Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Reconfigurable Generic Dual-Core Architecture

In this paper we propose a generic frame for the implementation of a dual-core processor with two modes of operation. One is the safety mode that allows to run the two cores in lock step in a classical master/checker fashion. A clock delay of 1.5 clock cycles between master and checker establishes the temporal redundancy to minimize the potential for common mode faults. The second operation mode allows a parallel execution of different instruction streams on the two cores in a multiprocessor fashion. The possibility to dynamically switch between the two modes allows for an efficient utilization of the duplicated core. We propose an implementation of such a generic frame that can be applied in conjunction with virtually any standard processor core. Also we perform a systematic failure analysis for the safety mode and the mode switching procedure. Experimental fault injection confirms that our reconfigurable architecture indeed provides the same fail safe properties as the classical master/checker architecture
WHAT DOES DEBT RELIEF DO FOR DEVELOPMENT? Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Experiment

This paper analyzes the effect of a large debt relief program on investment, productivity and the subsequent financial access of beneficiary households. We carry out a survey of 2,897 households affected by the Indian Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Program for Small and Marginal Farmers –one of the largest debt relief programs in history. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design based on the program eligibility criteria, we show that debt relief does not improve the investment or productivity of beneficiary households, but leads to a strong and persistent shift of borrowing away from formal sector lenders. We further document strong effects of debt relief on beliefs about the seniority of debt and the reputational consequences of default. The results resonate with findings from the literature on personal bankruptcy and suggest that bailout programs are of limited use in addressing problems of debt overhang, but have significant behavioral implications. JEL: O1, G18, G28, D14
Hippocampus Segmentation using a Local Prior Model on its Boundary

Segmentation techniques based on Active Contour Models have been strongly benefited from the use of prior information during their evolution. Shape prior information is captured from a training set and is introduced in the optimization procedure to restrict the evolution into allowable shapes. In this way, the evolution converges onto regions even with weak boundaries. Although significant effort has been devoted on different ways of capturing and analyzing prior information, very little thought has been devoted on the way of combining image information with prior information. This paper focuses on a more natural way of incorporating the prior information in the level set framework. For proof of concept the method is applied on hippocampus segmentation in T1-MR images. Hippocampus segmentation is a very challenging task, due to the multivariate surrounding region and the missing boundary with the neighboring amygdala, whose intensities are identical. The proposed method, mimics the human segmentation way and thus shows enhancements in the segmentation accuracy. Keywords—Medical imaging & processing, Brain MRI segmentation, hippocampus segmentation, hippocampus-amygdala missing boundary, weak boundary segmentation, region based segmentation, prior information, local weighting scheme in level sets, spatial distribution of labels, gradient distribution on boundary.
Reproductive aging patterns in primates reveal that humans are distinct

Women rarely give birth after ∼45 y of age, and they experience the cessation of reproductive cycles, menopause, at ∼50 y of age after a fertility decline lasting almost two decades. Such reproductive senescence in mid-lifespan is an evolutionary puzzle of enduring interest because it should be inherently disadvantageous. Furthermore, comparative data on reproductive senescence from other primates, or indeed other mammals, remains relatively rare. Here we carried out a unique detailed comparative study of reproductive senescence in seven species of nonhuman primates in natural populations, using long-term, individual-based data, and compared them to a population of humans experiencing natural fertility and mortality. In four of seven primate species we found that reproductive senescence occurred before death only in a small minority of individuals. In three primate species we found evidence of reproductive senescence that accelerated throughout adulthood; however, its initial rate was much lower than mortality, so that relatively few individuals experienced reproductive senescence before death. In contrast, the human population showed the predicted and well-known pattern in which reproductive senescence occurred before death for many women and its rate accelerated throughout adulthood. These results provide strong support for the hypothesis that reproductive senescence in midlife, although apparent in natural-fertility, natural-mortality populations of humans, is generally absent in other primates living in such populations.
Human-Robot Interaction Based on a Sensitive Bumper Skin

