Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘Fundamental Plane’-like relations from collisionless stellar dynamics: a comparison of mergers and collapses

We present a new set of dissipationless N-body simulations aiming to better understand the pure dynamical aspects of the “Fundamental Plane” (FP) of elliptical galaxies. We have extended our previous hierarchical merger scheme by considering the Hernquist profile for the initial galaxy model. Two-component Hernquist galaxy models were also used to study the effect of massive dark halos on the end-products characteristics. We have also performed new collapse simulations including initial spin. We found that the one-component Hernquist mergers give results similar to those found for the one-component King models, namely both were able to build-up small scatter FP-like correlations with slopes consistent with what is found for the near-infrared FP of nearby galaxies. The two-component models also reproduce a FP-like correlation, but with a significantly steeper slope. This is in agreement with what has been found for elliptical galaxies at higher redshift (0.1 < z < 0.6). We discuss some structural properties of the simulated galaxies and their ability to build-up FP-like correlations. We confirm that collapses generally do not follow a FP-like correlation regardless of the initial spin. We suggest that the evolution of gradients in the gravitational field of the merging galaxies may be the main ingredient dictating the final non-homology property of the end products.
Where's Waldo?: Geosocial Search over Myriad Geotagged Posts

The myriad geotagged posts in the social media constitute a vibrant information source that can be used to support geosocial search, that is, a search for geographic locations based on user activities in online social networks and microblogging platforms. Unlike a traditional geographic search, the results of a geosocial search are not restricted to predefined entities, and may reflect events, sentiments, and other matters that are expressed in the social media. A search for "jogging", for instance, will indicate popular jogging places. A search for "4-th of July Fireworks" would point out places where people watch the spectacle and tweet about it. Yet, geosocial search is different from ordinary Web search because there is no natural partition of the space into documents. There is a need to find new ways to effectively rank, filter, and present results. In this paper, we introduce a novel two-step search process of first, quickly finding relevant areas by using an arbitrarily indexed partition of the space, and second, applying clustering to the geotagged posts in the discovered areas, to present more accurate results. We propose and compare four different ranking measures for evaluating the relevance of an area to a given query. Our experiments, over a dataset of more than 40 million geotagged posts, illustrate the effectiveness of geosocial search, e.g., for finding events, or in a search based on a sentiment, in comparison to ordinary geographic search. Online search is supported by a partition-aware inverted index. Using the index, results are retrieved in a fraction of a second over millions of posts, even on a single standard machine.
Loss of Follow-Up in Orthopaedic Trauma: Is 80% Follow-Up Still Acceptable?

Background: Loss of follow-up represents a potential source of bias. Suggested guidelines propose 20% loss of follow-up as acceptable. However, these guidelines have not been established through scientific investigations. The goal of this study was to evaluate how loss of follow-up influences the statistical significance in a trauma database. Methods: A database of 637 polytrauma patients with an average follow-up of 17.5 years postinjury was used. The functional outcome of workers' compensation patients versus nonworkers' compensation patients was compared using a validated scoring system. A significant difference between the 2 groups was found (P < 0.05). We simulated a gradually increasing loss of follow-up by randomly deleting an increasing number of patients from 2%, 5%, and 10%, and then increasing in increments of 5% until the significance changed. This process was repeated 50 times, each time with a different electronic random generator. For each simulation series, we documented at which simulated loss of follow-up that the results turned from significant (P < 0.05) to nonsignificant (P > 0.05). Results: Among 50 simulation series, the turning point from significant to nonsignificant varied between 15% and 75% loss of follow-up. A simulated loss of follow-up of 10% did not change the statistical significance in any of the simulation series; a simulated loss of follow-up of 20% changed the statistical significance in 28% of our simulation series. Conclusions: A loss of follow-up of 20% or less may frequently change the study results. Researchers should establish protocols to minimize loss of follow-up and clearly state the loss of follow-up in manuscript publications.
Differential Antifungal and Calcium Channel-Blocking Activity among Structurally Related Plant Defensins1[w]

