Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between Perceived Sleep Problems and Thalamic Size in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Compared to Non-Fatigued Controls: A Preliminary Study

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterized by disabling fatigue of unknown etiology. The thalamus is a key subcortical structure in sleep disorders and certain cognitive functions previously shown to be impaired in CFS patients. We investigated the association between subjective sleep quality and thalamic size in CFS. Twelve right-handed CFS patients and 12 age-, gender-, and handedness-matched healthy controls completed the Jenkins Sleep Questionnaire in order to assess subjective sleep problems. Thalamic size was determined by MR-based volumetry. More sleep problems correlated with greater total thalamic volume in patients (rP = 0.62, 95% CI 0.07–0.88, p = 0.032) but not in controls (rP = −0.034, p = 0.30). In post hoc analysis, more sleep problems correlated with right thalamic size in patients (rP = 0.70, 95% CI 0.21–0.91, p = 0.012) but not in controls (rP = −0.080, p = 0.81). Our preliminary results provide a basis for further studies on a possible role of the thalamus in sleep complaints and fatigue of patients with CFS.
In search of the fibrotic epithelial cell: opportunities for a collaborative network

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic progressive disease of unknown aetiology. It has a very poor prognosis and no effective treatment. There are two major barriers to the development of novel treatments in IPF: an incomplete understanding of its pathogenesis and the fact that current models of the disease are poorly predictive of therapeutic response. Recent studies suggest an important role for the alveolar epithelium in the pathogenesis of IPF. However, practical limitations associated with isolation and culture of primary alveolar epithelial cells have hampered progress towards further elucidating their role in the pathogenesis of the disease or developing disease models that accurately reflect the epithelial contribution. The practical limitations of primary alveolar epithelial cell culture can be divided into technical, logistical and regulatory hurdles that need to be overcome to ensure rapid progress towards improved treatment for patients with IPF. To develop a strategy to facilitate alveolar epithelial cell harvest, retrieval and sharing between IPF research groups and to determine how these cells contribute to IPF, a workshop was organised to discuss the central issues surrounding epithelial cells in IPF (ECIPF). The central themes discussed in the workshop have been compiled as the proceedings of the ECIPF.
MultiLabel Classification on Tree- and DAG-Structured Hierarchies

Many real-world applications involve multi-label classification, in which the labels are organized in the form of a tree or directed acyclic graph (DAG). However, current research efforts typically ignore the label dependencies or can only exploit the dependencies in tree-structured hierarchies. In this paper, we present a novel hierarchical multi-label classification algorithm which can be used on both tree- and DAG-structured hierarchies. The key idea is to formulate the search for the optimal consistent multi-label as the finding of the best subgraph in a tree/DAG. Using a simple greedy strategy, the proposed algorithm is computationally efficient, easy to implement, does not suffer from the problem of insufficient/skewed training data in classifier training, and can be readily used on large hierarchies. Theoretical results guarantee the optimality of the obtained solution. Experiments are performed on a large number of functional genomics data sets. The proposed method consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art method on both tree- and DAG-structured hierarchies.
Sources of disagreement in inflation forecasts : a cross-country empirical investigation

Central to the conduct of monetary policy is the preparation and evaluation of inflation forecasts. Inflation forecast are, however, not unique. Central banks, professional organizations, international institutions, households and firms also generate forecasts of inflation, among other macroeconomic variables that reflect the expected state of the economy. This paper estimates inflation forecast disagreement for nine economies, five of which target inflation over the 1999-2009 period. I find that central bank transparency tends to increase forecast disagreement. To the extent that this reflects the attention paid to inflation performance this suggests that transparency is beneficial. Also, it appears that inflation forecasts are largely driven by a global component but the impact of this global component on forecast disagreement is mixed.
Do White NBA Players Suffer from Reverse Discrimination?

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has been fertile ground for the study of discrimination due to demographic and cultural shifts in not only the teams but also the fan populace. The early research found evidence of black-white wage differentials and customer discrimination (Kahn and Sherer, 1988). However, this effect has gone away as customers have become more accustomed to African-Americans in the NBA. Recent research has now shown that the pendulum has swung in the other direction and find the existence of reverse discrimination (Groothuis and Hill, 2013; Yang and Lin, 2010). In this paper, I test whether there exist reverse discrimination with White athletes in the NBA. Following Altonji and Pierret (2001), I use a statistical discrimination with employer learning framework to estimate the model. Unlike previous work, I incorporate advanced basketball metrics like Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Win Shares (WS) to measure player productivity. The results find no evidence of reverse discrimination occurring.
Routing protocols performance analysis for scalable video coding (SVC) transmission over mobile ad-hoc networks

The main challenge of future wireless networks is providing quality of service and quality of experience to satisfy the consumer. This can be achieved by providing mechanisms that will serve optimally the users with the required system resources according to the QoS. Satisfying video consumer require enhancing video streaming quality. Therefore, video streaming over wireless network and particularly over MANET necessitate deeper investigations. In this context, this paper focused on performance analysis of routing protocol over MANET for scalable video streaming. In this work the video codec under evaluation is H.264/SVC and the routing protocols are DSR, AODV, DSDV and AOMD. Our evaluation carried using the Ns-2 simulators configured to support an ad-hoc environment. The QoS metrics used in this analysis are Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Average End-to-end Delay and packets loss rate.
Is only one gps position sufficient to locate you to the road network accurately?

