Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spline Orbifolds

In order to obtain a global principle for modeling closed surfaces of arbitrary genus, first hyperbolic geometry and then discrete groups of motions in planar geometries of constant curvature are studied. The representation of a closed surface as an orbifold leads to a natural parametrization of the surfaces as a subset of one of the classical geometries S, E and H. This well known connection can be exploited to define spline function spaces on abstract closed surfaces and use them e. g. for approximation and interpolation problems. §1. Geometries of Constant Curvature We are going to define three geometries consisting of a set of points, a set of lines, and a group of congruence transformations: The geometry of the euclidean plane E, the geometry of the unit sphere S of euclidean E, and the geometry of the hyperbolic plane H. The geometries of E and S are well known: the hyperbolic plane will be presented in the next subsections. For more details, see for instance (Alekseevskij et al., 1988). It is possible to define hyperbolic geometry in a completely synthetic way. We could use a system of axioms for euclidean geometry and then negate the parallel postulate or one of its equivalents. Any structure satisfying the axioms would be called a model of hyperbolic geometry. We would have to verify that all models, including the classical ones, the Poincaré and the Klein model, are isomorphic. We start from a different point of view: We first define a set of points, lines and congruence transformations, as linear as possible, and then show some structures isomorphic to it. The reader then will see the difference to euclidean or spherical geometry. Curves and Surfaces with Applications in CAGD 445 A. Le Méhauté, C. Rabut, and L. L. Schumaker (eds.), pp. 445–464. Copyright oc 1997 by Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, TN. ISBN 0-8265-1293-3. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 446 J. Wallner, H. Pottmann
Parametric models and spectral analysis for classification in brain-computer interfaces

Parametric modelling strategies and spectral analysis are explored in conjunction with linear discriminant analysis to facilitate an EEG based direct-brain interface for use by disabled people. A self-paced typing exercise is analysed by employing for feature extraction, respectively, an autoregressive model, an autoregressive with exogenous input model, and a time-frequency decomposition of the data. Modelling both the signal and noise is found to be more, effective than modelling the noise alone with the former yielding an accuracy of 70.7% and the latter an accuracy of 57.4%. Experiments, using the raw samples of a short-time power spectral density estimate of each trial as features, yielded an accuracy of 62.5%.
Using Volume Features and Shape Features for Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis

The way that Alzheimer's disease (AD) invades brain is to destroy its fundamental elements, i.e. neurons. The phenomenon of neuron destruction reflects volume changes on brain tissues such as gray matter, white matter and cerebro-spinal fluid. In the AD-related research, the volumetric analysis of hippocampus is the most extensive study. However, the segmentation and identification of the hippocampus are highly complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, we designed a MRI-based classification framework to distinguish AD's patients from normal individuals. First, 3-D volumetric features and 2-D shape features were extracted from MRI data. Afterward, Principle component analysis (PCA) was utilized to decrease the dimensions of feature space. Finally, a SVM classifier was trained for AD classification. With the proposed framework, the classification accuracy is improved from 64% or 72%, by only using 3-D volumetric features or 2-D shape features, to 84% by using both features.
Photoreactivity of some light-sensitive estrogen derivatives. Use of an exchange assay to determine their photointeraction with the rat uterine estrogen binding protein.

The photoreactivity of 20 estrogen derivatives (4 azides 4 diazos 4 triarylethylenes and 8 miscellaneous) was analyzed by a rat uterus cytosol exchange assay. The photosensitive derivative was incubated with rat uterus supernatant fraction with or without estradiol for 1-2 hours at 4 degrees C. then irradiated with 254 nm or 315 nm light at 2 degrees C. while samples were removed for assay of tritiated estrogen-binding sites. The reaction efficiency or percent of estrogen-binding capacity consumed by photolysis was computed. The reaction efficiency of azides and diazos ranged from 0%-21% and of triarylethylenes 20%-51%. Benzil o-iodophenol o-nitrophenol alpha-oximo ketone stilbene and styrene chromophores were unreactive. The kinetics of reaction was usually biphasic with a rapid initial rate due to photolysis of the photosensitive moiety and a slower rate interpreted as direct photolytic degradation of the estrogen-binding protein. 6-oxoestradiol had a first order reaction.
The G.O.A.L. Approach - A Goal-Oriented Algebraic Language

