Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ultra-low distortion linearized pseudo-RC low-pass filter

Low distortion applications are increasingly demanded especially in the medical and audiovisual fields. Equally important, body sensors are more and more used in the medical, sports and space research fields. For instance, the breathing and heart rate signals fluctuate in the 0.5 to 5 Hz frequency range while several of the common biophysiological signals are situated between the 0.1 to 1 kHz spectrum like the electrooculography (EOG), the electroencephalography (EEG), the electrocardiogram (ECG), the electromyography (EMG). In this paper, an active low-pass filter using very high linear pseudo-resistors is presented. The pseudo-resistors allow the realization of very large resistances using small silicon area. More importantly, our proposed linearization technique provides tunable pseudo-resistors with very high linearity measured thanks to the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output signal. Simulations results show that the proposed circuit's cutoff frequency is tunable in a wide range from 34 Hz to 20 kHz. In other words, we we were able to achieve a resistance value as high as 0.46 GO for a THD of −60 dB or 0.1%. Comparatively, for a cutoff frequency of 141 Hz and equivalent resistance of 0.11 GO, our filter achieves a THD as high as −83 dB or 0.007%.
Dietary Folate Deficiency Blocks Prostate Cancer Progression in the TRAMP Model

Dietary folate is essential in all tissues to maintain several metabolite pools and cellular proliferation. Prostate cells, due to specific metabolic characteristics, have increased folate demand to support proliferation and prevent genetic and epigenetic damage. Although several studies have found that dietary folate interventions can affect colon cancer biology in rodent models, its impact on prostate is unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether dietary folate manipulation, possibly being of primary importance for prostate epithelial cell metabolism, could significantly affect prostate cancer progression. Strikingly, mild dietary folate depletion arrested prostate cancer progression in 25 of 26 transgenic adenoma of the mouse prostate (TRAMP) mice, in which tumorigenesis is prostate-specific and characteristically aggressive. The significant effect on prostate cancer growth was characterized by size, grade, proliferation, and apoptosis analyses. Folate supplementation had a mild, nonsignificant, beneficial effect on grade. In addition, characterization of folate pools (correlated with serum), metabolite pools (polyamines and nucleotides), genetic and epigenetic damage, and expression of key biosynthetic enzymes in prostate tissue revealed interesting correlations with tumor progression. These findings indicate that prostate cancer is highly sensitive to folate manipulation and suggest that antifolates, paired with current therapeutic strategies, might significantly improve treatment of prostate cancer, the most commonly diagnosed cancer in American men. Cancer Prev Res; 4(11); 1825–34. ©2011 AACR.
An RNA Interference-Based Screen of Transcription Factor Genes Identifies Pathways Necessary for Sensory Regeneration in the Avian Inner Ear

Sensory hair cells of the inner ear are the mechanoelectric transducers of sound and head motion. In mammals, damage to sensory hair cells leads to hearing or balance deficits. Nonmammalian vertebrates such as birds can regenerate hair cells after injury. In a previous study, we characterized transcription factor gene expression during chicken hair cell regeneration. In those studies, a laser microbeam or ototoxic antibiotics were used to damage the sensory epithelia (SE). The current study focused on 27 genes that were upregulated in regenerating SEs compared to untreated SEs in the previous study. Those genes were knocked down by siRNA to determine their requirement for supporting cell proliferation and to measure resulting changes in the larger network of gene expression. We identified 11 genes necessary for proliferation and also identified novel interactive relationships between many of them. Defined components of the WNT, PAX, and AP1 pathways were shown to be required for supporting cell proliferation. These pathways intersect on WNT4, which is also necessary for proliferation. Among the required genes, the CCAAT enhancer binding protein, CEBPG, acts downstream of Jun Kinase and JUND in the AP1 pathway. The WNT coreceptor LRP5 acts downstream of CEBPG, as does the transcription factor BTAF1. Both of these genes are also necessary for supporting cell proliferation. This is the first large-scale screen of its type and suggests an important intersection between the AP1 pathway, the PAX pathway, and WNT signaling in the regulation of supporting cell proliferation during inner ear hair cell regeneration.
The properties of the peculiar type Ia supernova 1991bg — I. Analysis and discussion of two years of observations

