Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 5-year follow-up study of an atypical case of myotonic dystrophy

This study presents 5-year follow-up data on NG, a woman with adult onset myotonic dystrophy and progressive cognitive decline who was first described by Wilson et al. The extent of the cognitive impairment is atypical of symptom-onset in adulthood and of paternal inheritance, both of which apply to this case. Together, the present and earlier studies report the results of regular neuropsychological assessments over a 16-year period. Severe impairment in executive functioning, episodic and semantic memory were apparent early in the history, while visuospatial skills and working memory were only mildly impaired after 16 years of follow-up. There was also a progressive dyslexia, initially characterized by the regularization errors typical of surface dyslexia, but subsequently dominated by visual/phonological reading errors. This pattern of impairment is not typical of myotonic dystrophy but resembles semantic dementia. Whilst the deficits may be attributable wholly to myotonic dystrophy pathology, the co-existence of a form of semantic dementia is also possible. It is noted that the aggregation of tau protein is a neuropathological feature common to both diseases.
Telomerase-directed molecular therapeutics

The management of malignant disease remains one of the most challenging areas of modern medicine. The lifetime risk of developing cancer in the western world is estimated to be as high as 1 in 3. Traditionally, surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy have been the primary choice of treatment for patients with malignant tumours. Despite advances in the use and development of conventional cytotoxic agents, the cure rate remains disappointing in most patients with advanced disease of the common solid tumours. Consequently, the development of novel anti-cancer therapies is a high priority in cancer medicine. In recent years, a new generation of cancer therapies has emerged, based on a growing understanding of the molecular events that contribute to malignant transformation. A major difference between normal and cancer cells is the ability of cancer cells to multiply in an unrestricted and ungoverned fashion. In this context, there is considerable interest in elucidating the mechanisms that allow this unrestricted proliferation and that ultimately result in immortal cancer cells. It is now clear that the enzyme telomerase confers immortality on cells in most types of cancer. With the cancer cell reliant on telomerase for its survival, telomerase represents an extremely attractive mechanism-based target for the development of new cancer therapeutics.
Restriction endonuclease from thermophilic bacterial species III. Isolation and characterization of BsiHKA I.

BsiHKA I is a type II restriction endonuclease from a Bacillus stearothermophilus strain isolated from soil according to (1). fisiHKA I in 11 culture (4.7 g wet cells) was purified by a DEAEsephacel column (30 ml bed volume). Enzyme eluted at about 0.3 M NaCl was dialysed against buffer A (1) and loaded onto a heparin column (8 ml bed volume). Enzyme eluted at 0.4—0.5 M NaCl was dialysed against buffer B (1) and loaded onto an FPLC Mono Q anion exchange column. Enzyme was eluted at 0.3-0.4 M NaCl. The purified enzyme was used to digest various DNA with known sequences (Fig. 1). The sizes and numbers of fragments produced are identical to those cleaved by mesophilic enzyme HgiAl which recognizes 5'G(AT)GC(AT)C3' (2). The cleavage site of BsiHKA I was determined according to (3) using pUC18 DNA as the template and a 17 mer oligonucleotide with sequence 5 'CAGCACTGACCC'1T1TG3' as the primer. The primer was annealed to position 359-375 of the denatured pUC18 DNA and was extended through the BsiHKA I site at position 444. Figure 2 shows that the cleavage product of reaction I comigrates with the band corresponding to nucleodde T in the sequence GAGCTC and reaction II comigrates with the band corresponding to the first G nucleodde. Therefore, BsiHKA I recognizes and cleaves 5'G(AT)GC(AT)! C3'. The optimal buffer for this enzyme was medium salt (4) and optimal reaction temperature 60°C.
A novel spectrum sensing scheme using clock timing extraction based feature detection

A cyclostationarity based feature detection by calculating autocorrelation function for OFDM signal with cyclic prefix is proposed as a spectrum sensing scheme for dynamic spectrum access. However, this approach cannot be applied to single carrier modulation signals without cyclic prefix. This paper proposes a novel spectrum sensing scheme for single carrier modulation signals using clock timing extraction based feature detection, where envelope detection is used for clock timing extraction and an overlap FFT filter-bank is used to receive the primary signals using the designated frequency band. This paper also evaluates false-alarm and miss-detection probability performance of the proposed scheme and compares with those of the conventional energy detection scheme by computer simulation.
Efficacy of Internet-Based Guided Treatment for Genito-Pelvic Pain/Penetration Disorder: Rationale, Treatment Protocol, and Design of a Randomized Controlled Trial