In a global context of sharing information, such as Big Data and cloud computing paradigms, researchers are developing many means to deal with new data models and algorithms. However, the development and reuse of these ones is complex because of the heterogeneity of environments, data formats and contexts of use all around of the world. That's why a way to share and reuse algorithms and treatments through a common formalism is needed, for both machines and computers. The ultimate goal of our work is to provide a collaborative platform for not only experts but also machines automatically develop, reuse and chain treatments, computations and models. For this, we rely on a goal-oriented approach which is associated with the Semantic Web, to establish a common formalism to design models for worldwide researchers. In this article, we propose the formalization of our approach thanks to an algebra which is linked to the Semantic Web standards. Finally, we provide a high-level language dedicated to both computers and experts, illustrated with examples that are linked to the agriculture domain.
Biological Characteristics and Antimicrobial Activity of Endophytic Streptomyces sp. TQR12-4 Isolated from Elite Citrus nobilis Cultivar Ham Yen of Vietnam

Ham Yen orange (Citrus nobilis Lour) is the highly valuable commercial fruit of Vietnam. With the blooming of fruit production and farming area, this specialty crop is facing threats from several serious diseases; therefore the search for new effective biocontrollers is required to prevent the existing excessive use of fertilizers and plant protection chemicals. Endophytic actinomycetes are of great scientific interest due to their high potential of application in agriculture and pharmaceutical research. In this work, endophytic actinomycetes were isolated from a native orange species of Northeast mountainous province Tuyen Quang. Among 49 isolates obtained, the isolate TQR12-4 strongly inhibited test pathogens Colletotrichum truncatum, Geotrichum candidum, Fusarium oxysporum, and F. udum. This isolate gave comparatively high biomass yields on different substrates, for example, carboxy methyl cellulose, starch, protein, and chitin, within a wide range of temperature from 15 to 45°C and pH from 4 to 10. Sequence analysis of 16S rDNA gene showed that TQR12-4 shared 99% similarity to Streptomyces prasinopilosus; however, it slightly differed from the latter in spore morphology and hence was named as Streptomyces sp. TQR12-4. A thermostable antifungal substance of nonpeptide nature produced by Streptomyces sp. TQR12-4 had MIC against Fusarium udum of 100 μg/mL and 400 μg/mL respective to extract fractions X 4 and X 5.
An Outbreak Due to Multiresistant Acinetobacter baumannii in a Burn Unit: Risk Factors for Acquisition and Management

Objectives: To describe the investigation and management of an outbreak due to multiresistant Acinetobacter baumannii and to determine risk factors for acquisition of the organism. Setting: A 14-bed regional burn unit in a Canadian tertiary-care teaching hospital. Design: Case-control study with multivariate analysis of potential risk factors using logistic regression analysis. Surveillance cultures were obtained from the hospital environment, from noninfected patients, and from healthcare providers. Results: A total of 31 (13%) of 247 patients with acute burn injuries acquired multiresistant A. baumannii between December 1998 and March 2000; 18 (58%) of the patients were infected. The organism was recovered from the hospital environment and the hands of healthcare providers. Significant risk factors for acquisition of multiresistant A. baumannii were receipt of blood products (odds ratio [OR], 10.8; 95% confidence interval [CI95], 3.4 to 34.4; P < .001); procedures performed in the hydrotherapy room (OR, 4.1; CI95, 1.3 to 13.1; P = .02); and increased duration of mechanical ventilation (OR, 1.1 per day; CI95, 1.0 to 1.1; P=. 02). Interventions: Improved compliance with hand hygiene, strict patient isolation, meticulous environmental cleaning, and temporary closure of the unit to new admissions. Conclusions: Acquisition of multiresistant A. baumannii was likely multifactorial, related to environmental contamination and contact with transiently colonized healthcare providers. Control measures addressing these potential sources of multiresistant A. baumannii were successful in terminating the outbreak. Ongoing surveillance and continued attention to hand hygiene and adequate environmental cleaning are essential to prevent recurrent outbreaks due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in burn units.
Geometrical Aspects of Wood Aging Based on 3GMap L-System Growth Model

