Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Origin and Molecular Specification of Globus Pallidus Neurons

The mechanisms controlling the assembly of brain nuclei are poorly understood. In the forebrain, it is typically assumed that the formation of nuclei follows a similar sequence of events that in the cortex. In this structure, projection neurons are generated sequentially from common progenitor cells and migrate radially to reach their final destination, whereas interneurons are generated remotely and arrive to the cortex through tangential migration. Using the globus pallidus as a model to study the formation of forebrain nuclei, we found that the development of this basal ganglia structure involves the generation of several distinct classes of projection neurons from relatively distant progenitor pools, which then assemble together through tangential migration. Our results thus suggest that tangential migration in the forebrain is not limited to interneurons, as previously thought, but also involves projection neurons and reveal that the assembly of forebrain nuclei is more complex than previously anticipated.
Artifacts for Agile User-Centered Design: A Systematic Mapping

The integration of Agile and User-Centered Design methods is a fundamental condition to improve the quality of software products. However, one of the main problems faced to establish this integration on a day-to-day basis is how to improve communication among the invariably distinct involved teams. We believe that the artifacts involved in the development process could be used to support and increase teams’ communication. To better understand this scenario, we performed a systematic mapping study on artifacts and their role in the communication between Agile and User-Centered Design fields. Through the analysis of 56 papers dealing with this specific topic, we present the artifacts used for communication in these approaches and software development events when they are used. The analyzed studies reinforced our beliefs about the importance of artifacts to improve teams’ communication.
Use of spectrographic analyses to evaluate the efficacy of phonological intervention

A case study is presented which describes the use of spectrographic measures to analyse the effectiveness of phonological intervention. Perceptual analysis showed that the child realized the phonemes /l/ and /j/ as the phone [1]. However, acoustic analysis showed slight differences between his productions of /l/ and /j/. The child's development of differential phones involved systematic acoustic changes. Principles of coarticulation formed the basis of intervention which resulted in adult productions of /l/ and /j/. This study indicates the potential value of acoustic analyses for evaluating the efficacy of phonological intervention.
Mathematical analysis of the use of application-level traffic measurements for capacity engineering

In general, the traffic characteristics of the individual applications that constitute the aggregate traffic on a network can be important for capacity engineering. In this paper, we demonstrate, based on mathematical analysis, the value of application-specific measurements, even when there is no service differentiation. Specifically, under certain assumptions, we obtain the result that engineering errors occur when traffic characteristics of individual applications are ignored, and that the errors are in the direction of under-engineering. The assumptions are that the individual applications can be modeled adequately as Fractional Brownian Motions and that measurements are available only at relatively coarse time scales (as is common presently). The results in this paper emphasize the value of collecting fine-grained traffic measurements.
Clustering via Concave Minimization

The problem of assigning m points in the n-dimensional real space Rn to k clusters is formulated as that of determining k centers in Rn such that the sum of distances of each point to the nearest center is minimized. If a polyhedral distance is used, the problem can be formulated as that of minimizing a piecewise-linear concave function on a polyhedral set which is shown to be equivalent to a bilinear program: minimizing a bilinear function on a polyhedral set. A fast finite k-Median Algorithm consisting of solving few linear programs in closed form leads to a stationary point of the bilinear program. Computational testing on a number of real-world databases was carried out. On the Wisconsin Diagnostic Breast Cancer (WDBC) database, k-Median training set correctness was comparable to that of the k-Mean Algorithm, however its testing set correctness was better. Additionally, on the Wisconsin Prognostic Breast Cancer (WPBC) database, distinct and clinically important survival curves were extracted by the k-Median Algorithm, whereas the k-Mean Algorithm failed to obtain such distinct survival curves for the same database.
Alginate Overproduction Affects Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm Structure and Function

ABSTRACT During the course of chronic cystic fibrosis (CF) infections,Pseudomonas aeruginosa undergoes a conversion to a mucoid phenotype, which is characterized by overproduction of the exopolysaccharide alginate. Chronic P. aeruginosainfections involve surface-attached, highly antibiotic-resistant communities of microorganisms organized in biofilms. Although biofilm formation and the conversion to mucoidy are both important aspects of CF pathogenesis, the relationship between them is at the present unclear. In this study, we report that the overproduction of alginate affects biofilm development on an abiotic surface. Biofilms formed by an alginate-overproducing strain exhibit a highly structured architecture and are significantly more resistant to the antibiotic tobramycin than a biofilm formed by an isogenic nonmucoid strain. These results suggest that an important consequence of the conversion to mucoidy is an altered biofilm architecture that shows increasing resistance to antimicrobial treatments.
Implementing Open Call-by-Value (Extended Version)