Introduction Genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder (GPPPD) not only adversely affects women’s sexuality and sexual satisfaction but is also associated with a wide range of psychosocial consequences such as reduced quality of life and well-being, mental health comorbidities, and relationship distress. Evidence for effective treatment options is scarce. Aim This article describes the rationale, treatment protocol, and study design for a randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of an Internet-based guided intervention for GPPPD. Method Two hundred women who meet the criteria for GPPPD and have not been able to experience sexual intercourse for at least the last 6 months will be recruited and randomly assigned either to the intervention group (IG) or a 6-month waitlist control group. Assessments take place at baseline (T1), peritreatment after completion of Session 5 in IG (T2), after completion of Session 8 or 12 weeks after randomization (T3), and after 6 months (T4). Data will be analyzed on an intention-to-treat and a completer basis. Main outcome measures The primary outcome will be sexual intercourse involving the insertion of the partner’s penis at posttreatment. Secondary outcomes include, e.g., improved non-intercourse penetration, sexual functioning, dyadic stress coping, reduced fear of sexuality and negative penetration-related cognitions. Fear of sexuality, penetration-related cognitions, and exercise intensity will be assessed as mediators of intercourse in the IG. Sexual dysfunctions of partners will be measured at baseline (T1) and investigated as a potential moderator of the primary treatment outcome. Discussion Given the burden associated with GPPPD and the need for specialized treatment, there is a surprising lack of evidence-based treatment options. This study aims to assess whether Internet-based interventions could contribute to closing this treatment gap. Clinical Trial Registration German Register of Clinical Studies (DRKS): DRKS00010228.
Moist Wound Healing with Occlusive Dressings: A Clinical Review

BACKGROUND Occlusive dressings have become increasingly popular in the management of wound care. Numerous types of occlusive dressings are presently available for the treatment of acute and chronic wounds. Occlusion enhances wound healing primarily by preventing wound dessication. As a result, epidermal necrosis and eschar formation do not occur, and wounds reepithelialize more quickly. OBJECTIVE Choosing a dressing to meet the specific needs of the patient can often become confusing for the physician. We review the various types of occlusive dressings and their advantages and disadvantages in the practical management of acute and chronic wounds. METHODS A literature review of the subject was performed. RESULTS Occlusive dressings enhance reepithelialization by preventing wound dessication. Lower infection rates are generally achieved despite bacterial proliferation under some occlusive dressings. CONCLUSION Occlusive dressings simplify wound care and are an excellent choice in the management of most acute and chronic wounds. This review should enable the clinician to choose the best dressing to meet the individual wound of the patient.
Design of Unequal Dual Band Gysel Power Divider With Isolation Bandwidth Improvement

This letter presents a new design of an unequal dual band Gysel power divider (GPD) with isolation bandwidth (IW) improvement, which contains two grounded resistors for better power-handling capability (PHC), one resistor between output ports for enhancing the IW, an extension line at the input and a single stub line at the end for dual band operation, and ten branch line sections. Exact closed-form equations are derived for the proposed structure. For verification, the proposed structure is simulated, fabricated, and measured using microstrip lines. Simulation and measurement results show wide IW, while maintaining high PHC over the Wilkinson PD.
Dynamic Resizing on Active Warps Scheduler to Hide Operation Stalls on GPUs

This paper conducts a detailed study of the factors affecting the operation stalls in terms of the fetch group size on the warp scheduler of GPUs. Throughout this paper, we reveal that the size of a fetch group is highly involved for hiding various types of operation stalls: short latency stalls, long latency stalls, and Load/Store Unit (LSU) stalls. The scheduler with a small fetch group cannot hide short latency stalls due to the limited number of warps in a fetch group. In contrast, the scheduler with a large fetch group cannot hide long latency and LSU stalls due to the limited number of fetch groups and the lack of memory subsystems, respectively. To hide various types of stalls, this paper proposes a Dynamic Resizing on Active Warps (DRAW) scheduler which adjusts the size of a fetch group dynamically based on the execution phases of applications. For the applications that have the best performance at LRR (one fetch group), the DRAW scheduler matches the performance of LRR and outperforms TL (multiple fetch groups) by 22.7 percent. In addition, for the applications that have the best performance at TL, our scheduler achieves 11.0 and 5.5 percent better performance compared to LRR and TL, respectively.
HYDRA: virtualized distributed testbed for DTN simulations

We present and evaluate HYDRA, a virtualized testbed for realistic large-scale network simulations. While classic simulation tools only provide approximations of the protocol stack, HYDRA virtualizes nodes running a complete Linux system. Mobility models and connection management integrated into HYDRA allow for the simulation of various wireless networking scenarios. Our distributed virtualization approach achieves excellent scalability and the automated node setup makes it easy to deploy large setups with hundreds of nodes. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations are possible, using HYDRA to augment a testbed of real devices. The ability to boot a HYDRA node completely from an USB flash drive enables the user to convert temporarily unused computer resources into a testbed without the need for any complex setup.
The Role of Parental Experience in Entrepreneurship Choice among Adults

