Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Cause of Death of a Child in the 18th Century Solved by Bone Microbiome Typing Using Laser Microdissection and Next Generation Sequencing

The history of medicine abounds in cases of mysterious deaths, especially by infectious diseases, which were probably unresolved because of the lack of knowledge and of appropriate technology. The aim of this study was to exploit contemporary technologies to try to identify the cause of death of a young boy who died from a putative “infection” at the end of the 18th century, and for whom an extraordinarily well-preserved minute bone fragment was available. After confirming the nature of the sample, we used laser microdissection to select the most “informative” area to be examined. Tissue genotyping indicated male gender, thereby confirming the notary’s report. 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing showed that Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were more abundant than Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, and that Pseudomonas was the most abundant bacterial genus in the Pseudomonadaceae family. These data suggest that the patient most likely died from Pseudomonas osteomyelitis. This case is an example of how new technological approaches, like laser microdissection and next-generation sequencing, can resolve ancient cases of uncertain etiopathology. Lastly, medical samples may contain a wealth of information that may not be accessible until more sophisticated technology becomes available. Therefore, one may envisage the possibility of systematically storing medical samples for evaluation by future generations.
POLITECNICO DI TORINO Repository ISTITUZIONALE Output Statistics of MIMO Channels with General Input Distribution

The information that can be conveyed through a wireless channel, with multiple-antenna equipped transmitter and receiver, crucially depends on the channel behavior as well as on the input structure. In this paper, we derive analytical results, concerning the probability density function (pdf) of the output of a single-user, multiple-antenna communication. The analysis is carried out under the assumption of an optimized input structure, and assuming Gaussian noise and a Rayleigh block-fading channel. Our analysis therefore provides a quite general and compact expression for the conditional output pdf. We also highlight the relation between such an expression and the results already available in the literature for some specific input structures.
A Possible Cellular Mechanism of Neuronal Loss in the Dorsal Root Ganglia of Dystonia musculorum (dt) Mice

Dystonia musculorum (dt) is a mutant mouse with hereditary sensory neuropathy. A defective bullous pemphigoid antigen 1 (BPAG1) gene is responsible for this mutation. In the present study, we examined the distribution of neuronal intermediate filament proteins in the central and peripheral processes of the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) in adult dt mice using different approaches. We found that not only BPAG1, but also &agr;-internexin was absent in the DRG neurons in adult dt mice. To study the relationship between the absence of &agr;-internexin and the progressive neuronal loss in the DRG of dt mice, we further cultured DRG neurons from embryonic dt mutants. Immunocytochemical assay of cultured DRG neurons from dt embryos revealed that &agr;-internexin was aggregated in the proximal region of axons and juxtanuclear region of the cytoplasma, yet the other intermediate filament proteins were widely distributed in all processes. The active caspase-3 activity was observed in the dt neuron with massive accumulation of &agr;-internexin. From our observations, we suggest that the interaction between BPAG1 and &agr;-internexin may be one of the key factors involved in neuronal degeneration, and abnormal accumulation of &agr;-internexin may impair the axonal transport and subsequently turns on the cascade of neuronal apoptosis in dt mice.
Unsupervised Japanese-Chinese Opinion Word Translation using Dependency Distance and Feature-Opinion Association Weight

Online shoppers depend on customer reviews when evaluating products or services. However, in the international online marketplace, reviews in a user's language may not be available. Translation of online customer reviews is therefore an important service. A crucial aspect of this task is translating opinion words, key words that capture the reviewers' sentiments. This is challenging because opinion words often have multiple translations. We propose an unsupervised opinion word translation disambiguation scoring method using dependency distance and feature-opinion association as weighting factors. The scores of an opinion word's translation and its surrounding words' translations are estimated using Google snippets. We focus on Japanese-Chinese translation of hotel review s from Rakutan Travel, using the 10 most common polysemous Japanese opinion words to evaluate system performance. Results show our weighting factors significantly improve translation accuracy compared to Google and Excite.
A low-power CMOS analog voltage buffer using compact adaptive biasing

A CMOS analog buffer with high output drivability is presented. The buffer combines class-AB operation with rail-to-rail signal swing. A new adaptive biasing scheme is proposed with low complexity, thereby allowing the construction of a very compact, low-power analog voltage buffer with wide bandwidth and high slew rate. Simulated results using a 0.35-mum CMOS process are provided. The circuit operates from a single 1.5-V power supply and has a quiescent power consumption of only 282 muW.
Convergencia real en la Unión Europea

