Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multimodal Regulation of Cardiac Myocyte Proliferation

Efficient cardiac regeneration is closely associated with the ability of cardiac myocytes to proliferate. Fetal or neonatal mouse hearts containing proliferating cardiac myocytes regenerate even extensive injuries, whereas adult hearts containing mostly post-mitotic cardiac myocytes have lost this ability. The same correlation is seen in some homoiotherm species such as teleost fish and urodelian amphibians leading to the hypothesis that cardiac myocyte proliferation is a major driver of heart regeneration. Although cardiomyocyte proliferation might not be the only prerequisite to restore full organ function after cardiac damage, induction of cardiac myocyte proliferation is an attractive therapeutic option to cure the injured heart and prevent heart failure. To (re)initiate cardiac myocyte proliferation in adult mammalian hearts, a thorough understanding of the molecular circuitry governing cardiac myocyte cell cycle regulation is required. Here, we review the current knowledge in the field focusing on the withdrawal of cardiac myocytes from the cell cycle during the transition from neonatal to adult stages.
Quality-Controlled Small-Scale Production of a Well-Defined Bacteriophage Cocktail for Use in Human Clinical Trials

We describe the small-scale, laboratory-based, production and quality control of a cocktail, consisting of exclusively lytic bacteriophages, designed for the treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus infections in burn wound patients. Based on succesive selection rounds three bacteriophages were retained from an initial pool of 82 P. aeruginosa and 8 S. aureus bacteriophages, specific for prevalent P. aeruginosa and S. aureus strains in the Burn Centre of the Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels, Belgium. This cocktail, consisting of P. aeruginosa phages 14/1 (Myoviridae) and PNM (Podoviridae) and S. aureus phage ISP (Myoviridae) was produced and purified of endotoxin. Quality control included Stability (shelf life), determination of pyrogenicity, sterility and cytotoxicity, confirmation of the absence of temperate bacteriophages and transmission electron microscopy-based confirmation of the presence of the expected virion morphologic particles as well as of their specific interaction with the target bacteria. Bacteriophage genome and proteome analysis confirmed the lytic nature of the bacteriophages, the absence of toxin-coding genes and showed that the selected phages 14/1, PNM and ISP are close relatives of respectively F8, φKMV and phage G1. The bacteriophage cocktail is currently being evaluated in a pilot clinical study cleared by a leading Medical Ethical Committee.
Radar and Multisensor Precipitation Estimation Techniques in National Weather Service Hydrologic Operations

This paper describes techniques used operationally by the National Weather Service (NWS) to prepare gridded multisensor (gauge, radar, and satellite) quantitative precipitation estimates (QPEs) for input into hydrologic forecast models and decision- making systems for river forecasting, flood and flash flood warning, and other hydrologic monitoring purposes. Advanced hydrologic prediction techniques require a spatially continuous representation of the precipitation field, and remote sensor input is critical to achiev- ing this continuity. Although detailed descriptions of individual remote sensor estimation algorithms have been published, this review provides a summary of how the estimates from these various sources are merged into finished products. Emphasis is placed on the Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) Precipitation Processing System (PPS) and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Multisensor Precipitation Estimator (MPE) algorithms that utilize a combination of in situ rain gauges and remotely sensed measurements to provide a real-time suite of gridded radar and multisensor precipitation products. These two algorithm suites work in series to combine both computer-automated and human-interactive techniques, and they are used routinely at NWS field offices (river forecast centers (RFCs) and weather forecast offices (WFOs)) to support NWS's broader hydrologic missions. The resulting precipitation products are also available to scientists and engineers outside the NWS; a summary of charac- teristics and sources of these products is presented. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000523. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Probabilistic Real-Time User Posture Tracking for Personalized Robot-Assisted Dressing

