Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cumulus cells accelerate aging of mouse oocytes by secreting a soluble factor(s)

Control of oocyte aging in vitro is important for both human‐assisted reproduction and animal embryo technologies because fertilization or artificial activation of aged oocytes results in abnormal development. Interactions between somatic and germ cells are also an important issue in current biological research. The role of cumulus cells (CCs) in maturation, ovulation, and fertilization of oocytes has been extensively studied, yet little is known about their role in oocyte aging. Although our previous study has shown that CCs accelerate the aging progression of mouse oocytes, the mechanism by which CCs accelerate oocyte aging is unknown. In this study, cumulus‐denuded mouse oocytes (DOs) were co‐cultured with cumulus‐oocyte complexes (COCs) or CC monolayer or cultured in medium conditioned with these cells and changes in the susceptibility to activating stimuli and in MPF activity of oocytes were evaluated after different aging treatments. The results showed that culture with or in medium conditioned with COCs or CC monolayer promoted activation of DOs, indicating that a soluble factor is responsible for the aging‐promoting effect. The in vivo and in vitro‐matured DOs did not differ in responsiveness to the aging‐promoting factor (APF). Heat shock did not accelerate oocyte aging unless in the presence of CCs. The production of APF was not affected by the age or maturation system of COCs, but increased with their density and duration of culture. The results strongly suggest that CCs accelerated oocyte aging by secreting a soluble APF into the medium. Further analysis showed that the APF was heat labile but stable to freezing, it had a threshold effective concentration and can be depleted by DOs. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 75: 521–528, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cramér-Rao bounds and TX-RX selection in a multistatic radar scenario

Multistatic radars utilize multiple transmitter and receiver sites to provide several different monostatic and bistatic channels of observation. Multistatic passive and active systems can offer many advantages in terms of coverage and accuracy in the estimation of target signal parameters but unfortunately their performances are heavily sensitive to the position of receivers (RX) and transmitters (TX) with respect to the target trajectory. As known, geometry factors play an important role in the shape of the ambiguity function (AF) which is often used to measure the possible global resolution and large error properties of the target parameters estimates. Exploiting the relation between the ambiguity function and the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB), in this work we propose an algorithm for choosing in a multistatic scenario, along the trajectory of the tracked target, the pair TX-RX with the best asymptotic performance calculated in terms of CRLB on estimation accuracy.
Improvement or simply practice? The effects of twenty repeated assessments on people with and without brain injury

Measuring recovery of function may mean testing the same individual many times, a procedure that is inevitably open to improvement due to learning on the specific tests rather than recovery per se. This is particularly likely to be an issue with measures of memory performance. We therefore studied the performance of normal and brain-injured people across 20 successive test sessions on measures of orientation, simple reaction time, forward and backward digit span, visual and verbal recognition, word list learning and forgetting, and on three semantic memory measures, namely, letter and category fluency and speed of semantic processing. Differences in overall performances between the two groups occurred for all tests other than orientation, digit span forward, and simple reaction time, although the tests differed in their degree of sensitivity. The tests varied in the presence or absence of practice effects and in the extent to which these differed between the two groups. Data are presented that should allow investigators to select measures that are likely to optimize sensitivity while minimizing possible confounding due to practice effects. (JINS, 2000, 6, 469–479.)
Colorimetric Analysis of Ochratoxin A in Beverage Samples

This manuscript describes the use of a portable and low cost fluorescence setup to quantify the concentration of ochratoxin A (OTA) in beverage samples using an in-house developed system and different color models. It is reported that OTA is naturally fluorescent, for that reason an ultraviolet light at 365 nm was used to excite the samples and a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) sensor was used to get a photograph of the OTA under excitation conditions, which is controlled by an executable interface designed in MATLAB. For each concentration of OTA, the coordinates with respect to each model color were obtained and plotted to quantify the mycotoxin present in the sample. It was possible to observe that despite the fact no extraction column was employed, the Red, Green, Blue (RGB) model shows a proportional relation to the evaluated concentrations. Despite the fact more analysis and other methods are required to quantify the OTA concentration, the brightness and a,b for the color-opponent dimensions (L*a*b) and Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) tests provide results whereby it is possible to identify the concentration of OTA in beverage samples such as beer and wine.
Black-box non-black-box zero knowledge

