Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Endurance Exercise on Cerebral and Muscle Oxygenation

It has been suggested that during exhaustive exercise both a central and peripheral mechanism of fatigue exists. Indeed, a central debate in the exercise science literature is the nature of fatigue that determines exercise performance under different conditions (Swart et al., 2009a). Hypoxia, for example, has a small but direct role on the cessation of exercise, specifically during endurance performances (Millet, Aubert, Favier, Busso, & Benoit, 2008; Secher, Seifert, & Van Lieshout, 2008). Numerous studies to date have provided new information related to the factors implicated in short-term high intensity exercise, while more studies of a longer nature (endurance time trials), measuring central and peripheral fatigue factors simultaneously, and under hypoxic conditions, are needed to add additional information to guide our understanding of the mechanisms involved in central and peripheral fatigue. This thesis represents a contribution to the much needed research within this area. Four key papers, separated into four chapters, discuss this research in this thesis. To investigate these effects, an integrative physiological approach was used by including muscle and cerebral oxygenation changes (NIRS), cardiovascular and pulmonary responses and blood biochemistry during cycling exercise in a normoxic and hypoxic environment. The primary inference of this thesis is that in hypoxia the brain is protected and the muscle is in need of a similar oxygenation and extraction to do less work; a finding that contributes to the support of previous speculations in the literature. A secondary inference of this thesis is that a difference in the pattern of oxygenation between continuous and incremental exercise exists; a finding that has not been previously identified in the literature. The findings from this study have therefore furthered our understanding of the nature of fatigue, specifically in endurance exercise
Intensive Behavioral Intervention in a School Setting for Ten Years

The current study presents case studies of two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who received an intensive behavioral intervention in a school setting for ten years. The participants received intensive applied behavior analysis within the Comprehensive Application of Behavior Analysis to Schooling (CABAS®) system following curricular objectives from an empirically validated assessment tool and curriculum, the Preschool Inventory of Repertoires for Kindergarten (PIRK®). An initial PIRK® assessment was carried out when the children entered the school setting and this was followed-up at three years and ten years. Progress was measured by the completion of PIRK® objectives and was described in terms of academic skills, communication skills, social skills, self-help skills, play skills and physical development skills.
Discriminatively Trained Acoustic Model for Improving Mispronunciation Detection and Diagnosis in Computer Aided Pronunciation Training ( CAPT )

In this study, we propose a discriminative training algorithm to jointly minimize mispronunciation detection errors (i.e., false rejection and false acceptances) and diagnosis errors (i.e., correctly pinpointing mispronunciations but incorrectly stating how they are wrong). An optimization procedure, similar to Minimum Word Error (MWE) discriminative training, is developed to refine the ML-trained HMMs. The errors to be minimized are obtained by comparing transcribed training utterances (including mispronunciations) with Extended Recognition Networks [3] which contain both canonical pronunciations and explicitly modeled mispronunciations. The ERN is compiled by handcrafted rules, or data-driven rules. Several conclusions can be drawn from the experiments: (1) data-driven rules are more effective than hand-crafted ones in capturing mispronunciations; (2) compared with the ML training baseline, discriminative training can reduce false rejections and diagnostic errors, though false acceptances increase slightly due to a small number of false-acceptance samples in the training set.
Declarative cartography: In-database map generalization of geospatial datasets

Creating good maps is the challenge of map generalization. An important generalization method is selecting subsets of the data to be shown at different zoom-levels of a zoomable map, subject to a set of spatial constraints. Applying these constraints serves the dual purpose of increasing the information quality of the map and improving the performance of data transfer and rendering. Unfortunately, with current tools, users must explicitly specify which objects to show at each zoom level of their map, while keeping their application constraints implicit. This paper introduces a novel declarative approach to map generalization based on a language called CVL, the Cartographic Visualization Language. In contrast to current tools, users declare application constraints and object importance in CVL, while leaving the selection of objects implicit. In order to compute an explicit selection of objects, CVL scripts are translated into an algorithmic search task. We show how this translation allows for reuse of existing algorithms from the optimization literature, while at the same time supporting fully pluggable, user-defined constraints and object weight functions. In addition, we show how to evaluate CVL entirely inside a relational database. The latter allows users to seamlessly integrate storage of geospatial data with its transformation into map visualizations. In a set of experiments with a variety of real-world data sets, we find that CVL produces generalizations in reasonable time for off-line processing; furthermore, the quality of the generalizations is high with respect to the chosen objective function.
Genetic control of the immune response to collagen. II. Antibody responses produced in fetal liver restored radiation chimeras and thymus reconstituted F1 hybrid nude mice