El analisis de la existencia de convergencia en terminos reales entre los dis-tintos espacios economicos ha suscitado un intenso debate entre los macroe-conomistas. La metodologia basada en un analisis de corte transversal, la mas extendida en este campo de estudio, ha proporcionado apoyo a la hipote-sis de convergencia, normalmente condicionando al estado estacionario de cada economia. Sin embargo, las criticas a este enfoque han potenciado el uso de metodologias alternativas. En nuestro trabajo, se procede al analisis de las series temporales del produc-to real per capita de los paises de la Union Europea, examinando la presen-cia o no de relaciones de largo plazo entre las mismas, mediante tecnicas de cointegracion. Posteriormente, para superar la seria restriccion que supone considerar una misma tendencia para toda la serie, se introduce modelos al-ternativos capaces de captar la existencia de cambios estructurales y detectar endogenamente el posible punto en el que se producen.
Adaptive Holistic Scheduling for In-Network Sensor Query Processing

We observe two problems in the current scheduling schemes for in-network sensor query processing: (1) A query execution plan never changes after it is injected into the network and (2) the data communication schedule rarely considers the query workload. Both problems severely hurt the performance, because the runtime dynamics, such as the wireless connectivity and the data flows, change frequently and affect the performance greatly. To address these two problems, we propose an adaptive, holistic scheduler, AHS, which schedules both the query operators and the data communication, and is able to adapt the schedules to the runtime dynamics. We have implemented AHS in nesC and have tested it on real motes as well as in simulation. Our results show that AHS improves the performance of query processing in various dynamic settings.
Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions of Dyslexia and Ability to Identify Students At-Risk

This study primarily explored the perceptions of dyslexia held by early childhood educators teaching in Head Start centers. A secondary purpose was to investigate how early childhood educators in Head Start centers perceive the notion of risk for dyslexia and how they identify at-risk students in ways that are consist with the results of a research-based assessment instrument. A case study approach was used for this study of two Head Start centers, one in the state of New Jersey and one in the state of Pennsylvania. Two teachers in each center (n = 4) and a total of 19 preschoolers participated in the study. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews, observations, a teacher rating scale, and the Preschool Early Literacy Indicator (PELI) assessment. Findings indicate that the Head Start teachers held the prevailing misconception that dyslexia is a visual processing disorder rather than a phonological processing disorder. The Head Start teachers did not view phonemic awareness as a key factor in identifying children at-risk for dyslexia. Participants had a high success rate in identifying students at-risk in the areas of alphabet knowledge and oral language, but not in phonemic awareness and vocabulary. The results suggest that the stereotypes of dyslexia are hard to dispel and that professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers in early literacy practices and dyslexia are needed.
LSTM-Based Predictions for Proactive Information Retrieval

We describe a method for proactive information retrieval targeted at retrieving relevant information during a writing task. In our method, the current task and the needs of the user are estimated, and the potential next steps are unobtrusively predicted based on the user's past actions. We focus on the task of writing, in which the user is coalescing previously collected information into a text. Our proactive system automatically recommends the user relevant background information. The proposed system incorporates text input prediction using a long short-term memory (LSTM) network. We present simulations, which show that the system is able to reach higher precision values in an exploratory search setting compared to both a baseline and a comparison system.
In Vivo Non-Invasive Tracking of Macrophage Recruitment to Experimental Stroke