Motivated by theoretical and practical interest, the challenging task of designing cryptographic protocols having only black-box access to primitives has generated various breakthroughs in the last decade. Despite such positive results, even though nowadays we know black-box constructions for secure two-party and multi-party computation even in constant rounds, there still are in Cryptography several constructions that critically require non-black-box use of primitives in order to securely realize some fundamental tasks. As such, the study of the gap between black-box and nonblack-box constructions still includes major open questions. In this work we make progress towards filling the above gap. We consider the case of black-box constructions for computations requiring that even the size of the input of a player remains hidden. We show how to commit to a string of arbitrary size and to prove statements over the bits of the string. Both the commitment and the proof are succinct, hide the input size and use standard primitives in a blackbox way. We achieve such a result by giving a black-box construction of an extendable Merkle tree that relies on a novel use of the "MPC in the head" paradigm of Ishai et al. [STOC 2007]. We show the power of our new techniques by giving the first black-box constant-round public-coin zero knowledge argument for NP. To achieve this result we use the nonblack-box simulation technique introduced by Barak [FOCS 2001], the PCP of Proximity introduced by Ben-Sasson et al. [STOC 2004], together with a black-box public-coin witness indistinguishable universal argument that we construct along the way.
Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Concentrations in Amniotic Fluid, Biomarkers of Fetal Leydig Cell Function, and Cryptorchidism and Hypospadias in Danish Boys (1980–1996)

Background Exposure to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) may potentially disturb fetal Leydig cell hormone production and male genital development. Objectives We aimed to study the associations between levels of amniotic fluid PFOS, fetal steroid hormone, and insulin-like factor 3 (INSL3) and the prevalence of cryptorchidism and hypospadias. Methods Using the Danish National Patient Registry, we selected 270 cryptorchidism cases, 75 hypospadias cases, and 300 controls with stored maternal amniotic fluid samples available in a Danish pregnancy-screening biobank (1980–1996). We used mass spectrometry to measure PFOS in amniotic fluid from 645 persons and steroid hormones in samples from 545 persons. INSL3 was measured by immunoassay from 475 persons. Associations between PFOS concentration in amniotic fluid, hormone levels, and genital malformations were assessed by confounder-adjusted linear and logistic regression. Results The highest tertile of PFOS exposure (> 1.4 ng/mL) in amniotic fluid was associated with a 40% (95% CI: –69, –11%) lower INSL3 level and an 18% (95% CI: 7, 29%) higher testosterone level compared with the lowest tertile (< 0.8 ng/mL). Amniotic fluid PFOS concentration was not associated with cryptorchidism or hypospadias. Conclusions Environmental PFOS exposure was associated with steroid hormone and INSL3 concentrations in amniotic fluid, but was not associated with cryptorchidism or hypospadias in our study population. Additional studies are needed to determine whether associations with fetal hormone levels may have long-term implications for reproductive health. Citation Toft G, Jönsson BA, Bonde JP, Nørgaard-Pedersen B, Hougaard DM, Cohen A, Lindh CH, Ivell R, Anand-Ivell R, Lindhard MS. 2016. Perfluorooctane sulfonate concentrations in amniotic fluid, biomarkers of fetal Leydig cell function, and cryptorchidism and hypospadias in Danish boys (1980–1996). Environ Health Perspect 124:151–156; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1409288
Regional frequency analysis of maximum daily rainfalls using TL-Moment approach

Analyzing rainfalls data are important in order to obtain the probability distribution of flood. The main aim of the study is to perform regional frequency analysis of maximum daily rainfalls measured over stations in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur by using the TL-moment method with t = 0, t = 1 and t = 2. Initially, the maximum of each daily rainfall for each year were obtained. Then, parameters of every distributions considered including the normal (N), logistic (LOG), generalized logistic (GLO), extreme value type I (EV), generalized extreme value (GEV) and generalized Pareto (GPA) distribution were estimated using TL-moment approach. TL-moments with t = 0 are known as L-moments while TL-moments with and imply TLmoments that are symmetrically trimmed by one and two conceptual sample values respectively. The most suitable distribution were determined according to the mean absolute deviation index (MADI), mean square deviation index (MSDI) and correlation, r. L-moment and TL-moment ratio diagrams provided visual proofs of the results. The L-moment method showed that the generalized logistic (GLO) distribution is the best distribution whilst TL-moment method with t = 1 and t = 2 concluded that the extreme value type I (EV) and generalized extreme value (GEV) distributions are the most suitable distributions to fit the data of maximum daily rainfalls for stations in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.
Switching logic synthesis for reachability

We consider the problem of driving a system from some initial configuration to a desired configuration while avoiding some unsafe configurations. The system to be controlled is a dynamical system that can operate in different modes. The goal is to synthesize the logic for switching between the modes so that the desired reachability property holds. In this paper, we first present a sound and complete inference rule for proving reachability properties of single mode continuous dynamical systems. Next, we present an inference rule for proving controlled reachability in multi-modal continuous dynamical systems. From a constructive proof of controlled reachability, we show how to synthesize the desired switching logic. We show that our synthesis procedure is sound and produces only non-zeno hybrid systems. In practice, we perform a constructive proof of controlled reachability by solving an Exists-Forall formula in the theory of reals. We present an approach for solving such formulas that combines symbolic and numeric solvers. We demonstrate our approach on some examples. All results extend naturally to the case when, instead of reachability, interest is in until properties.
Crossing the Line: Crowd Counting by Integer Programming with Local Features

