Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term variation in user actions

There has been little research into the study of long term adaptation by users or the extent to which usage is enhanced over a substantial period [1]. However, there is general agreement that some interfaces, such as Unix shells and certain editors, take years to master. In this paper we present evidence that users do indeed change their actions in the long term. Some implications of our findings are discussed.
Contrast-induced acute kidney injury.

Case Presentation : A 63-year-old man with prior mitral valve repair, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and mild chronic renal insufficiency (creatinine 1 year earlier, 1.2 mg/dL) presents to the emergency department with progressive dyspnea on exertion and new anterior T-wave inversions. Subsequent laboratory testing confirms a myocardial infarction (troponin I, 11.0 ng/mL) and worsening renal insufficiency in the setting of recently being started on chlorthalidone for hypertension (creatinine, 2.7 mg/dL). Diuretics are discontinued; intravenous fluids are infused; and therapy for an acute coronary syndrome, including aspirin, clopidogrel, nitrates, and intravenous unfractionated heparin, is initiated. After 48 hours, creatinine improves to 1.8 mg/dL (estimated glomerular filtration rate, 46 mL/min), and the patient undergoes cardiac catheterization with iopamidol (Isovue, Bracco Diagnostics Inc, Princeton, NJ) contrast after receiving 1 hour of prophylactic sodium bicarbonate infusion. A complex bifurcation lesion of the left anterior descending artery/first diagonal branch is identified (Figure 1A). What is this patient's risk of contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI), and which measures may modify that risk significantly? This Clinician Update reviews the recent literature on the acute kidney injury that follows the administration of iodinated contrast medium. Figure 1. A, A complex culprit lesion in the left anterior descending artery (LAD) and first diagonal branch (D1). B, After 250 cm3 iopamidol contrast dye, successful drug-eluting stent placement in the LAD-D1 bifurcation lesion. Patients at risk for CI-AKI have comorbidities that will exacerbate the primary pathogenesis of the injury: contrast-induced vasoconstriction leading to diminished blood flow to the renal medulla. These comorbidities include diabetes mellitus, congestive heart failure, acute hypotension (requiring pressors or intra-aortic balloon pump), ST-elevation myocardial infarction, and volume depletion. Patients with chronic kidney disease are also at risk for contrast-induced acute kidney injury because compensatory mechanisms to maintain filtration function are diminished, and a smaller number of nephrons must excrete …
Comparing Evolvable Hardware to Conventional Classifiers for Electromyographic Prosthetic Hand Control

Evolvable hardware has shown to be a promising approach for prosthetic hand controllers as it features self-adaptation, fast training, and a compact system-on-chip implementation. Besides these intriguing features, the classification performance is paramount to success for any classifier. However, evolvable hardware classifiers have not yet been sufficiently compared to state-of-the-art conventional classifiers. In this paper, we compare two evolvable hardware approaches for signal classification to three conventional classification techniques: k-nearest-neighbor, decision trees, and support vector machines. We provide all classifiers with features extracted from electromyographic signals taken from forearm muscle contractions, and try to recognize eight different hand movements. Experimental results demonstrate that evolvable hardware approaches are indeed able to compete with state-of-the-art classifiers. Specifically, one of our evolvable hardware approaches delivers a generalization performance similar to that of support vector machines.
Compensated Proportional Fair Scheduling in Multiuser OFDM Wireless Networks

In wireless networks, providing a fair bandwidth allocation without too much reducing the system throughput is very challenging. Path loss attenuations induce unequal spectral efficiencies and in terms unequal throughtput for mobiles with different geographical positions. In the litterature, Proportional Fair (PF) is acknowledged as the reference scheduler in multiuser OFDM wireless networks. Opportunistically considering the channel state, PF is adapted to the wireless environment fighting the multipath fading negative effects. PF takes advantage of multiuser diversity and globally maximizes the throughput. Additionally, PF scheduling currently makes the best tradeoff between fairness and throughput maximization. However, severe fairness deficiencies appear when the mobiles experience unequal path loss. In this paper, we propose to solve this fairness issue with a modified PF scheme that introduces distance compensation factors. Simulation results show that this well-balanced resource allocation outperforms other existing scheduling schemes and jointly provides both high system throughput and high fairness.
Co-localization and functional cross-talk between A1 and P2Y1 purine receptors in rat hippocampus