Locating only one GPS position to a road segment accurately is crucial to many location-based services such as mobile taxi-hailing service, geo-tagging, POI check-in, etc. This problem is challenging because of errors including the GPS errors and the digital map errors (misalignment and the same representation of bidirectional roads) and a lack of context information. To the best of our knowledge, no existing work studies this problem directly and the work to reduce GPS signal errors by considering hardware aspect is the most relevant. Consequently, this work is the first attempt to solve the problem of locating one GPS position to a road segment. We study the problem in a data-driven view to make this process ubiquitous by proposing a tractable, efficient and robust generative model. In addition, we extend our solution to the real application scenario, i.e., taxi-hailing service, and propose an approach to further improve the result accuracy by considering destination information. We use the real taxi GPS data to evaluate our approach. The results show that our approach outperforms all the existing approaches significantly while maintaining robustness, and it can achieve an accuracy as high as 90% in some situations.
Codes on graphs: constraint complexity of cycle-free realizations of linear codes

Cycle-free graphical realizations of linear codes generalize trellis realizations. Given a linear code C and a cycle-free graph topology, there exists a well-defined minimal realization for C on that graph in which each constraint is a linear code with a well-defined length and dimension. The constraint complexity of the realization is defined as maximum dimension of any constraint code. There exists a graph that minimizes constraint complexity in which all internal nodes have degree 3 and all interface nodes have degree 2, and which moreover can be put in the form of a "tree-structured trellis realization. " The constraint complexity of a general cycle-free graph realization can be less than that of any conventional trellis realization, but not by very much. Such realizations can yield reductions in decoding complexity even when they do not reduce constraint complexity.
STOCK MARKET VOLATILITY AND THE FORECASTING ACCURACY OF IMPLIED VOLATILITY INDICES

This study develops a new model-free benchmark of implied volatility for the Japanese stock market similar in construction to the new VIX based on the S&P 500 index. It also examines the stochastic dynamics of the implied volatility index and its relationship with realized volatility in both markets. There is evidence that implied volatility is governed by a long-memory process. Despite its upward bias, implied volatility is more reflective of changes in realized volatility than alternative GARCH models, which account for volatility persistence and the asymmetric impact of news. The implied volatility index is also found to be inclusive of some but not all information on future volatility contained in historical returns. However, its higher out-of sample performance provides further support to the rationale behind drawing inference about future stock market volatility based on the incremental information contained in options prices.
Pupillary response based cognitive workload index under luminance and emotional changes

Pupillary response has been widely accepted as a physiological index of cognitive workload. It can be reliably measured with video-based eye trackers in a non-intrusive way. However, in practice commonly used measures such as pupil size or dilation might fail to evaluate cognitive workload due to various factors unrelated to workload, including luminance condition and emotional arousal. In this work, we investigate machine learning based feature extraction techniques that can both robustly index cognitive workload and adaptively handle changes of pupillary response caused by confounding factors unrelated to workload.
Adaptive Wavelet Density Estimators over Data Streams

A variety of scientific and commercial applications requires an immediate analysis of transient data streams. Many approaches for analyzing data share the property that an estimation of the underlying data distribution is used as a fundamental building block. To estimate the density of a continuous data distribution, wavelet density estimation, a technique from the area of nonparametric statistics, is very appealing as it is theoretically well-founded and practically approved. For that reason, its application to data streams is highly promising; it provides a convenient way to analyze the characteristics of a stream. However, the heavy computational cost of wavelet density estimators renders their direct application to the streaming scenario impossible. In this work, we tackle this problem and present a novel approach to adaptive wavelet density estimators over data streams. Not only do our estimators meet the rigid processing requirements for data streams, they also adapt to changing system resources in a well-defined manner. A thorough experimental evaluation demonstrates the efficacy of our wavelet density estimators and shows their superiority to competing kernel- and histogram-based estimators.
Devolution, the SNP and the electorate

