Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genotyping of Human Papillomavirus in Liquid Cytology Cervical Specimens by the PGMY Line Blot Assay and the SPF10 Line Probe Assay

ABSTRACT A comparison of two PCR-based human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA detection and genotyping systems (PGMY LBA and SPF10 LiPA) was conducted in two laboratories. Both systems are based on broad-spectrum PCR for the detection of HPV DNA, followed by reverse hybridization with type-specific probes. A total of 400 selected cervical scrape specimens in PreservCyt solution (55% normal cytology, 18% atypical squamous cells of unknown significance, 14.8% low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions [SIL], and 12.5% high-grade SIL) were tested for the presence of HPV DNA. In this selected group of specimens, the overall agreement between the two methods for the detection of any HPV DNA was high (κ = 0.859). When the 20 common HPV genotypes identified by both methods were considered (HPV types 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 40, 42, 45, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 66, and 68), compatible genotype-specific results were observed in 96.5% of the samples, even when multiple HPV genotypes were present. However, for some specific HPV genotypes, there were significant differences in HPV detection by the two methods. PGMY LBA detected more HPV type 42 (P = 0.002), HPV type 56 (P = 0.039), and HPV type 59 (P < 0.001), whereas SPF10 LiPA detected more HPV type 31 (P < 0.001) and HPV type 52 (P = 0.031). For the remaining genotypes, including HPV types 16 and 18, the results obtained by the two methods were not significantly different. In general, both genotyping methods are highly suitable for clinical and epidemiological studies.
Intui2: A Prototype System for Question Answering over Linked Data

An ever increasing amount of Linked Data is made available every day. Public triple stores offer the possibility of querying hundreds of millions of triples. But this information can only be retrieved using specialized query languages like SPARQL, so for the majority of Internet users, it is still unavailable. This paper presents a prototype system aimed at streamlining the access to the information stored as RDF. The system takes as input a natural language question formulated in English and generates an equivalent SPARQL query. The mapping is based on the analysis of the syntactic patterns present in the input question. In the initial evaluation results, against the 99 questions in the QALD-3 DBpedia test set, the system provides a correct answer to 30 questions and a partial answer for another 3 questions, achieving an F-measure of 0.32.
Canola/Rapeseed Protein: Future Opportunities and Directions—Workshop Proceedings of IRC 2015

At present, canola meal is primarily streamlined into the animal feed market where it is a competitive animal feed source owing to its high protein value. Beyond animal feed lies a potential game-changer with regards to the value of canola meal, and its opportunity as a high quality food protein source. An economic and sustainable source of protein with high bioavailability and digestibility is essential to human health and well-being. Population pressures, ecological considerations, and production efficiency underscore the importance of highly bioavailable plant proteins, both for the developed and developing world. Despite decades of research, several technologies being developed, and products being brought to large scale production, there are still no commercially available canola protein products. The workshop entitled “Canola/Rapeseed Protein—Future Opportunities and Directions” that was held on 8 July 2015 during the 14th International Rapeseed Congress (IRC 2015) addressed the current situation and issues surrounding canola meal protein from the technological, nutritional, regulatory and genomics/breeding perspective. Discussions with participants and experts in the field helped to identify economic barriers and research gaps that need to be addressed in both the short and long term for the benefit of canola industry.
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics: News

Three new approvals broaden the indications for immunotherapeutic MAbs targeting the PD-1 checkpoint pathway. Atezolizumab (Tecentriq, Roche) was approved in the EU for locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and urothelial carcinoma, and avelumab (Bavencio, Merck & Pfizer) will become the first immunotherapy to treat metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma. Pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) was approved by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer. Pembrolizumab, which thus becomes the first gastric cancer immunotherapy with US license, was also found safe and »60% effective in combination with the oncolytic virotherapy talimogene laherparepvec (T-vec) in treating metastatic melanoma. Clinical data from the Phase 1b trial with 21 patients suggested that the combination might be more effective than either drug as a monotherapy. Finally, an anti-PD-1 MAb combined with TLR7 and TLR9 agonists as adjuvants elicited tumor-specific T-cell response and successfully eliminated both primary and metastatic tumors.in a mouse model of head-and-neck cancer.
Genetic feature selection to optimally detect P300 in brain computer interfaces