Adenosine and ATP, via their specific P1 and P2 receptors, modulate a wide variety of cellular and tissue functions, playing a neuroprotective or neurodegenerative role in brain damage conditions. Although, in general, adenosine inhibits excitability and ATP functions as an excitatory transmitter in the central nervous system, recent data suggest the existence of a heterodimerization and a functional interaction between P1 and P2 receptors in the brain. In particular, interactions of adenosine A1 and P2Y1 receptors may play important roles in the purinergic signalling cascade. In the present work, we investigated the subcellular localization/co‐localization of the receptors and their functional cross‐talk at the membrane level in Wistar rat hippocampus. This is a particularly vulnerable brain area, which is sensitive to adenosine‐ and ATP‐mediated control of glutamatergic transmission. The postembedding immunogold electron microscopy technique showed that the two receptors are co‐localized at the synaptic membranes and surrounding astroglial membranes of glutamatergic synapses. To investigate the functional cross‐talk between the two types of purinergic receptors, we evaluated the reciprocal effects of their activation on their G protein coupling. P2Y1 receptor stimulation impaired the potency of A1 receptor coupling to G protein, whereas the stimulation of A1 receptors increased the functional responsiveness of P2Y1 receptors. The results demonstrated an A1–P2Y1 receptor co‐localization at glutamatergic synapses and surrounding astrocytes and a functional interaction between these receptors in hippocampus, suggesting ATP and adenosine can interact in purine‐mediated signalling. This may be particularly important during pathological conditions, when large amounts of these mediators are released.
Effects of hyperoxia on 18F-fluoro-misonidazole brain uptake and tissue oxygen tension following middle cerebral artery occlusion in rodents: Pilot studies

Purpose Mapping brain hypoxia is a major goal for stroke diagnosis, pathophysiology and treatment monitoring. 18F-fluoro-misonidazole (FMISO) positron emission tomography (PET) is the gold standard hypoxia imaging method. Normobaric hyperoxia (NBO) is a promising therapy in acute stroke. In this pilot study, we tested the straightforward hypothesis that NBO would markedly reduce FMISO uptake in ischemic brain in Wistar and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), two rat strains with distinct vulnerability to brain ischemia, mimicking clinical heterogeneity. Methods Thirteen adult male rats were randomized to distal middle cerebral artery occlusion under either 30% O2 or 100% O2. FMISO was administered intravenously and PET data acquired dynamically for 3hrs, after which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and tetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining were carried out to map the ischemic lesion. Both FMISO tissue uptake at 2-3hrs and FMISO kinetic rate constants, determined based on previously published kinetic modelling, were obtained for the hypoxic area. In a separate group (n = 9), tissue oxygen partial pressure (PtO2) was measured in the ischemic tissue during both control and NBO conditions. Results As expected, the FMISO PET, MRI and TTC lesion volumes were much larger in SHRs than Wistar rats in both the control and NBO conditions. NBO did not appear to substantially reduce FMISO lesion size, nor affect the FMISO kinetic rate constants in either strain. Likewise, MRI and TTC lesion volumes were unaffected. The parallel study showed the expected increases in ischemic cortex PtO2 under NBO, although these were small in some SHRs with very low baseline PtO2. Conclusions Despite small samples, the apparent lack of marked effects of NBO on FMISO uptake suggests that in permanent ischemia the cellular mechanisms underlying FMISO trapping in hypoxic cells may be disjointed from PtO2. Better understanding of FMISO trapping processes will be important for future applications of FMISO imaging.
Performance of Intellectually Gifted Children on Three Measures of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