The theory of the call-by-value lambda-calculus relies on weak evaluation and closed terms, that are natural hypotheses in the study of programming languages. To model proof assistants, however, strong evaluation and open terms are required. Open call-by-value is the intermediate setting of weak evaluation with open terms, on top of which Gr\'egoire and Leroy designed the abstract machine of Coq. This paper provides a theory of abstract machines for open call-by-value. The literature contains machines that are either simple but inefficient, as they have an exponential overhead, or efficient but heavy, as they rely on a labelling of environments and a technical optimization. We introduce a machine that is simple and efficient: it does not use labels and it implements open call-by-value within a bilinear overhead. Moreover, we provide a new fine understanding of how different optimizations impact on the complexity of the overhead.
Fast Crosstalk Repair by Quick Timing Change Estimation

Post route crosstalk repair is a difficult process and often requires significant manual intervention. Since repairing crosstalk for one net may cause new timing violations on other nets, the repair process might not converge. This often makes automation process of crosstalk repair difficult. In this paper, we formulate crosstalk repair process as an integer linear programming (ILP). Then, we propose a fast and efficient heuristic algorithm that minimizes the number of repairs by quickly estimating and predicting new timing information to choose the best candidate. Our experiments with industrial designs have shown excellent crosstalk repair results without any manual intervention
Answering hard questions: Wh-movement across dialects and disorder

ABSTRACT A large-scale study of complex wh-questions with 1,000 subjects aged 4–9 years is reported. The subjects' dialects were Mainstream American English or African American English, and approximately one-third were language impaired. The study examined when children permit long distance wh-movement, and when they respect a variety of syntactic barriers to movement. Thirteen different structures were compared, and the results suggest that typically developing children and disordered children at all the ages studied are capable of long-distance movement and obedience to abstract barriers. In no case was dialect a significant factor in the children's linguistic performance on these tasks.
Mind the Gap: The Tempo Rubato of Dwelling in Lineups

Abstract Despite their prominence in everyday life lineups are of peripheral concern to mobility scholars. Aiming to contribute to our existing knowledge on lineups and the transitory places of everyday life writ large, this paper attempts investigates lineups at small island ferry terminals. Drawing upon fieldwork including travel to, on and from ferry boats, for a total of about 250 journeys over three years, and about 400 qualitative interviews, this mobile ethnography focuses on practices of ferry mobility in coastal British Columbia. Lineups are portrayed as complex orchestrations of rest and movement weaved through relational performances of mobility and relative immobility. As neither a place in the sedentarist nor nomadic sense, lineups defeat facile, dichotomous conceptualizations of spatialities and temporalities. Neither still nor flowing, neither public nor private, lineups are animated by idiosyncratic practices of dwelling whereby multiple and unique forms of livelihood are performed. Ferry lineups are ephemeral moorings: places where communities form and dissolve in temporary zones, as if suspended from the regular rhythms of the rest of the day and the week. On small islands lineups exist as stolen time‐spaces – an original concept that draws inspiration from the musical idea of tempo rubato and from Michel de Certeau’s (1984) treatment of tactics.
A simple angiographic index to predict adverse clinical outcome associated with acute myocardial infarction.

OBJECTIVES The major determinant of final infarct size for a given coronary occlusion is the size of the myocardial area-at-risk. We propose herein a new index 'Relative Importance Index (RII)' to predict area-at-risk in patients with anterior myocardial infarction (MI). The aim of the study was to assess the predictive value of RII in left ventricle (LV) systolic function reduction and its relation to adverse clinical outcome. STUDY DESIGN One hundred twenty-three acute anterior MI patients with their first acute coronary syndrome incident were consecutively and prospectively enrolled in to the study. RII was calculated by dividing the culprit segment diameter by the sum of diameters of the left anterior descending, circumflex, and right coronary arteries at their proximal segments. We evaluated the one-month follow-up rates of major clinical endpoints, which were defined as death, non-fatal MI, stroke, and new congestive heart failure (CHF). RESULTS RII was significantly and negatively correlated with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (r=-0.65, p<0.001). Likewise, RII was significantly correlated with 72 hour troponin I (TnI) (r=0.48, p<0.001). Patients were dichotomized according to the median value of RII (median RII: 0.30). Supra-median RII was associated with lower EF (32.8±8.6 vs. 42.8±9.4, p<0.001) and higher incidence of composite major adverse cardiac events (33.9% vs. 13.1%, p=0.01). The mortality, non-fatal MI and new CHF rates in the supra-median RII group trended higher but they did not reach statistical significance. An RII >0.30 had an 88% sensitivity and 60% specificity (ROC area: 0.82, p<0.001, CI: 0.73-0.90) for predicting severe LV dysfunction (LVEF<30%). CONCLUSION A simple index derived from coronary angiography at the time of primary percutaneous coronary intervention can predict LV systolic function loss and adverse clinical outcome in patients with acute anterior MI.
Open Standards in Scientific Communication and Publishing