Observations of the peculiar type Ia SN 1991bg in NGC 4374 collected at ESO–La Silla and Asiago are presented and discussed. The photometric coverageextends for 530 days and the spectroscopy for the first seven months after the explosion. The broad– band light curves in the early months have a narrower peak and a luminosity decline faster than other SNIa (14.6 and 11.7 mag×(100d) 1 in B and V respectively). The R and I light curves do not show the secondary peak typical of normal SNIa. The SN is intrinsically very red ((B V )max = 0.74) and faint (Bmax = 16.54). The light curves flatten with age but remain significantly steeper (2.0 and 2.7 mag×(100d) 1 in B and V between 70 and 200 day) than the average. Consequently the uvoir bolometric light curve of SN 1991bg is fainter with a steeper decline than that of the normal SNIa (e.g. 1992A). This object enhances the correlation which exists between the peak luminosity of SNIa, the decline rate and the kinetic energy. Peculiarities are evident in the spectra at various phases. The continuum at maximum is very red and the photospheric expansion velocity extremely low. There are a number of unusual spectral features, in particular a broad absorption between 4200 and 4500 u which is attributed to TiII and the appearance, as early as one month after maximum, of nebular emission of possibly [CoIII] �5890 5908. Nevertheless, contrary to previous claims (Ruiz-Lapuente et al 1993), the spectral evolution retains a general resemblance to that of other SNIa until the latest available observation (day 203). At this epoch one sees the typical emission features of SNIa at late times although they are significantly narrower (FWHM� 2300 km s 1 ). This facilitates the identification of most lines with forbidden emission of [FeII], [FeIII] and [CoIII]. The emission feature centered at about �6590 is difficult to reconcile with the previous identification as H�, unless asymmetries in the ejecta or ad hoc binary configurations are invoked. This work suggests that the explosion energy was probably a factor 3 to 5 lower than in normal SNIa. Whether this resulted from an explosion of a sub–Chandrasekhar mass WD is not unambiguously established.
Enhancing privacy and trust in electronic communities

A major impediment to using recommendation systems and collective knowledge for electronic commerce is the reluctance of individuals to reveal preferences in order to find groups of people that share them. An equally important barrier to fluid electronic commerce is the lack of agreed upon trusted third parties. We propose new non-third party mechanisms to overcome these barriers. Our solutions facilitate finding shared preferences, discovering communities with shared values, removing disincentives posed by liabilities, and negotiating on behalf of a group. We adapt known techniques from the cryptographic literature to enable these new capabilities.
Generative 3D Hand Tracking with Spatially Constrained Pose Sampling

We present a method for 3D hand tracking that exploits spatial constraints in the form of end effector (fingertip) locations. The method follows a generative, hypothesize-andtest approach and uses a hierarchical particle filter to track the hand. In contrast to state of the art methods that consider spatial constraints in a soft manner, the proposed approach enforces constraints during the hand pose hypothesis generation phase by sampling in the Reachable Distance Space (RDS). This sampling produces hypotheses that respect both the hands’ dynamics and the end effector locations. The data likelihood term is calculated by measuring the discrepancy between the rendered 3D model and the available observations. Experimental results on challenging, ground truth-annotated sequences containing severe hand occlusions demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the state of the art in hand tracking accuracy.
CYK-4 regulates Rac, but not Rho, during cytokinesis

The roles of the Rho-family GAP CYK-4 and small GTPase Rac during cytokinesis are examined in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. CYK-4 opposes Rac (and potentially Cdc42) activity during cytokinesis. There is no evidence that CYK-4 is upstream of Rho activity or that Rac disruption is a general suppressor of cytokinesis failure.
Forced extraction of targeted components from complex macromolecular assemblies