While there is a growing awareness of the co-occurrence of giftedness and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), little is known about the clinical presentation of ADHD in intellectually gifted children. Current diagnostic decisions with this subpopulation are made employing procedures and norms developed using a non­ exceptional population. However, it is unknown whether this common practice is appropriate. This study explored how intellectually gifted children perform on three commonly used measures of ADHD, specifically: (a) the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA); (b) the Conners' Teacher Rating Scale, Revised Long Form (CTS); and (c) the Conners' Parent Rating Scale, Revised Long Form (CPS).
The Escherichia coli Azoreductase AzoR Is Involved in Resistance to Thiol-Specific Stress Caused by Electrophilic Quinones

ABSTRACT The physiological role of Escherichia coli azoreductase AzoR was studied. It was found that AzoR was capable of reducing several benzo-, naphtho-, and anthraquinone compounds, which were better substrates for AzoR than the model azo substrate methyl red. The ΔazoR mutant displayed reduced viability when exposed to electrophilic quinones, which are capable of depleting cellular reduced glutathione (GSH). Externally added GSH can partially restore the impaired growth of the ΔazoR mutant caused by 2-methylhydroquinone. The transcription of azoR was induced by electrophiles, including 2-methylhydroquinone, catechol, menadione, and diamide. A transcription start point was identified 44 bp upstream from the translation start point. These data indicated that AzoR is a quinone reductase providing resistance to thiol-specific stress caused by electrophilic quinones.
Kernelized Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Describing Complex Images

With the impressive capability to capture visual content, deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) have demon- strated promising performance in various vision-based ap- plications, such as classification, recognition, and objec- t detection. However, due to the intrinsic structure design of CNN, for images with complex content, it achieves lim- ited capability on invariance to translation, rotation, and re-sizing changes, which is strongly emphasized in the s- cenario of content-based image retrieval. In this paper, to address this problem, we proposed a new kernelized deep convolutional neural network. We first discuss our motiva- tion by an experimental study to demonstrate the sensitivi- ty of the global CNN feature to the basic geometric trans- formations. Then, we propose to represent visual content with approximate invariance to the above geometric trans- formations from a kernelized perspective. We extract CNN features on the detected object-like patches and aggregate these patch-level CNN features to form a vectorial repre- sentation with the Fisher vector model. The effectiveness of our proposed algorithm is demonstrated on image search application with three benchmark datasets.
Design and IC implementation of a fully digital power management delay-line ADC

This paper presents the design and IC implementation of a fully-digital 10-bit, 4Mbps sampling rate, delay-line analog-to-digital converter (DL-ADC) for power management applications. The design of the ADC is based on the approach of delay cells string to reduce design complexity and the resultant the silicon area. A unique advantage of the new ADC architecture and the design process is that it is entirely based on standard digital cells out of a vendor's library. Namely, neither custom nor analog design is required, making the concept attractive in terms of performance, scalability to other implementation platforms, design complexity and cost. In this study, two implementation options to the DL-ADC architecture are presented, and both are demonstrated and verified with post-layout results on a Tower Jazz 0. 18μm power management (TS18PM) platform. The total silicon area that is required for the implementation of the new DL-ADC sums at 0.05mm2, which confirms the area saving attribute of the concept and design procedure.
Cellular and viral determinants that regulate HIV‐1 infection in macrophages

Macrophages in brain, lung, and lymphatics constitute a major HIV reservoir during subclinical infection and disease. During HIV transmission macrophages are seemingly one of the first cells infected, being as efficient as T cells in supporting productive viral replication. Macrophages control a myriad of cell‐mediated immune responses that regulate the levels of infection and lead to viral persistence. HIV determinants control viral entry and productive replication and, taken together with cellular differentiation factors, decide the outcome of virus‐macrophage interactions. Most important, many clinical manifestations of HIV infection such as encephalitis, myelopathy, pneumonitis, and lymphadenopathy are closely linked to viral replication. Indeed, tissue pathology often correlates with viral gene expression in tissue macrophages. Taken together, these observations provide strong support for a central role of macrophages in progressive HIV infection and its clinical manifestations. J. Leukoc. Biol. 56: 278–288; 1994.
Conditioning of Quasi-Newton Methods for Function Minimization

