Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Model of Bilateral Hemispheric Ischemia in the Unanesthetized Rat

A new model of transient, bilateral hemispheric ischemia in the unanesthetized rat is described. During ether anesthesia the rat's vertebral arteries were electrocauterized through the alar foramina of the first cervical vertebra and reversible clasps placed loosely around the common carotid arteries. Twenty-four hr later, the awake rats were restrained and the carotid clasps tightened to produce 4-vessel occlusion. The carotid clasps were removed after 10,20 or 30 min of 4-vessel occlusion and the animals killed by perfusion fixation 72 hr later. Rats which convulsed during the ischemic or post-ischemic period were excluded from further study. All rats subjected to 20 or 30 min of 4-vessel occlusion demonstrated ischemic neuronal damage. The HI and paramedian hippocampus, striatum and layers 3, 5 and 6 of the posterior neocortex were the regions most frequently damaged. The advantages of this model are the ease of preparation of large numbers of animals, a high rate of predictable ischemic neuronal damage, a low incidence of seizures and the absence of anesthesia.
Do Parentese Prosody and Fathers' Involvement in Interacting Facilitate Social Interaction in Infants Who Later Develop Autism?

Background Whether development of autism impacts the interactive process between an infant and his/her parents remains an unexplored issue. Methodology and Principal Findings Using computational analysis taking into account synchronic behaviors and emotional prosody (parentese), we assessed the course of infants' responses to parents' type of speech in home movies from typically developing (TD) infants and infants who will subsequently develop autism aged less than 18 months. Our findings indicate: that parentese was significantly associated with infant responses to parental vocalizations involving orientation towards other people and with infant receptive behaviours; that parents of infants developing autism displayed more intense solicitations that were rich in parentese; that fathers of infants developing autism spoke to their infants more than fathers of TD infants; and that fathers' vocalizations were significantly associated with intersubjective responses and active behaviours in infants who subsequently developed autism. Conclusion The parents of infants who will later develop autism change their interactive pattern of behaviour by both increasing parentese and father's involvement in interacting with infants; both are significantly associated with infant's social responses. We stress the possible therapeutic implications of these findings and its implication for Dean Falk's theory regarding pre-linguistic evolution in early hominins.
The Selection of Small Forest Hollows for Pollen Analysis in Boreal and Temperate Forest Regions

Small forest hollows represent a specialised site type for pollen analysis, since they mainly record the vegetation within an approximate radius of 20–100 m from the hollow. We discuss how to choose the most appropriate small forest hollow for pollen analysis. Hollow size, site topography, location, sediment type, drainage aspects and disturbance characteristics of the specific hollows should be considered during site selection. Guidelines are developed on how to take the core and outline the special characteristics of small hollow palynology that influence data interpretation.
Tracking Persons in Monocular Image Sequences

Quantitative geometric descriptions of the movements of persons are obtained by fitting the projection of a three-dimensional person model to consecutive frames of an image sequence. The kinematic of the person model is given by a homogeneous transformation tree and its body parts are modeled by right-elliptical cones. The values of a varying number of degrees of freedom (DOFs; body joints, position, and orientation of the person relative to the camera) can be determined according to the application and the kind of image sequence. The determination of the DOFs is understood as an estimation problem which is solved by an iterated extended Kalman filter (IEKF). For this purpose, the person model is augmented by a simple motion model of constant velocity for all DOFs which is used in the prediction step of the IEKF. In the update step, both region and edge information are used. Various experiments demonstrate the efficiency of our approach.
Intracellular accumulation of linezolid in Escherichia coli, Citrobacter freundii and Enterobacter aerogenes: role of enhanced efflux pump activity and inactivation.

OBJECTIVES The oxazolidinone class of antibiotics such as linezolid have a narrow spectrum of activity that targets Gram-positive bacteria. We hypothesized that the poor activity of linezolid in Gram-negative bacteria is in part caused by relatively low intracellular concentration due to efflux. METHODS Using whole cell accumulation assays we estimated the intracellular concentration of linezolid in Escherichia coli and other Enterobacteriaceae. We included test strains with enhanced RND-type multidrug efflux pump activity and with genetic inactivation of the pump or functional inhibition by carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone as inhibitor of the proton motive force or 1-(1-naphthylmethyl)-piperazine (NMP), an efflux pump inhibitor. RESULTS Consistent with susceptibility studies, enhanced pump activity caused decreased accumulation, and pump inactivation and inhibition caused increased accumulation, of linezolid. The accumulation levels in test strains of E. coli, Citrobacter freundii and Enterobacter aerogenes with functional pumps were lower than in control strains of Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecium, but were higher after pump inactivation and correlated with ethidium bromide and pyronin Y accumulation. CONCLUSIONS The intracellular concentration of linezolid is comparatively low owing to efficient efflux of the drug and could be increased substantially by inhibition of RND-type efflux pumps.
Transductive link spam detection