A Brain Computer Interface is a system that provides an artificial communication between the human brain and the external world. The paradigm based on event related evoked potentials is used in this work. Our main goal was to efficiently solve a binary classification problem: presence or absence of P300 in the registers. Genetic Algorithms and Support Vector Machines were used in a wrapper configuration for feature selection and classification. The original input patterns were provided by two channels (Oz and Fz) of resampled EEG registers and wavelet coefficients. To evaluate the performance of the system, accuracy, sensibility and specificity were calculated. The wrapped wavelet patterns show a better performance than the temporal ones. The results were similar for patterns from channel Oz and Fz, together or separated.
A statistical state dynamics-based study of the structure and mechanism of large-scale motions in plane Poiseuille flow

The perspective of statistical state dynamics (SSD) has recently been applied to the study of mechanisms underlying turbulence in a variety of physical systems. An SSD is a dynamical system that evolves a representation of the statistical state of the system. An example of an SSD is the second-order cumulant closure referred to as stochastic structural stability theory (S3T), which has provided insight into the dynamics of wall turbulence, and specifically the emergence and maintenance of the roll/streak structure. S3T comprises a coupled set of equations for the streamwise mean and perturbation covariance, in which nonlinear interactions among the perturbations has been removed, restricting nonlinearity in the dynamics to that of the mean equation and the interaction between the mean and perturbation covariance. In this work, this quasi-linear restriction of the dynamics is used to study the structure and dynamics of turbulence in plane Poiseuille flow at moderately high Reynolds numbers in a closely related dynamical system, referred to as the restricted nonlinear (RNL) system. Simulations using this RNL system reveal that the essential features of wall-turbulence dynamics are retained. Consistent with previous analyses based on the S3T version of SSD, the RNL system spontaneously limits the support of its turbulence to a small set of streamwise Fourier components, giving rise to a naturally minimal representation of its turbulence dynamics. Although greatly simplified, this RNL turbulence exhibits natural-looking structures and statistics, albeit with quantitative differences from those in direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the full equations. Surprisingly, even when further truncation of the perturbation support to a single streamwise component is imposed, the RNL system continues to self-sustain turbulence with qualitatively realistic structure and dynamic properties. RNL turbulence at the Reynolds numbers studied is dominated by the roll/streak structure in the buffer layer and similar very large-scale structure (VLSM) in the outer layer. In this work, diagnostics of the structure, spectrum and energetics of RNL and DNS turbulence are used to demonstrate that the roll/streak dynamics supporting the turbulence in the buffer and logarithmic layer is essentially similar in RNL and DNS.
Development and Validation of the Xhosa Translations of the Beck Inventories: 2. Item Analysis, Internal Consistency and Factor Analysis

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) were translated into Xhosa, a language widely spoken in South Africa to yield translated scales referred to as the XBDI-I (Xhosa BDI-II), the XBAI (Xhosa BAI) and the XBHS (Xhosa BHS). These scales were administered to a sample of 122 Xhosa respondents which included students and patients. The psychometric properties of the translated scales were comparable to those of the original English versions. Measures of internal consistency were as high as those for the validation studies in the USA and good item-scale correlations were obtained. This suggests that the translation yielded clinically useful scales which tap symptoms that are largely culturally universal.
Changes in Negative Reciprocity as a Function of Age

Standard economic models assume people exclusively pursue material self-interests in social interactions. However, people exhibit social preferences; that is, they base their choices partly on the outcomes others obtained in a social interaction. People care about fairness, and reciprocity affects behavior. This study examines the differences in negative reciprocity (costly punishment for unfair divisions) as a function of age. Sixty-one kindergarteners (5-year-olds), 53 second graders (8-year-olds), and 57 sixth graders (12-year-olds) played a dictator game or a mini�ultimatum game either with a human proposer or with a random machine that determined the division between the two players. By keeping the divisions between the players constant and varying the source of the unfair proposal, we were able to differentiate between reciprocity-based and inequality-aversion preferences. We found that kindergarteners proposed and accepted unfair divisions regardless of the source of the offer, behaving according to the standard economic model. Children in the sixth grade tended to reject unfair offers from a human proposer but accept unfair divisions from a random device, indicating the emergence of negative reciprocity preferences by age eight (and contrary to inequality aversion). Children at this age also tended to give more fair offers in the ultimatum game than in the dictator game, indicating the emergence of strategic thinking.
Cold + hot dark matter cosmology with m()m()2.4 eV