Abstract The paper takes as a starting point a recent EU Commission report on scientific publishing in Europe (Dewatripont et al 2006). In Norway, where a new system of documentation of scientific publishing was introduced in 2005, several of the recommendations in this report have already been anticipated. The Norwegian documentation system which has already proven controversial in parts of the research community and lacks parallells in other Nordic countries like Denmark and Sweden, is expected to have considerable consequences on Norwegian publishing patterns, such as increased use of electronic journals and of open standards such as Open Access and Open Source (Vaagan 2005). As e-publishing grows as part of the process of globalization, there is increasing awareness in many countries of ethical concerns in science and in scientific publishing, including the need for public access to publicly-funded research results. In this perspective, the paper links open standards in scientific communication and publishing to the principle of universality of science and to information ethics priorities identified by Capurro (2004). Qualitative methodology is used with critical & typical case sampling (Patton 2002) of key policy documents as well as international articles on e-publishing 2000-2005, especially from DLib magazine. In conclusion, it is suggested that open standards such as Open Access and Open Source are likely to increase in scientific publishing in the future, both in Norway and in the EU.
Multirate haptic simulation achieved by coupling finite element meshes through Norton equivalents

This paper introduces a methodology to simulate the dynamics of deformable viscoelastic 3D bodies in real-time for haptic interaction. The method is based upon a finite element approach. The central idea in this scheme is to reduce the computation required in regions which are to the periphery of the region of interaction between the virtual haptic device and the virtual body. This is accomplished by implementing a multilayer finite element mesh. The top layer, or parent, consists of a coarse mesh of the entire body; child meshes represent sub-regions of the coarse mesh, but have a much finer resolution. By using equivalent impedances to relate the two meshes, it is possible to decouple the coarse and fine regions; this enables the system to not only to have different resolutions in different regions, but also allows the parent and child meshes to be updated at different frequencies. The multilayer mesh also addresses numerical integration issues.
An Examination of the Relationships Among Uncertainty, Appraisal, and Information-Seeking Behavior Proposed in Uncertainty Management Theory

Uncertainty management theory (UMT; Brashers, 2001, 2007) is rooted in the assumption that, as opposed to being inherently negative, health-related uncertainty is appraised for its meaning. Appraisals influence subsequent behaviors intended to manage uncertainty, such as information seeking. This study explores the connections among uncertainty, appraisal, and information-seeking behavior proposed in UMT. A laboratory study was conducted in which participants (N = 157) were primed to feel and desire more or less uncertainty about skin cancer and were given the opportunity to search for skin cancer information using the World Wide Web. The results show that desired uncertainty level predicted appraisal intensity, and appraisal intensity predicted information-seeking depth—although the latter relationship was in the opposite direction of what was expected.
Surveys in Combinatorics, 1999: Random Walks on Combinatorial Objects

Approximate sampling from combinatorially-defined sets, using the Markov chain Monte Carlo method, is discussed from the perspective of combinatorial algorithms. We also examine the associated problem of discrete integration over such sets. Recent work is reviewed, and we re-examine the underlying formal foundational framework in the light of this. We give a detailed treatment of the coupling technique, a classical method for analysing the convergence rates of Markov chains. The related topic of perfect sampling is examined. In perfect sampling, the goal is to sample exactly from the target set. We conclude with a discussion of negative results in this area. These are results which imply that there are no polynomial time algorithms of a particular type for a particular problem.
The Influence of Social Position on Sensemaking about Organizational Change

Traditionally, scholars have examined the influence of actors’ sensemaking on context; in this paper, we explore the reverse. Employing Bourdieu’s theory of practice we explore how actors’ unique contexts, as encapsulated by their social positions, provide the important “raw materials” for their sensemaking about organizational change. Drawing on a case study of three focal actors, located in different social positions in the National Health Service in England, but tasked with enacting a common organizational change, we explore how actors’ capital endowments and dispositions shape their sensemaking about organizational change. We conclude by developing a theoretical model of the influence of social position on sensemaking about organizational change and discuss the practical implications of paying closer attention to the social positions of actors engaged as change agents
Corrigendum: Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies: A Response to Neumark, Salas, and Wascher

