Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Circulating microparticles in cardiovascular disease: going on stage!

Abstract Context: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide. In spite of the fact that treatments are based on risk calculators which in turn are based on population characteristics, it is well known that these methods have definite levels of uncertainty. Recently, more precise diagnostic or predictive methods have been developed based on indicators of vascular and/or cardiac damage in order to supplement this risk evaluation. Objective: In this review, we describe the main discoveries leading to the idea of using circulating microparticles as a promising and complementary tool in the evaluation of cardiovascular risk. Methods: A Medline search for the terms cardiovascular diseases, microparticles, miRNAs, diagnosis, prognosis, biomarkers and microvesicles was performed. Results: We found (i) nine articles, which were relevant to forming the idea of using microparticles as biomarkers in CVDs, and (ii) 15 and 12 experimental clinical studies which describe their potential in primary and secondary CVD prevention, respectively. Conclusions: The levels of circulating microparticles have been associated with cardiovascular damage in asymptomatic patients as well as in patients who suffered a cardiovascular event, becoming promising diagnostics or prediction biomarkers in recent years.
Elevated cerebrospinal fluid total tau in former professional athletes with multiple concussions

Objective To identify CSF biomarkers that are related to decreased white matter (WM) integrity and poor cognitive performance in former professional athletes with a history of multiple concussions. Methods Concentrations of phosphorylated tau181, total tau (t-tau), and β-amyloid in the CSF were measured in 3 groups: 22 former professional athletes with multiple concussions (mean ± SD age 55.9 ± 12.2 years), 5 healthy controls (age 57.4 ± 5.2 years), and 12 participants (age 60.0 ± 6.6 years) diagnosed with Alzheimer disease (AD). All participants in the former athletes group underwent diffusion tensor imaging to determine WM tract integrity and completed neuropsychological testing. We divided the former athletes group into those with normal (<300 pg/mL) and high (>300 pg/mL) CSF t-tau. Results CSF t-tau in the former athletes group was significantly higher than in the healthy control group (349.3 ± 182.6 vs 188.8 ± 39.9 pg/mL, p = 0.003) and significantly lower than in the patients with AD (349.3 ± 182.6 vs 857.0 ± 449.3 pg/mL, p = 0.007). Fractional anisotropy values across all the tracts were significantly lower in the high CSF t-tau group compared to the normal CSF t-tau group (p = 0.036). Participants in the high CSF t-tau group scored significantly lower on the Trail Making Test (TMT) Part B compared to the normal CSF t-tau group (t scores 45.6 ± 18.8 vs 62.3 ± 10.1, p = 0.017). Conclusion Our findings indicate that former athletes with multiple concussions are at increased risk of elevated levels of CSF t-tau and that high CSF t-tau is associated with reduced WM integrity and worse scores on the TMT Part B.
Uppgjord -prepared Srf/btc Gunnar Le Grand Ert Datum -your Date Tfn -telephone

GSM is featured by significant inter-symbol interference. Equalization is thus an important function of the receiver system. Channel estimation and maximum likelihood sequence detection are performed by the equalizer. In this thesis, the application of feedback for channel re-estimation and sequence detection is studied. Feedback data from the first equalization and from the decoder output are considered for channel re-estimation with extended data. In this case, taking two channel estimates per burst was considered to cope with fast speeds. Decoder feedback, which is the hard bit decisions on coded bits, was also used in assisting sequence detection during re-equalization. This was done for the speech service, TCH/FS, using its block diagonal interleaving feature. Channel re-estimation is also tested on one of the coding schemes of GPRS. Using only equalizer feedback does not give any improvement. Feedback from the decoder used for both channel estimation and sequence detection results in a gain in SNR around 1 dB, considering the BER after decoding. This is allowing a delay of 20 ms in TCH/FS. To avoid delay, mixed decoder and equalizer feedback is used to give 0.5-0.6 dB gain. With co-channel interference, the gain reduces to 0.15-0.25 dB. For GPRS, a gain of 0.8 dB is achieved for BLER. Datum Date 2001-05-09 Rev B Dokumentnr Document no SRF/B-00:0202 Blad Sheet -2 (56) Dokument Document Master’s Thesis
Watermarking: How secure is the DM-QIM embedding technique?

