Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connectomic and Surface-Based Morphometric Correlates of Acute Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Reduced integrity of white matter (WM) pathways and subtle anomalies in gray matter (GM) morphology have been hypothesized as mechanisms in mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). However, findings on structural brain changes in early stages after mTBI are inconsistent and findings related to early symptoms severity are rare. Fifty-one patients were assessed with multimodal neuroimaging and clinical methods exclusively within 7 days following mTBI and compared to 53 controls. Whole-brain connectivity based on diffusion tensor imaging was subjected to network-based statistics, whereas cortical surface area, thickness, and volume based on T1-weighted MRI scans were investigated using surface-based morphometric analysis. Reduced connectivity strength within a subnetwork of 59 edges located predominantly in bilateral frontal lobes was significantly associated with higher levels of self-reported symptoms. In addition, cortical surface area decreases were associated with stronger complaints in five clusters located in bilateral frontal and postcentral cortices, and in the right inferior temporal region. Alterations in WM and GM were localized in similar brain regions and moderately-to-strongly related to each other. Furthermore, the reduction of cortical surface area in the frontal regions was correlated with poorer attentive-executive performance in the mTBI group. Finally, group differences were detected in both the WM and GM, especially when focusing on a subgroup of patients with greater complaints, indicating the importance of classifying mTBI patients according to severity of symptoms. This study provides evidence that mTBI affects not only the integrity of WM networks by means of axonal damage but also the morphology of the cortex during the initial post-injury period. These anomalies might be greater in the acute period than previously believed and the involvement of frontal brain regions was consistently pronounced in both findings. The dysconnected subnetwork suggests that mTBI can be conceptualized as a dysconnection syndrome. It remains unclear whether reduced WM integrity is the trigger for changes in cortical surface area or whether tissue deformations are the direct result of mechanical forces acting on the brain. The findings suggest that rapid identification of high-risk patients with the use of clinical scales should be assessed acutely as part of the mTBI protocol.
Online Algorithms for Location-Aware Task Offloading in Two-Tiered Mobile Cloud Environments

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is emerging as a main ubiquitous computing platform which enables to leverage the resource limitations of mobile devices and wireless networks by offloading data-intensive computation tasks from resource-poor mobile devices to resource-rich clouds. In this paper, we consider an online location-aware offloading problem in a two-tiered mobile cloud computing environment consisting of a local cloudlet and remote clouds, with an objective to fair share the use of the cloudlet by consuming the same proportional of their mobile device energy, while keeping their individual SLA, for which we devise an efficient online algorithm. We also conduct experiments by simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is promising and outperforms other heuristics.
A 42 mW 2 GS/s 4-bit flash ADC in 0.18-μm CMOS

A low power 4-bit 2 GS/s flash ADC is presented. To enhance the speed, the analog part of the ADC is fully pipelined; reset switches are inserted into preamplifiers and comparators for fast overdrive recovery. Post-simulation results show that the peak DNL and INL are 0.04 LSB and 0.06 LSB, respectively. With 970.2 MHz input, the SFDR and ENOB achieve 33.2 dB and 3.61 bits at 2 GS/s. the ADC occupies 0.32 mm2 active area in 0.18-μm CMOS process and consumes 42 mW with a 1.8 V power supply.
Children Gender Recognition Under Unconstrained Conditions Based on Contextual Information