In order to enable robots to work in close contact with humans or in environments with unknown obstacles, new reactive control strategies based on sensitive bumper skins are proposed. The aim of this work is to provide a robot with contact and force control based strategies that make it dependable, safe and with foreseeable behaviours. The sensory skin is composed of rigid-bumpers provided with deformation sensors incorporated in a flexible substrate. This solution is a compromise between a simple bumper skin and current array-based robot skins, with better potential performances but, more costly and with usability problems. Such sensitive bumpers cover all moveable links of the robot allowing the detection of collisions, measuring the force involved and locating the point of contact with reasonable precision and cost
Finding the timings for a guide agent to interveneinter-user conversation in considering their gazebehaviors

As the advance of embodied conversational agent (ECA) technologies, there are more and more real-world deployed applications of ECA's like the guides in museums or exhibitions. However, in those situations, the agent systems are usually used by groups of visitors rather than individuals. In such multi-user situation which is much more complex than single user one, specific features are required. One of them is the ability for the agent to smoothly intervene user-user conversation. This feature is supposed to facilitate mixed-initiative human-agent conversation and more proactive service for the users. This paper presents the results of the first step of our project that aims to build an information providing the agent for collaborative decision making tasks, finding the timings for the agent to intervene user-user conversation to provide active support by focusing on the user's gaze. In order to realize this, at first, a Wizard-of- Oz (WOZ) experiment was conducted for collecting human interaction data. By analyzing the collected corpus, eight kinds of timings which allow the agent to do intervention potentially were found. Second, a method was developed to automatically identify four of the eight kinds of timings only by using nonverbal cues, gaze direction, body posture, and speech information. Although the performance of the method is moderate (F-measure 0.4), it should be able to be improved by integrating context information in the future.
Tie2 Expressing Monocytes in the Spleen of Patients with Primary Myelofibrosis

Primary myelofibrosis (PMF) is a Philadelphia-negative (Ph−) myeloproliferative disorder, showing abnormal CD34+ progenitor cell trafficking, splenomegaly, marrow fibrosis leading to extensive extramedullary haematopoiesis, and abnormal neoangiogenesis in either the bone marrow or the spleen. Monocytes expressing the angiopoietin-2 receptor (Tie2) have been shown to support abnormal angiogenic processes in solid tumors through a paracrine action that takes place in proximity to the vessels. In this study we investigated the frequency of Tie2 expressing monocytes in the spleen tissue samples of patients with PMF, and healthy subjects (CTRLs), and evaluated their possible role in favouring spleen angiogenesis. We show by confocal microscopy that in the spleen tissue of patients with PMF, but not of CTRLs, the most of the CD14+ cells are Tie2+ and are close to vessels; by flow cytometry, we found that Tie2 expressing monocytes were Tie2+CD14lowCD16brightCDL62−CCR2− (TEMs) and their frequency was higher (p = 0.008) in spleen tissue-derived mononuclear cells (MNCs) of patients with PMF than in spleen tissue-derived MNCs from CTRLs undergoing splenectomy for abdominal trauma. By in vitro angiogenesis assay we evidenced that conditioned medium of immunomagnetically selected spleen tissue derived CD14+ cells of patients with PMF induced a denser tube like net than that of CTRLs; in addition, CD14+Tie2+ cells sorted from spleen tissue derived single cell suspension of patients with PMF show a higher expression of genes involved in angiogenesis than that found in CTRLs. Our results document the enrichment of Tie2+ monocytes expressing angiogenic genes in the spleen of patients with PMF, suggesting a role for these cells in starting/maintaining the pathological angiogenesis in this organ.
Entropy and Compression

The concept of entropy is fundamental to information theory. In 1948, Claude Shannon introduced entropy as a measure of the amount of choice in a set of events, where only the probabilities of the events are known [3]. Entropy can be understood in many ways, such as a measure of uncertainty, or a measure of the amount of information gained when learning the outcome of a set of events. Each interpretation is insightful to specific applications, such as compression and coding. Formally, for a discrete random variable X, entropy is the expected value of the information content of X. Thus, the entropy H of X is defined as H(X) = E[I(X)], if I(X) is the information content. The information content of an event is simply the negative logarithm of the probability of the event, I(p) = −logbp. This definition of information content has the benefit of being additive [3]. If p and q are two independent events, then the information content of the sequence (p, q) is I(p) + I(q). Thus, entropy is defined to be:
Research on Virtual Network Mapping Algorithm with Path Splitting Based on Sort Preprocessing