Web spam can significantly deteriorate the quality of search engines. Early web spamming techniques mainly manipulate page content. Since linkage information is widely used in web search, link-based spamming has also developed. So far, many techniques have been proposed to detect link spam. Those approaches are basically built on link-based web ranking methods. In contrast, we cast the link spam detection problem into a machine learning problem of classification on directed graphs. We develop discrete analysis on directed graphs, and construct a discrete analogue of classical regularization theory via discrete analysis. A classification algorithm for directed graphs is then derived from the discrete regularization. We have applied the approach to real-world link spam detection problems, and encouraging results have been obtained.
KIDS Lab at ImageCLEF 2012 Personal Photo Retrieval

The personal photo retrieval task at ImageCLEF 2012 is a pilot task for testing QBE-based retrieval scenarios in the scope of personal informa- tion retrieval. This pilot task is organized as two subtasks: the visual concepts retrieval and the events retrieval. In this paper, we develop a framework of combining different visual features, EXIF data and similarity measures based on two clustering methods to retrieve the relevant images having similar visual concepts. We first analyze and select the effective visual features including color, shape, texture, and descriptor to be the basic elements of recognition. A flexible similarity measure is then given to achieve high precise image retrieval automatically. The experimental results show that the proposed framework can provide good effectiveness in distinct measures of evaluation.
Cognitive dissonance induction in everyday life: An fMRI study

This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study explored the neural substrates of cognitive dissonance during dissonance “induction. ” A novel task was developed based on the results of a separate item selection study (n = 125). Items were designed to generate dissonance by prompting participants to reflect on everyday personal experiences that were inconsistent with values they had expressed support for. One experimental condition (dissonance) and three control conditions (justification, consonance, and non-self-related inconsistency) were used for comparison. Items of all four types were presented to each participant (n = 14) in a randomized design. The fMRI analysis used a whole-brain approach focusing on the moments dissonance was induced. Results showed that in comparison with the control conditions the dissonance experience led to higher levels of activation in several brain regions. Specifically dissonance was associated with increased neural activation in key brain regions including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, and precuneus. This supports current perspectives that emphasize the role of anterior cingulate and insula in dissonance processing. Less extensive activation in the prefrontal cortex than in some previous studies is consistent with this study’s emphasis on dissonance induction, rather than reduction. This article also contains a short review and comparison with other fMRI studies of cognitive dissonance.
Synthesis of switching controllers using approximately bisimilar multiscale abstractions

When available, discrete abstractions provide an appealing approach to controller synthesis. Recently, an approach for computing discrete abstractions of incrementally stable switched systems has been proposed, using the notion of approximate bisimulation. This approach is based on sampling of time and space where the sampling parameters must satisfy some relation in order to achieve a certain precision. Particularly, the smaller the sampling period, the finer the lattice approximating the state-space and the larger the number of states in the abstraction. This renders the use of these abstractions for synthesis of fast switching controllers computationally prohibitive. In this paper, we present a novel class of multiscale discrete abstractions for switched systems that allows us to deal with fast switching while keeping the number of states in the abstraction at a reasonable level. The transitions of our abstractions have various durations: for transitions of longer duration, it is sufficient to consider abstract states on a coarse lattice; for transitions of shorter duration, it becomes necessary to use finer lattices. These finer lattices are effectively used only on a restricted area of the state-space where the fast switching occurs. We show how to use these abstractions for multiscale synthesis of self-triggered switching controllers for reachability specifications under time optimization. We illustrate the merits of our approach by applying it to the boost DC-DC converter.
A New Worldwide Index ( 1961-2011 )

In this paper, we construct a new index that measures the strength of intellectual property (IP) protection for plant varieties for 69 countries over the period 1961-2011. We examine the statistical properties of the index and we compare it with other measures of IP protection. We conclude that the indicator provides a reasonable proxy for assessing the relative strength of IP protection in plants across countries. Finally, we study the main determinants of the evolution of the index over time and we find that variables such as GDP per capita, types of political and institutional environment, levels of urbanization and schooling affect the level of IP protection for plant varieties. The TRIPS Agreement appears as an exogenous factor driving the process towards stronger levels of IP protection for all countries.
Analysis of underwater radiance observations: Apparent optical properties and analytic functions describing the angular radiance distribution