The level of antibody produced in response to calf skin collagen in mice is influenced by genes which are closely linked to the I region of the H-2 major histocompatibility complex. This influence is shown to be expressed during lymphoid maturation by testing the antibody responsiveness to collagen in two types of chimeric mice. First, high responder and low responder parental strain mice were lethally irradiated and restored with fetal liver cells from (high X low responder) F1 mice. These F1 leads to parent chimeras exhibited an immune response phenotype characteristic of the irradiated parental strain animals, establishing that H-2 determinants of the host affect antigen responsiveness. Second, (high X low responder) F1 congenitally athymic (nude) mice were restored with fetal thymus transplants from either high or low responder parental strain mice. After a period of maturation these mice were shown to be competent for a T-dependent IgG response to SRBC. The responsiveness to collagen in these mice was characteristic of the parental strain thymus donors, indicating that the expression of H-2 determinants in thymic tissue during lymphoid maturation influences the antibody response phenotype expressed by mice.
Limit of gate oxide thickness scaling in MOSFETs due to apparent threshold voltage fluctuation induced by tunnel leakage current

We report on a new roadblock which will limit the gate oxide thickness scaling of MOSFETs. It is found that statistical distribution of direct tunnel leakage current through 1.2 to 2.8 nm thick gate oxides induces significant fluctuations in the threshold voltage and transconductance when the gate oxide tunnel resistance becomes comparable to gate poly-Si resistance. By calculating the measured tunnel current based on multiple scattering theory, it is shown that the device characteristics fluctuations will be problematic when the gate oxide thickness is scaled down to less than 1 nm.
Stochastic Transitions between Neural States in Taste Processing and Decision-Making

Noise, which is ubiquitous in the nervous system, causes trial-to-trial variability in the neural responses to stimuli. This neural variability is in turn a likely source of behavioral variability. Using Hidden Markov modeling, a method of analysis that can make use of such trial-to-trial response variability, we have uncovered sequences of discrete states of neural activity in gustatory cortex during taste processing. Here, we advance our understanding of these patterns in two ways. First, we reproduce the experimental findings in a formal model, describing a network that evinces sharp transitions between discrete states that are deterministically stable given sufficient noise in the network; as in the empirical data, the transitions occur at variable times across trials, but the stimulus-specific sequence is itself reliable. Second, we demonstrate that such noise-induced transitions between discrete states can be computationally advantageous in a reduced, decision-making network. The reduced network produces binary outputs, which represent classification of ingested substances as palatable or nonpalatable, and the corresponding behavioral responses of “spit” or “swallow”. We evaluate the performance of the network by measuring how reliably its outputs follow small biases in the strengths of its inputs. We compare two modes of operation: deterministic integration (“ramping”) versus stochastic decision-making (“jumping”), the latter of which relies on state-to-state transitions. We find that the stochastic mode of operation can be optimal under typical levels of internal noise and that, within this mode, addition of random noise to each input can improve optimal performance when decisions must be made in limited time.
Effects of antidepressant treatment on subjective sleep characteristics of depressed patients

Each week one of the two senior psychiatrists of the ward filled in the HRSD. The initial HRSD score was compared with the HRSD after four weeks of treatment at adequate plasma levels to obtain an impression of the improvement of depressive mood. During three days the patients reported in a sleep log their wake and sleep periods, inand outbed times, and the estimated time between going to bed and falling asleep in the evening. Furthermore, each morning the patients completed a questionnaire for subjective sleep quality. The following subjective sleep parameters were obtained and averaged over the three measurement days: 1) total sleep time (TST), 2) sleep latency time (SLT) and 3) subjective sleep quality (SSQ).
On minmax theorems for multiplayer games

We prove a generalization of von Neumann's minmax theorem to the class of separable multiplayer zero-sum games, introduced in [Bregman and Fokin 1998]. These games are polymatrix---that is, graphical games in which every edge is a two-player game between its endpoints---in which every outcome has zero total sum of players' payoffs. Our generalization of the minmax theorem implies convexity of equilibria, polynomial-time tractability, and convergence of no-regret learning algorithms to Nash equilibria. Given that Nash equilibria in 3-player zero-sum games are already PPAD-complete, this class of games, i.e. with pairwise separable utility functions, defines essentially the broadest class of multi-player constant-sum games to which we can hope to push tractability results. Our result is obtained by establishing a certain game-class collapse, showing that separable constant-sum games are payoff equivalent to pairwise constant-sum polymatrix games---polymatrix games in which all edges are constant-sum games, and invoking a recent result of [Daskalakis, Papadimitriou 2009] for these games. We also explore generalizations to classes of non-constant-sum multi-player games. A natural candidate is polymatrix games with strictly competitive games on their edges. In the two player setting, such games are minmax solvable and recent work has shown that they are merely affine transformations of zero-sum games [Adler, Daskalakis, Papadimitriou 2009]. Surprisingly we show that a polymatrix game comprising of strictly competitive games on its edges is PPAD-complete to solve, proving a striking difference in the complexity of networks of zero-sum and strictly competitive games. Finally, we look at the role of coordination in networked interactions, studying the complexity of polymatrix games with a mixture of coordination and zero-sum games. We show that finding a pure Nash equilibrium in coordination-only polymatrix games is PLS-complete; hence, computing a mixed Nash equilibrium is in PLS ∩ PPAD, but it remains open whether the problem is in P. If, on the other hand, coordination and zero-sum games are combined, we show that the problem becomes PPAD-complete, establishing that coordination and zero-sum games achieve the full generality of PPAD.
Imaging of Microglia Activation in Stroke