One of the biggest challenges faced by law enforcement entities in the present digital era, is fighting against online Child Sexual Abuse (CSA), due in particular to the massive amount of data that they receive for analysis. Pattern recognition system can provide an aid, e.g., to ease the identification of both the perpetrator and the victim of the crime. In particular, ancillary cues related the identity of the involved persons, like age, race or gender, can represent a significant aid for identification. These cues can be estimated using statistical classifiers on face features. In this work, we explore one of these ancillary cues, namely the gender. The research community has provided methods for gender recognition able to achieve good performance with adults. However, in the case of CSA, victims are minors (typically, very young children). Children gender recognition may be difficult even for humans, due to the lack of many gender-specific face traits usually present in adult faces. Totally uncontrolled poses and illumination conditions, that might be found in CSA material, represent an additional issue. We propose to tackle this problem by the use of contextual information to complement face features used by traditional algorithms. In particular, we exploit the image context of the face, that is, the portion of the image surrounding the face. This is motivated by the usage that humans themselves make of face external information, such as the hair or earrings, to take decisions on this task. The proposed approach is tested on a novel data base of faces of children, collected from royalty-free stock-photography web sites, which show totally unconstrained conditions. The reported results are promising and set the way for a deeper study of the use of the face context for estimating ancillary identification cues.
Monolithic paper-based & inkjet-printed technology for conformal stepped-FMCW GPR applications: First results

The first design for a monolithic FMCW Ground Penetrating Radar system integrated onto an inkjet-printed patterned flexible substrate is presented. Using advanced materials printing and surface mounting techniques, each signal stage, including the antennas, can be built onto one continuous portable conformal substrate. This would make radar systems easy to roll up to miniaturized highly-portable sizes and volumes, that are really critical especially in “rugged” and hazardous remote environments. This paper addresses several design challenges involved in the development of monolithic paper-based radar systems including unique design, fabrication, and testing procedures that differ from the conventional radar systems. A paper-based mixer circuit is built and the performance is to be compared to that of a state of the art mixer board to verify the advantages of the newly proposed inkjet-printer approach.
Prevalence of HIV and Syphilis Infection among High School and College Student MSM in China: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives The aim of this study is to systematically review the published studies and summarize the estimates of HIV and syphilis prevalences among high school and college student MSM in China in order to provide information for conducting targeted interventions. Methods Pubmed, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang and Google Scholar databases were searched in January 2013 to identify relevant articles. Data of eligible citations were extracted by two reviewers. All analyses were performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis V2.0 and SPSS V17.0. Results Twenty-four eligible studies (6 in English and 18 in Chinese), published between 2006 and 2012, with a total of 3083 student MSM participants, were included. The meta-analyses showed that the prevalences of HIV and syphilis among studied student MSM were 4.4% (95% CI: 3.0%, 6.4%) and 5.7% (95% CI: 4.8%, 6.7%), respectively. HIV prevalence increased over the study period (3.0% in 2003–2006; 4.5% in 2007–2008, and 6.8% in 2009–2010, trend test chi-square = 11.3, p = 0.001). Conclusions Student MSM have become high-risk populations for HIV infection in China. The high prevalence of syphilis and the increasing HIV prevalence trend indicate the potential for a more severe HIV epidemic. Comprehensive intervention strategies that address condom promotion, syphilis detection and treatment, and health education need to be tailored to this vulnerable population to prevent HIV and syphilis infections.
Role of Nucleoporin Induction in Releasing an mRNA Nuclear Export Block

Signal-mediated nuclear import and export proceed through the nuclear pore complex (NPC). Some NPC components, such as the nucleoporins (Nups) Nup98 and Nup96, are also associated with the nuclear interior. Nup98 is a target of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) matrix (M) protein–mediated inhibition of messenger RNA (mRNA) nuclear export. Here, Nup98 and Nup96 were found to be up-regulated by interferon (IFN). M protein–mediated inhibition of mRNA nuclear export was reversed when cells were treated with IFN-γ or transfected with a complementary DNA (cDNA) encoding Nup98 and Nup96. Thus, increased Nup98 and Nup96 expression constitutes an IFN-mediated mechanism that reverses M protein–mediated inhibition of gene expression.
Role of enhanced half‐life factor VIII and IX in the treatment of haemophilia