A primary data set consisting of 70 series of angular radiance distributions observed in clear blue western Mediterranean water and a secondary set of 12 series from the more green and turbid Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho, have been analyzed. The results demonstrate that the main variation of the shape of the downward radiance distribution occurs within the Snell cone. Outside the cone the variation of the shape decreases with increasing zenith angle. The most important shape changes of the upward radiance appear within the zenith angle range 90°–130°. The variation in shape reaches its minimum around nadir, where an almost constant upward radiance distribution implies that a flat sea surface acts like a Lambert emitter within ±8% in the zenith angle interval 140°–180° in air. The ratio Q of upward irradiance and nadir radiance, as well as the average cosines μd and μu for downward and upward radiance, respectively, have rather small standard deviations, ≤10%, within the local water type. In contrast, the irradiance reflectance R has been observed to change up to 400% with depth in the western Mediterranean, while the maximum observed change of Q with depth is only 40%. The dependence of Q on the solar elevation for blue light at 5 m depth in the Mediterranean coincides with observations from the central Atlantic as well as with model computations. The corresponding dependence of μd shows that diffuse light may have a significant influence on its value. Two simple functions describing the observed angular radiance distributions are proposed, and both functions can be determined by two field observations as input parameters. The e function approximates the azimuthal means of downward radiance with an average error ≤7% and of upward radiance with an error of ∼1%. The α function describes the zenith angle dependence of the azimuthal means of upward radiance with an average error ≤7% in clear ocean water, increasing to ≤20% in turbid lake water. The a function suggests that the range of variation for μu falls between 0 and 1/2, and for Q it is between π and 2π. The limits of both ranges are confirmed by observations. By combining the e and α functions, a complete angular description of the upward radiance field is achieved.
Trivializing and orbifolding the conifold's base

The conifold is a cone over the space T1,1, which is known to be topologically S2 × S3. The coordinates used in the literature describe a sphere-bundle which can be proven to be topologically trivializable. We provide an explicit trivialization of this bundle, with simultaneous global coordinates for both spheres. Using this trivialization we are able to describe the topology of the base of several infinite families of chiral and non-chiral orbifolds of the conifold. We demonstrate that in each case the 2nd Betti number of the base matches the number of independent ranks in the dual quiver gauge theory.
Activation-induced death by apoptosis in CD4+ T cells from human immunodeficiency virus-infected asymptomatic individuals

In immature thymocytes, T cell receptor for antigen (TCR) mobilization leads to an active T cell suicide process, apoptosis, which is involved in the selection of the T cell repertoire. We have proposed that inappropriate induction of such a cell death program in the mature CD4+ T cell population could account for both early qualitative and late quantitative CD4+ T lymphocyte defects of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals (Ameisen, J.C., and A. Capron. 1991. Immunol. Today. 4:102). Here, we report that the selective failure of CD4+ T cells from 59 clinically asymptomatic HIV-infected individuals to proliferate in vitro to TCR mobilization by major histocompatibility complex class II-dependent superantigens and to pokeweed mitogen (PWM) is due to an active CD4+ T cell death process, with the biochemical and ultrastructural features of apoptosis. Activation-induced cell death occurred only in the CD4+ T cell population from HIV-infected asymptomatic individuals and was not observed in T cells from any of 58 HIV-seronegative controls, including nine patients with other acute or chronic infectious diseases. Activation-induced CD4+ T cell death was prevented by cycloheximide, cyclosporin A, and a CD28 monoclonal antibody (mAb). The CD28 mAb not only prevented apoptosis but also restored T cell proliferation to stimuli, including PWM, superantigens, and the tetanus and influenza recall antigens. These findings may have implications for the understanding of the pathogenesis of acquired immune deficiency syndrome and for the design of specific therapeutic strategies.
RDF-based model for context-aware reasoning in rich service environment

We present a framework for utilizing context-awareness for classifying services. We also present a novel RDF-based model for context-aware reasoning in pervasive computing environment. Our model enables a flexible way of describing context-based rules that can be used for constructing prioritized service lists and also for giving recommendations about certain available services. In addition, the model provides a way for describing context-triggered actions, e.g. notifications. We have implemented several demonstrations of the use of our model.
Coding or Not: Optimal Mobile Data Offloading in Opportunistic Vehicular Networks

To cope with explosive vehicular traffic and ever-increasing application demands in the vehicular cellular network, opportunistic vehicular networks are used to disseminate mobile data by high-capacity device-to-device communication, which offloads significant traffic from the cellular network. In the current opportunistic vehicular data transmission, coding-based schemes are proposed to address the challenge of opportunistic contact. However, whether coding techniques can be beneficial in the context of vehicular mobile data offloading is still an open question. In this paper, we establish a mathematical framework to study the problem of coding-based mobile data offloading under realistic network assumptions, where 1) mobile data items are heterogeneous in terms of size; 2) mobile users have different interests to different data; and 3) the storage of offloading participants is limited. We formulate the problem as a users' interest satisfaction maximization problem with multiple linear constraints of limited storage. Then, we propose an efficient scheme to solve the problem, by providing a solution that decides when the coding should be used and how to allocate the network resources in terms of contact rate and offloading helpers' storage. Finally, we show the effectiveness of our algorithm through extensive simulations using two real vehicular traces.
Simultaneous record detection and attribute labeling in web data extraction