We propose an integer programming method for estimating the instantaneous count of pedestrians crossing a line of interest in a video sequence. Through a line sampling process, the video is first converted into a temporal slice image. Next, the number of people is estimated in a set of overlapping sliding windows on the temporal slice image, using a regression function that maps from local features to a count. Given that count in a sliding window is the sum of the instantaneous counts in the corresponding time interval, an integer programming method is proposed to recover the number of pedestrians crossing the line of interest in each frame. Integrating over a specific time interval yields the cumulative count of pedestrian crossing the line. Compared with current methods for line counting, our proposed approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on several challenging crowd video datasets.
Community-Aware Prediction of Virality Timing Using Big Data of Social Cascades

Predicting the virality of contents is attractive for many applications in today's big data era. Previous works mostly focus on final popularity, but predicting the time at which content gets popular (virality timing), is essential for applications such as viral marketing. This work proposes a community-aware iterative algorithm to predict virality timing of contents in social media using big data of user dynamics in social cascades and community structure in social networks. From the continuously generated big data, the algorithm uses the increasing amount of data to make self-corrections on the virality timing prediction and improve its prediction. Experimental results on viral stories from a social network, Digg, prove that the proposed algorithm is able to predict virally timing effectively, with the prediction error bounded within 30% with 20% of data.
Mapping and assessing coastal resilience in the Caribbean region

Assessing the vulnerability and resilience to coastal hazards is a critical worldwide issue, especially for hurricane-prone coastal regions such as the Caribbean. However, the development of a useful metric for vulnerability and resilience assessment has a lot of challenges. Cartography and GIS analysis can contribute effectively to the solution of the issue by integrating natural and human data layers for assessment, mapping, and visualization. This paper uses the new Resilience Inference Measurement (RIM) model to assess the resilience of 25 countries in the Caribbean region to hurricanes. The RIM indices of the countries were computed using three variables representing three dimensions: exposure, damage, and recovery, and eight variables representing social-environmental capacity. The RIM resilience indices were mapped and compared with the vulnerability indices computed in a previous study. The results show that Turks & Caicos Islands had the highest resilience, whereas Montserrat had the lowest. This paper contributes to the hazard literature by demonstrating new vulnerability and resilience assessment methodologies that include validation and enable inference. The paper also contributes to the cartography and GIS literature by demonstrating the need to integrate data and perspectives from multiple disciplines and regions, as well as the ability of geospatial technology, in producing useful decision-making tools for a very pressing societal problem.
Seafloor structure near the epicenter of the great 25 March 1998 Antarctic Plate earthquake

The great Antarctic Plate earthquake (M 8.1) that took place on 25 March 1998 was one of the largest oceanic intraplate strike‐slip events ever recorded, but the cause of the earthquake is still unclear. Detailed marine geophysical surveys were conducted near the epicenter of the earthquake, and the results of swath bathymetry and the magnetic and gravity anomalies are presented. The data revealed the detailed structure of a seamount just south of the epicenter of the main shock. Two possible structures, which may represent the faults of the Antarctic Plate earthquake during the first subevent, were inferred from the geophysical data collected during the cruise by taking the uncertainties in the location of the epicenter and the distribution of the aftershocks into account, and the foot of the north‐side escarpment of the seamount may indicate the main fault of the first strike‐slip subevent of the Antarctic Plate earthquake. The north‐side escarpment of the seamount was most likely formed before the Antarctic Plate earthquake, indicating that the earthquake occurred along preexisting structures. The magnetic anomaly and structural trends near the seamount are different from those in adjacent areas, and the area near the seamount is likely a block that was captured during ridge reorganization. Moreover, the area near the seamount may be a crustal fragment that was formed during initial rifting between Antarctica and Australia.
Audio signal segmentation and classification for scene-cut detection

A scene is regarded as a basic unit of audiovisual material, and thereby the boundaries between two adjacent scenes, which are called scene-cuts, must be detected in advance for audiovisual indexing. This paper proposes a scene-cut detection method. Since scene-cuts are associated with a simultaneous change of visual and audio characteristics, both audio and visual analyses are required for the scene-cut detection. For the audio signal analysis, the proposed method utilizes an audio signal segmentation and classification method using fuzzy c-means clustering, which has been proposed by the authors. For the visual signal analysis, the proposed method utilizes some visual segmentation methods. By using these methods simultaneously, the proposed method can accurately detect the scene-cuts, and thereby it is highly valuable for the preprocessing for audiovisual indexing. Experimental results performed by applying the proposed method to real audiovisual material are shown to verify its high performance.
Manifestation of Charged and Strained Graphene Layers in the Raman Response of Graphite Intercalation Compounds

