Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prefrontal Cortex Structure Predicts Training-Induced Improvements in Multitasking Performance

The ability to perform multiple, concurrent tasks efficiently is a much-desired cognitive skill, but one that remains elusive due to the brain's inherent information-processing limitations. Multitasking performance can, however, be greatly improved through cognitive training (Van Selst et al., 1999, Dux et al., 2009). Previous studies have examined how patterns of brain activity change following training (for review, see Kelly and Garavan, 2005). Here, in a large-scale human behavioral and imaging study of 100 healthy adults, we tested whether multitasking training benefits, assessed using a standard dual-task paradigm, are associated with variability in brain structure. We found that the volume of the rostral part of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) predicted an individual's response to training. Critically, this association was observed exclusively in a task-specific training group, and not in an active-training control group. Our findings reveal a link between DLPFC structure and an individual's propensity to gain from training on a task that taps the limits of cognitive control. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Cognitive “brain” training is a rapidly growing, multibillion dollar industry (Hayden, 2012) that has been touted as the panacea for a variety of disorders that result in cognitive decline. A key process targeted by such training is “cognitive control. ” Here, we combined an established cognitive control measure, multitasking ability, with structural brain imaging in a sample of 100 participants. Our goal was to determine whether individual differences in brain structure predict the extent to which people derive measurable benefits from a cognitive training regime. Ours is the first study to identify a structural brain marker—volume of left hemisphere dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—associated with the magnitude of multitasking performance benefits induced by training at an individual level.
Electromechanical Sigma–Delta Modulators ( $\Sigma \Delta {\mathrm{ M}}$ ) Force Feedback Interfaces for Capacitive MEMS Inertial Sensors: A Review

Analog-to-digital converters based on sigma-delta modulators (ΣAM) are a popular choice for high resolution conversion from the analog to the digital domain. With relatively small modifications, they can also be used as electromechanical ΣAM (EM-ΣAM) force feedback interfaces for capacitive micro-electromechanical systems (MEMSs) inertial sensors. Such interfaces are able to combine the benefits of force feedback and analog-to-digital conversion at relatively modest circuit cost. This paper provides a comprehensive review of EM-ΣAM interfaces for capacitive MEMS inertial sensors. The principle and the design methodology of EM-ΣAM interfaces are introduced. A classification of EM-ΣAM accelerometers and gyroscopes is presented, and a detailed analysis of different EM-ΣAM architectures is given. The most representative EM-ΣAM inertial sensors systems are discussed and compared with regard to their performance characteristics. In particular, the properties of various discrete and continuous-time techniques and a system parameter optimization methodology are illustrated through specific examples. Finally, current challenges and future development trends of EM-ΣAM interfaces for inertial sensors have been identified.
Design study for wire and arc additive manufacture

Additive Manufacture (AM) is a technique whereby freeform structures are produced by building up material in a layer by layer fashion. Among the different AM processes, Wire and Arc Additive Manufacture (WAAM) has the ability to manufacture large custom-made metal workpiece with high efficiency. A design study has been performed to explore the process capabilities of fabricating complicated geometries using WAAM. Features such as enclosed structures, crossing structures, and balanced building structures have been investigated in this study. Finite Element (FE) models are employed to take the thermo-mechanical performance into account. Robot tool path design has been performed to transfer the WAAM component designs into real components efficiently. This paper covers these essential design steps from a technical as well as practical point of view.
The effect of phase and amplitude quantization on the axial ratio quality of mm-wave phased-arrays with sequential rotation

Several future portable/mobile applications operating at mm-wave frequencies will require circular polarization. At the same time, these applications need to use a phased-array concept in order to cope with the associated free space path loss. By sequentially rotating linearly-polarized antenna elements, circular polarization can be obtained in a phased-array. Calibration is required to obtain a low axial ratio when scanning the beam off-broadside. The purpose of this paper is to show the effect of phase and amplitude quantization on the calibration accuracy of the axial ratio. Measured results from a 60 GHz demonstrator are used to investigate the required accuracy of the phase- and amplitude setting of each of the array elements. It is found that an accuracy of 4 bits results in an axial ratio of 0.73 dB rms for scanning between +/− 30°.
Comments on Enhanced Space Time Coded Diversity Feature of 802.16e