Robotic solutions to dressing assistance have the potential to provide tremendous support for elderly and disabled people. However, unexpected user movements may lead to dressing failures or even pose a risk to the user. Tracking such user movements with vision sensors is challenging due to severe visual occlusions created by the robot and clothes. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic tracking method using Bayesian networks in latent spaces, which fuses robot end-effector positions and force information to enable cameraless and real-time estimation of the user postures during dressing. The latent spaces are created before dressing by modeling the user movements with a Gaussian process latent variable model, taking the user's movement limitations into account. We introduce a robot-assisted dressing system that combines our tracking method with hierarchical multitask control to minimize the force between the user and the robot. The experimental results demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of our tracking method. The proposed method enables the Baxter robot to provide personalized dressing assistance in putting on a sleeveless jacket for users with (simulated) upper-body impairments.
A scheme of resource allocation and stability for peer–to–peer file–sharing networks

Abstract Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks offer a cost-effective and easily deployable framework for sharing content. However, P2P file-sharing applications face a fundamental problem of unfairness. Pricing is regarded as an effective way to provide incentives to peers to cooperate. In this paper we propose a pricing scheme to achieve reasonable resource allocation in P2P file-sharing networks, and give an interpretation for the utility maximization problem and its sub-problems from an economic point of view. We also deduce the exact expression of optimal resource allocation for each peer, and confirm it with both simulation and optimization software. In order to realize the optimum in a decentralized architecture, we present a novel price-based algorithm and discuss its stability based on Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm can attain an optimum within reasonable convergence times.
Low level of systemic autoimmunity in Western Australian multiple sclerosis patients

Previous autoantibody (AAb) studies in multiple sclerosis MS have produced conflicting results. The objective of this study was to determine AAb frequency and association with the HLA-DRB1 genotype. Antinuclear antibody, antithyroid peroxidase and anti-aquaporin-4 assays and HLA-DRB1 genotyping were performed in 198 MS patients and 188 controls. There were no significant differences in AAb frequency or titres between MS and control subjects. AQP4-IgG was not found in any MS patients. There was no correlation between AAbs and HLA-DRB1 alleles. In conclusion, this study failed to confirm previous reports of increased AAbs in MS or to show an association between HLA-DRB1 genotype and the presence of AAbs.
Endomyocardial biopsy.

Of providing mor~hologic and Procedures for obtaining biopsy specihistochemical information related to dis,,, have consisted of direct excision of ease in tissues and organs which is not obfragments of myocardial tissue durtainable by other diagnostic methods. ing an open thoracotomy and pericardiotProgress has been made in omy or by use of a biopsy needle, either at the diagnosis of heart disease in recent time of direct exposure of the heart at years, yet there remain instances where thoracotomy or by transthoracic puncture. accurate diagnosis of the nature of the dis1, addition to the general disadvantage and ease cannot be Obtained prior to death, limitations afforded by a needle biopsy in although all existing diagnostic procedures providing only a small plug of tissue, needle are exhausted. A g o u p Of heart diseases in biopsy of the heart offers other problems. question is that group MatBeing a hollow contractile organ filled with as primary diseases. This blood under high pressure, it provides group of diseases, where the problems not encountered in the biopsy is the primary site of cardioof fixed solid organs such as the liver, kidvascular disorder, consists of, in addition neys, prostate gland, etc. Sutton and Sutto acute myocarditis, various forms tona introduced a biopsy proce-
An Independent Analysis of Altera’s FPGA Floating-point DSP Design Flow

FPGAs are increasingly used as parallel processing engines for demanding digital signal processing applications. Benchmark results show that on highly parallelizable workloads, FPGAs can achieve higher performance and superior cost/performance compared to digital signal processors (DSPs) and general-purpose CPUs. However, to date, FPGAs have been used almost exclusively for fixed-point DSP designs. FPGAs have not been viewed as an effective platform for applications requiring high-performance floating-point computations. FPGA floating-point efficiency and performance has been limited due to long processing latencies and routing congestion. In addition, the traditional FPGA design flow, based on writing register-transfer-level hardware descriptions in Verilog or VHDL, is not well suited to implementing complex floating-point algorithms. Altera has developed a new floating-point design flow intended to streamline the process of implementing floating-point digital signal processing algorithms on Altera FPGAs
Comparing the Level of Code-Switching in Corpora