Treatment of congenital haemophilia with factor VIII and IX concentrates often requires frequent infusions. This has obvious implications in establishing effective administration strategies and, in turn, adherence. To overcome these issues, three main technologies – polyethylene‐glycol, Fc‐neonatal IgG1 and albumin fusion products – have emerged into various stages of clinical development. Published data indicates an approximately 1·5‐ and fivefold increase in half‐life of factor VIII and IX, respectively, compared to standard recombinant concentrates. Studies into efficacy and safety are starting to be published. Monitoring and optimal use of these new concentrates remains unknown. Weekly factor IX prophylaxis appears to be a feasible prophylactic regimen in haemophilia B patients. Weekly longer‐acting FVIII is unlikely to provide adequate prophylaxis in most patients with haemophilia A but may reduce the frequency of infusions. Ongoing clinical trials and real life experience will help shape how these products can be used in practice and their cost effectiveness. The drive for convenience however should not overshadow the ultimate goal of prophylaxis, namely, preventing bleeding and arthropathy.
Long-Term Stability of Cardiovascular and Catecholamine Responses to Stress Tests: An 18-Year Follow-Up Study

Cardiovascular (CV) hyperreactivity to stress must be reasonably stable if it is considered to be important in the development of hypertension and CV disease. The aim of the present study was to assess long-term stability of blood pressure, heart rate, epinephrine, and norepinephrine responses to a cold pressor test and a mental arithmetic stress test. Eighty-one subjects selected from the first (n=30), 50th (n=30), and 95th to 99th (n=39) percentiles of the mean blood pressure distribution at a military draft procedure were tested on 2 occasions 18 years apart. Stress responses were measured during a cold pressor test (hand immersed in ice water for 1 minute) and during a mental stress test (subtraction for 5 minutes). Intra-arterial blood pressure measurements and arterial catecholamine samples were taken at the initial examination. At follow-up, noninvasive Finapres beat-to-beat blood pressure measurements and venous plasma catecholamine samples were used. The 18-year correlations of the CV and epinephrine absolute responses during mental stress ranged from 0.6 to 0.8. The entry/follow-up correlation of systolic blood pressure during the mental stress test (95% CI: 0.69 to 0.86) was significantly higher than during the cold pressor test (95% CI: 0.30 to 0.65), and responses to mental stress overall appeared to be more stable than responses to the cold pressor test. Our study suggests that CV and sympathoadrenal reactivity, specifically to mental stress, are relatively stable individual characteristics. These results support one of the necessary preconditions to consider hyperreactivity involved in the development of hypertension and CV disease.
Designing universally accessible games

Today, computer games are one of the major sources of entertainment. Computer games are usually far more demanding than typical interactive applications in terms of motor and sensory skills needed for interaction control, due to special-purpose input devices, complicated interaction techniques, and the primary emphasis on visual control and attention. This renders computer games inaccessible to a large percentage of people with disabilities. This article introduces the concept of universally accessible games, that is, games proactively designed to optimally fit and adapt to individual gamer characteristics and to be concurrently played among people with diverse abilities, without requiring particular adjustments or modifications. The concept is elaborated and tested through four case studies: a web-based chess game (UA-Chess), an action game (Access Invaders), a universally inaccessible game (Game Over! ) used as an interactive educational tool, and an improved version of Access Invaders (Terrestrial Invaders). For all cases, key design and evaluation findings are discussed, reporting consolidated know-how and experience. Finally, the research challenge of creating multiplayer universally accessible games is further elaborated, proposing the novel concept of Parallel Game Universes as a potential solution.
Variational methods for conditional multimodal deep learning

In this paper, we address the problem of conditional modality learning, whereby one is interested in generating one modality given the other. While it is straightforward to learn a joint distribution over multiple modalities using a deep multi-modal architecture, we observe that such models are not very effective at conditional generation. Hence, we address the problem by learning conditional distributions between the modalities. We use variational methods for maximizing the corresponding conditional log-likelihood. The resultant deep model, which we refer to as conditional multimodal autoencoder (CMMA), forces the latent representation obtained from a single modality alone to be ‘close’ to the joint representation obtained from multiple modalities. We use the proposed model to generate faces from attributes. We show that the faces generated from attributes using the proposed model are qualitatively and quantitatively more representative of the attributes from which they were generated, than those obtained by other deep generative models. We also propose a secondary task, whereby the existing faces are modified by modifying the corresponding attributes. We observe that the modifications in face introduced by the proposed model are representative of the corresponding modifications in attributes.
An algorithm for detecting unreliable code sequence segments and its applications

