consists of 3D simulated heart images for segmentation evaluation, which are available online 1. This document details how they were produced. It is presented as a 4-page abstract that will constitute initial input material for a publication in 2012.
The Utilisation of Curative Healthcare in Mozambique: Does Income Matter?

In Mozambique, easily treatable diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory infections contribute to a heavy burden of disease. Notwithstanding efforts by the Mozambican government to promote access to healthcare, many who could benefit from simple, cost-effective healthcare services do not currently receive treatment. Moreover, it is known that the utilisation of health services varies considerably across spatial domains and socio-economic groups. This paper is concerned with understanding the determinants of utilisation of curative health services, paying particular attention to the role of income. It provides a broad analytical framework for analysing both the binary decision to seek formal healthcare in the event of illness, and the multinomial choice of healthcare provider. The results show that income is a relatively unimportant determinant of healthcare choices in Mozambique. Instead, other factors, in particular education and physical access, are more important. Moreover, unlike in some studies, own (time) price elasticity does not vary notably with income. At a methodological level, the analysis shows that the general conclusions are robust to a number of estimation issues that are rarely addressed explicitly in the analysis of healthcare choices, including sample selection, the potential endogeneity of consumption and cluster-level unobservables. For the analysis of provider choice, the paper demonstrates the merits of a 'flexible' behavioural model. In particular, the paper rejects some of the restrictions of the standard model of provider choice, and shows that both the level of the price elasticity and the extent to which the elasticity varies with income is sensitive to the empirical specification. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
Performance and Persistence Outcomes of GEAR UP Students: Leveling the Playing Field in Higher Education

Given the major investment in the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) grant, rising postsecondary access, trends in poor persistence and retention rates, and the ongoing accountability measures in higher education, it is critical to examine factors related to postsecondary performance and persistence of GEAR UP students in comparison to their peers. College performance and persistence of 298 State GEAR UP students were compared with other first-time, first-year students (1,841) who entered a moderately selective, medium-sized public research university in Fall 2012. The GEAR UP students were more likely to be from disadvantaged, underrepresented backgrounds; despite less advantageous beginnings, they entered college with similar high school grade point average and Scholastic Assessment Test scores, though lower American College Test scores. Also, students’ first-term grade point average and credit loads served as predictors of persistence. Most importantly, GEAR UP students were just as likely to perform and persist as their peers.
DNMT 1 maintains hypermethylation of CAG promoter specific region and prevents expression of exogenous gene in fat-1 transgenic sheep

Methylation is an important issue in gene expression regulation and also in the fields of genetics and reproduction. In this study, we created fat-1 transgenic sheep, investigated the fine-mapping and the modulatory mechanisms of promoter methylation. Sheep fetal fibroblasts were transfected by pCAG-fat1-IRES-EGFP. Monoclonal cell line was screened as nuclear donor and carried out nuclear transfer (441 transgenic cloned embryos, 52 synchronism recipient sheep). Six offsprings were obtained. Expressions of exogenous genes fat-1 and EGFP were detectable in 10 examined tissues and upregulated omega-3 fatty acid content. Interestingly, more or less EGFP negative cells were detectable in the positive transgenic fetal skin cells. EGFP negative and positive cells were sorted by flow cytometry, and their methylation status in the whole promoter region (1701 nt) were investigated by bisulphate sequencing. The fine-mapping of methylation in CAG promoter were proposed. The results suggested that exogenous gene expression was determined by the methylation status from 721–1346 nt and modulated by methylation levels at 101, 108 and 115 nt sites in CAG promoter. To clarify the regulatory mechanism of methylation, examination of four DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) demonstrated that hypermethylation of CAG promoter is mainly maintained by DNMT 1 in EGFP negative cells. Furthermore, investigation of the cell surface antigen CD34, CD45 and CD166 indicated that EGFP positive and negative cells belong to different types. The present study systematically clarified methylation status of CAG promoter in transgenic sheep and regulatory mechanism, which will provide research strategies for gene expression regulation in transgenic animals.
Optimization of existing heat-integrated refinery distillation systems.