In this paper, we propose a new approach to wood aging problems in computer graphics. During its life, wood suffers from various damages due, for example, to insects, fungus or drying. These damages can have an impact on the appearance of wood, for example insects can create galleries in its structure and drying can lead to topological changes or misshapenness. According to botanic literature, it seems obvious that these geometric alterations are dependent on the internal structure of wood. In order to take into account this consideration, we propose to base our approach on a growth model of wood. In this paper we have chosen to tackle the aspects of aging that seem to be the most important and whose impact on the geometry of wood is significant. So, in this paper, we have chosen to focus on: insects and mushrooms attacks, some various kinds of slits and on the phenomenon of erosion.
Bilingual lexical skills of school-age children with Chinese and Korean heritage languages in the United States

This cross-sectional study investigated the bilingual lexical skills of 175 US school-age children (5 to18 years old) with Cantonese, Mandarin, or Korean as their heritage language (HL), and English as their dominant language. Primary study goals were to identify potential patterns of development in bilingual lexical skills over the elementary to high school time span and to examine the relation of environmental factors to lexical skills. HL and English productive lexical skills were assessed with a Picture Naming and a Verbal Fluency task. English receptive lexical skills were assessed with Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. A survey obtained information about participants’ language use in six environmental contexts. There were age-related significant increases in both HL and English skills. However, English proficiency already had a significant lead over HL proficiency at the youngest age. English receptive lexical skills reached monolingual expectations from age 8, whereas for HL, high school age participants on average only reached the level of early elementary school monolinguals. Although more English use at home at younger ages was associated with stronger English skills, the relation did not exist for older participants. Instead, among older participants, more English use at home was associated with weaker HL skills. Children’s attendance at HL programs and visits to home countries bore little relation to HL proficiency.
Final Report of the Intergroup Randomized Study of Combined Androgen-Deprivation Therapy Plus Radiotherapy Versus Androgen-Deprivation Therapy Alone in Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer

Purpose We have previously reported that radiotherapy (RT) added to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) improves survival in men with locally advanced prostate cancer. Here, we report the prespecified final analysis of this randomized trial. Patients and Methods NCIC Clinical Trials Group PR.3/Medical Research Council PR07/Intergroup T94-0110 was a randomized controlled trial of patients with locally advanced prostate cancer. Patients with T3-4, N0/Nx, M0 prostate cancer or T1-2 disease with either prostate-specific antigen (PSA) of more than 40 μg/L or PSA of 20 to 40 μg/L plus Gleason score of 8 to 10 were randomly assigned to lifelong ADT alone or to ADT+RT. The RT dose was 64 to 69 Gy in 35 to 39 fractions to the prostate and pelvis or prostate alone. Overall survival was compared using a log-rank test stratified for prespecified variables. Results One thousand two hundred five patients were randomly assigned between 1995 and 2005, 602 to ADT alone and 603 to ADT+RT. At a median follow-up time of 8 years, 465 patients had died, including 199 patients from prostate cancer. Overall survival was significantly improved in the patients allocated to ADT+RT (hazard ratio [HR], 0.70; 95% CI, 0.57 to 0.85; P < .001). Deaths from prostate cancer were significantly reduced by the addition of RT to ADT (HR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.34 to 0.61; P < .001). Patients on ADT+RT reported a higher frequency of adverse events related to bowel toxicity, but only two of 589 patients had grade 3 or greater diarrhea at 24 months after RT. Conclusion This analysis demonstrates that the previously reported benefit in survival is maintained at a median follow-up of 8 years and firmly establishes the role of RT in the treatment of men with locally advanced prostate cancer.
Pause concepts for audio segmentation at different semantic levels