Based on the previous research, a virtual network mapping algorithm with repeatable embedding over substrate nodes is summarized, in which, the virtual nodes in the same virtual network may be assigned to the same substrate node so that some virtual links don’t need to be mapped to reduce the substrate link costs and improve the mapping effectively. Additionally, in the link mapping process, path splitting is introduced to make best use of some low bandwidth to make more virtual networks mapped, which is similar to the multi-commodity flow problem. Meanwhile, we classify the virtual network requests before mapping, map the virtual networks without link splitting request firstly and assign those with it secondly. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm and the improved scheme perform better in mapping percentage, acceptance percentage and revenue.
The CD40-Autophagy Pathway Is Needed for Host Protection Despite IFN-Γ-Dependent Immunity and CD40 Induces Autophagy via Control of P21 Levels

Autophagy degrades pathogens in vitro. The autophagy gene Atg5 has been reported to be required for IFN-γ-dependent host protection in vivo. However, these protective effects occur independently of autophagosome formation. Thus, the in vivo role of classic autophagy in protection conferred by adaptive immunity and how adaptive immunity triggers autophagy are incompletely understood. Employing biochemical, genetic and morphological studies, we found that CD40 upregulates the autophagy molecule Beclin 1 in microglia and triggers killing of Toxoplasma gondii dependent on the autophagy machinery. Infected CD40−/− mice failed to upregulate Beclin 1 in microglia/macrophages in vivo. Autophagy-deficient Beclin 1+/− mice, mice with deficiency of the autophagy protein Atg7 targeted to microglia/macrophages as well as CD40−/− mice exhibited impaired killing of T. gondii and were susceptible to cerebral and ocular toxoplasmosis. Susceptibility to toxoplasmosis occurred despite upregulation of IFN-γ, TNF-α and NOS2, preservation of IFN-γ-induced microglia/macrophage anti-T. gondii activity and the generation of anti-T. gondii T cell immunity. CD40 upregulated Beclin 1 and triggered killing of T. gondii by decreasing protein levels of p21, a molecule that degrades Beclin 1. These studies identified CD40-p21-Beclin 1 as a pathway by which adaptive immunity stimulates autophagy. In addition, they support that autophagy is a mechanism through which CD40-dependent immunity mediates in vivo protection and that the CD40-autophagic machinery is needed for host resistance despite IFN-γ.
EFFECTIVENESS OF FUNCTIONAL MUSCLE STIMULATION IN IMPROVING MOTOR CONTROL AROUND SHOULDER IN PATIENTS WITH HEMIPLEGIA

Background: The effect of electrical stimulation on motor outcomes around shoulder in acute hemiplegia is elusive. We tested the effect of stimulation of specific muscles around shoulder on motor outcome in shoulder in patient with hemiplegia. Methods: 32 first time hemiplegic patient of stroke origin were randomly allocated to control and experimental group. Experimental group received electrical stimulation apart from exercises given to both the groups for 2 weeks. Deltoid, infraspinatus and upper trapezius were stimulated, along with attempt to contract the muscles. Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement (STREAM) upper components and manual muscle testing were used for evaluation of outcome. Wilcoxon sign rank test and chi-square tests were used for statistics. Results: Experimental group demonstrated greater recovery compared to control group. In both groups trapezius muscle work showed improvement in large number of patients followed by deltoid. STREAM score changes were seen a more number of patients in experimental group than control group. Conclusion: Electrical stimulation can be considered as an adjunct to exercises around shoulder in early stroke rehabilitation
Better Semantic Frame Based MT Evaluation via Inversion Transduction Grammars