This paper evaluates enhanced space time coded diversity feature proposed in IEEE 802.16e (Amendment of 802.16-2004 standard for combined Fixed and Mobile Broadband Wireless Access operation in licensed band), under 2048 points orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) mode of operation. It is shown that the current transmit diversity matrix does not fully exploit selection gain available, a modified transmit diversity scheme is then proposed which include antenna selection capability. The performances of the new scheme are evaluated under different channel conditions according to Stanford University Interim (SUI) channel model, and the amount of gain achieved are summarized
Various factors (allergen nature, mouse strain, CpG/recombinant protein expressed) influence the immune response elicited by genetic immunization

Background: Genetic immunization is a very promising therapeutic approach for allergy treatment. In the present study we investigate the influence of the nature of the allergen, the mouse strain, and the relative amount of CpG to expressed recombinant protein on immune responses using two major peanut allergens, Ara h 1 and Ara h 4.
Genes Preferentially Expressed in Bovine Oocytes Revealed by Subtractive and Suppressive Hybridization1

Abstract To isolate bovine oocyte marker genes, we performed suppressive and subtractive hybridization between oocytes and somatic tissues (i.e., intestine, lung, muscle, and cumulus cells). The subtracted library was characterized by sequencing 185 random clone inserts, representing 146 nonredundant genes. After Blast analysis within GenBank, 64% could be identified, 21% were homologous to unannotated expressed sequence tag (EST) or genomic sequences, and 15% were novel. Of 768 clone inserts submitted for differential screening by macroarray hybridization, 83% displayed a fourfold overexpression in the oocyte. The 40 most preferential nonredundant ESTs were submitted to GenBank analysis. Several well-known oocyte-specific genes were represented, including growth differentiation factor 9, bone morphogenetic protein 15, or the zona pellucida glycoprotein genes. Other ESTs were not identified. We investigated the expression profile of several candidates in the oocyte and a panel of gonadal and somatic tissues by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. B-cell translocation gene 4, cullin 1, MCF.2 transforming sequence, a locus similar to snail soma ferritin, and three unidentified genes were, indeed, preferentially expressed in the oocyte, even though most were also highly expressed in testis. The transcripts were degraded throughout preimplantation development and were not compensated for by embryonic transcription after the morula stage. These profiles suggest a role in gametogenesis, fertilization, or early embryonic development.
Single Carrier Cyclic Prefix-Assisted CDMA System with Frequency Domain Equalization for High Data Rate Transmission

Multiple-access interference and interfinger interference limit the capacity of conventional single-carrier DS-CDMA systems. Even though multicarrier CDMA posses the advantages of conventional CDMA and OFDM, it suffers from two major implementation difficulties such as peak-to-average power ratio and high sensitivity to frequency offset and RF phase noise. A novel approach based on single-carrier cyclic prefix-assisted CDMA has been proposed to overcome the disadvantages of single-carrier CDMA and multicarrier modulation. The usefulness of the proposed approach for high-speed packet access with simplified channel estimation procedures are investigated in this paper. The paper also proposes a data-dependent pilot structure for the downlink transmission of the proposed system for enhancing pilot-assisted channel estimation in frequency domain. The performance of the proposed pilot structure is compared against the data-independent common pilot structure. The proposed system is extensively simulated for different channel parameters with different channel estimation and equalization methods and the results are compared against conventional multicarrier CDMA systems with identical system specifications.
Molecular imaging in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: visual assessment of [11C]PIB and [18F]FDDNP PET images