Existing refinery distillation systems are highly energy-intensive, and have complex column configurations that interact strongly with the associated heat exchanger network. An optimization approach is developed for existing refinery distillation processes. The optimization framework includes shortcut models developed for the simulation of the existing distillation column, and a retrofit shortcut model for the heat exchanger network. The existing distillation process is optimized by changing key operating parameters, while simultaneously accounting for hydraulic limitations and the design and the performance of the existing heat exchanger network. A case study shows that a reduction in energy consumption and operating costs of over 25% can be achieved.
A 470-μw multi-modulus injection-locked frequency divider with division ratio of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 in 0.13-μm CMOS

This paper presents a multi-modulus injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) based on a ring oscillator using inverter chains for a small area and low power consumption. In the proposed ILFD, division ratio of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 can be performed by selecting a specific loop which consists of a transmission gate and several delay cells. A prototype chip implemented in 0.13 mum CMOS process operates at 5 GHz while consuming 470 muW from 1.2 V supply, where 350 muW is dissipated in me core of the ILFD. The proposed ILFD is the first reported multi-modulus ILFD with a digitally controlled division ratio and the size of the ILFD is 44 times 33 mum2. This number is one of the smallest area that have been reported for a ILFD.
Optimal transportation and monotonic quantities on evolving manifolds

We adapt Topping's L-optimal transportation theory for Ricci flow to a more general situation, in which a complete manifold (M, g ij (t)) evolves by ∂ t g ij = ―2S ij , where S i j is a symmetric 2-tensor field on M. We extend some recent results of Topping, Lott and Brendle, generalize the monotonicity of the W-entropy of List (and hence also of Perelman), and recover the monotonicity of the reduced volume of Muller (and hence also of Perelman).
Challenges in maintaining a heritage language

Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) is a home of the Igorots in the Northern Philippines. It is a place of cultural diversity. Such cultural diversity is the unique heritage languages spoken in the area. Accordingly, most of these heritage languages are facing some challenges. Thus, a qualitative phenomenological study was designed to explore the challenges in maintaining heritage language of 32 Cordilleran college students of Saint Louis University of the School of Teacher Education, Baguio City, Philippines. Purposive sampling was conducted prior to an interview proper. The respondents of this study were chosen according to the following criteria. The respondents must be born and raised in any of the provinces of CAR with both native parents from the Cordillera and whose first language is any of the following heritage languages: Kankanaey, Ibaloi, Itneg (Tinguian), Ifugao, Bontoc, Kalinga, Isneg, Iwak, Kalanguya, Ga'dang, Isnag, Applai, Bago, I-lagod, Balangao, Ikallahan, Karaw, Ilongot, Ibanag, Isinal, Itawis. An interview was carried out as a gathering tool to gather information coming from the respondents. Findings revealed that migration effect, code switching and linguistic discrimination are the challenges in maintaining heritage language of Cordilleran college students.
Decentralized robust load-frequency control of power system based on quantitative feedback theory

This paper aims at investigating the problem of Load Frequency Control (LFC) in interconnected power systems in order to obtain robustness against uncertainties. A design method for a robust controller, based on Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT), has been presented in this paper. For a two-area power system, the simulation results show that the system response with the proposed QFT controller exhibits transient response beyond PI controllers. It is also shown that the transient response of the tie line power can also be improved.
Extended affine root systems III (elliptic Weyl groups)

We give a presentation of an elliptic Weyl group W(R) (=the Weyl group for an elliptic root system*0 R) in terms of the elliptic Dynkin diagram F(R, G) for the elliptic root system. The presentation is a generalization of a Coxeter system: the generators are in one to one correspondence with the vertices of the diagram and the relations consist of two groups : i) elliptic Coxeter relations attached to the diagram, and ii) a flniteness condition on the Coxeter transformation attached to the diagram. The group defined only by the elliptic Coxeter relations is isomorphic to the central extension W(R, G) of W(R) by an infinite cyclic group, called the hyperbolic extension of W(R). *) an elliptic root system=a 2-extended affine root system (see the introduction and the remark at its end).
Towards Efficient Collaborations with Trust-Seeking Adaptive Robots