Plant defensins are a family of small Cys-rich antifungal proteins that play important roles in plant defense against invading fungi. Structures of several plant defensins share a Cys-stabilized α/β-motif. Structural determinants in plant defensins that govern their antifungal activity and the mechanisms by which they inhibit fungal growth remain unclear. Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) seed defensin, MsDef1, strongly inhibits the growth of Fusarium graminearum in vitro, and its antifungal activity is markedly reduced in the presence of Ca2+. By contrast, MtDef2 from Medicago truncatula, which shares 65% amino acid sequence identity with MsDef1, lacks antifungal activity against F. graminearum. Characterization of the in vitro antifungal activity of the chimeras containing portions of the MsDef1 and MtDef2 proteins shows that the major determinants of antifungal activity reside in the carboxy-terminal region (amino acids 31–45) of MsDef1. We further define the active site by demonstrating that the Arg at position 38 of MsDef1 is critical for its antifungal activity. Furthermore, we have found for the first time, to our knowledge, that MsDef1 blocks the mammalian L-type Ca2+ channel in a manner akin to a virally encoded and structurally unrelated antifungal toxin KP4 from Ustilago maydis, whereas structurally similar MtDef2 and the radish (Raphanus sativus) seed defensin Rs-AFP2 fail to block the L-type Ca2+ channel. From these results, we speculate that the two unrelated antifungal proteins, KP4 and MsDef1, have evolutionarily converged upon the same molecular target, whereas the two structurally related antifungal plant defensins, MtDef2 and Rs-AFP2, have diverged to attack different targets in fungi.
Intraneuronal delivery of protein kinase C pseudosubstrate leads to growth cone collapse

Axonal navigation during development requires that cues present in the extracellular environment be capable of modifying the structure of the cone in a dynamic way. Protein kinase C (PKC) has long been suspected to be one of the multiple molecular relays present in the terminal structure of the developing axon and involved in the transduction of extracellular signals. The latter proposal is, however, based on the use of drugs or of protocols leading to pleiotropic and often nonspecific effects. In the present study, we have taken advantage of the discovery of a peptide capable of translocating across biological membranes and to accumulate in the cytoplasm and nucleus of cells in culture, to internalize a highly specific peptidic inhibitor of PKC. We demonstrate that linking the two peptides (vector and PKC inhibitor) allows the internalization of the latter in live cells, specifically inhibits PKC and provokes a rapid modification of growth cone morphology. This set of data thus establishes that a peptidic inhibitor of PKC activity, once internalized, provokes a change in growth cone morphology, reminiscent of the collapse phenotype. In addition, the present study describes a new efficient and harmless way to introduce pharmacologically active substances in neural cells in culture.
Dynamically discovering likely program invariants

This dissertation introduces dynamic detection of program invariants, presents techniques for detecting such invariants from traces, assesses the techniques' efficacy, and points the way for future research. Invariants are valuable in many aspects of program development, including design, coding, verification, testing, optimization, and maintenance. They also enhance programmers' understanding of data structures, algorithms, and program operation. Unfortunately, explicit invariants are usually absent from programs, depriving programmers and automated tools of their benefits. This dissertation shows how invariants can be dynamically detected from program traces that capture variable values at program points of interest. The user runs the target program over a test suite to create the traces, and an invariant detector determines which properties and relationships hold over both explicit variables and other expressions. Properties that hold over the traces and also satisfy other tests, such as being statistically justified, not being over unrelated variables, and not being implied by other reported invariants, are reported as likely invariants. Like other dynamic techniques such as testing, the quality of the output depends in part on the comprehensiveness of the test suite. If the test suite is inadequate, then the output indicates how, permitting its improvement. Dynamic analysis complements static techniques, which can be made sound but for which certain program constructs remain beyond the state of the art. Experiments demonstrate a number of positive qualities of dynamic invariant detection and of a prototype implementation, Daikon. Invariant detection is accurate—it rediscovers formal specifications—and useful—it assists programmers in programming tasks. It runs quickly and produces output of modest size. Test suites found in practice tend to be adequate for dynamic invariant detection.
Cdk2-dependent Phosphorylation of Homeobox Transcription Factor CDX2 Regulates Its Nuclear Translocation and Proteasome-mediated Degradation in Human Intestinal Epithelial Cells*