When individual protein components of supramolecular complexes are required for assembly, determining whether they play additional structural or functional roles can be difficult. Removing a protein from the complex after assembly can circumvent this problem. Here, we show that an AAA+ unfoldase/protease can extract an essential assembly protein from the ribosome. Specifically, Mg2+ depletion allowed ClpXP to remove an ssrA-tagged variant of ribosomal protein L22 from the 50S subunit of E. coli ribosomes without disrupting either the structural integrity or hydrodynamic properties of the modified particle. Forced extraction using AAA+ enzymes and targeted component proteins should be broadly applicable to the study of macromolecular complexes.
PSEUDONEGLECT IN REPRESENTATIONAL SPACE: EFFECTS OF MAGICAL IDEATION

SUMMARY Background. Magical thinking, a sign of schizotypy, is accompanied by a decrease in the strength of left hemisphere language dominance and by an inattention towards the right side of space ("pseudoneglect"). We set out to explore whether it is also associated with a pseudoneglect in imagined space. Material and methods. Forty healthy right-handed adults were asked to imagine the contours of the European continent, viewed from a point in outer space directly over Switzerland. After having contemplated this mental map for one minute, they were asked to name as many European countries as they could. All subjects filled in the Magical Ideation (MI) scale, and we split the population at the median scale score into low and high MI groups. Results. The twenty subjects of the high MI group named less countries than those of the low MI group overall, but the difference was only significant for eastern ("right-sided") countries. Conclusions. This study presents preliminary support for an association between magical thinking and right-sided inattention in the evocation of a mental map. We suggest that future studies should make use of tasks that allow a better quantification of left and right in imagined space. The neuropsychiatric significance of lateralized abnormalities in the mental representation of space is emphasized.
Monetary Policy Instrument and Inflation in South Africa: Structural Vector Error Correction Model Approach

Since the adoption of inflation rate targeting policy, there has been a great concern on the effectiveness of monetary policy to curb inflation in South Africa. The effectiveness of the repo rate as a policy instrument to control the level of inflation has been widely criticised not only in the South African context but also internationally. With the critics pointing out from a substantial lag for monetary policy changes to affect inflation to the inability of the policy instrument to effectively affect inflation level. In assessing the effectiveness of the monetary policy in South Africa, this paper makes use of the structural vector error correction model (SVECM) to characterise the dynamics of inflation to monetary policy shocks. The results of the impulse response function obtained from the SVECM found that while positive shocks to monetary policy decrease output but do not decrease credit demand and inflation in South Africa.
Recommendation-Based Evolvement of Dynamic Schemata in Semistructured Information Systems

Community-based collaborative information systems provide the exibility of storing information without having to adhere to any predened, rigid schema. However, the stored knowledge lacks common structure, which is crucial in terms of data access and search capability. We present a novel concept for semistructured information systems, which features a dynamic and self-learning schema system and provides the users with recommendations when entering information. The recommendations ensure the creation and maintenance of a common, homogeneous schema while at the same time not restricting the user’s exibility to enter any kind of information.
Predicting Long-Term Outcome in Group Treatment of Atopic Dermatitis

Background: Psychological group treatments are effective adjuncts to dermatological treatments in improving dermatological symptoms and quality of life. However, no data are available on variables that may predict which patients benefit from such group treatments. Methods: On the basis of data from the Marburg group treatment study, we explored which variables are associated with successful treatment. Treatment outcome was defined by a marked reduction of dermatological symptoms at 1-year follow-up. Results: Regardless of the treatment condition, a high pretreatment level of scratching, a low serum IgE level, low scores on the internal Health Locus of Control Scale and a high frequency of coping-related cognitions regarding itching predicted good outcome at 1 year. Logistic regression analyses indicated that the predictive power of locus of control and itch-related cognitions differed between different treatment conditions. Conclusion: In patients with atopic dermatitis, indication for psychological treatment may be based on the assessment of psychological target problems including excessive scratching and dysfunctional cognitions.
A Scalable Framework to Detect Personal Health Mentions on Twitter