Objective To evaluate visual assessment of [11C]PIB and [18F]FDDNP PET images as potential supportive diagnostic markers for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Methods Twenty-one AD patients and 20 controls were included. Parametric [11C]PIB and [18F]FDDNP global binding potential (BPND) images were visually rated as ‘AD’ or ‘normal. ’ Data were compared with ratings of [18F]FDG PET images and MRI-derived medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTA) scores. Inter-rater agreement and agreement with clinical diagnosis were assessed for all imaging modalities. In addition, cut-off values for quantitative global [11C]PIB and [18F]FDDNP BPND were determined. Visual ratings were compared with dichotomised quantitative values. Results Agreement between readers was excellent for [11C]PIB, [18F]FDDNP and MTA (Cohen kappa κ≥0.85) and moderate for [18F]FDG (κ=0.56). The highest sensitivity was found for [11C]PIB and [18F]FDG (both 1.0). The highest specificity was found for MTA (0.90) and [11C]PIB (0.85). [18F]FDDNP had the lowest sensitivity and specificity (0.67 and 0.53, respectively). The cut-off for quantitative [11C]PIB BPND was 0.54 (sensitivity and specificity both 0.95) and for [18F]FDDNP BPND 0.07 (sensitivity 0.80, specificity 0.73). Agreement between quantitative analyses and visual ratings was excellent for [11C]PIB (κ=0.85) and fair for [18F]FDDNP (κ=0.40). Conclusion Visual assessment of [11C]PIB images was straightforward and accurate, showing promise as a supportive diagnostic marker for AD. Moreover, [11C]PIB showed the best combination of sensitivity and specificity. Visual assessment of [18F]FDDNP images was insufficient. The quantitative analysis of [18F]FDDNP data showed a considerably higher diagnostic value than the visual analysis.
SIREN: A Memory-Conserving, Snapshot-Consistent Checkpoint Algorithm for in-Memory Databases

Checkpoint of an in-memory database is the main source of a persistent database image surviving a software crash, or a power outage, and is, together with transactions logs, a foundation for transaction durability. Since checkpoints are created simultaneously with transaction processing, they tend to decrease database throughput and increase its memory footprint. Of the current methods, most efficient are the fuzzy checkpoint algorithms that write dirty pages to disk and require transaction logs for reconstructing a consistent state. Known consistency-preserving methods suffer from excessive memory usage or a transaction-blocking behavior. In this paper, we present a consistency-preserving and memory-efficient checkpoint method. It is based on tuple shadowing as opposed to known page shadowing methods, and rearranging of tuples between pages for minimal memory usage overhead. The method’s algorithms are introduced and both analytical and experimental analysis of the proposed algorithms show significant reduction in the memory usage overhead, and up to 30% higher transaction throughput compared with a fuzzy checkpoint method with undo/redo log.
Parachuting from fixed objects: descriptive study of 106 fatal events in BASE jumping 1981–2006

Objective: To analyse the characteristics of fatal incidents in fixed object sport parachuting (building, antenna, span, earth (BASE) jumping) and create a basis for prevention. Design: Descriptive epidemiological study. Participants: Data on reported fatal injury events (n = 106) worldwide in 1981–2006 retrieved from the BASE fatality list. Assessment of risk factors: Human, equipment and environmental factors. Main outcome measurements: Identification of typical fatal incident and injury mechanisms for each of the four fixed object types of BASE jumping (building, antenna, span, earth). Results: Human factors included parachutist free fall instability (loss of body control before parachute deployment), free fall acrobatics and deployment failure by the parachutist. Equipment factors included pilot chute malfunction and parachute malfunction. In cliff jumping (BASE object type E), parachute opening towards the object jumped was the most frequent equipment factor. Environmental factors included poor visibility, strong or turbulent winds, cold and water. The overall annual fatality risk for all object types during the year 2002 was estimated at about one fatality per 60 participants. Conclusions: Participants in BASE jumping should target risk factors with training and technical interventions. The mechanisms described in this study should be used by rescue units to improve the management of incidents.
Regulation of the Human MSH6 Gene by the Sp1 Transcription Factor and Alteration of Promoter Activity and Expression by Polymorphisms