By having demonstrated previously that p27Kip1, a potent inhibitor of G1 cyclin-cyclin-dependent kinases complexes, increases markedly during intestinal epithelial cell differentiation, we examined the effect of p27Kip1 on the activity of the transcription factor CDX2. The present results revealed the following. 1) p27Kip1 interacts with the CDX2 transcription factor. 2) In contrast to CDX2 mRNA levels, CDX2 protein expression levels significantly increased as soon as Caco-2/15 cells reached confluence, slowed their proliferation, and began their differentiation. The mechanism of CDX2 regulation is primarily related to protein stability, because inhibition of proteasome activity increased CDX2 levels. The half-life of CDX2 protein was significantly enhanced in differentiated versus undifferentiated proliferative intestinal epithelial cells. 3) Cdk2 interacted with CDX2 and phosphorylated CDX2, as determined by pull-down glutathione S-transferase and immunoprecipitation experiments with proliferating undifferentiated Caco-2/15 cell extracts. 4) Treatment of Caco-2/15 cells with MG132 (a proteasome inhibitor) and (R)-roscovitine (a specific Cdk2 inhibitor) induced an increase in CDX2 protein levels. 5) Conversely, ectopic expression of Cdk2 resulted in decreased expression of CDX2 protein. 6) Of note, treatment of proliferative Caco-2/15 cells with (R)-roscovitine or leptomycin (an inhibitor of nuclear export through CRM1) led to an accumulation of CDX2 into the nucleus. These data suggest that CDX2 undergoes CRM1-dependent nuclear export and cytoplasmic degradation in cells in which Cdk2 is activated, such as in proliferative intestinal epithelial cells. The targeted degradation of CDX2 following its phosphorylation by Cdk2 identifies a new mechanism through which CDX2 activity can be regulated in coordination with the cell cycle machinery.
Non-contact ACL injuries in female athletes: an International Olympic Committee current concepts statement

The incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury remains high in young athletes. Because female athletes have a much higher incidence of ACL injuries in sports such as basketball and team handball than male athletes, the IOC Medical Commission invited a multidisciplinary group of ACL expert clinicians and scientists to (1) review current evidence including data from the new Scandinavian ACL registries; (2) critically evaluate high-quality studies of injury mechanics; (3) consider the key elements of successful prevention programmes; (4) summarise clinical management including surgery and conservative management; and (5) identify areas for further research. Risk factors for female athletes suffering ACL injury include: (1) being in the preovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle compared with the postovulatory phase; (2) having decreased intercondylar notch width on plain radiography; and (3) developing increased knee abduction moment (a valgus intersegmental torque) during impact on landing. Well-designed injury prevention programmes reduce the risk of ACL for athletes, particularly women. These programmes attempt to alter dynamic loading of the tibiofemoral joint through neuromuscular and proprioceptive training. They emphasise proper landing and cutting techniques. This includes landing softly on the forefoot and rolling back to the rearfoot, engaging knee and hip flexion and, where possible, landing on two feet. Players are trained to avoid excessive dynamic valgus of the knee and to focus on the “knee over toe position” when cutting.
A framework for service quality assurance using event correlation techniques

Due to the increasing use of service level agreements for the provisioning of IT services, providers have to ensure that the guarantees for the quality of their offered services, expressed by quality of service parameters, are met. These guarantees are endangered by resource malfunctions in the provider's infrastructure or quality degradations of services which are supplied by subproviders. To optimize the resolution of customer reports about service quality degradations affecting the quality guarantees we propose to apply event correlation techniques. In this paper we present a framework for this new kind of event correlation which is called service-oriented event correlation. The framework bridges the gap between the management of the infrastructure and the offer of services for the customers with respect to the service fault diagnosis. The application of event correlation approaches in the framework is examined in detail.
Cuckoo: Layered Clustering for NFS