Let the Viterbi algorithm be applied for maximum-likelihood decoding of a terminated convolutional code using a trellis. We propose an additional procedure that permits a receiver to locate unreliable segments within an estimated code sequence. This reliability output may be used, for example, to request retransmissions, in systems with error concealment, or in channel-coding systems with unequal error protection.
Automatic initial/final generation for dialectal Chinese speech recognition

Phonetic differences always exist between any Chinese dialect and standard Chinese (Putonghua). In this paper, a method, named automatic dialect-specific Initial/Final (IF) generation, is proposed to deal with the issue of phonemic difference which can automatically produce the dialect-specific units based on model distance measure. A dialect-specific decision tree regrowing method is also proposed to cope with the tri-IF expansion due to the introduction of dialect-specific IFs (DIFs). In combination with a certain adaptation technique, the proposed methods can achieve a syllable error rate (SER) reduction of 18.5% for Shanghai-accented Chinese compared with the Putonghua-based baseline while the use of the DIF set only can lead to an SER reduction of 5.5%. Index Terms: speech recognition, dialectal Chinese speech recognition, phone set generation, acoustic distance measure
Numerical investigation of mechanical properties of nanowires : a review

Nanowires (NWs) have attracted intensive researches owing to the broad applications that arise from their remarkable properties. Over the last decade, immense numerical studies have been conducted for the numerical investigation of mechanical properties of NWs. Among these numerical simulations, the molecular dynamics (MD) plays a key role. Herein we present a brief review on the current state of the MD investigation of nanowires. Emphasis will be placed on the FCC metal NWs, especially the Cu NWs. MD investigations of perfect NWs’ mechanical properties under different deformation conditions including tension, compression, torsion and bending are firstly revisited. Following in succession, the studies for defected NWs including the defects of twin boundaries (TBs) and pre-existing defects are discussed. The different deformation mechanism incurred by the presentation of defects is explored and discussed. This review reveals that the numerical simulation is an important tool to investigate the properties of NWs. However, the substantial gaps between the experimental measurements and MD results suggest the urgent need of multi-scale simulation technique.
LuxCDABE—Transformed Constitutively Bioluminescent Escherichia coli for Toxicity Screening: Comparison with Naturally Luminous Vibrio fischeri

We show that in vitro toxicity assay based on inhibition of the bioluminescence of recombinant Escherichia coli encoding thermostable luciferase from Photorhabdus luminescens is a versatile alternative to Vibrio fischeri Microtox™ test. Performance of two luxCDABE-transformed E. coli MC1061 constructs (pDNlux) and (pSLlux) otherwise identical, but having 100-fold different background luminescence was compared with the performance of V. fischeri. The microplate luminometer and a kinetic Flash-Assay test format was used that differently from Microtox test is also applicable for high throughput analysis. Toxic effects (30-s till 30-min EC50) of four heavy metals (Zn, Cd, Hg, Cu) and three organic chemicals (aniline, 3,5-dichloroaniline and 3,5-dichlorophenol) were studied. Both E. coli strains had comparable sensitivity and the respective 30-min EC50 values highly correlated (log-log R2 = 0.99; p < 0.01) showing that the sensitivity of the recombinant bacteria towards chemicals analyzed did not depend on the bioluminescence level of the recombinant cells. The most toxic chemical for all used bacterial strains (E. coli, V. fischeri) was mercury whereas the lowest EC50 values for Hg (0.04–0.05 mg/L) and highest EC50 values for aniline (1,300–1,700 mg/L) were observed for E. coli strains. Despite of that, toxicity results obtained with both E. coli strains (pSLlux and pDNlux) significantly correlated with V. fischeri results (log-log R2 = 0.70/0.75; p < 0.05/0.01). The use of amino acids (0.25%) and glucose (0.05%)-supplemented M9 medium instead of leucine-supplemented saline significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the apparent toxicity of heavy metals to both E. coli strains up to three orders of magnitude, but had little or no complexing effect on organic compounds. Thus, P. luminescens luxCDABE-transformed E. coli strains can be successfully used for the acute toxicity screening of various types of organic chemicals and heavy metals and can replace V. fischeri in certain cases where the thermostability of luciferase >30 °C is crucial. The kinetic Flash Assay test format of the bioluminescence inhibition assay facilitates high throughput analysis. The assay medium, especially in case of testing heavy metals should be a compromise: optimal for the viability/luminescence of the recombinant test strain and of minimum complexing potential.
Electronic band structure and bonding in Nb3O3.