Background Biomedical research has traditionally been conducted via surveys and the analysis of medical records. However, these resources are limited in their content, such that non-traditional domains (eg, online forums and social media) have an opportunity to supplement the view of an individual’s health. Objective The objective of this study was to develop a scalable framework to detect personal health status mentions on Twitter and assess the extent to which such information is disclosed. Methods We collected more than 250 million tweets via the Twitter streaming API over a 2-month period in 2014. The corpus was filtered down to approximately 250,000 tweets, stratified across 34 high-impact health issues, based on guidance from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. We created a labeled corpus of several thousand tweets via a survey, administered over Amazon Mechanical Turk, that documents when terms correspond to mentions of personal health issues or an alternative (eg, a metaphor). We engineered a scalable classifier for personal health mentions via feature selection and assessed its potential over the health issues. We further investigated the utility of the tweets by determining the extent to which Twitter users disclose personal health status. Results Our investigation yielded several notable findings. First, we find that tweets from a small subset of the health issues can train a scalable classifier to detect health mentions. Specifically, training on 2000 tweets from four health issues (cancer, depression, hypertension, and leukemia) yielded a classifier with precision of 0.77 on all 34 health issues. Second, Twitter users disclosed personal health status for all health issues. Notably, personal health status was disclosed over 50% of the time for 11 out of 34 (33%) investigated health issues. Third, the disclosure rate was dependent on the health issue in a statistically significant manner (P<.001). For instance, more than 80% of the tweets about migraines (83/100) and allergies (85/100) communicated personal health status, while only around 10% of the tweets about obesity (13/100) and heart attack (12/100) did so. Fourth, the likelihood that people disclose their own versus other people’s health status was dependent on health issue in a statistically significant manner as well (P<.001). For example, 69% (69/100) of the insomnia tweets disclosed the author’s status, while only 1% (1/100) disclosed another person’s status. By contrast, 1% (1/100) of the Down syndrome tweets disclosed the author’s status, while 21% (21/100) disclosed another person’s status. Conclusions It is possible to automatically detect personal health status mentions on Twitter in a scalable manner. These mentions correspond to the health issues of the Twitter users themselves, but also other individuals. Though this study did not investigate the veracity of such statements, we anticipate such information may be useful in supplementing traditional health-related sources for research purposes.
Learning High-Dimensional Markov Forest Distributions: Analysis of Error Rates

The problem of learning forest-structured discrete graphical models from i.i. d. samples is considered. An algorithm based on pruning of the Chow-Liu tree through adaptive thresholding is proposed. It is shown that this algorithm is both structurally consistent and risk consistent and the error probability of structure learning decays faster than any polynomial in the number of samples under fixed model size. For the high-dimensional scenario where the size of the model d and the number of edges k scale with the number of samples n, sufficient conditions on (n,d,k) are given for the algorithm to satisfy structural and risk consistencies. In addition, the extremal structures for learning are identified; we prove that the independent (resp., tree) model is the hardest (resp., easiest) to learn using the proposed algorithm in terms of error rates for structure learning.
Cytochrome P450 CYP94B3 mediates catabolism and inactivation of the plant hormone jasmonoyl-L-isoleucine