The Scottish National Party has played a significant role in the politics of Scotland in the last forty years. In particular it has contributed to and shaped the impact and dynamics of devolution. This collection brings together academics, writers, commentators and analysts of Scottish politics to address the nature of the SNP: its position in Scotland, its influence on devolution, its role as a minority administration and its relationship with other institutions in Scotland, the UK and Europe.
Design and kinematic modeling of a planar piezo-actuated multistage compliant mechanism

Multistage compliant mechanisms have been widely investigated in recent decades oweing to their multiplying displacement amplification and compact structure. This paper presents a new planar multistage compliant mechanism with no assembly errors, relatively high frequency response and large range. By defining an impedance factor to describe the hindering effect of the second layer on the preceding one, the combined displacement amplification ratio of the proposed multistage compliant mechanism is theoretically modeled based on the elastic beam theory and the principle of conservation of energy. Initial prototype is monolithically fabricated and experimentally tested. It exhibits a natural frequency of 987Hz and displacement of more than 260μm, which agrees well with the finite elemental results and the theoretical predictions. The accuracy of the proposed model and the vibration modal is also verified, which may be a versatile tool for designing.
Nucleate Pool Boiling in the Presence of an Electric Field : Effect of Subcooling and Heat-up Rate

Paolo Di Marco Walter Grassi Dipartimento di Energetica, Universit? ~ di Pisa, Pisa, Italy • The purpose of the paper is to experimentally assess the effect exerted by subcooling degree and heat-up rate (i.e., the rate of increase of thermal flux) on the phenomenon of nucleate boiling in the presence of an electric field. To this aim, an experimental facility was set up to investigate pool boiling on a heated platinum wire of 0.2-ram diameter. The working fluid was R-113 (C2C13F3). A cylindrical electric field (up to 21 M V / m at the heater surface) was imposed. The power was increased along a linear ramp, at a rate ranging from 2.5 m W / s to 6 W/s. Subcooling degrees up to 22 K (Ja = 0.146) were investigated. The results of zero-field measurements are in agreement with previous ones in the literature. The effect exerted by the electric field consists mainly of a strong increase in critical heat flux, whereas, for a given heat flux, the nucleate boiling performance can be either weakly degraded or slightly enhanced. The critical heat flux was found to remain nearly constant with increasing transient velocity up to a given heat-up rate and then to increase with it. The effect of subcooling on nucleate boiling is quite complex but, in any case, quite weak in the entire investigated range. © Elsevier Science Inc., 1997
Non-Excludable Public Good Experiments1

We conducted a two-stage game experiment with a non-excludable public good. In the first stage, two subjects choose simultaneously whether or not they commit to contributing nothing to provide a pure public good. In the second stage, knowing the other subject's commitment decision, subjects who selected not to commit in the first stage choose contributions to the public good. We found no support for the evolutionary stable strategy equilibrium, and the ratio of subjects who did not commit to contributing nothing increased as rounds advanced; that is, the free-riding rate declined over time. Furthermore, this behavior did not arise due to altruism or kindness among subjects, but from spiteful behavior of subjects.
Identification of ebola glycoprotein mutants that exhibit increased transduction efficiency

Previous studies in the lab identified a series of alanine substitutions in the mucin domain-deleted Ebola virus glycoprotein 1 (EBOVΔO GP1) that enhance EBOV GP pseudovirion transduction efficiency by about two fold above wild type glycoprotein (1). To determine if combining these alanine substitutions resulted in even higher transduction levels, a series of mutants were generated and assessed for their ability to deliver pseudovirions into the highly permissive cell line SNB-19. The mutant EBOV GP 1 V96A/V97A was used as the base construct on to which other substitutions were added. A total of 8 combinations of alanine substitutions were assessed and transduction of the mutants could be characterized by one of three patterns: 1) enhancement of transduction, 2) decrease in transduction, or 3) no change in transduction in comparison to wild type and the previous mutant combinations. The best combination enhanced transduction in SNB-19 cells eight fold over wild type EBOVΔO GP and contained the mutations 96A/V97A/T83A/E106A/N107A. Previous transduction studies suggested that EBOV ΔO GP pseudovirion transduction efficiency would need to increase by 8-10 fold for this viral glycoprotein to be of value for in vivo pseudovirion gene therapy delivery studies. Our mutant 96A/V97A/T83A/E106A/N107A affords that enhanced transduction efficiency thereby providing an additional viral glycoprotein that efficiently delivers transgenes in vivo. With the recent success crystallizing the Ebola virus glycoprotein (56), we were able to use 3D modeling programs to visualize the location of the alanine substitutions, and identify other residues located in a similar context to identify additional potential transduction-enhancing substitutions. These newly identified residues consisting of three single mutations and two new combinations of mutations were
A Skin Homing Molecule Defines the Langerhans Cell Progenitor in Human Peripheral Blood