First published February 1, 2017 | Correction Original article: Sylvia Allegretto, Arindrajit Dube, Michael Reich, and Ben Zipperer. 2017. Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies: A Response to Neumark, Salas, and Wascher. ILR Review 70(3): 559–592. doi: 10.1177/0019793917692788 Arindrajit Dube received financial support from the Russell Sage Foundation for this research. This information was inadvertently omitted from the original article’s acknowledgment section.
WYSIWYP: What You See Is What You Pick

Scientists, engineers and physicians are used to analyze 3D data with slice-based visualizations. Radiologists for example are trained to read slices of medical imaging data. Despite the numerous examples of sophisticated 3D rendering techniques, domain experts, who still prefer slice-based visualization do not consider these to be very useful. Since 3D renderings have the advantage of providing an overview at a glance, while 2D depictions better serve detailed analyses, it is of general interest to better combine these methods. Recently there have been attempts to bridge this gap between 2D and 3D renderings. These attempts include specialized techniques for volume picking in medical imaging data that result in repositioning slices. In this paper, we present a new volume picking technique called WYSIWYP (“what you see is what you pick”) that, in contrast to previous work, does not require pre-segmented data or metadata and thus is more generally applicable. The positions picked by our method are solely based on the data itself, the transfer function, and the way the volumetric rendering is perceived by the user. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed method, we apply it to automated positioning of slices in volumetric scalar fields from various application areas. Finally, we present results of a user study in which 3D locations selected by users are compared to those resulting from WYSIWYP. The user study confirms our claim that the resulting positions correlate well with those perceived by the user.
Do young bilinguals acquire past tense morphology like monolinguals, only later? Evidence from French–English and Chinese–English bilinguals

ABSTRACT Previous studies have shown that preschool bilingual children lag behind same-aged monolinguals in their production of correct past tense forms. This lag has been attributed to bilinguals' less frequent exposure to either language. If so, bilingual children acquire the past tense like monolinguals, only later. In this study, we compared the English past tense production of Chinese–English bilingual children with a matched sample of French–English bilinguals (5–12 years old). The results showed small but reliable differences in the children's past tense production (e.g., the kinds of errors the children made) that could be attributed to knowledge of the other language. Both groups of children showed equivalent rates of accuracy, suggesting that bilinguals exposed to naturalistic speech acquire the past tense much like monolinguals do, only later and with some effects, most likely morphophonological, from their other language.
EcoLaser: An adaptive laser control for energy-efficient on-chip photonic interconnects

The high-speed and low-cost modulation of light make photonic interconnects an attractive solution for the communication demands of manycore processors. However, the high optical loss of many nanophotonic components results in high laser power consumption, most of which is wasted during periods of system inactivity. We propose EcoLaser, an adaptive laser control mechanism that saves between 24-77% of the laser power by turning off the laser when not needed. These power savings allow the cores to exploit a higher power budget and achieve speedups of 1.1-2x.
Program to Improve Colorectal Cancer Screening in a Low-Income, Racially Diverse Population: A Randomized Controlled Trial

PURPOSE More effective strategies are needed to improve rates of colorectal cancer screening, particularly among the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and individuals with limited English proficiency. We examined whether the direct mailing of fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) kits to patients overdue for such screening is an effective way to improve screening in this population. METHODS All adults aged 50 to 80 years who did not have documentation of being up to date with colorectal cancer screening as of December 31, 2009, and who had had at least 2 visits to the community health center in the prior 18 months were randomized to the outreach intervention or usual care. Patients in the outreach group were mailed a colorectal cancer fact sheet and FOBT kit. Patients in the usual care group could be referred for screening during usual clinician visits. The primary outcome was completion of colorectal cancer screening (by FOBT, sigmoidoscopy, or colonoscopy) 4 months after initiation of the outreach protocol. Outcome measures were compared using the Fisher exact test. RESULTS Analyses were based on 104 patients assigned to the outreach intervention and 98 patients assigned to usual care. In all, 30% of patients in the outreach group completed colorectal cancer screening during the study period, compared with 5% of patients in the usual care group (P <.001). Nearly all of the screenings were by FOBT. The groups did not differ significantly with respect to the percentage of patients making a clinician visit or the percentage for whom a clinician placed an order for a screening test. CONCLUSIONS The mailing of FOBT kits directly to patients was efficacious for promoting colorectal cancer screening among a population with high levels of poverty, limited English proficiency, and racial and ethnic diversity. Non–visit-based outreach to patients may be an important strategy to address suboptimal rates of colorectal cancer screening among populations most at risk for not being screened.