Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Cardiovascular Effects of Incretin

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), a leading cause of death in patients with diabetes mellitus, has several pathogenic mechanisms that are well established. However, the traditional hypoglycemic agents do not have proven positive effects on macrovascular disease. Novel therapeutic agents target the incretin pathway including the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor (GLP-1R) agonists and the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors. The glucose-regulatory actions of these agents function by increasing insulin secretion and suppressing glucagon. They also act to increase weight loss not only by inhibiting gastric emptying, but also by reducing appetite. Although GLP-1 and GLP-1R agonists have demonstrated beneficial effects on myocardium and vascular endothelium including coronary and peripheral mouse vessels, they also have anti-inflammatory and anti-atherogenic actions. These agents also have positive effects on the lipid profile and blood pressure. Although these cardioprotective actions seem to be beyond the effects of glucose control and weight loss, they are mediated through GLP-1R- or GLP-1R-independent actions of cleaved GLP-1 (9-36). Larger randomized controlled trials are necessary to elucidate the clinical promise of these beneficial CVD effects.
Development of a mixed signal LSI for tactile data processing

A tactile sensor which can cover the entire body of a robot is needed to construct a robot that coexists with humans. In this study, pressure conductive rubber and a matrix of electrodes are used to build a two-dimensional force sensor array. The large amount of wiring causes problems in these sensor arrays. We are trying to develop an LSI which can detect the force distribution on the sensor and compress it to reduce the number of wires. The goal of this study is to detect signals from a 64 /spl times/ 64 sensor array and convert it into an 8-bit digital signal at 1-ms intervals. In this work, the detection circuit in particular is discussed.
Integrating non-intering versions of programs

The need to integrate several versions of a program into a common one arises frequently, but it is a tedious and time consuming task to integrate programs by hand. The main contribution of this paper is an algorithm, called <italic>integrate</italic>, that takes as input three programs <italic>A, B</italic>, and <italic>Base</italic>, where <italic>A</italic> and <italic>B</italic> are two variants of <italic>Base</italic>. Whenever the changes made to <italic>Base</italic> to create <italic>A</italic> and <italic>B</italic> do not “interfere” (in a sense defined in the paper), Integrate produces a program <italic>M</italic> that integrates <italic>A</italic> and <italic>B</italic>.
PPM-HDA: Privacy-Preserving and Multifunctional Health Data Aggregation With Fault Tolerance

Wireless body area networks (WBANs), as a promising health-care system, can provide tremendous benefits for timely and continuous patient care and remote health monitoring. Owing to the restriction of communication, computation and power in WBANs, cloud-assisted WBANs, which offer more reliable, intelligent, and timely health-care services for mobile users and patients, are receiving increasing attention. However, how to aggregate the health data multifunctionally and efficiently is still an open issue to the cloud server (CS). In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving and multifunctional health data aggregation (PPM-HDA) mechanism with fault tolerance for cloud-assisted WBANs. With PPM-HDA, the CS can compute multiple statistical functions of users' health data in a privacy-preserving way to offer various services. In particular, we first propose a multifunctional health data additive aggregation scheme (MHDA+) to support additive aggregate functions, such as average and variance. Then, we put forward MHDA⊕ as an extension of MHDA+ to support nonadditive aggregations, such as min/max, median, percentile, and histogram. The PPM-HDA can resist differential attacks, which most existing data aggregation schemes suffer from. The security analysis shows that the PPM-HDA can protect users' privacy against many threats. Performance evaluations illustrate that the computational overhead of MHDA+ is significantly reduced with the assistance of CSs. Our MHDA⊕ scheme is more efficient than previously reported min/max aggregation schemes in terms of communication overhead when the applications require large plaintext space and highly accurate data.
Hashing Based Dictionaries in Different Memory Models

Hashing based dictionaries are one of the most fundamental data structures in computer science, in both theory and practice. They have been intensively studied for decades, and numerous results have been obtained in many memory models. In this survey, we try to cover some basic approaches and techniques for designing hashing based dictionaries. We focus on three most popular memory models: the RAM model, the I/O model [1] and the cache-oblivious model [18]. Some lower bound results are discussed as well. This survey is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. qualifying examination in computer science, HKUST The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Ph.D Qualifying Exam Computer Science and Engineering
MeCoCo: A Context-Aware System for Mediated Communications

In this paper, the potential of contextual communications with mobile technologies is explored. Context-aware applications allow relevant information and services to be delivered to users at a given time. One of the two objectives of our work is to propose a generic user's context model for mediated communications. This model is based on six dimensions: User's profile, Activity, Device, Environment, Location and Time. In addition, to show the utility and to validate the proposed approach, we designed a prototype named MeCoCo (Mediated Contextual Communications) with a specific interface promoting the search of interesting contacts and messages. The MeCoCo prototype illustrates the power of contextual information.
Wind Generators and Market Power: Does it matter who owns them?