Brain-infiltrating monocyte-derived macrophages are one of the key players in the local immune response after stroke. It is now widely accepted that the inflammatory response is not an exclusively destructive process. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms needed for proper regulation still remain to be elucidated. Here, we propose an in vitro labelling strategy for multimodal in vivo observation of macrophage dynamics distinguished from brain-residing microglia response. Prior to intracerebral transplantation into the striatum of recipient mice or systemic administration, monocytes and macrophages, isolated from luciferase-expressing mice, were labelled with superparamagnetic iron oxide particles. Temporo-spatial localization was monitored by magnetic resonance imaging, whereas survival of grafted cells was investigated using bioluminescence imaging. The labelling procedure of the isolated cells did not significantly influence cell characteristics and resulted in detection of as few as 500 labelled cells in vivo. Two weeks after stereotactic transplantation, the luciferase signal was sustained traceable, with approximately 18% of the original luciferase signal detectable for monocytes and about 30% for macrophages. Hypointensity in MRI of the graft appeared unaltered in spatial location. In a therapeutically relevant approach, systemic cell administration after stroke resulted in accumulation mostly in thoracic regions, as could be visualized with BLI. For detection of homing to ischemic brain tissue more cells need to be administered. Nevertheless, during parallel MRI sessions recruitment of i.v. injected cells to the lesion site could be detected by day 2 post stroke as scattered hypointense signal voids. With further increase in sensitivity, our multi-facetted labelling strategy will provide the basis for in vivo tracking and fate specification of tissue-infiltrating macrophages and their distinct role in stroke-related neuro-inflammation.
Interaction Histories and Short Term Memory: Enactive Development of Turn-taking Behaviors in a Childlike Humanoid Robot

In this article, an enactive architecture is described that allows a humanoid robot to learn to compose simple actions into turn-taking behaviors while playing interaction games with a human partner. The robot's action choices are reinforced by social feedback from the human in the form of visual attention and measures of behavioral synchronization. We demonstrate that the system can acquire and switch between behaviors learned through interaction based on social feedback from the human partner. The role of reinforcement based on a short term memory of the interaction is experimentally investigated. Results indicate that feedback based only on the immediate state is insufficient to learn certain turn-taking behaviors. Therefore some history of the interaction must be considered in the acquisition of turn-taking, which can be efficiently handled through the use of short term memory.
THE COMPLETE SPECTRUM OF THE NEUTRON STAR X-RAY BINARY 4 U 0614 + 091 Citation

We observed the neutron star (NS) ultra-compact X-ray binary 4U 0614+091 quasi-simultaneously in the radio band (Very Large Array), mid-infrared (IR)/IR (Spitzer/Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer and Infrared Array Camera), near-IR/optical (Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System), optical–UV (Swift/UV–Optical Telescope), soft and hard X-rays (Swift/X-ray Telescope and Rossi-X-ray Timing Explorer). The source was steadily in its “hard state. ” We detected the source in the whole range, for the first time in the radio band at 4.86 and 8.46 GHz and in the mid-IR at 24 μm, up to 100 keV. The optically thick synchrotron spectrum of the jet is consistent with being flat from the radio to the mid-IR band. The flat jet spectrum breaks in the range ∼(1–4) × 1013 Hz to an optically thin power-law synchrotron spectrum with spectral index ∼ −0.5. These observations allow us to estimate a lower limit on the jet radiative power of ∼3 × 1032 erg s−1 and a total jet power LJ ∼ 1034μ−1 0.05 E0.53 c erg s−1 (where Ec is the high-energy cutoff of the synchrotron spectrum in eV and μ0.05 is the radiative efficiency in units of 0.05). The contemporaneous detection of the optically thin part of the compact jet and the X-ray tail above 30 keV allows us to assess the contribution of the jet to the hard X-ray tail by synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) processes. We conclude that, for realistic jet size, boosting, viewing angle, and energy partition, the SSC emission alone, from the post-shock, accelerated, non-thermal population in the jet, is not a viable mechanism to explain the observed hard X-ray tail of the NS 4U 0614+091.
Why are CASE tools not used?

group, and 5% are widely used, but not to capacity. Aaen et al. [1], based on a survey of 102 CASE user organizations in Denmark and Fin-land, report that less than 20% of the organizations were close to routine users of CASE tools, even though 24% had used them more than three years. About half the respondents had used the tools for two projects or less, and in the majority of the organizations, less than one-fourth of the analysts used CASE tools. Kusters and Wijers [14] found in their analysis of 262 Dutch organizations that in 20% of the organizations more than 75% of analysts used CASE tools on a regular basis and in 18% the rate was between 51% and 75%. Even so, in 37% of the organizations, 25% or less of the analysts used CASE tools on a regular basis. Besides the waste of the initial investment in CASE tools, the low rate is alarming because most empirical studies indicate positive rather than negative impact of CASE tools on systems development effectiveness. Norman and Nunamaker [17] reported that software engineers generally perceived their productivity being improved with the use of CASE technology. Banker and Kauffman [2] found an order of magnitude increase in software development productivity in their analysis of 20 projects that applied a CASE tool emphasizing reusability. Aaen et al. [1] found that about 72% of their sample perceived the objectives of improved quality of systems, improved systems development procedures, and increased standardization were met to a significant degree, but about 60% of respondents assessed the objective of improved productivity was met only to a minor degree. 47% of the respondents indicated good profitability of CASE investments while 31% assessed it as poor. The author examines attitudes toward CASE usage in a wide variety of organizations. CASE (Computer-Aided Software/Systems Engineering) tools are claimed to increase information systems and software development effectiveness in terms of productivity of systems development and the quality of the developed systems. However, the results of prior research on CASE adoption [1, 6, 14, 17] are to some extent paradoxical. While most research reports positive rather than negative impact on the quality of developed systems , and to a lesser extent on the productivity of the development process, the actual use of CASE technology has been much less than one would expect. Kemerer [13], for example, reports that one year after introduction, 70% …
Complementary Cognitive Capabilities, Economic Decision-Making, and Aging