The phytohormone jasmonoyl-L-isoleucine (JA-Ile) signals through the COI1-JAZ coreceptor complex to control key aspects of plant growth, development, and immune function. Despite detailed knowledge of the JA-Ile biosynthetic pathway, little is known about the genetic basis of JA-Ile catabolism and inactivation. Here, we report the identification of a wound- and jasmonate-responsive gene from Arabidopsis that encodes a cytochrome P450 (CYP94B3) involved in JA-Ile turnover. Metabolite analysis of wounded leaves showed that loss of CYP94B3 function in cyp94b3 mutants causes hyperaccumulation of JA-Ile and concomitant reduction in 12-hydroxy-JA-Ile (12OH-JA-Ile) content, whereas overexpression of this enzyme results in severe depletion of JA-Ile and corresponding changes in 12OH-JA-Ile levels. In vitro studies showed that heterologously expressed CYP94B3 converts JA-Ile to 12OH-JA-Ile, and that 12OH-JA-Ile is less effective than JA-Ile in promoting the formation of COI1-JAZ receptor complexes. CYP94B3-overexpressing plants displayed phenotypes indicative of JA-Ile deficiency, including defects in male fertility, resistance to jasmonate-induced growth inhibition, and susceptibility to insect attack. Increased accumulation of JA-Ile in wounded cyp94b3 leaves was associated with enhanced expression of jasmonate-responsive genes. These results demonstrate that CYP94B3 exerts negative feedback control on JA-Ile levels and performs a key role in attenuation of jasmonate responses.
An efficient two-level DC operating points finder for transistor circuits

DC analysis, as a foundation for the simulation of many electronic circuits, is concerned with locating DC operating points. In this paper, a new and efficient algorithm to find all DC operating points is proposed for transistor circuits. The novelty of this DC operating points finder is its two-level simple implementation based on the affine arithmetic preconditioning and interval contraction method. Compared to traditional methods such as homotopy, this finder offers a dramatically faster way of computing all roots, without sacrificing any accuracy. Explicit numerical examples and comparative analysis are given to demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed approach.
A Virtual Ring Method for Building Small-World Structured P2P Overlays

This paper presents a general virtual ring method to design and analyze small-world structured P2P networks on the base topologies embedded in ID spaces with distance metric. Its basic idea is to abstract a virtual ring from the base topology according to the distance metric, then build small-world long links in the virtual ring and map the links back onto the real network to construct the small-world routing tables for achieving logarithmic greedy routing efficiency. Four properties are proposed to characterize the base topologies that can be turned into small-world by the virtual ring method. The virtual ring method is applied to the base topologies of d-torus with Manhattan distance, high dimensional d-torus base topologies, and other base topologies including the unbalanced d-torus and the ring topology with tree distance. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments demonstrate the efficiency and the resilience of the proposed overlays.
Macrophage activation marker soluble CD163 may predict disease progression in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract Background: Tumor associated macrophages are present in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and associated with a poor prognosis. The aim of the present study was to investigate the levels and dynamics of soluble (s)CD163, a specific macrophage activation marker, in patients with HCC. Methods: In a cohort from Australia, we studied 109 HCC patients, 116 patients with chronic liver disease (CLD), and 52 healthy controls. We examined associations between baseline sCD163 and parameters of HCC severity as well as overall and progression-free survival. In a cohort of 42 Danish HCC patients, we measured sCD163 at baseline and 1, 4 and 12 weeks after ablative treatment. Results: In the Australian cohort, median sCD163 was similarly increased in HCC (5.6[interquartile range 3.5–8.0] mg/L) and CLD (6.1[3.6–9.6] mg/L) patients as compared to controls (2.0[1.5–2.7] mg/L, p < 0.001). sCD163 correlated with Child-Pugh and MELD scores in both HCC and CLD patients. Patients with high sCD163 levels had shorter progression-free survival (p < 0.001), but not overall survival (p = 0.15). In the Danish cohort, patients with HCC progression at 12 weeks had an increase in sCD163. There was no association between sCD163 and HCC size, number, vascular invasion or metastasis in any of the cohorts. Conclusions: We confirmed increased sCD163 levels in CLD and HCC patients associated with Child-Pugh and MELD scores and portal hypertension, but not with HCC size and number, or metastasis. As a novel finding, baseline sCD163 appeared to predict a rapid HCC progression, as sCD163 increased during follow-up in HCC patients who showed progression.