Electricity production from wind generators holds significant importance in European Union’s 20% renewable energy target by 2020. In this paper, I show that ownership of wind generators a! ects market outcomes by using both a Cournot oligopoly model and a real options model. In the Cournot oligopoly model, ownership of the wind generators by owners of fossil-fueled (peakload) generators decreases total peakload production and increases the market price. These e! ects increase with total wind generation and aggregate wind generator ownership. In the real options model, start up and shut down price thresholds are significantly higher when the monopolist at the peakload level owns both types of generators. Furthermore, when producing electricity with the peakload generator, the monopolist can avoid facing prices below marginal cost by owning a certain share of the wind generators.
Impact of Serotonin 2C Receptor Null Mutation on Physiology and Behavior Associated with Nigrostriatal Dopamine Pathway Function

The impact of serotonergic neurotransmission on brain dopaminergic pathways has substantial relevance to many neuropsychiatric disorders. A particularly prominent role has been ascribed to the inhibitory effects of serotonin 2C receptor (5-HT2CR) activation on physiology and behavior mediated by the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway, particularly in the terminal region of the nucleus accumbens. The influence of this receptor subtype on functions mediated by the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway is less clear. Here we report that a null mutation eliminating expression of 5-HT2CRs produces marked alterations in the activity and functional output of this pathway. 5-HT2CR mutant mice displayed increased activity of substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) dopaminergic neurons, elevated baseline extracellular dopamine concentrations in the dorsal striatum (DSt), alterations in grooming behavior, and enhanced sensitivity to the stereotypic behavioral effects of d-amphetamine and GBR 12909. These psychostimulant responses occurred in the absence of phenotypic differences in drug-induced extracellular dopamine concentration, suggesting a phenotypic alteration in behavioral responses to released dopamine. This was further suggested by enhanced behavioral responses of mutant mice to the D1 receptor agonist SKF 81297. Differences in DSt D1 or D2 receptor expression were not found, nor were differences in medium spiny neuron firing patterns or intrinsic membrane properties following dopamine stimulation. We conclude that 5-HT2CRs regulate nigrostriatal dopaminergic activity and function both at SNc dopaminergic neurons and at a locus downstream of the DSt.
Efficacy of Killed Virus Vaccine, Live Attenuated Chimeric Virus Vaccine, and Passive Immunization for Prevention of West Nile virus Encephalitis in Hamster Model

Results of experiments evaluating the efficacy of three immunization strategies for the prevention of West Nile virus (WNV) encephalitis are reported. Immunization strategies evaluated included a killed virus veterinary vaccine, a live attenuated chimeric virus vaccine candidate, and passive immunization with WNV-immune serum; all were tested by using a hamster model of the disease. Each product protected the animals from clinical illness and death when challenged with a hamster-virulent wild-type WNV strain 1 month after initial immunization. The live attenuated chimeric virus vaccine candidate induced the highest humoral antibody responses, as measured by hemagglutination inhibition, complement fixation, and plaque reduction neutralization tests. Although the duration of protective immunity was not determined in this study, our preliminary results and the cumulative experience of other virus vaccines suggest that the live attenuated chimeric virus provides the longest lasting immunity.
Pure alexia and covert reading: Evidence from Stroop tasks

Abstract Patients with pure alexia (also referred to as letter-by-letter readers) show a marked word-length effect when naming visually presented words, evidenced by a monotonic increase in response time (or decrease in accuracy) as a function of the number of letters in the string. Interestingly, despite the difficulty in overtly reporting the identity of some words, many patients exhibit fast and above-chance access to lexical and/or semantic information for the same words. To explore the extent of this covert reading, we examined the degree of interference afforded by the inconsistent (word identity and colour label do not match) versus neutral condition in a Stroop task in a pure alexic patient, EL. EL shows evidence of covert reading on a semantic categorisation task and a lexical decision task. She also demonstrates covert reading by exhibiting Stroop interference of the same magnitude as a matched control subject, when naming the colour of the ink in which a word is printed. When the word shares some but not all letters with the colour name (BLOW instead of BLUE), neither subject shows interference. In contrast with the control subject, EL does not show Stroop interference when various orthographic changes (degraded visual input, cursive font) or phonological or semantic changes are made to the word. These findings indicate that although some implicit processing of words may be possible, this processing is rather rudimentary. Not surprising, this implicit activation may be insufficient to support overt word identification. We explain these findings in the context of a single, integrated account of pure alexia.
The Implementation of a Query-Directed Multi-document Summarization System