Evaluation of the security of data hiding methods has gained considerable interest recently. The security of quantisation index modulation (QIM) based watermark embedding methods has previously been investigated for different classes of attacks including known-message attack, known-original attack and watermark-only attack. In this paper, an extreme case of the watermark-only attack scenario is discussed wherein only a single instance of a set of watermarked content is available. We challenge the security of the dither modulation (DM)-QIM based embedding method by examining feature space embeddings for time series and images, using a distribution-free algorithm to discover the primary key embedding parameters.
Globalization and Discrimination . Ethical Issues

The realities of globalization enable increasing familiarity with cultures, customs, and religions not long ago deemed obscure. Yet, not all the consequences of this compression of space and culture are desirable or favorable. The closeness of peoples and familiarity with diverse cultures has not automatically resulted in an embrace of differences, of the “other”. Rather, globalization, perhaps unwittingly, has inflamed religious, national, ethnic, and racial hatreds and strife, as well as sex and gender subordination and marginalization. The topic of women and globalization raises fundamental questions on the impact of globalization on women, ethnic minorities and other sociodemographically under-represented actors in global organizations. This article seeks to integrate theories of procedural justice, psychological contracts, motivation in global organizations, and the implications for women, and other under-represented actors. Our analysis concurs with current research on the need for a relativist perspective in business ethics. Our contribution is to show that globalization is a complex process that has different impacts on actors, an impact that can vary widely depending on the situation of the actors.
Pulling hairpinned polynucleotide chains: Does base-pair stacking interaction matter?

Force-induced structural transitions both in relatively random and in designed single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) chains are studied theoretically. At high salt conditions, ssDNA forms compacted hairpin patterns stabilized by base pairing and base-pair stacking interactions, and a threshold external force is needed to pull the hairpinned structure into a random coiled one. The base-pair stacking interaction in the ssDNA chain makes this hairpin-coil conversion a discontinuous (first-order) phase transition process characterized by a force plateau in the force-extension curve, while lowering this potential below some critical level turns this transition into continuous (second-order) type, no matter how strong the base-pairing interaction is. The phase diagram (including hairpin-I, -II, and random coil) is discussed as a function of stacking potential and external force. These results are in quantitative agreement with recent experimental observations of different ssDNA sequences, and they reveal the necessity to consider the base-pair stacking interactions in order to understand the structural formation of RNA, a polymer designed by nature itself. The theoretical method used may be extended to study the long-range interaction along double-stranded DNA caused by the topological constraint of fixed linking number. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.
Observing users in multimodal interaction

My doctoral research focuses on the usability and usage of new computer technology such as interactive systems that support the combination different input media such as voice, gesture and video. I have contributed to the study of these systems in four complementary ways: the MSM framework helps classifying and reasoning about current and future “interactionally-rich” systems; I have also used formal methods to specify multimodal interaction; I have designed and developed the NEIMO multimodal Wizard of Oz platform, a tool for observing users using multimodal interaction and assessing usability issues; I am now working on computer-mediated communication and collaboration through audio and video.
Trait-like vulnerability of higher-order cognition and ability to maintain wakefulness during combined sleep restriction and circadian misalignment.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Determine stability of individual differences in executive function, cognitive processing speed, selective visual attention, and maintenance of wakefulness during simulated sustained operations with combined sleep restriction and circadian misalignment. METHODS 20 healthy adults (8 female), aged 25.7 (±4.2 SD), BMI 22.3 (±2.1) kg/m2 completed an 18-day protocol twice. Participants maintained habitual self-selected 8h sleep schedules for two weeks at home prior to a four-day laboratory visit that included one sleep opportunity per day: 8h on night one, 3h on night two and 3h on mornings three and four. After 3 days of unscheduled sleep at home, participants repeated the entire protocol. Stability and task dependency of individual differences in performance were quantified by intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) and Kendall's Tau, respectively. RESULTS Performance on Stroop, Visual Search, and the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test were highly consistent within individuals during combined sleep restriction and circadian misalignment. Individual differences were trait-like as indicated by ICCs (0.54-0.96) classified according to standard criteria as moderate to almost perfect. Individual differences on other performance tasks commonly reported in sleep studies showed fair to almost perfect ICCs (0.22-0.94). Kendall's rank correlations showed that individual vulnerability to sleep restriction and circadian misalignment varied by task and by metric within a task. CONCLUSIONS Consistent vulnerability of higher-order cognition and maintenance of wakefulness to combined sleep restriction and circadian misalignment has implications for the development of precision countermeasure strategies for workers performing safety-critical tasks, e.g., military, police, health care workers and emergency responders.
QGRS Mapper: a web-based server for predicting G-quadruplexes in nucleotide sequences