The local-density approximation is used to investigate the electronic and structural properties of Nb 3 O 3 and the reasons for its unusual defect rocksalt structure with 25% ordered vacancies. A tight-binding Hamiltonian is fitted to the energy bands which are compared to those of the hypothetical rocksalt phase. This analysis indicates that the ions in the ordered vacancy structure are nearly neutral, the Madelung energy is small, and electronic band effects contribute decisively to its stability. The tight-binding results are consistent with the interpretation that this structure favors a special hybridization between Nb d orbitals and their direct interaction gives rise to strong and nearly coulent metal-metal bonds
Structural Coupling of Smad and Runx2 for Execution of the BMP2 Osteogenic Signal*

Two regulatory pathways, bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)/transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) and the transcription factor RUNX2, are required for bone formation in vivo. Here we show the interdependent requirement of these pathways to induce an osteogenic program. A panel of Runx2 deletion and point mutants was used to examine RUNX2-SMAD protein-protein interaction and the biological consequences on BMP2-induced osteogenic signaling determined in Runx2 null cells. These cells do not respond to BMP2 signal in the absence of Runx2. We established that a triple mutation in the C-terminal domain of RUNX2, HTY (426-428), disrupts the RUNX2-SMAD interaction, is deficient in its ability to integrate the BMP2/TGFβ signal on promoter reporter assays, and is only marginally functional in promoting early stages of osteoblast differentiation. Furthermore, the HTY mutation overlaps the unique nuclear matrix targeting signal of Runx factors and exhibits reduced subnuclear targeting. Thus, formation of a RUNX2-SMAD osteogenic complex and subnuclear targeting are structurally and functionally inseparable. Our results establish the critical residues of RUNX2 for execution and completion of BMP2 signaling for osteoblastogenesis through a mechanism that requires RUNX2-SMAD transcriptional activity.
Discharge flocking, a new method to disperse nano-particles

One of the big challenges in the nano-field is how to effectively disperse nanoscale particles, especially CNTs and carbon blacks, which are strongly agglomerated by intermolecular van der Waals forces. Solution-based dispersion methods such as sonication and three-roll milling require lots of dispersion time and have re-agglomeration problems after processing. This study suggests a new method, i.e. discharge flocking, to disperse the particles effectively. Firstly nano-scale particles located between two electrodes, a negative electrode and a ground electrode, are charged by Townsend discharge. Next the negatively charged particles flow toward a target substrate by electric field generated by a positive electrode behind the substrate, and they are finally attached on the substrate. In contrast with the solution-based methods, this process makes nanoscale particles disperse in the air and repel each others because of their negative charges. Therefore, the re-agglomeration problem of processed particles could be prevented. In this study, carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites including CNTs and carbon blacks were fabricated by the discharge flocking and the solution-based dispersion methods, respectively, and then their mechanical and electrical properties were compared with each other.