We have recently described a system for the generation of dendritic cells (DC) and Langerhans cells (LC) from defined CD34+ precursors purified from peripheral blood of healthy adult volunteers (1). This study has now been extended by the characterization of two distinct subpopulations of CD34+ cells in normal human peripheral blood as defined by the expression of the skin homing receptor cutaneous lymphocyte-associated antigen (CLA). CD34+/CLA+ cells from normal peripheral blood were found to be CD71LOW/CD11a+/CD11b+/CD49d+/ CD45RA+ whereas CD34+/CLA− cells displayed the CD71+/CD11aLOW/CD11bLOW/CD49d(+)/ CD45RALOW phenotype. To determine the differentiation pathways of these two cell populations, CD34+ cells were sorted into CLA+ and CLA− fractions, stimulated with GM-CSF and TNF-α in vitro, and then were cultured for 10 to 18 d. Similar to unfractionated CD34+ cells, the progeny of both cell populations contained sizable numbers (12–22%) of dendritically shaped, CD1a+/HLA-DR+++ cells. In addition to differences in their motility, the two dendritic cell populations generated differed from each other by the expression of LC-specific structures. Only the precursors expressing the skin homing receptor were found to differentiate into LC as evidenced by the presence of Birbeck granules. In contrast, CLA− precursor cells generated a CD1a+ DC population devoid of Birbeck granule–containing LC. Provided that comparable mechanisms as found in this study are also operative in vivo, we postulate that the topographic organization of the DC system is already determined, at least in part, at the progenitor level.
Testing randomized software by means of statistical hypothesis tests

Software testing research has mostly focused on deterministic software systems so far. In reality, however, randomized software systems (i.e. software systems with random output) also play an important role, e. g. for simulation purposes. Test evaluation is a real problem in that case. In previous work, statistical hypothesis tests have already been used, but test decisions have not been interpreted. Furthermore, those tests have only been applied if theoretic values on the distribution of program outputs had been available and not in case of golden implementations. In the present paper, we propose a general approach on how to apply statistical hypothesis tests in order to test randomized software systems. We exactly determine the confidence gained through these tests. We show that after passing a statistical hypothesis test, it can be guaranteed that at least the tested characteristics of the system under test are correct with a certain probability and accuracy of the result. Our approach is also applicable in case of golden implementations. Therefore, knowledge about the outputs' distribution is not necessary in that situation, which is a great advantage. Two case studies are described that have been conducted in order to assess the proposed approach. One of the case studies is based on a software system for the simulation of stochastic geometric models (among others) that evolved from the GeoStoch research project and is now used at France Télécom R&D, Paris, in order to calculate costs for communication networks and to plan new network structures.
Robust lip-motion features for speaker identification

The paper addresses the selection of robust lip-motion features for an audio-visual open-set speaker identification problem. We consider two alternatives for initial lip motion representation. In the first alternative, the feature vector is composed of the 2D-DCT coefficients of the motion vectors estimated within the detected rectangular mouth region, whereas in the second, lip boundaries are tracked over the video frames, and only the motion vectors around the lip contour are taken into account along with the shape of the lip boundary. Experimental results of the HMM-based identification system are included for performance comparison of the two lip motion representation alternatives.
Are Changes in MAPK/ERK Necessary or Sufficient for Entrainment in Chick Pineal Cells?

Chick pineal cells in culture display a circadian rhythm of melatonin release. Light pulses can entrain (phase shift) the rhythm. One candidate for the photoentrainment pathway uses a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), also known as extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK). We tested the hypothesis that activation of ERK (by phosphorylation to p-ERK) is necessary and/or sufficient for entrainment by measuring the ability of several drugs, light, and other perturbations to change levels of p-ERK and to induce phase shifts in the melatonin rhythm. If changes in the levels of p-ERK are sufficient for photoentrainment, then all perturbations that reduce its level must induce light-like phase shifts, and all those that increase its level must induce dark-like phase shifts. If such changes are necessary for photoentrainment, then light pulses must reduce p-ERK levels, and the duration of the light pulse, the magnitude and duration of the change in p-ERK, and the size of the phase shift must correlate. We found five perturbations that reduced p-ERK levels. Of these, two induced light-like phase shifts (PD 98059 and caffeine), one induced dark-like phase shifts (SB203580), and two did not induce phase shifts at all (U0126 and omitting a medium change). Serum increased p-ERK levels without inducing any phase shifts. Finally, light pulses did not elicit changes in p-ERK, nor was there a diurnal rhythm in p-ERK levels, nor could rapid changes in p-ERK levels have accounted for duration effects of light pulses on phase shifts. Taken together, these results argue strongly against the hypothesis that reduction (or increases) in MAPK/ERK activation is necessary or sufficient for entrainment in chick pineal cells.