Activated microglia is one of the most important cellular components of poststroke neuroinflammation, which occurs early in the area of the infarct but also in remote regions with fiber tract connections to the site of the primary lesion. The development of different radioligands for the translocator protein, a mitochondrial membrane protein expressed in microglial cells when they transform from the resting to the activated state, allows to study the temporal dynamics of this cellular neuroinflammatory component in vivo in animal models and human stroke using positron emission tomography. In this article, we review the advantage and limitations of current and future methods for microglia imaging as well as new results of multimodal imaging approaches in clinical stroke, which try to combine microglia imaging with diffusion tensor imaging to investigate the clinical relevance of remote microglia activation along fiber tracts for poststroke recovery.
Structural and Functional Characterization of the Actin-1 Gene Promoter From the Antheraea pernyi (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae)

ABSTRACT. The Chinese oak silkworm, Antheraea pernyi, is an economically important insect of the Saturniidae family. In this study, genome walking was performed to obtain an A. pernyi actin promoter, which can be employed in transgenic or stable cell line expression systems. The putative promoter was analyzed by the online promoter analysis programs at the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project and the Web Promoter Scan Service, which led to the recognition of several functional elements. With respect to these elements, a series of actin A1 promoter fragments with 5′-deletions were generated that were then used to construct different vectors expressing Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). The plasmids were transfected into Sf9 cells and GFP expression was determined by observing GFP fluorescence in cells and by measuring GFP mRNA levels with real-time polymerase chain reaction. Sequence comparisons indicated that the sequence cloned from A. pernyi was the actin A1 promoter. The basic function of the promoter was verified by constructing expression vectors and observing GFP expression. In addition, real-time polymerase chain reaction revealed a strong inhibitory element may exist upstream of the TATA box, which downregulated gene expression. The actin A1 promoter is an ideal candidate for use in A. pernyi transgenic systems.
Effects of CCR5 and CD4 Cell Surface Concentrations on Infections by Macrophagetropic Isolates of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1

ABSTRACT It has been proposed that changes in cell surface concentrations of coreceptors may control infections by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), but the mechanisms of coreceptor function and the concentration dependencies of their activities are unknown. To study these issues and to generate stable clones of adherent cells able to efficiently titer diverse isolates of HIV-1, we generated two panels of HeLa-CD4/CCR5 cells in which individual clones express either large or small quantities of CD4 and distinct amounts of CCR5. The panels were made by transducing parental HeLa-CD4 cells with the retroviral vector SFF-CCR5. Derivative clones expressed a wide range of CCR5 quantities which were between 7.0 × 102 and 1.3 × 105 molecules/cell as measured by binding antibodies specific for CCR5 and the chemokine [125I]MIP1β. CCR5 was mobile in the membranes, as indicated by antibody-induced patching. In cells with a large amount of CD4, an unexpectedly low trace of CCR5 (between 7 × 102 and 2.0 × 103molecules/cell) was sufficient for maximal susceptibility to all tested HIV-1, including primary patient macrophagetropic and T-cell-tropic isolates. Indeed, the titers as indicated by immunoperoxidase staining of infected foci were as high as the tissue culture infectious doses measured in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. In contrast, cells with a small amount of CD4 required a much larger quantity of CCR5 for maximal infection by macrophagetropic HIV-1 (ca. 1.0 × 104 to 2.0 × 104 molecules/cell). Cells that expressed low and high amounts of CD4 were infected with equal efficiencies when CCR5 concentrations were above threshold levels for maximal infection. Our results suggest that the concentrations of CD4 and CCR5 required for efficient infections by macrophagetropic HIV-1 are interdependent and that the requirements for each are increased when the other component is present in a limiting amount. We conclude that CD4 and CCR5 directly or indirectly interact in a concentration-dependent manner within a pathway that is essential for infection by macrophagetropic HIV-1. In addition, our results suggest that multivalent virus-receptor bonds and diffusion in the membrane contribute to HIV-1 infections.
Innovative methods for large-scale fingerprint identification systems - Facilitating searching in a large-scale database