We introduce an inversion transduction grammar based restructuring of the MEANT automatic semantic frame based MT evaluation metric, which, by leveraging ITG language biases, is able to further improve upon MEANT’s already-high correlation with human adequacy judgments. The new metric, called IMEANT, uses bracketing ITGs to biparse the reference and machine translations, but subject to obeying the semantic frames in both. Resulting improvements support the presumption that ITGs, which constrain the allowable permutations between compositional segments across the reference and MT output, score the phrasal similarity of the semantic role fillers more accurately than the simple word alignment heuristics (bag-of-word alignment or maximum alignment) used in previous version of MEANT. The approach successfully integrates (1) the previously demonstrated extremely high coverage of cross-lingual semantic frame alternations by ITGs, with (2) the high accuracy of evaluating MT via weighted f-scores on the degree of semantic frame preservation.
Dynamic Hand Simulation with Strands

We have developed a framework for simulating muscles and tendons using a dynamic modeling primitive, a “strand,” based on cubic spline curves with inertia [Sueda et al. 2008]. With this framework, we do not require moment-arm data; the tendons are simulated dynamically as stiff hyper-elastic strands simultaneously with the bones. We are able to simulate the dynamics of the intricate mechanisms of the finger, which was not possible with previous approaches. The lumbrical, for example, with its looped connections to the flexor tendon and the extensor mechanism, can be simulated effectively using our framework.
Isolation of anti-glutathione antibodies from a phage display library.

We have isolated anti-glutathione antibodies from a human synthetic phage antibody scFv library (Nissim,A., Hoogenboom,H.R., Tomlinson,I.M., Flynn,G., Midgley,C., Lane,D. and Winter,G., 1994, EMBO J., 13, 692-698). Glutathione (GSH) conjugates with carrier proteins, such as bovine serum albumin (BSA), keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) and human lysozyme (LZM), were used as antigens. After four cycles of panning and affinity chromatography, clones that recognized GSH-conjugated proteins, but not BSA, KLH or LZM, were isolated. The isolated phage antibodies and the soluble scFv fragments were characterized by immunoblotting, and the nucleotide sequences of the VH segments of selected clones were determined. The binding of several isolates to GSH-BSA was competitively inhibited by GSH in an ELISA. These observations have demonstrated that antibodies against GSH, a tripeptide, can be isolated from the library. We constructed the tertiary models of several scFv fragments and discussed the mechanism of antigen binding sites.
Arundic Acid Prevents Developmental Upregulation of S100B Expression and Inhibits Enteric Glial Development

S100B is expressed in various types of glial cells and is involved in regulating many aspects of their function. However, little is known about its role during nervous system development. In this study, we investigated the effect of inhibiting the onset of S100B synthesis in the development of the enteric nervous system, a network of neurons and glia located in the wall of the gut that is vital for control of gastrointestinal function. Intact gut explants were taken from embryonic day (E)13.5 mice, the day before the first immunohistochemical detection of S100B, and cultured in the presence of arundic acid, an inhibitor of S100B synthesis, for 48 h. The effects on Sox10-immunoreactive enteric neural crest progenitors and Hu-immunoreactive enteric neurons were then analyzed. Culture in arundic acid reduced the proportion of Sox10+ cells and decreased cell proliferation. There was no change in the density of Hu+ enteric neurons, however, a small population of cells exhibited atypical co-expression of both Sox10 and Hu, which was not observed in control cultures. Addition of exogenous S100B to the cultures did not change Sox10+ cell numbers. Overall, our data suggest that cell-intrinsic intracellular S100B is important for maintaining Sox10 and proliferation of the developing enteric glial lineage.
Evaluating AAL solutions through competitive benchmarking : the localization competition