This paper presents work on the determination of temporal audio segmentations at different semantic levels. The segmentation algorithm draws upon the calculation of relative silences or pauses. A perceptual loudness measure is the only feature employed. An adaptive threshold is used for classification into pause and non-pause. The segmentation algorithm that determines perceptually relevant pause intervals for different semantic levels incorporates a minimum duration and a maximum interruption constraint. The influence of the different parameters on the segmentation is examined in experiments and presented in this paper. A new approach for evaluating segmentation accuracies is required. It is shown that the simple perceptual pause concept has a very high relevance when segmenting audio at different semantic levels.
Constrained Clustering: Effective Constraint Propagation with Imperfect Oracles

While spectral clustering is usually an unsupervised operation, there are circumstances in which we have prior belief that pairs of samples should (or should not) be assigned with the same cluster. Constrained spectral clustering aims to exploit this prior belief as constraint (or weak supervision) to influence the cluster formation so as to obtain a structure more closely resembling human perception. Two important issues remain open: (1) how to propagate sparse constraints effectively, (2) how to handle ill-conditioned/noisy constraints generated by imperfect oracles. In this paper we present a unified framework to address the above issues. Specifically, in contrast to existing constrained spectral clustering approaches that blindly rely on all features for constructing the spectral, our approach searches for neighbours driven by discriminative feature selection for more effective constraint diffusion. Crucially, we formulate a novel data-driven filtering approach to handle the noisy constraint problem, which has been unrealistically ignored in constrained spectral clustering literature.
Synergic Effects of Mycoplasmal Lipopeptides and Extracellular ATP on Activation of Macrophages

ABSTRACT Mycoplasmal lipopeptides S-(2,3-bispalmitoyloxypropyl)-CGDPKHSPKSF and S-(2,3-bispalmitoyloxypropyl)-CGNNDESNISFKEK activated a monocytic cell line, THP-1 cells, to produce tumor necrosis factor alpha. The activity of the lipopeptides was augmented by ATP in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, the level of expression of mRNAs for tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin-1β, -6, and -8 was also upregulated by the lipopeptides and/or extracellular ATP, but that of interleukin-10 was not. The P2X purinergic receptor antagonists pyridoxal phosphate 6-azophenyl 2′,4′-disulfonic acid and periodate-oxidized ATP suppressed the activity of ATP to augment the activation of THP-1 cells by the lipopeptides, suggesting that P2X receptors play important roles in the activity of ATP. The nuclear factor κB inhibitor dexamethasone also suppressed the activity, suggesting that the activity of ATP is dependent upon the nuclear factor κB. Thus, these results suggest that the interaction of extracellular ATP with the P2X receptors is attributed to the activity of ATP to augment the activation of THP-1 cells by mycoplasmal lipopeptides.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Planning skills of adolescents with ADHD

Objective: This study assesses planning skills of adolescents with ADHD using a multi-method assessment and explores subtype differences between inattentive and combined subtypes. Method: One hundred fifteen adolescents with ADHD and 34 typically developing controls completed subtests of the Delis–Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS), and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF). Results: No group differences were found on the D-KEFS. The BADS Zoo Map test showed longer completion times in the inattentive than in the combined subtype and controls. The BRIEF showed more planning problems in adolescents with ADHD (both subtypes) than in controls, with the combined subtype showing most problems on overall executive functioning. Conclusion: Only a proportion of adolescents with ADHD shows planning deficits. To capture these planning problems in adolescents with ADHD, it seems important to use multiple measures of planning, both ratings and “less structured” neurocognitive measures of planning. (J. of Att. Dis. 2018; 22(1) 46-57)
Electrical transport study of individually-wired colloidal nano-rods