The quadruplex structures formed by guanine-rich nucleic acid sequences have received significant attention recently because of growing evidence for their role in important biological processes and as therapeutic targets. G-quadruplex DNA has been suggested to regulate DNA replication and may control cellular proliferation. Sequences capable of forming G-quadruplexes in the RNA have been shown to play significant roles in regulation of polyadenylation and splicing events in mammalian transcripts. Whether quadruplex structure directly plays a role in regulating RNA processing requires investigation. Computational approaches to study G-quadruplexes allow detailed analysis of mammalian genomes. There are no known easily accessible user-friendly tools that can compute G-quadruplexes in the nucleotide sequences. We have developed a web-based server, QGRS Mapper, that predicts quadruplex forming G-rich sequences (QGRS) in nucleotide sequences. It is a user-friendly application that provides many options for defining and studying G-quadruplexes. It performs analysis of the user provided genomic sequences, e.g. promoter and telomeric regions, as well as RNA sequences. It is also useful for predicting G-quadruplex structures in oligonucleotides. The program provides options to search and retrieve desired gene/nucleotide sequence entries from NCBI databases for mapping G-quadruplexes in the context of RNA processing sites. This feature is very useful for investigating the functional relevance of G-quadruplex structure, in particular its role in regulating the gene expression by alternative processing. In addition to providing data on composition and locations of QGRS relative to the processing sites in the pre-mRNA sequence, QGRS Mapper features interactive graphic representation of the data. The user can also use the graphics module to visualize QGRS distribution patterns among all the alternative RNA products of a gene simultaneously on a single screen. QGRS Mapper can be accessed at .
On gauge invariant Wilsonian flows

We investigate non-Abelian gauge theories within a Wilsonian Renormalisation Group approach. Our main question is: How close can one get to a gauge invariant flow, despite the fact that a Wilsonian coarse-graining seems to be incompatible with gauge invariance? We discuss the possible options in the case of quantum fluctuations, and argue that for thermal fluctuations a fully gauge invariant implementation can be obtained. DIAS-STP-99-01 ECM-UB-PF-99-02
A Stream Cipher Based on Discretized Spatiotemporal Chaotic System

The floating-point operation makes the spatiotemporal chaos based cryptosystems difficult to be analyzed. In this paper, according to the design principles of confusion and diffusion, the coupled map lattice (CML) is discretized and a new stream cipher with the discretized CML is proposed. We show the proposed cipher can be clearly analyzed by using proper cryptographic techniques.
M dwarfs: effective temperatures, radii and metallicities

We empirically determine effective temperatures and bolometric luminosities for a large sample of nearby M dwarfs, for which high accuracy optical and infrared photometry is available. We introduce a new technique which exploits the flux ratio in different bands as a proxy of both effective temperature and metallicity. Our temperature scale for late-type dwarfs extends well below 3000 K (almost to the brown dwarf limit) and is supported by interferometric angular diameter measurements above 3000 K. Our metallicities are in excellent agreement (usually within 0.2 dex) with recent determinations via independent techniques. A subsample of cool M dwarfs with metallicity estimates based on hotter Hipparcos common proper motion companions indicates our metallicities are also reliable below 3000 K, a temperature range unexplored until now. The high quality of our data allows us to identify a striking feature in the bolometric luminosity versus temperature plane, around the transition from K to M dwarfs. We have compared our sample of stars with theoretical models and conclude that this transition is due to an increase in the radii of the M dwarfs, a feature which is not reproduced by theoretical models.
Deacetylation of Miro1 by HDAC6 blocks mitochondrial transport and mediates axon growth inhibition

Extracellular stimuli in the injured CNS, such as chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans, inhibit axon growth through activation of the small GTPase RhoA. This RhoA activation increases intracellular Ca2+ that converges on an HDAC6-dependent pathway to deacetylate Miro1. Deacetylation of Miro1 decreases mitochondrial transport and attenuates axon growth.
Amplitude variability extraction from multi-lead electrocardiograms for improvement of sleep apnea recognition