We present detailed multifrequency resonant Raman measurements of potassium graphite intercalation compounds (GICs). From a well-controlled and consecutive in situ intercalation and high-temperature deintercalation approach the response of each stage up to stage VI is identified. The positions of the G and 2D lines as a function of staging depend on the charge transfer from K to the graphite layers and on the lattice expansion. Ab initio calculations of the density and the electronic band structure demonstrate that most (but not all) of the transferred charge remains on the graphene sheets adjacent to the intercalant layers. This leads to an electronic decoupling of these “outer” layers from the ones sandwiched between carbon layers and consequently to a decoupling of the corresponding Raman spectra. Thus, higher stage GICs offer the possibility to measure the vibrations of single, double, and multilayer graphene under conditions of biaxial strain. This strain can additionally be correlated to the in-plane lattice constants of GICs determined by X-ray diffraction. The outcome of this study demonstrates that Raman spectroscopy is a very powerful tool to identify local internal strain in pristine and weakly charged single and few-layer graphene and their composites, yielding even absolute lattice constants.
Core-network method of empirical research in industrial cluster

Our paper aims to explain how core-network method is valid for the empirical study of cluster network evolution. To be a complex adaptive system, industrial cluster is characterized by its complicated relationship among different kind of organizations within the cluster. However, it is nearly impossible to get the whole-network data through traditional field-survey method not only for the high budget and time limited, but also for the dynamics during cluster evolving process. Therefore, in this paper we try to find the core-network to be an alternative one for empirical study of the cluster. We first put forward the algorithm of core-network and then examine its validity by comparing core-network to whole-network through five statistical indexes including cluster coefficient, average degree, average path length, time efficiency and quality of network, which are borrowed from complex network domain. Finally, the limitation of core-network method and its further research are provided.
Games for controls

We argue that games are expressive enough to encompass (history-based) access control, (resource) usage control (e.g., dynamic adaptive access control of reputation systems), accountability based controls (e.g., insurance), controls derived from rationality assumptions on participants (e.g., network mechanisms), and their composition. Building on the extensive research into games, we demonstrate that this expressive power coexists with a formal analysis framework comparable to that available for access control
On the Distribution of Firing Rates in Networks of Cortical Neurons

The distribution of in vivo average firing rates within local cortical networks has been reported to be highly skewed and long tailed. The distribution of average single-cell inputs, conversely, is expected to be Gaussian by the central limit theorem. This raises the issue of how a skewed distribution of firing rates might result from a symmetric distribution of inputs. We argue that skewed rate distributions are a signature of the nonlinearity of the in vivo f–I curve. During in vivo conditions, ongoing synaptic activity produces significant fluctuations in the membrane potential of neurons, resulting in an expansive nonlinearity of the f–I curve for low and moderate inputs. Here, we investigate the effects of single-cell and network parameters on the shape of the f–I curve and, by extension, on the distribution of firing rates in randomly connected networks.
ON TESTING FOR DRUG/CHEMICAL INTERACTIONS: DEFINITIONS AND INFERENCE

The notion of zero interaction in the statistical literature is not always equivalent to what is found in the toxicology literature. A discussion about when they are the same is provided here. Design issues are of paramount importance in the analysis of drug combinations (mixtures of chemicals) when the number of constituents in the combination is larger than, say, three as the usual factorial designs are not feasible. An economical design necessary and sufficient to support the estimation of an additivity model is single drug (chemical) dose-response data. Once estimated, the additivity surface can be used to make comparisons to the observed data at combination points of interest. Examples are provided to demonstrate the methods.
Effects of speech practice on fast mapping in monolingual and bilingual speakers.

PURPOSE This study examines the effects of the levels of speech practice on fast mapping in monolingual and bilingual speakers. METHOD Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual and 30 Spanish-English bilingual young adults. Each participant was randomly assigned to 1 of 3 practice conditions prior to the fast-mapping task: (a) intensive speech practice, (b) moderate speech practice, or (c) no practice. In a fast-mapping experiment, each participant was briefly exposed to novel objects and their corresponding novel words. Participants' knowledge of the target novel words was assessed immediately after the exposures. RESULTS There were significant effects of speech practice on fast mapping for both monolingual and bilingual adults. It is important to note that participants' language experience also played a role in their fast-mapping performance. CONCLUSION The findings suggest that speech practice, interacting with language experience, facilitates the processes for fast mapping.