Social media texts are often fairly informal and conversational, and when produced by bilinguals tend to be written in several different languages simultaneously, in the same way as conversational speech. The recent availability of large social media corpora has thus also made large-scale code-switched resources available for research. The paper addresses the issues of evaluation and comparison these new corpora entail, by defining an objective measure of corpus level complexity of code-switched texts. It is also shown how this formal measure can be used in practice, by applying it to several code-switched corpora.
Adaptive Dereverberation Using Multi-channel Linear Prediction with Deficient Length Filter

In almost all adaptive dereverberation algorithms based on the multi-channel linear prediction (MCLP) model, it is assumed that the filter length can cover the reverberation time. However, in many practical situations, a deficient length filter, whose length is less than the reverberation time, is employed in consideration of computational cost. A deficient length filter fails to fully model the late reverberation, resulting in degraded performance. In this paper, we present a new MCLP-based adaptive dereverberation algorithm to improve the dereverberation performance when using a deficient length filter. We introduce a gain and use the filter coefficients estimated from the previous frame to track the MCLP modeling errors of the current frame. The gain and the filter coeffi-cients are jointly optimized and solved by using an alternating minimization technique. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm. The shorter the filter length is, the more advantageous the proposed algorithm is.
Identifying Low pH Active and Lactate-Utilizing Taxa within Oral Microbiome Communities from Healthy Children Using Stable Isotope Probing Techniques

Background Many human microbial infectious diseases including dental caries are polymicrobial in nature. How these complex multi-species communities evolve from a healthy to a diseased state is not well understood. Although many health- or disease-associated oral bacteria have been characterized in vitro, their physiology within the complex oral microbiome is difficult to determine with current approaches. In addition, about half of these species remain uncultivated to date with little known besides their 16S rRNA sequence. Lacking culture-based physiological analyses, the functional roles of uncultivated species will remain enigmatic despite their apparent disease correlation. To start addressing these knowledge gaps, we applied a combination of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) with RNA and DNA based Stable Isotope Probing (SIP) to oral plaque communities from healthy children for in vitro temporal monitoring of metabolites and identification of metabolically active and inactive bacterial species. Methodology/Principal Findings Supragingival plaque samples from caries-free children incubated with 13C-substrates under imposed healthy (buffered, pH 7) and diseased states (pH 5.5 and pH 4.5) produced lactate as the dominant organic acid from glucose metabolism. Rapid lactate utilization upon glucose depletion was observed under pH 7 conditions. SIP analyses revealed a number of genera containing cultured and uncultivated taxa with metabolic capabilities at pH 5.5. The diversity of active species decreased significantly at pH 4.5 and was dominated by Lactobacillus and Propionibacterium species, both of which have been previously found within carious lesions from children. Conclusions/Significance Our approach allowed for identification of species that metabolize carbohydrates under different pH conditions and supports the importance of Lactobacilli and Propionibacterium in the development of childhood caries. Identification of species within healthy subjects that are active at low pH can lead to a better understanding of oral caries onset and generate appropriate targets for preventative measures in the early stages.
Denali: a goal-directed superoptimizer

This paper provides a preliminary report on a new research project that aims to construct a code generator that uses an automatic theorem prover to produce very high-quality (in fact, nearly mathematically optimal) machine code for modern architectures. The code generator is not intended for use in an ordinary compiler, but is intended to be used for inner loops and critical subroutines in those cases where peak performance is required, no available compiler generates adequately efficient code, and where current engineering practice is to use hand-coded machine language. The paper describes the design of the superoptimizer, and presents some encouraging preliminary results.
Teaching Oceanography Using Ocean Data View Software