Evaluation of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems is particularly challenging due to the complexity of such systems and to the variety of solutions adopted and services offered. This problem is related to the evaluation of pervasive and ubiquitous systems that has been the focus of many researchers in the recent years and that still awaits for solutions. On the other hand, analyzing and comparing AAL solutions is paramount for the assessment of the research results in this area. EvAAL (Evaluating AAL Systems Through Competitive Benchmarking) is a recently established international competition that aims to address this problem in order to let benchmarking and comparison methodologies of AAL systems emerge from experience. This work describes the first EvAAL competition which was devoted to localization and tracking; proposed evaluation criteria, benchmarks, and achieved results are reported. All evaluation data are freely available from the EvAAL web site.
A Level Set simulator for nanooxidation using non-contact atomic force microscopy

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) can be used as a lithographic technique capable of manufacturing nanometer-sized devices. A simulator for AFM, implemented in a Level Set environment, is presented. The simulator uses empirical models to deduce the shape of a desired nanodot based on the applied voltage, pulse time, and ambient humidity. The shape of an AFM nanowire depends on the same factors as the shape of the nanodot in addition to the wire's orientation with respect to the (010) direction. An advantage of the presented approach is the ease with which further processing steps can be simulated in the same environment. Sample oxide nanodots and nanowires are analyzed, showing the ability of the process to generate nanometer sized structures.
Prospects for F_L^D Measurements at HERA-II

The theoretical interest in the longitudinal diffractive structure function F_L^D is briefly motivated and possible measurement methods are surveyed. A simulation based on realistic scenarios with a reduced proton beam energy at HERA-II using the H1 apparatus shows that measurements are possible with up to 4 sigma significance, limited by systematic errors.
Using controlled query generation to evaluate blind relevance feedback algorithms

Currently in document retrieval there are many algorithms each with different strengths and weakness. There is some difficulty, however, in evaluating the impact of the test query set on retrieval results. The traditional evaluation process, the Cranfield evaluation paradigm, which uses a corpus and a set of user queries, focuses on making the queries as realistic as possible. Unfortunately such query sets lack the fine grained control necessary to test algorithm properties. We present an approach called controlled query generation (CQG) that creates query sets from documents in the corpus in a way that regulates the theoretic information quality of each query. This allows us to generate reproducible and well defined sets of queries of varying length and term specificity. Imposing this level of control over the query sets used for testing retrieval algorithms enables the rigorous simulation of different query environments to identify specific algorithm properties before introducing user queries. In this work, we demonstrate the usefulness of CQG by generating three different query environments to investigate characteristics of two blind relevance feedback approaches
Dietary Components Related to N-Nitroso Compound Formation: A Prospective Study of Adult Glioma

Background: N-nitroso compounds (NOC) are found in processed meat and are formed endogenously from intake of nitrite and nitrate. Endogenous NOC formation is antagonized by nitrosation inhibitors in fruit and vegetables (e.g., vitamin C) and promoted by heme in red meat. It has been hypothesized that a diet resulting in high exposure to NOCs increases adult glioma risk. Methods: Using proportional hazards models, we tested this hypothesis among 545,770 participants in the prospective NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which assessed dietary intake at baseline (1995–1996) with a comprehensive food frequency questionnaire, and at ages 12 to 13 years with an abbreviated food frequency questionnaire. Results: During follow-up through 2003, 585 participants were diagnosed with glioma. We found no significant trends in glioma risk for consumption of processed or red meat, nitrate, or vitamin C or E. We found significant positive trends for nitrite intake from plant sources (hazard ratio for quintile 5 versus quintile 1, 1.59; 95% confidence interval, 1.20–2.10; P for trend = 0.028) and, unexpectedly, for fruit and vegetable intake (hazard ratio, 1.42; 95% confidence interval, 1.08–1.86; P for trend = 0.0081). Examination of interactions between dietary intakes (e.g., nitrite and vitamin C) and a limited analysis of diet at ages 12 to 13 years provided no support for the NOC hypothesis. Conclusions: Our results suggest that consumption of processed or red meat, nitrite, or nitrate does not increase adult glioma risk, and that consumption of fruit and vegetables, vitamin C, or vitamin E does not reduce risk. Impact: Our results, in agreement with the only previous prospective analysis, cast doubt on the NOC hypothesis in relation to dietary intake and adult glioma risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(7); 1709–22. ©2010 AACR.