Cold + hot dark matter (CHDM) =1 cosmological models require a total neutrino mass 5 eV. Because recent data support the oscillation explanation of the cosmic ray deficit, which requires that m()m(), this suggests that m()m()2.4 eV. The linear calculations and N-body simulation reported here indicate that an =1 CHDM model with two 2.4 eV neutrinos (designated C2DM) agrees remarkably well with all available observations, but only if the Hubble parameter h0.5. We also show that even one 2.4 eV neutrino raises serious difficulties for low- flat CDM models. © 1995 The American Physical Society.
In vivo quantification of ageing changes in the rat liver from early juvenile to senescent life.

AIMS/METHOD Using high resolution multifluorescence in vivo microscopy, the present study was undertaken to determine the changes in rat hepatic tissue architecture and microvasculature during the growth associated with juvenile maturation and adult senescence, i.e. the age of 1, 3, 12 and 24 months. RESULTS By 1 month of age the liver attained its full size and functional capacity, as assessed by relative organ weight and hepatic bile flow. Survey of liver architecture revealed a progressive growth of lobular area with postsinusoidal venules exhibiting a proportional increase in length, diameter and inter-vascular distance up to the age of 12-24 months. In regard to the 3.5-4-fold average increase of lobular units, a minor reduction of sinusoidal density to 87% over life strongly implies the recruitment or formation of new sinusoidal microvessels as contributing mechanism to meet oxygen demand due to overall tissue enlargement. The sinusoidal perfusion rate remained above 98% over the whole lifespan. Leukocytic interaction with the hepatic microvascular endothelium was found within the physiological range in all age groups. Moreover, kinetics of clearance of latex beads as well as lobular distribution of Kupffer cells did not differ between animals of different age. Hepatic stellate cell-associated area of ultraviolet vitamin A-autofluorescence increased with age and significantly correlated with increasing tissue concentrations of vitamin A metabolites. Biochemical parameters serving as measures of tissue integrity did not indicate age-associated tissue alterations. CONCLUSION These age-associated physiological changes should be carefully taken into account as a relevant variable in experimental research.
Active Teacher Participation in Functional Behavior Assessment for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Risks in General Education Classrooms

This study presents functional assessment data from two second-grade students with behavior and academic problems. Functional assessment procedures included interview, observation, functional analysis, and intervention. Functional analysis conditions, conducted by the classroom teacher, with coaching from the researcher, indicated multiple functions for the behavior. Intervention consisted of teacher attention (praise) and points, and self-management of appropriate responses during group instruction. Intervention during independent seatwork consisted of modeling by the teacher to decrease task difficulty, the use of “help tickets” to request assistance from peers or the teacher, and social attention for task completion. Results indicated improved on-task and decreased disruptive behaviors during function-based intervention. The use of functional assessment in general education settings is discussed.
Memory optimisation for hardware induction of axis-parallel decision tree

In data mining and machine learning applications, the Decision Tree classifier is widely used as a supervised learning method not only in the form of a stand alone model but also as a part of an ensemble learning technique (i.e. Random Forest). The induction of Decision Trees (i.e. training stage) involves intense memory communication and inherent parallel processing, making an FPGA device a promising platform for accelerating the training process due to high memory bandwidth enabled by the embedded memory blocks in the device. However, peak memory bandwidth is reached when all the channels of the block RAMs on the FPGA are free for concurrent communication, whereas to accommodate large data sets several block RAMs are often combined together making unavailable a number of memory channels. Therefore, efficient use of the embedded memory is critical not only for allowing larger training dataset to be processed on an FPGA but also for making available as many memory channels as possible to the rest of the system. In this work, a data compression scheme is proposed for the training data stored in the embedded memory for improving the memory utilisation of the device, targeting specifically the axis-parallel decision tree classifier. The proposed scheme takes advantage of the nature of the problem of the decision tree induction and improves the memory efficiency of the system without any compromise on the performance of the classifier. It is demonstrated that the scheme can reduce the memory usage by up to 66% for the training datasets under investigation without compromise in training accuracy, while a 28% reduction in training time is achieved due to extra processing power enabled by the additional memory bandwidth.
Predictors of sex offender treatment dropout: psychopathy, sex offender risk, and responsivity implications