ABSTRACT Defects in human DNA mismatch repair have been reported to underlie a variety of hereditary and sporadic cancer cases. We characterized the structure of the MSH6 promoter region to examine the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation of the MSH6 gene. The 5′-flanking region of the MSH6 gene was found to contain seven functional Sp1 transcription factor binding sites that each bind Sp1 and Sp3 and contribute to promoter activity. Transcription did not appear to require a TATA box and resulted in multiple start sites, including two major start sites and at least nine minor start sites. Three common polymorphisms were identified in the promoter region (−557 T→G, −448 G→A, and −159 C→T): the latter two were always associated, and each of these functionally inactivated a different Sp1 site. The polymorphic allele −448 A −159 T was demonstrated to be a common Caucasian polymorphism found in 16% of Caucasians and resulted in a five-Sp1-site promoter that had 50% less promoter activity and was more sensitive to inactivation by DNA methylation than the more common seven Sp1 site promoter allele, which was only partially inactivated by DNA methylation. In cell lines, this five-Sp1-site polymorphism resulted in reduced MSH6 expression at both the mRNA and protein level. An additional 2% of Caucasians contained another polymorphism, −210 C→T, which inactivated a single Sp1 site that also contributes to promoter activity.
Managerial Behavior and Financial Performance of China's State-Owned Forest Enterprises

SUMMARY The economic reform in China in the early 1980s brought changes to the governance mechanism of its state owned forestry enterprises (SOFEs) whose managers gained autonomy and additional control rights of the enterprises while being asked to handle some social burdens. In this paper a principal-agent model is used to explain why these changes weakened governmental regulatory and resource constraints and led to financial and forest resource crises in these enterprises between the late 1980s and early 2000s. Further, empirical evidences show that information asymmetry and political tasks have negative impacts on the financial performance of timber-dependent SOFEs. These results may have policy implications on reforming the governance mechanism of SOFEs in China and elsewhere.
Design and Discovery of Plasmepsin II Inhibitors Using an Automated Workflow on Large‐Scale Grids

Novel and potent inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum plasmepsin II were identified by post‐processing the results of a docking screening with BEAR, a recently reported procedure for the refinement and rescoring of docked ligands in virtual screening. FRET substrate degradation assays performed on the 30 most promising compounds resulted in 26 inhibitors with IC50 values ranging from 4.3 nM to 1.8 μM.
Coping With Heterogeneous Video Contributors and Viewers in Crowdsourced Live Streaming: A Cloud-Based Approach

With the advances in personal computing devices and the prevalence of broadband network and wireless mobile network accesses, end-users are no longer pure content consumers, but contributors, too. In today's crowdsourced streaming systems, numerous broadcasters lively stream their video content, e.g., live events or online game scenes, to fellow viewers. Compared to professional video producers and broadcasters, these new generation broadcasters are geo-distributed globally and highly heterogeneous in terms of the generated video quality and the network/system configurations. The scalability and heterogeneity challenges therefore lie on both broadcasters and the viewers, which call for massive transcoding, and two critical issues: 1) choosing video representation set that maximizes viewer satisfaction and 2) allocating computational resources that minimize operational costs, must be systematically optimized in the global scale. In this paper, we present a generic framework utilizing the powerful and elastic cloud computing services for crowdsourced live streaming with heterogeneous broadcasters and viewers. We jointly consider the viewer satisfaction and the service availability/pricing of geo-distributed cloud resources for transcoding. We develop an optimal scheduler for allocating cloud instances with no regional constraints. We then extend the solution to accommodate regional constraints, and discuss a series of practical enhancements, including popularity forecasting, initialization latency, and viewer feedbacks. Our solutions have been evaluated under diverse networks and cloud system configurations as well as parameter settings. The trace-driven simulation confirms the superiority of our design, while our Planetlab-based experiment offers further practical hints toward real-world migration.
The Anatomy of the Global Football Player Transfer Network: Club Functionalities versus Network Properties