Quasi-Newton methods accelerate the steepest-descent technique for function minimization by using computational history to generate a sequence of approximations to the inverse of the Hessian matrix. This paper presents a class of approximating matrices as a function of a scalar parameter. The problem of optimal conditioning of these matrices under an appropriate norm as a function of the scalar parameter is investigated. A set of computational results verifies the superiority of the new methods arising from conditioning considerations to known methods.
An update of the parton distributions for the

I discuss our current understanding of parton distributions. I begin with the underlying theoretical framework, and the way in which different data sets constrain different partons, highlighting recent developments. The methods of examining the uncertainties on the distributions and those physical quantities dependent on them is analysed. Finally I look at the evidence that additional theoretical corrections beyond NLO perturbative QCD may be necessary, what type of corrections are indicated and the impact these may have on the uncertainties.
The Effect of Postlexical Deletion on Automatic Speech Recognition in Fast Spontaneously Spoken Zulu

We consider the phenomenon of postlexical deletion in fast spontaneously spoken isiZulu speech and its implication for automatic speech recognition (ASR). Analysis of hand-crafted transcripts of fast spontaneous speech recorded from broadcast media indicates that postlexical deletion, especially of vowels, is common in isiZulu. We show that ASR performance can be increased by inclusion of pronunciation variants that model such deletions. We also apply a sequence modelling approach normally used for grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion to generate orthography containing synthetic deletions. These synthetically generated contacted words are subsequently used to generate accompanying pronunciations using conventional G2P conversion. We evaluate an ASR system using these synthetically generated pronunciations, and compare it to a baseline system without such variants as well as an oracle system. Augmentation with synthetically generated pronunciations leads to an absolute improvement in word error rate (WER) of 2.36% relative to the baseline. Furthermore, the augmented system performs almost as well as the oracle system, with an absolute difference in WER of 0.38%.
Values and Educative Aspirations

Empirical research was done interviewing face to face a sample of 2,447, 10-12 grade students in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, from the main public university high school in town. Education is seen as a tool to develop better citizens first, and better workers later. The objective of this research was to detect different perceptions related to values and education. Using a 13 items questionnaire, we measured: Students’ perceptions about him/herself as part of their education role, responsibility that students show toward activities in school, perceptions about education as a tool to grow in the social ladder and as a way of social recognition, social perception about effort as an important value to self-improve and get social recognition, and to finish, perceptions about their teacher’s performance.
Brain Aging: Changes in the Nature of Information Coding by the Hippocampus

Advanced age in rats is associated with a decline in spatial memory capacities dependent on hippocampal processing. As yet, however, little is known about the nature of age-related alterations in the information encoded by the hippocampus. Young rats and aged rats identified as intact or impaired in spatial learning capacity were trained on a radial arm maze task, and then multiple parameters of the environmental cues were manipulated to characterize the changes in firing patterns of hippocampal neurons corresponding to the presence of particular cues or the spatial relationships among them. The scope of information encoded by the hippocampus was reduced in memory-impaired aged subjects, even though the number of neurons responsive to salient environmental cues was not different from that in young rats. Furthermore, after repeated manipulations of the cues, memory-intact aged rats, like young rats, altered their spatial representations, whereas memory-impaired aged rats showed reduced plasticity of their representation throughout testing. Thus changes in hippocampal memory representation associated with aging and memory loss can be characterized as a rigid encoding of only part of the available information.
How mitochondria produce reactive oxygen species