This paper proposes an approach to qualify fingerprint samples captured by smartphones’ cameras under real-life scenarios, foreseeing the future application using such general purposed cameras as fingerprint sensors. In this approach, a sample image is first divided into non-overlapping blocks. Then a 7-dimensional feature vector will be formed from the proposed 7 quality features. We use a trained support vector machine to produce a binary indication for each image block on its quality. Finally a quality score is generated to indicate the whole fingerprint sample’s quality by counting the number of qualified blocks in a sample. Experiments demonstrate the proposed approach’s capability of qualifying such quality-challenging fingerprint samples the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient ρ (−1 ≤ ρ ≤ 1) between the proposed quality metric and samples’ normalized comparison scores reaches as high as 0.53 in our experiment.
Difficult temperament predicts self‐esteem in adolescence

A six‐year longitudinal study investigated the impact of maternal hostile child‐rearing attitudes, role dissatisfaction, and maternal perceptions of adolescent temperamental difficultness on self‐esteem in late adolescence, after controlling for the initial self‐esteem measured in early adolescence. Adolescents (n = 313), derived from the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study, rated their self‐esteem at the study entry at age 12, and six years later at age 18. Maternal reports of child‐rearing attitudes, of role satisfaction, and of the temperament of the adolescent were obtained at the study entry and three years later. Mother's perceptions of adolescent's temperament as difficult at ages 12 and 15 predicted adolescent's self‐reported self‐esteem in late adolescence, whereas earlier self‐esteem did not predict later perceptions of temperament or parenting. We found no evidence that maternal perceptions of parenting indirectly, or after controlling for the initial level, predicted adolescent's self‐reported self‐esteem. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
SC/FDE with Constant Phase Modulation combined with CDMA and MIMO

Single carrier transmission with a frequency domain equalization (SCFDE) is combined to a MIMO system and extended to multiuser techniques in CDMA. We also compare the overall system in terms of modulation format, such as constant phase modulations. The overall system features constant envelope transmit signals, which are immune to the non-linearity of the power amplifiers, a high spectral efficiency and a low complex equalization process at the receiver for multiuser environments. After a description of the concepts we show simulation results for SCFDE adapted to the MIMO-extended UMTS-TDD down link
Using Morphological Information for Robust Language Modeling in Czech ASR System

Automatic speech recognition, or more precisely language modeling, of the Czech language has to face challenges that are not present in the language modeling of English. Those include mainly the rapid vocabulary growth and closely connected unreliable estimates of the language model parameters. These phenomena are caused mostly by the highly inflectional nature of the Czech language. On the other hand, the rich morphology together with the well-developed automatic systems for morphological tagging can be exploited to reinforce the language model probability estimates. This paper shows that using rich morphological tags within the concept of class-based n-gram language model with many-to-many word-to-class mapping and combination of this model with the standard word-based n-gram can improve the recognition accuracy over the word-based baseline on the task of automatic transcription of unconstrained spontaneous Czech interviews.
Exploring the contribution of public art to the tourist experience in Istanbul, Ravenna and New York

The appeal of art within the tourist experience is often associated with works of art in galleries and museums. The attraction of art, including architecture, which is found in urban public spaces, such as parks, churches and squares and is largely not interpreted for visitors, receives less attention, despite its ubiquitousness in cities around the world. This article explores the role of public art in the tourist experience using comparative case studies of Istanbul, Ravenna and New York to frame the discussion. Findings suggest that the lack of formal interpretation of public art does not necessarily diminish but may in fact enhance the tourist experience, especially for those tourists open to discovery and exploration.
First-Year Students' Priorities and Choices in STEM Studies - IRIS Findings from Germany and Austria

IRIS (Interests and Recruitment in Science; http://iris.fp- 7.org/about-iris/) is a European 7th framework project focusing on the challenge that only few young people in general, and women in particular, choose an education and career in science and technology. Project IRIS aims to contribute to the improvement of recruitment, retention and gender equity patterns in higher education. To acquire information about the factors that influence the educational choice of young people, a questionnaire was developed by the IRIS consortium. The IRIS questionnaire is based on the model of achievement-related choices (Eccles, Barber, & Jozefowicz, 1999) and on the theory on the role of self- efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1997). These theories provide a framework for investigating the central aspects that influence an individual's educational choice. This paper reports the experience and findings of the IRIS survey conducted in Austria and Germany. The data are based on a questionnaire survey with 3680 first-year students. Additionally, interview data from Austrian biology students contribute qualitative data about supportive and hindering factors that influences the study choice. The findings indicate that experiences in the secondary school and good teachers are important in choosing a STEM study. To prevent drop-out key factors are relevance of the study choice for the own life, social and academic integration and supportive mentoring systems.