Recent work has shown the feasibility and promise of template-independent Web data extraction. However, existing approaches use decoupled strategies - attempting to do data record detection and attribute labeling in two separate phases. In this paper, we show that separately extracting data records and attributes is highly ineffective and propose a probabilistic model to perform these two tasks simultaneously. In our approach, record detection can benefit from the availability of semantics required in attribute labeling and, at the same time, the accuracy of attribute labeling can be improved when data records are labeled in a collective manner. The proposed model is called Hierarchical Conditional Random Fields. It can efficiently integrate all useful features by learning their importance, and it can also incorporate hierarchical interactions which are very important for Web data extraction. We empirically compare the proposed model with existing decoupled approaches for product information extraction, and the results show significant improvements in both record detection and attribute labeling.
A numerical algorithm as an observer for spacecraft attitude determination

This paper studies a nonlinear discrete-time state observer design problem for rigid spacecraft, particularly for spacecraft attitude estimation. The observer is a partial state observer, and it is constructed based on a numerical algorithm that preserves the orthogonality of a matrix function. Orthogonality preservation is important as the attitude matrix to be estimated is orthogonal, whereas in general orthogonality is destroyed under sampling. We prove that the proposed construction yields a semiglobal practical asymptotic observer. We also show that the separation principle holds for our problem, and hence stabilization using output feedback is possible. Two examples are provided to illustrate the usefulness of our results in a sampled-data implementation
Biphasic Finite Element Modeling Reconciles Mechanical Properties of Tissue-Engineered Cartilage Constructs Across Testing Platforms.

Cartilage tissue engineering is emerging as a promising treatment for osteoarthritis, and the field has progressed toward utilizing large animal models for proof of concept and preclinical studies. Mechanical testing of the regenerative tissue is an essential outcome for functional evaluation. However, testing modalities and constitutive frameworks used to evaluate in vitro grown samples differ substantially from those used to evaluate in vivo derived samples. To address this, we developed finite element (FE) models (using FEBio) of unconfined compression and indentation testing, modalities commonly used for such samples. We determined the model sensitivity to tissue radius and subchondral bone modulus, as well as its ability to estimate material parameters using the built-in parameter optimization tool in FEBio. We then sequentially tested agarose gels of 4%, 6%, 8%, and 10% weight/weight using a custom indentation platform, followed by unconfined compression. Similarly, we evaluated the ability of the model to generate material parameters for living constructs by evaluating engineered cartilage. Juvenile bovine mesenchymal stem cells were seeded (2 × 107 cells/mL) in 1% weight/volume hyaluronic acid hydrogels and cultured in a chondrogenic medium for 3, 6, and 9 weeks. Samples were planed and tested sequentially in indentation and unconfined compression. The model successfully completed parameter optimization routines for each testing modality for both acellular and cell-based constructs. Traditional outcome measures and the FE-derived outcomes showed significant changes in material properties during the maturation of engineered cartilage tissue, capturing dynamic changes in functional tissue mechanics. These outcomes were significantly correlated with one another, establishing this FE modeling approach as a singular method for the evaluation of functional engineered and native tissue regeneration, both in vitro and in vivo.
Online Sparse System Identification and Signal Reconstruction Using Projections Onto Weighted  $\ell_{1}$ Balls

This paper presents a novel projection-based adaptive algorithm for sparse signal and system identification. The sequentially observed data are used to generate an equivalent sequence of closed convex sets, namely hyperslabs. Each hyperslab is the geometric equivalent of a cost criterion, that quantifies “data mismatch. ” Sparsity is imposed by the introduction of appropriately designed weighted ℓ1 balls and the related projection operator is also derived. The algorithm develops around projections onto the sequence of the generated hyperslabs as well as the weighted ℓ1 balls. The resulting scheme exhibits linear dependence, with respect to the unknown system's order, on the number of multiplications/additions and an O(Llog2L) dependence on sorting operations, where L is the length of the system/signal to be estimated. Numerical results are also given to validate the performance of the proposed method against the Least-Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) algorithm and two very recently developed adaptive sparse schemes that fuse arguments from the LMS/RLS adaptation mechanisms with those imposed by the lasso rational.