Entrepreneurship choice is influenced by a number of contemporaneous variables including household wealth, spouse's education, gender, family composition, and health. Family background is another important factor; in particular whether a parent was involved in entrepreneurship. The long- running Panel Study of Income Dynamics provides an opportunity to examine the influence of parental entrepreneurship, from the 1960s and 1970s, on the entrepreneurship choices of middle-age Americans in the late 2000s. Consistent with previous literature, we find that parental experience is a consistent predictor of entrepreneurship choice for contemporary Americans. Our results, however, shed light in particular on the contribution of parental entrepreneurship when an individual was of school age or a young adult.
AUTOMATED EXTRACTION OF TRAFFIC INFORMATION FROM SATELLITE IMAGERY

The increased availability of high resolution remote sensing imagery has opened up for new opportunities for road traffic monitoring applications. Vehicle detection from satellite images has a potential ability to cover large geographical areas and can provide valuable additional information to traditional ground based equipment. This is especially the case for remote rural roads where ground based counting can be both expensive and difficult. In this paper we present a solution for satellite-based traffic counts intended for such roads. The solution, which is currently under development, aims at covering all steps necessary in the process of extracting this information, and several novel approaches have been developed to achieve this.
Towards a performance interference-aware virtual machine placement strategy for supporting soft real-time applications in the cloud

It is standard practice for cloud service providers (CSPs) to overbook physical system resources to maximize the resource utilization and make their business model more profitable. Resource overbooking can lead to performance interference, however, among the virtual machines (VMs) hosted on the physical resources causing performance unpredictability for soft real-time applications hosted in the VMs, which is unacceptable to these applications. Balancing these conflicting requirements needs a careful design of the placement strategies for hosting soft real-time applications such that the performance interference effects are minimized while still allowing resource overbooking. These placement decisions cannot be made offline because workloads change at run time. Moreover, satisfying the priorities of collocated VMs may require VM migrations, which require an online solution. This paper presents a machine learning-based, online placement solution to this problem where the system is trained using a publicly available trace of a large data center owned by Google. Our approach first classifies the VMs based on their historic mean CPU and memory usage, and performance features. Subsequently, it learns the best patterns of collocating the classified VMs by employing machine learning techniques. These extracted patterns are those that provide the lowest performance interference level on the specified host machines making them amenable to hosting soft real-time applications while still allowing resource overbooking. Keywords-virtual machine placement, cloud computing, performance interference, resource overbooking, application QoS.
The neutral population model and Bayesian nonparametrics

In this paper a widely-studied model in Population Genetics, the so-called Infinitely- Many-Alleles model with neutral mutation, is reinterpreted in terms of a timedependent Bayesian nonparametric statistical model, where the prior of the model is described by the Neutral Fleming-Viot process. A natural likelihood process is introduced such that every collection of k observations, at each time point, is essentially a vector of i.i. d. samples from the state of the Fleming-Viot process at that time. The dynamic properties of the particle process induced by such a likelihood are studied. The Moran model is derived as the marginal distribution of a timedependent sample induced by such a choice of prior and likelihood. The derivation of all results relies on the transition density of the Neutral Fleming-Viot process and on a new representation for the Dirichlet process.
Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 CHAPTER ONE Lies and the Murderer Next Door 5 CHAPTER TWO Duress and Moral Progress 47 CHAPTER THREE A Thinker-Based Approach to Freedom of Speech 79 CHAPTER FOUR Lying and Freedom of Speech 116 CHAPTER FIVE Accommodation, Equality, and the Liar 157 CHAPTER SIX Sincerity and Institutional Values 182 Index 225
Teasing Apart Behavioral Protocols in Longitudinal Self-reported Friendship Networks

How can we effectively model the network-mediated process of social selection in longitudinal friendship? Self-reported measures have long been used as major information sources for tapping people’s behavior. Recent years have witnessed highly cited research pushing this idea further to additionally utilize sensor-based information as means of obtaining fine-grained access to social behavior. While such approaches have been shown to be promising, there is lack of work that comprehensively evaluates the contribution of these two different information sources in decoupling group behavioral dynamics. In an attempt to unleash the combined potential of self-reports and sensor data in understanding social interaction, we utilized multidimensional self-reported survey data along with yearly call, SMS and bluetooth logs from 131 participants. By leveraging a statistical representation capable of encoding simultaneous social processes that mobilize and constrain individuals in a network, our results provide rich insights into behavioral rules that govern the dynamics of friendship among these participants.
Lapatinib, a Dual EGFR and HER2 Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor, Downregulates Thymidylate Synthase by Inhibiting the Nuclear Translocation of EGFR and HER2