We are interested in asymmetric human-robot teams, where a human supervisor occasionally takes over control to aid an autonomous robot in a given task. Our research aims to optimize team efficiency by improving the robot's task performance, decreasing the human's workload, and building trust in the team. We envision synergistic collaborations where the robot adapts its behaviors dynamically to optimize efficacy, reduce manual interventions, and actively seek for greater trust. We describe recent works that study two facets of this trust-seeking adaptive methodology: modeling human-robot trust dynamics, and developing interactive behavior adaptation techniques. We also highlight ongoing efforts to combine these works, which will enable future human-robot teams to be maximally trusting and efficient.
A Multidomain and Multilingual Conceptual Data Model for Online Reviews Representation

User-Generated Content (UGC) such as online reviews are freely available in the web. This kind of data has been used to support clients’ and managerial decision making in several industries, e.g. books, tourism or hospitality. However, the challenge is how to represent this information in a structured way in order to leverage on the information provided by the use of Web 2.0 applications. To deal with this challenge, models and metamodels have been used to support a set of concrete applications in several sub-domains into Computer Science and Information Systems body of knowledge (Karagiannis and Hofferer, 2006). This paper focuses on the model-driven engineering and introduces a new multidomain and multilingual conceptual data model to represent UGC. This model is based on a characterization of online reviews and aims to capture all the facets of these reviews. The characterization of the reviews’ sentences extends previous models (such as Martin and White, 2007; Ding et al., 2008; Liu, 2010). Applications build on the model proposed in this paper may allow in-depth analysis of the fine-grained and disperse knowledge existent in the UGC. Furthermore, as this model is domain-independent it can be used to represent multiple
Customer-Specific Taste Parameters and Mixed Logit

With flexible models of customers’ choices among products and services, we estimate the tastes (part-worths) of each sampled customer as well as the distribution of tastes in the population. First, maximum likelihood procedures are used to estimate the distribution of tastes in the population using the pooled data for all sampled customers. Then, the distribution of tastes of each sampled customer is derived conditional on the observed data for that customer and the estimated population distribution of tastes (accounting for uncertainty in the population estimates.) The procedure provides the same type of information and is similar in spirit to hierarchical Bayes (HB.) The procedure is computationally attractive when it is easier to calculate the likelihood function for the population parameters than to draw from the posterior distribution of parameters as needed for HB. We apply the method to data on residential customers’ choice among energy suppliers in conjoint-type experiments. The estimated distribution of tastes provides practical information that is useful for suppliers in designing their offers. The conditioning for individual customers is found to differentiate customers effectively for marketing purposes and to improve considerably the predictions in new situations. Acknowledgements: We have benefited from comments and suggestions by Greg Allenby, Joel Huber, Rich Johnson, Daniel McFadden, and Peter Rossi. Of course, we alone are responsible for our representations and conclusions. The data for this analysis were collected by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI.) We are grateful to Ahmad Faruqui and EPRI for allowing us to use the data and present the results publicly. Andrew Goett and Kathleen Hudson, who had previously used these data, provided us data files in easily useable form, which saved us a considerable amount of time. For interested readers, software to estimate mixed logits is available free from Train’s web site at http://elsa.berkeley. edu/~train .
Intelligent Automatic Fault Detection for Actuator Failures in Aircraft

This paper applies an intelligent technique based on fuzzy-genetic algorithm for automatically detecting failures in aircraft. The fuzzy-genetic algorithm constructs the automatic fault detection system for monitoring aircraft behaviors. Fuzzy-based classifier is employed to estimates the time of occurrence and types of actuator failure. Genetic algorithms are used to generate an optimal fuzzy rule set for the classifier. The optimization capability of genetic algorithms provides an efficient and effective way to generate optimal fuzzy rules. Different types of actuator failure can be detected online by the fuzzy-genetic algorithm based automatic fault detection system. Simulations with different actuator failures of the nonlinear F-16 aircraft model are reported and discussed.
Semi-Supervised Learning Model Based Efficient Image Annotation