—The purpose of this study was to improve students understanding of introductory oceanography with the aid of a computer program. The software that we used is Ocean Data View, abbreviated as ODV, which is proprietary yet freely available software for the analysis and visualization of oceanographic and meteorological data sets. This study used the quasi-experimental method with one group pre-test and post-test design. A group consists of 30 undergraduate students of marine science study-program at University of Bengkulu was involved in this study. An open-ended question and questionnaire were used to collect data on students understanding on salinity, temperature, density and nutrients profiles in seawater. The results of the study show that students’ understanding of the introductory chemical and physical oceanography was improved significantly. Before using the ODV software, only 73.3% of total students answer the question correctly and it increased to 93.3% after the treatment. Moreover, before a thorough discussion of the ODV software, only 79.3% of students strongly agree that the software is easy to use and help them learning oceanography easier, that increased significantly to 92.7%. Therefore, we concluded that the visualization of seawater properties and nutrients distribution through ODV computer software is useful to assist students understanding of introductory oceanography
Technology of detecting GIC in power grids &amp; its monitoring device

The magnetic storm results in the transmission lines with geomagnetically induced current (GIC). And GIC happening in random has the frequency between 0.001 Hz~0.1 Hz, and continues from several minutes to several hours. Based on elaborating mechanism and characteristic of GIC in grids and the influence on China power grids, the article has conducted the research work of GIC monitoring technology, and has investigated the method of sampling data of GIC, the survey algorithm and the new monitoring device. The simulated test shows, the monitoring device can effectively measure GIC which is signal of quasi direct current and randomness, has advantages of having few data to be handled and needing little memory space, etc
Semi-Supervised Clustering with Limited Background Knowledge

In many machine learning domains, there is a large supply of unlabeled data but limited labeled data, which can be expensive to generate. Consequently, semi-supervised learning, learning from a combination of both labeled and unlabeled data, has become a topic of significant recent interest. Our research focus is on semi-supervised clustering, which uses a small amount of supervised data in the form of class labels or pairwise constraints on some examples to aid unsupervised clustering. Semi-supervised clustering can be either constraint-based, i.e., changes are made to the clustering objective to satisfy user-specified labels/constraints, or metricbased, i.e., the clustering distortion measure is trained to satisfy the given labels/constraints. Our main goal in this thesis is to study constraint-based semi-supervised clustering algorithms, integrate them with metric-based approaches, characterize some of their properties and empirically validate our algorithms on different domains, e.g., text processing and bioinformatics.
Heterochromatin protein 1α: a hallmark of cell proliferation relevant to clinical oncology

Mammalian cells contain three closely related heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) isoforms, HP1α, β and γ, which, by analogy to their unique counterpart in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, have been implicated in gene silencing, genome stability and chromosome segregation. However, the individual importance of each isoform during normal cell cycle and disease has remained an unresolved issue. Here, we reveal that HP1α shows a proliferation‐dependent regulation, which neither HP1β nor γ display. During transient cell cycle exit, the HP1α mRNA and protein levels diminish. Transient depletion of HP1α, but not HP1β or γ, in tumoural and primary human cells leads to defects in chromosome segregation. Notably, analysis of an annotated collection of samples derived from carcinomas reveals an overexpression of HP1α mRNA and protein, which correlates with clinical data and disease outcome. Our results unveil a specific expression pattern for the HP1α isoform, suggesting a unique function related to cell division and tumour growth. The overexpression of HP1α constitutes a new example of a potential epigenetic contribution to tumourigenesis that is of clinical interest for cancer prognosis.
Triglyceride to HDL-C ratio and increased arterial stiffness in apparently healthy individuals.