Professional association football is a game of talent. The success of a professional club hinges largely on its ability of assembling the best team. Building on a dataset of player transfer records among more than 400 clubs in 24 world-wide top class leagues from 2011 to 2015, this study aims to relate a club’s success to its activities in the player transfer market from a network perspective. We confirm that modern professional football is indeed a money game, in which larger investment spent on the acquisition of talented players generally yields better team performance. However, further investigation shows that professional football clubs can actually play different strategies in surviving or even excelling this game, and the success of strategies is strongly associated to their network properties in the football player transfer network.
A performance simulation technique for distributed programs: application to an SOR iterative solver

In this paper we present the application of an approach for the performance prediction of message passing programs, to a PVM code implementing an iterative solver based on the Successive OverRelaxation method. The approach, based on the integration of static program analysis and simulation techniques, is aimed at significantly speeding up the time needed for simulating the execution of a message passing program. We show how the proposed technique can provide, in a reasonable elaboration time, the user for a characterization of iterative regular programs as the proposed one, in terms of idle-, cpu-, communication and synchronization time in Heterogeneous and Network Computing environments.
Ultrasound Standard Plane Detection Using a Composite Neural Network Framework

Ultrasound (US) imaging is a widely used screening tool for obstetric examination and diagnosis. Accurate acquisition of fetal standard planes with key anatomical structures is very crucial for substantial biometric measurement and diagnosis. However, the standard plane acquisition is a labor-intensive task and requires operator equipped with a thorough knowledge of fetal anatomy. Therefore, automatic approaches are highly demanded in clinical practice to alleviate the workload and boost the examination efficiency. The automatic detection of standard planes from US videos remains a challenging problem due to the high intraclass and low interclass variations of standard planes, and the relatively low image quality. Unlike previous studies which were specifically designed for individual anatomical standard planes, respectively, we present a general framework for the automatic identification of different standard planes from US videos. Distinct from conventional way that devises hand-crafted visual features for detection, our framework explores in- and between-plane feature learning with a novel composite framework of the convolutional and recurrent neural networks. To further address the issue of limited training data, a multitask learning framework is implemented to exploit common knowledge across detection tasks of distinctive standard planes for the augmentation of feature learning. Extensive experiments have been conducted on hundreds of US fetus videos to corroborate the better efficacy of the proposed framework on the difficult standard plane detection problem.
New Trypanosoma cruzi Repeated Element That Shows Site Specificity for Insertion

ABSTRACT A new family of site-specific repeated elements identified in Trypanosoma cruzi, which we named TcTREZO, is described here. TcTREZO appears to be a composite repeated element, since three subregions may be defined within it on the basis of sequence similarities with other T. cruzi sequences. Analysis of the distribution of TcTREZO in the genome clearly indicates that it displays site specificity for insertion. Most TcTREZO elements are flanked by conserved sequences. There is a highly conserved 68-bp sequence at the 5′ end of the element and a sequence domain of ∼500 bp without a well-defined borderline at the 3′ end. Northern blot hybridization and reverse transcriptase PCR analyses showed that TcTREZO transcripts are expressed as oligo(A)-terminated transcripts whose length corresponds to the unit size of the element (1.6 kb). Transcripts of ∼0.2 kb derived from a small part of TcTREZO are also detected in steady-state RNA. TcTREZO transcripts are unspliced and not translated. The copy number of TcTREZO sequences was estimated to be ∼173 copies per haploid genome. TcTREZO appears to have been assembled by insertions of sequences into a progenitor element. Once associated with each other, these subunits were amplified as a new transposable element. TcTREZO shows site specificity for insertion, suggesting that a sequence-specific endonuclease could be responsible for its insertion at a unique site.