Automatic image annotation is a promising way to achieve more effective image management and retrieval. However, system performances of the existing state-of-the-art keyword annotation schemes are often not so satisfactory. Therefore, image annotation refinement is crucial to improve the imprecise annotation results. In this paper, a novel approach is developed to automatically annotate image content by a semi-supervised learning model. With perceptual visual characteristics, the candidate annotations of unlabelled images are first obtained based on a progressive model. Then, a transducitive model, random walk with restart algorithm is used to refine these candidate annotations and the top ones are reserved as the final annotations. Experiments conducted on the typical Corel dataset show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Performance analysis of MRC combiner output in log normal shadowed fading

In this paper, we provide the performance of diversity systems in the presence of log normal shadowing. The performance measures of fading communication systems such as probability of density function (PDF) of received signal to noise ratio (SNR), Amount of fading (AF) and Outage probability (Pout) have been calculated and graphically represented for Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) for different numbers of diversity branches. We have used Fenton-Wilkinson method to estimate the parameters for a single log-normal distribution that approximates the sum of log-normal random variables (RVs). The results that we provide in this paper are an important tool for measuring the performance of communication links in a log-normal shadowing.
Restoration of underwater vision using a two-phase regularization mechanism

Clear underwater vision is crucial to many research and realistic applications in ocean engineering, ocean biology, and ocean science. However, owing to particular propagation properties of light beneath water, underwater images two-phase regularization mechanismusually have poor quality including low contrast, blurring, darkness, and color diminishing. In this article, a new underwater image restoration algorithm is proposed that consists of two major phases: haze removal and color correction. In the first phase, underwater images are observed similar to haze images because they have the same problems of low contrast and color shifting. This motivated us to use the dark channel prior haze removal technique to dehaze underwater images. Subsequently, in the second phase, we equalize the color mean in each RGB (red, green, blue) channel to balance the color. We use the CLAHE method to further increase the local contrast of the image. Then, the color space is transformed from RGB to HSV (hue, saturation, value) to adjust the S channel to make the image color more natural. Finally, we adjust V channel according to the brightness value of RGB to enhance the global contrast. Preliminary results indicated that the proposed method effectively improved visual interpretation of underwater images.
A theoretical study of watermarking security

This article proposes a theory of watermarking security based on a cryptanalysis point of view. The main idea is that information about the secret key leaks from the observations, for instance watermarked pieces of content, available to the opponent. Tools from information theory (Shannon's mutual information and Fisher's information matrix) can measure this leakage of information. The security level is then defined as the number of observations the attacker needs to successfully estimate the secret key. This theory is applied to two common watermarking methods: the substitutive scheme and the spread spectrum based techniques. Their security levels are calculated against three kinds of attack
Correlation between surface chemistry and settlement behaviour in barnacle cyprids (Balanus improvisus)

In laboratory-based biofouling assays, the influence of physico-chemical surface characteristics on barnacle settlement has been tested most frequently using the model organism Balanus amphitrite (= Amphibalanus amphitrite). Very few studies have addressed the settlement preferences of other barnacle species, such as Balanus improvisus (= Amphibalanus improvisus). This study aimed to unravel the effects of surface physico-chemical cues, in particular surface-free energy (SFE) and surface charge, on the settlement of cyprids of B. improvisus. The use of well-defined surfaces under controlled conditions further facilitates comparison of the results with recent similar data for B. amphitrite. Zero-day-old cyprids of B. improvisus were exposed to a series of model surfaces, namely self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols with varying end-groups, homogenously applied to gold-coated polystyrene (PS) Petri dishes. As with B. amphitrite, settlement of cyprids of B. improvisus was influenced by both SFE and charge, with higher settlement on low-energy (hydrophobic) surfaces and negatively charged SAMs. Positively charged SAMs resulted in low settlement, with intermediate settlement on neutral SAMs of similar SFE. In conclusion, it is demonstrated that despite previous suggestions to the contrary, these two species of barnacle show similar preferences in response to SFE; they also respond similarly to charge. These findings have positive implications for the development of novel antifouling (AF) coatings and support the importance of consistency in substratum choice for assays designed to compare surface preferences of fouling organisms.