Background Epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) has been shown to exert a synergistic antitumor effect when combined with fluoropyrimidine. This synergy may be attributable to the downregulation of thymidylate synthase (TS), which is frequently overexpressed in fluoropyrimidine-resistant cancer cells. However, the molecular mechanism underlying the downregulation of TS has yet to be clearly elucidated. Methodology and Principal Findings In this study, we demonstrate that lapatinib, a dual TKI of EGFR and HER2 downregulates TS via inhibition of the nuclear translocation of EGFR and HER2. From our cDNA microarray experiments, we determined that a variety of nucleotide synthesis-related genes, including TS, were downregulated with lapatinib, and this was apparent in HER2-amplified cells. Targeted and pharmacologic inhibition assays confirmed that the dual inhibition of EGFR and HER2 is required for the more effective reduction of TS as compared to what was observed with gefitinib or trasutuzumab alone. Additionally, we determined that co-transfected EGFR and HER2 activate the TS gene promoter more profoundly than do either EGFR or HER2 alone. The translocation of EGFR and HER2 into the nucleus and the subsequent activation of the TS promoter were inhibited by lapatinib. Conclusions and Significance These results demonstrate that lapatinib inhibits the nuclear translocation of EGFR and HER2 and downregulates TS, thus sensitizing cancer cells to fluoropyrimidine.
Combining optical holograms with interactive computer graphics

Holograms can reconstruct complete optical wavefronts, capturing images that have a three-dimensional appearance and can be observed from different perspectives. Museum exhibits often use optical hologram technology because it permits presentation of 3D objects with almost no loss in visual quality. Optical holograms are static, however, and lack interactivity. Combining 3D computer graphical elements with stereoscopic presentation techniques provides an alternative that allows interactivity.
VCIP135 acts as a deubiquitinating enzyme during p97–p47-mediated reassembly of mitotic Golgi fragments

The AAA-ATPase p97/Cdc48 functions in different cellular pathways using distinct sets of adapters and other cofactors. Together with its adaptor Ufd1–Npl4, it extracts ubiquitylated substrates from the membrane for subsequent delivery to the proteasome during ER-associated degradation. Together with its adaptor p47, on the other hand, it regulates several membrane fusion events, including reassembly of Golgi cisternae after mitosis. The finding of a ubiquitin-binding domain in p47 raises the question as to whether the ubiquitin–proteasome system is also involved in membrane fusion events. Here, we show that p97–p47-mediated reassembly of Golgi cisternae requires ubiquitin, but is not dependent on proteasome-mediated proteolysis. Instead, it requires the deubiquitinating activity of one of its cofactors, VCIP135, which reverses a ubiquitylation event that occurs during mitotic disassembly. Together, these data reveal a cycle of ubiquitylation and deubiquitination that regulates Golgi membrane dynamics during mitosis. Furthermore, they represent the first evidence for a proteasome-independent function of p97/Cdc48.
1D high resolution transient elastography: An optimized elastographic tool for a viscoelastic characterization of thin heterogeneous tissues

Transient elastography (TE) is a parametric technique used to quantify Young's modulus (E) by estimating the shear wave (SW) velocity (Vs) in an homogeneous medium. TE has been successfully integrated in the Fibroscan® device to assess fibrosis stages in the liver. Considering the last as homogeneous and elastic, fibrosis is correlated to averaged E at 50 Hz low vibration. In this poster, we present a preliminary study using a new development in TE dedicated to 1D high resolution (HR) estimation of E in thin, heterogeneous and viscoelastic medium such as the skin. The HR TE targets to offer a new elastographic tool to characterize viscoelatic parameters of the human dermis in dermatology and cosmetology.
The Measurement of Life Satisfaction and Happiness in Old-Old Age

ABSTRACT Happiness and satisfaction with life has emerged as a renewed topic of interest among gerontological investigators. However, the conceptualization of life satisfaction and happiness in advanced later life can present challenges relative to selection of proper measurement instrumentation. This chapter addresses the conceptualization and measurement of life satisfaction and happiness in very old age in three key ways. First, the conceptualization of subjective well-being is addressed in reference to the oldest old. Second, psychometric properties pertaining to past and current use of classical (e.g., Life Satisfaction Index-A), second-generation (e.g., Satisfaction with Life Scale), and domain-specific (e.g., Retirement Satisfaction Index) measures of subjective well-being within old and very old populations is addressed. Third, future directions for the advancement of measurement of subjective well-being in old-old populations are highlighted. INTRODUCTION In Chapter 3, Shmotkin referred to subjective well-being as a “dynamic and flexible agent of adaptation” in old-old age. Gerontologists have a long history of developing quantitative instruments to assess feelings of satisfaction and the pursuit of happiness in later life (Ferraro & Schafer, 2008). Yet reliable and valid psychometric tools to evaluate subjective well-being among exceptionally old adults can be difficult to find. As Fry and Ikels highlighted in Chapter 15, the well-being construct is conceptually sound but often too complex to operationalize. This is a possible explanation for why quantitative assessments of subjective well-being have yielded mixed results.