Abstract : Layered clustering allows unmodified distributed file systems to enjoy many of the benefits of cluster-based file services. By interposing between clients and servers, layered clustering requires no changes to clients, servers, or the client-server protocol. Cuckoo demonstrates one particular use of layered clustering: spreading load among a set of otherwise independent NFS servers. Specifically, Cuckoo replicates frequently read, rarely updated files from each server onto others. When one server has a queue of requests, read requests to its replicated files are offloaded to other servers. No client-server protocol changes are involved. Sitting between clients and servers, the Cuckoo interposer simply modifies selected fields of NFS requests and responses. Cuckoo provides this load shedding with about 2000 semicolons of C code. Further, analyses of NFS traces indicate that replicating only 1000-10,000 objects allows 42% to 77% of all operations to be offloaded.
Comparing Human and Machine Performance for Natural Language Information Extraction: Results for English Microelectronics From the MUC-5 Evaluation

In evaluating the state of technology for extracting information from natural language text by machine, it is valuable to compare the performance of machine extraction systems with that achieved by humans performing the same task. The purpose of this paper is to present some results from a comparative study of human and machine performance for one of the information extraction tasks used in the MUC-5/Tipster evaluation that can help assess the maturity and applicability of the technology.
Scalable graph analyzing approach for software fault-localization

In this paper, a new approach for analyzing program behavioral graphs to detect fault relevant paths is presented. The existing graph mining approaches for bug localization merely detect discriminative sub-graphs between failing and passing runs. However, they are not applicable when the context of a failure is not appeared in a discriminative pattern. In our proposed method, the suspicious transitions are identified by contrasting nearest neighbor failing and passing dynamic behavioral graphs. For finding similar failing and passing graphs, we first convert the graphs into adequate vectors. Then, a combination of Jacard-Cosine similarity measures is applied to identify the nearest graphs. The new scoring formula takes advantage of null hypothesis testing for ranking weighted transitions. The main advantage of the proposed technique is its scalability which makes it work on large and complex programs with huge number of predicates. Another main capability of our approach is providing the faulty paths constructed from fault suspicious transitions. Considering the weighted execution graphs in the analysis enables us to find those types of bugs which reveal themselves in specific number of transitions between two particular predicates. The experimental results on Siemens test suite and Space program manifest the effectiveness of the proposed method on weighted execution graphs for locating bugs in comparison with other methods.
Twenty-Four Hours of Mild Hypothermia in Unsedated Newborn Pigs Starting after a Severe Global Hypoxic-Ischemic Insult Is Not Neuroprotective

Three to 12 h of mild hypothermia (HT) starting after hypoxia-ischemia is neuroprotective in piglets that are anesthetized during HT. Newborn infants suffering from neonatal encephalopathy often ventilate spontaneously and are not necessarily sedated. We aimed to test whether mild posthypoxic HT lasting 24 h was neuroprotective if the animals were not sedated. Thirty-nine piglets (median weight 1.6 kg, range 0.8–2.2 kg; median age 24 h, range 7–48 h) were anesthetized and ventilated and subjected to a 45-min hypoxic (Fio2 ∼ 6%) global insult (n = 36) or sham hypoxia (n = 3). On reoxygenation, 18 were maintained normothermic (NT, 39.0°C) for 72 h, and 21 were cooled from 39 (NT) to 35°C (HT) for the first 24 h before NT was resumed (18 experimental, three sham hypoxia). Cardiovascular parameters and intermittent EEG were documented throughout. The brain was perfusion fixed for neuropathology and five main areas examined using light microscopy. The insult severity (duration in minutes of EEG amplitude < 7μV) was similar in the NT and HT groups, mean ± SD (28 ± 7.2 versus 27 ± 8.6 min), as was the mean Fio2 (5.9 ± 0.7 versus 5.8 ± 0.8%) during the insult. Six NT and seven HT piglets developed posthypoxic seizures that lasted 29 and 30% of the time, respectively. The distribution and degree of injury (0.0–4.0, normal-maximal damage) within the brain (hippocampus, cortex/white matter, cerebellum, basal ganglia, thalamus) were similar in the NT and HT groups (overall score, mean ± SD, 2.3 ± 1.5 versus 2.4 ± 1.3) as was the EEG background amplitude at 3 h (13 ± 3.5 versus 10 ± 3.3 μV). The HT animals shivered and were more active. The sham control group (n = 3) shivered but had normal physiology and neuropathology. Plasma cortisol was significantly higher in the HT group during the HT period, 766 ± 277 versus 244 ± 144 μM at 24 h. Mild postinsult HT for 24 h was not neuroprotective in unsedated piglets and did not reduce the number of animals that developed posthypoxic seizures. Cortisol reached 3 times the NT value at the end of HT. We speculate that the stress of shivering and feeling cold interfered with the previously shown neuroprotective effect of HT. Research on the appropriateness of sedation during clinical HT is urgent.
Efficient identification of mental health problems in refugees in Germany: the Refugee Health Screener