Colloidal semiconducting nano-particles can be fabricated with fine control over size, shape and composition. They have been studied extensively by optical techniques, but very few attempts have been made to wire such particles into an electrical circuit. This work presents a study of wiring individual CdSe and CdS nano-rods, 30–70 nm long and of 4–5 nm diameter, by applying the Electron-Beam-Induced-Deposition (EBID) technique. EBID is based on electron-bean dissociation of precursor molecules and allows the single-step in-situ deposition of thin (< 10 nm) metallic lines onto a substrate. The resulting devices are measured at T = 4–300K. At 4K many of the devices exhibit smooth I(V) curves with no sharp onset features, which remarkably fit a field-effect (Fowler-Nordheim) tunneling model. All devices exhibit an anomalous exponential temperature dependence, of the form I ~ exp(T/To). This highly irregular behavior, which can not be explained by any hopping or activation model, is interpreted by accounting for the lowering of the conduction band due to lattice dilation and phonon-coupling.
A versatile reducible polycation-based system for efficient delivery of a broad range of nucleic acids

Synthetic vectors based on reducible polycations consisting of histidine and polylysine residues (HIS RPCs) were evaluated for their ability to deliver nucleic acids. Initial experiments showed that RPC-based vectors with at least 70% histidine content mediated efficient levels of gene transfer without requirement for the endosomolytic agent chloroquine. Significant gene transfer was observed in a range of cell types achieving up to a 5-fold increase in the percentage of transfected cells compared to 25 kDa PEI, a gold standard synthetic vector. In contrast to 25 kDa PEI, HIS RPCs also mediated efficient transfer of other nucleic acids, including mRNA encoding green fluorescent protein in PC-3 cells and siRNA directed against the neurotrophin receptor p75NTR in post-mitotic cultures of rat dorsal root ganglion cell neurons. Experiments to elevate intracellular glutathione and linear profiling of cell images captured by multiphoton fluorescent microscopy highlighted that parameters such as the molecular weight and rate of cleavage of HIS RPCs were important factors in determining transfection activity. Altogether, these results demonstrate that HIS RPCs represent a novel and versatile type of vector that can be used for efficient cytoplasmic delivery of a broad range of nucleic acids. This should enable different or a combination of therapeutic strategies to be evaluated using a single type of polycation-based vector.
Estimation and prediction of multiple flying balls using Probability Hypothesis Density filtering

We describe a method for estimating position and velocity of multiple flying balls for the purpose of robotic ball catching. For this a multi-target recursive Bayes filter, the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density filter (GM-PHD), fed by a circle detector is used. This recently developed filter avoids the need to enumerate all possible data association decisions, making them computationally efficient. Over time, a mixture of Gaussians is propagated as tracks, predicted into the future and then sent to the robot. By learning a prior from training data we are focusing on detections that are likely to lead to a catchable trajectory which increases robustness. We evaluate the tracker's performance by comparing it with ground truth data, assessing tracking performance as well as the prediction precision of single tracks. Reasonable prediction performance is acquired right from the start, leading to a good overall catching rate.
Optical Mapping Reveals a Large Genetic Inversion between Two Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Strains

ABSTRACT Staphylococcus aureus is a highly versatile and evolving bacterium of great clinical importance. S. aureus can evolve by acquiring single nucleotide polymorphisms and mobile genetic elements and by recombination events. Identification and location of novel genomic elements in a bacterial genome are not straightforward, unless the whole genome is sequenced. Optical mapping is a new tool that creates a high-resolution, in situ ordered restriction map of a bacterial genome. These maps can be used to determine genomic organization and perform comparative genomics to identify genomic rearrangements, such as insertions, deletions, duplications, and inversions, compared to an in silico (virtual) restriction map of a known genome sequence. Using this technology, we report here the identification, approximate location, and characterization of a genetic inversion of ∼500 kb of a DNA element between the NRS387 (USA800) and FPR3757 (USA300) strains. The presence of the inversion and location of its junction sites were confirmed by site-specific PCR and sequencing. At both the left and right junction sites in NRS387, an IS1181 element and a 73-bp sequence were identified as inverted repeats, which could explain the possible mechanism of the inversion event.