This study is in the context of sleep apnea recognition from multi-lead ECGs. In 38 patients, 8-channel ECGs were recorded simultaneously to a polysomography (PSG). The ECG was classified in segments of one minute for occurrence of sleep apnea events by quantification of the regularity of characteristic oscillations in either heart rate or ECG amplitude. Diagnostic accuracy is compared by ROC-analysis against the expert annotations of the PSG, and its reproducibility was tested on the Physionet apnea ECG database. Whereas amplitude variations yield consistent results on both data sets (ROC-area 89.0% vs. 88.3%), a remarkable loss in performance is observed for heart rhythm (89.8% vs. 77.9%). Reasons for this difference are discussed and it is shown that factors like diabetes have a confounding influence on heart rate. With respect to aggregation of multi-lead information, simple averaging (89.3%) seems to be as appropriate as more complex PCA-based methods (87.2%)
Recent methodology progress of deep learning for RNA–protein interaction prediction

Interactions between RNAs and proteins play essential roles in many important biological processes. Benefitting from the advances of next generation sequencing technologies, hundreds of RNA‐binding proteins (RBP) and their associated RNAs have been revealed, which enables the large‐scale prediction of RNA–protein interactions using machine learning methods. Till now, a wide range of computational tools and pipelines have been developed, including deep learning models, which have achieved remarkable performance on the identification of RNA–protein binding affinities and sites. In this review, we provide an overview of the successful implementation of various deep learning approaches for predicting RNA–protein interactions, mainly focusing on the prediction of RNA–protein interaction pairs and RBP‐binding sites on RNAs. Furthermore, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, and highlight future perspectives on how to design better deep learning models. Finally, we suggest some promising future directions of computational tasks in the study of RNA–protein interactions, especially the interactions between noncoding RNAs and proteins.
Opportunities for Fine-Grained Adaptive Voltage Scaling to Improve System-Level Energy Efficiency

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) can yield significant energy savings in processor SoCs. New integrated voltage regulator technologies enable fine-grained DVFS, in which many independent voltage domains switch voltage levels at nanosecond timescales to save energy. This work presents an overview of DVFS techniques and an energy model by which to evaluate them. Applying the energy model to traces of a cycle-accurate processor system simulation predicts energy savings of up to 53% from the application of fine-grained DVFS techniques. Further exploration and implementation of these technologies has the potential to dramatically reduce energy consumption in future systems.
Knowledge-based trajectory completion from sparse GPS samples

Traffic trajectories collected from GPS-enabled mobile devices or vehicles are widely used in urban planning, traffic management, and location based services. Their performance often relies on having dense trajectories. However, due to the power and bandwidth limitation on these devices, collecting dense trajectory is too costly on a large scale. We show that by exploiting structural regularity in large trajectory data, the complete geometry of trajectories can be inferred from sparse GPS samples without information about the underlying road network - a process called trajectory completion. In this paper, we present a knowledge-based approach for completing traffic trajectories. Our method extracts a network of road junctions and estimates traffic flows across junctions. GPS samples within each flow cluster are then used to achieve fine-level completion of individual trajectories. Finally, we demonstrate that our method is effective for trajectory completion on both synthesized and real traffic trajectories. On average 72.7% of real trajectories with sampling rate of 60 seconds/sample are completed without map information. Comparing to map matching, over 89% of points on completed trajectories are within 15 meters from the map matched path.
The transcriptional factors HIF-1 and HIF-2 and their novel inhibitors in cancer therapy

ABSTRACT Introduction: Hypoxia is one of the intrinsic features of solid tumors, and it is always associated with aggressive phenotypes, including resistance to radiation and chemotherapy, metastasis, and poor patient prognosis. Hypoxia manifests these unfavorable effects through activation of a family of transcription factors, Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) play a pivotal role in the adaptation of tumor cells to hypoxic and nutrient-deprived conditions by upregulating the transcription of several pro-oncogenic genes. Several advanced human cancers share HIFs activation as a final common pathway. Areas covered: This review highlights the role and regulation of the HIF-1/2 in cancers and alludes on the biological complexity and redundancy of HIF-1/2 regulation. Moreover, this review summarizes recent insights into the therapeutic approaches targeting the HIF-1/2 pathway. Expert opinion: More studies are needed to unravel the extensive complexity of HIFs regulation and to develop more precise anticancer treatments. Inclusion of HIF-1/2 inhibitors to the current chemotherapy regimens has been proven advantageous in numerous reported preclinical studies. The combination therapy ideally should be personalized based on the type of mutations involved in the specific cancers, and it might be better to include two drugs that inhibit HIF-1/2 activity by synergistic molecular mechanisms.