Fluid intelligence decreases with age, yet evidence about age declines in decision-making quality is mixed: Depending on the study, older adults make worse, equally good, or even better decisions than younger adults. We propose a potential explanation for this puzzle, namely that age differences in decision performance result from the interplay between two sets of cognitive capabilities that impact decision making, one in which older adults fare worse (i.e., fluid intelligence) and one in which they fare better (i.e., crystallized intelligence). Specifically, we hypothesized that older adults' higher levels of crystallized intelligence can provide an alternate pathway to good decisions when the fluid intelligence pathway declines. The performance of older adults relative to younger adults therefore depends on the relative importance of each type of intelligence for the decision at hand. We tested this complementary capabilities hypothesis in a broad sample of younger and older adults, collecting a battery of standard cognitive measures and measures of economically important decision-making "traits"--including temporal discounting, loss aversion, financial literacy, and debt literacy. We found that older participants performed as well as or better than younger participants on these four decision-making measures. Structural equation modeling verified our hypothesis: Older participants' greater crystallized intelligence offset their lower levels of fluid intelligence for temporal discounting, financial literacy, and debt literacy, but not for loss aversion. These results have important implications for public policy and for the design of effective decision environments for older adults.
Gait Based Gender Identification Approach

To improve the performance of gait based human identification system, gender can plays an important role in the field of surveillance and monitoring applications. The proposed algorithm consist of four steps. In initial step, silhouette object detection is take place by using background subtraction and morphological operation. In segmentation step, silhouette body is divided into six regions. Then their gait features are extracted by using 2D discrete wavelet transform and finally the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier is employed to classify the gender for identification of the person. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, experiments are conducted on CASIA Gait database. An experimental result shows that the proposed method is more effective for gender identification using gait biometrics. The proposed approach achieved highly competitive performance compare with earlier published methods.
Extraction of 3D information using overlay detection on SAR images

This paper presents a study of height recovery using overlay detection in semi-urban areas. The input data are a lonely SAR image and a map of the buildings. The first part of the paper presents the different steps of the proposed algorithm (primitive selection, overlay extraction and height recovery), and the second part is dedicated to the method evaluation on two SAR images of the same area but acquired with different incidence angles.
A Pattern-Driven Process Model for Quality-Centered Software Architecture Design--A Case Study on Usability-Centered Design

Quality requirements of software systems typically affect large portions of the system, and should be taken into account early in the design process. Patterns have become a mainstream technique to associate frequent quality-related design problems with proven solutions. We present a generic pattern-driven design process model, and apply this to usability, obtaining a usability-centered design process model. As a case study, we have applied the model to the usability-centered software architecture design of a stone crusher control system.
Strategic Planning Objectives for Venture Capitalist Investments in Emerging Information Technologies: A value-focused perspective

Academic and practitioner literature suggests that Venture Capitalists often have problems with aligning information technology opportunities with investment objectives. To a large extent the alignment process is not formally documented and relies on intuitive instincts. Hence it is important to define Venture Capitalist objectives for investments in emerging information technologies. This paper uses the ValueFocused Thinking approach to identify, define and structure value driven objectives. Based on data collected from a number of Venture Capitalist interviews we identified 130 values, which resulted in 72 objectives. These objectives were organized into 22 clusters, which were bifurcated into fundamental and means categories. In a final synthesis we present a 7 fundamental and 15 means categorical objectives for strategically planning Venture Capitalist investments in emerging information technologies.