The production of ROS (reactive oxygen species) by mammalian mitochondria is important because it underlies oxidative damage in many pathologies and contributes to retrograde redox signalling from the organelle to the cytosol and nucleus. Superoxide (O2•−) is the proximal mitochondrial ROS, and in the present review I outline the principles that govern O2•− production within the matrix of mammalian mitochondria. The flux of O2•− is related to the concentration of potential electron donors, the local concentration of O2 and the second-order rate constants for the reactions between them. Two modes of operation by isolated mitochondria result in significant O2•− production, predominantly from complex I: (i) when the mitochondria are not making ATP and consequently have a high Δp (protonmotive force) and a reduced CoQ (coenzyme Q) pool; and (ii) when there is a high NADH/NAD+ ratio in the mitochondrial matrix. For mitochondria that are actively making ATP, and consequently have a lower Δp and NADH/NAD+ ratio, the extent of O2•− production is far lower. The generation of O2•− within the mitochondrial matrix depends critically on Δp, the NADH/NAD+ and CoQH2/CoQ ratios and the local O2 concentration, which are all highly variable and difficult to measure in vivo. Consequently, it is not possible to estimate O2•− generation by mitochondria in vivo from O2•−-production rates by isolated mitochondria, and such extrapolations in the literature are misleading. Even so, the description outlined here facilitates the understanding of factors that favour mitochondrial ROS production. There is a clear need to develop better methods to measure mitochondrial O2•− and H2O2 formation in vivo, as uncertainty about these values hampers studies on the role of mitochondrial ROS in pathological oxidative damage and redox signalling.
A singularities avoidance approach for the optimal local path generation of redundant manipulators

A singularities-avoidance approach suitable for the optimal local path generation of redundant robot manipulators is presented. It is based on establishing proper bounds for the rate of change of the Jacobian matrix representing the transformation between the joints speeds and the end-effector Cartesian speed. These bounds become an additional constraint for an optimization problem which is formulated locally to obtain the optimal path of the considered robot manipulator. The problem is considered as a minimization of energy with given robot kinematics (and dynamics) and subject to the robot requirements and singularities-avoidance constraint. From this formulation, a closed-form solution is derived which allows online interaction with sensors. <<ETX>>
Space and Time Resolved Detection of Platelet Activation and von Willebrand Factor Conformational Changes in Deep Suspensions

Tracking cells and proteins' phenotypic changes in deep suspensions is critical for the direct imaging of blood-related phenomena in in vitro replica of cardiovascular systems and blood-handling devices. This paper introduces fluorescence imaging techniques for space and time resolved detection of platelet activation, von Willebrand factor (VWF) conformational changes, and VWF-platelet interaction in deep suspensions. Labeled VWF, platelets, and VWF-platelet strands are suspended in deep cuvettes, illuminated, and imaged with a high-sensitivity EM-CCD camera, allowing detection using an exposure time of 1 ms. In-house postprocessing algorithms identify and track the moving signals. Recombinant VWF-eGFP (rVWF-eGFP) and VWF labeled with an FITC-conjugated polyclonal antibody are employed. Anti-P-Selectin FITC-conjugated antibodies and the calcium-sensitive probe Indo-1 are used to detect activated platelets. A positive correlation between the mean number of platelets detected per image and the percentage of activated platelets determined through flow cytometry is obtained, validating the technique. An increase in the number of rVWF-eGFP signals upon exposure to shear stress demonstrates the technique's ability to detect breakup of self-aggregates. VWF globular and unfolded conformations and self-aggregation are also observed. The ability to track the size and shape of VWF-platelet strands in space and time provides means to detect pro- and antithrombotic processes.
Expressive Speech Identifications based on Hidden Markov Model

This paper concerns a sub-area of a larger research field of Affective Computing, focusing on the employment of affect-recognition systems using speech modality. It is proposed that speech-based affect identification systems could play an important role as next generation biometric identification systems that are aimed at determining a person’s ‘state of mind’, or psycho-physiological state. The possible areas for the deployment of voice-affect recognition technology are discussed. Additionally, the experiments and results for emotion identification in speech based on a Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) classifier are also presented. The result from experiment suggests that certain speech feature is more precise to identify certain emotional state, and that happiness is the most difficult emotion to detect.