OBJECTIVES High triglycerides and low high density lipoprotein cholesterol are important cardiovascular risk factors. Triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (TG/HDL-C) has been reported to be useful in predicting cardiovascular disease. Brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) is a valid and reproducible measurement by which to assess arterial stiffness and a surrogate marker of atherosclerosis. However, there is limited evidence about the relationship between them. Therefore, we tested the hypotheses that TG/HDL-C is associated with baPWV in healthy individuals. METHODS Fasting lipid profiles, baPWV and clinical data were measured in 1498 apparently healthy, medication-free subjects (926 men, 572 women) who participated in a routine health screening from 2011 to 2013. Participants were stratified into quartiles of TG/HDL-C ratio. BaPWV > 1400 cm/s was defined as abnormal baPWV, Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify associations of TG/HDL-C quartiles and baPWV, after adjusting for the presence of conventional cardiovascular risk factors. RESULTS In both genders, we observed positive relationships between TG/HDL-C quartiles and BMI, systolic BP, diastolic BP, fasting glucose, total cholesterol, LDL-C, triglycerides, uric acid, and percentages of high baPWV. Multivariable logistic regression revealed that baPWV abnormality OR value of the highest TG/HDL-C quartiles was 1.91 (95% CI: 1.11-3.30, P < 0.05) and 2.91 (95% CI: 1.02-8.30, P < 0.05) in male and female after adjusting for age, systolic BP, diastolic BP, BMI, fasting plasma glucose, LDL-C, uric acid and estimated glomerular filtration rate when compared with the lowest TG/HDL-C quartiles. CONCLUSION Increased TG/HDL-C was independently associated with baPWV abnormality in apparently healthy individuals.
Female Pseudohermaphroditism with Adrenocortical Failure in Identical Twins

The adrenogenital syndrome of prenatal onset has been described many times, and its association with adrenocortical failure is well known. Wilkins in 1948 collected 99 cases, of which 16 were male and 83 female. Ten of the male and six of the female cases had associated adrenocortical failure. Since then 35 further cases of this association of syndromes have been reported; 12 were male and 23 female (Allibone, Baar and Cant, 1947; Tepper, 1949; Zuelzer and Blum, 1949; Panos, 1950; Hinman, 1951; Knudson, 1951; Jailer, 1951; Crigler, Silverman and Wilkins, 1952; Doxiadis, 1952). The condition is known to occur in siblings, but has not previously been described in identical twins. Of the 51 children with the adrenogenital syndrome and associated adrenocortical failure, only 16 had survived beyond the age of 12 months at the time of reporting. The others died in infancy as a result of adrenocortical failure. Of the 16 children who survived for more than one year, four died at 20 months, 3 years, 6 years and 4 years respectively. The others were kept alive by constant medication with salt, D.O. C.A. , and, latterly, cortisone, in various combinations. Only one case has been reported in which it was possible to withdraw salt and D.O. C.A. at the age of 14 months without adverse effects (Doxiadis, 1951). The oldest of the survivors was 11 years at the time of reporting (Gardner, Sniffen and Zygmuntowicz, 1950; Butler, Ross and Talbot, 1939). The twins described here are therefore of interest both as medical curiosities, and as illustrating the problems involved in the management of this condition. Case Reports
Self-modeling ordinal regression with time invariant covariates – An application to prostate cancer data

In a prostate cancer study, the severity of genito-urinary (bladder) toxicity is assessed for patients who were given different doses of radiation. The ordinal responses (severity of side effects) are recorded longitudinally along with the cancer stage of a patient. Differences among the patients due to time-invariant covariates are captured by the parameters. To build up a suitable framework for an analysis of such data, we propose the use of self-modeling ordinal longitudinal model where the conditional cumulative probabilities for a category of an outcome have a relation with shape-invariant model. Since patients suffering from a common disease usually exhibit a similar pattern, it is natural to build up a nonlinear model that is shape invariant. The model is essentially semi-parametric where the population time curve is modeled with penalized regression spline. Monte Carlo expectation maximization technique is used to estimate the parameters of the model. A simulation study is also carried out to justify the methodology used.