ABSTRACT Background: A substantial number of refugees present with mental disorders. This appears particularly acute in the currently increasing refugee populations in Europe. Although EU guidelines demand the identification and support of vulnerable individuals such as survivors of trauma, no adequately validated and comprehensive mental health screening instruments for refugees residing in Europe currently exist. Objective: We studied the feasibility, validity, and reliability of the Refugee Health Screener-15 (RHS-15) – a time-efficient and easy-to-implement screening developed by Hollifield et al. (2013) – as a self-rating and interview instrument. Methods: A sample of refugees from different countries (N = 86), representative of those who had arrived around the turn of the year 2015/2016 in Germany, filled in the RHS-15 on their own. A semi-structured clinical interview was later conducted with a random subsample (n = 56). Results: Fifty-two percent of the refugees examined screened positive in the RHS-15, thus indicating current mental health problems. The RHS-15 showed a good feasibility, reliability, and validity in both the self-rating and the interview version. It detected clinically relevant mental health problems when PTSD, depression, anxiety, or somatization problems were present. A shorter 13-item version proved to be equally valid. Conclusions: Together with previous research on the RHS in refugees living in the US, this suggests that the RHS is a time-efficient and accurate instrument that is able to detect common mental health problems in a wide range of refugees. Prospectively, the RHS could be used as an instrument for identifying vulnerable refugees, for example, by integrating it in the initial medical examination in the host community, thereby initiating support.
A style capturing approach to F0 transformation in voice conversion

In this paper, we present a new approach to F0 transformation, that can capture aspects of speaking style. Instead of using the traditional 5ms frames as units in transformation, we propose a method that looks at longer phonological regions such as metrical feet. We automatically detect metrical feet in the source speech, and for each of source speaker's feet, we find its phonological correspondence in target speech. We use a statistical phrase accent model to represent the F0 contour, where a 4-dimensional TILT representation is used for the F0 is parameterized over each feet region for the source and target speakers. This forms the parallel data that is the training data for our transformation. We transform the phrase component using simple z-score mapping. We use a joint density Gaussian mixture model to transform the accent contours. Our transformation method generates F0 contours that are significantly more correlated with the target speech than a baseline, frame-based method.
Learning Robot Control

Learning robot control, a subclass of the field of learning control, refers to the process of acquiring a sensory-motor control strategy for a particular movement task and movement system by trial and error. Learning control is usually distinguished from adaptive control (see ADAPTIVE CONTROL) in that the learning system is permitted to fail during the process of learning, while adaptive control emphasizes single trial convergence without failure. Thus, learning control resembles the way that humans and animals acquire new movement strategies, while adaptive control is a special case of learning control that fulfills stringent performance constraints, e.g., as needed in life-critical systems like airplanes and industrial robots.