Abstract We examined sex offender treatment dropout predictors, in particular, the relationship of psychopathy and sex offender risk to treatment dropout in a sample of 154 federally incarcerated sex offenders treated in a high intensity sex offender treatment program. Demographic, criminal history, mental health and treatment-related data as well as data on risk assessment measures including the Static 99, Violence Risk Scale – Sexual Offender version (VRS-SO), and Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R) were collected. Logistic regression and discriminant function analyses were used to identify predictors that made significant and unique contributions to dropout among all the variables under study. The Emotional facet of Factor 1 of the PCL-R and never being married were found to be the most salient predictors of treatment dropout and correctly identified about 70% of the cases. The implications of the findings for managing treatment dropout and for the treatment of psychopathic offenders are discussed.
Neural Representation of Space Using Sinusoidal Arrays

O'Keefe (1991) has proposed that spatial information in rats might be represented as phasors: phase and amplitude of a sine wave encoding angle and distance to a landmark. We describe computer simulations showing that operations on phasors can be efficiently realized by arrays of spiking neurons that recode the temporal dimension of the sine wave spatially. Some cells in motor and parietal cortex exhibit response properties compatible with this proposal.
Design, implementation and field tests of a socially assistive robot for the elderly: HealthBot version 2

This paper presents the second version of a mobile service robot (HealthBot) designed for older people. The lessons learned from studies of the first version of the robot at a retirement village, and design decisions for the second version, are discussed. Technical requirements of field trials, a focus on cognitive human-robot interactions, the importance of working together in a multidisciplinary team, and the necessity for rapid iterative development suggested a new software framework. The features of new framework are discussed and implementation details are presented. Details of field trials and user acceptance results are presented. Results are promising for older-user acceptance of the robot.
Usability of a Multi-Touch Tabletop Surface to Enhance Social Competence Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

We present the results of a usability study of a co-located suite of games (the Join-In suite) run on a multi-user tabletop surface to support social competence training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This suite has been designed to implement different patterns of collaboration to support teachers and therapists in their use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Following a participatory design process that included three focus groups of occupational therapists, teachers and children with ASD, a field study was conducted where two occupational therapists used the system for social competence training during a single one hour session with four pairs of boys with high functioning ASD, aged 9-13 years. Outcome measures included two usability questionnaires, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory and interviews with the boys who participated in the study. Responses of the therapists to the System Usability Scale were also recorded. Results showed great enjoyment of the games as well as clear preferences amongst them. The participants demonstrated proficient use of the collaboration patterns embedded within each game, showing a range of abilities in social competence. The use of collaborative patterns embedded in the structure of the Join-In suite appeared to be effective in leveraging the engaging power of computer games as well as capturing a level of ecological validity which is often not sufficiently present in computer games alone.
Induction of aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase in rat tissue following intratracheal instillation of diesel particulate extract and Benzo[a]pyrene

The potential for aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylate (AHH) induction by inhaled diesel particles was assessed by intratracheal administration. Benzo[a]pyrene, (B[a]P) a reference compound, or an extract of particles, dissolved in gelatin‐saline solution was administered to Fischer 344 rats at several dose levels. Twenty‐four hours after administration of B[a]P or diesel particulate extract, the AHH activity increased in a dose‐response manner in the lung, but not in liver. The maximum increase in the AHH activity in the lung was observed 12 h after intratracheal instillation of B[a]P (5 mg/kg), and the levels remained elevated for seven days. The AHH activity in the liver reached the maximum 24 h after the administration, and returned rapidly to control values. In contrast, intratracheal instillation of diesel particulate extract resulted in a significant increase of AHH activity in the lungs only after doses greater than 6 mg kg−1. The activity, however, declined rapidly and returned to control values within 75 h. The liver AHH activity in this instance, remained unchanged throughout the experimental period. These data indicate that in the lung, hydrocarbons extracted from diesel particles are weak enzyme inducers and exposure to these compounds by intratracheal administration did not result in AHH induction in the liver. The results suggest that doses higher than those normally expected from occupational exposures will be required to induce AHH activity in organs examined.