Query-directed multi-document summarization aims to provide a more effective characterization of a document set accounting to the user's information need when generating a summary. In this paper, we propose a practical approach for this task by identifying the sentences with high query-relevant and high information density. This is implemented by mining two kinds of features for each sentence: the power of correlation with the query and the power of global connectivity. While the first is executed by computing semantic similarity between the sentence and the query, and the other is executed by using semantic graph. Then these two kinds of features are blessed to score each sentence. At last with the help of MMR for reducing redundancy, we get the summary. Experimental results indicate that this method is encouraging for both those retrieved documents that correspondingly concentrating to one subject and retrieved documents who have many sub-topics and comparatively being related to the query.
Design and Evaluation of an Event Architecture for Paper UIs: Developers Create by Copying and Combining

This paper explores architectural support for interface ensembles comprising pens, paper, and PCs. We show how the event-based approach common to GUIs can apply to augmented paper, and describe additions to address paper's distinguishing characteristics. Most notably, we introduce techniques for integrating interactive and batched input handling, coordinating interactions across devices, and rapidly debugging applications that integrate paper and computation. To understand the developer experience of this architecture, we deployed the toolkit to 17 teams at another university for six weeks. Static analysis of the participants' code provided insight into the appropriateness of events for paper (e.g., programmers relied on debugging output to track event flow). We also distilled usage patterns, revealing that programmers composed simple gesture handlers from ink measurements. This desire for informal interactions inspired us to include abstractions for recognition. This study has implications beyond paper ' designers of graphical tools can provide visualizations for event flow, and examine API usage to inform toolkit revisions.
A distributed object-oriented framework for tool development

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the availability and quality of software engineering tools; such tools are invaluable in ensuring program correctness and identifying performance problems. The majority of these, however, do not interoperate and are available on a limited platform set. We analyse such deficiencies and propose an extensible architecture for a distributed software engineering tool framework using CORBA object-oriented technology. The resulting framework provides a unified interface for parallel, distributed and single-processor systems, facilitates tool development, promotes tool interoperability, and can be extended by the integration of new tools and services. This flexibility is demonstrated by the specification of an extension to support the MPI programming paradigm and a wide selection of tools that have been built using the system.
Global spatial normalization of human brain using convex hulls.

UNLABELLED Global spatial normalization transforms a brain image so that its principal global spatial features (position, orientation and dimensions) match those of a standard or atlas brain, supporting consistent analysis and referencing of brain locations. The convex hull (CH), derived from the brain's surface, was selected as the basis for automating and standardizing global spatial normalization. The accuracy and precision of CH global spatial normalization of PET and MR brain images were evaluated in normal human subjects. METHODS Software was developed to extract CHs of brain surfaces from tomographic brain images. Pelizzari's hat-to-head least-square-error surface-fitting method was modified to fit individual CHs (hats) to a template CH (head) and calculate a nine-parameter coordinate transformation to perform spatial normalization. A template CH was refined using MR images from 12 subjects to optimize global spatial feature conformance to the 1988 Talairach Atlas brain. The template was tested in 12 additional subjects. Three major performance characteristics were evaluated: (a) quality of spatial normalization with anatomical MR images, (b) optimal threshold for PET and (c) quality of spatial normalization for functional PET images. RESULTS As a surface model of the human brain, the CH was shown to be highly consistent across subjects and imaging modalities. In MR images (n = 24), mean errors for anterior and posterior commissures generally were <1 mm, with SDs < 1.5 mm. Mean brain-dimension errors generally were <1.3 mm, and bounding limits were within 1-2 mm of the Talairach Atlas values. The optimal threshold for defining brain boundaries in both 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (n = 8) and 15O-water (n = 12) PET images was 40% of the brain maximum value. The accuracy of global spatial normalization of PET images was shown to be similar to that of MR images. CONCLUSION The global features of CH-spatially normalized brain images (position, orientation and size) were consistently transformed to match the Talairach Atlas in both MR and PET images. The CH method supports intermodality and intersubject global spatial normalization of tomographic brain images.
Mutation of the Mouse Syce1 Gene Disrupts Synapsis and Suggests a Link between Synaptonemal Complex Structural Components and DNA Repair

In mammals, the synaptonemal complex is a structure required to complete crossover recombination. Although suggested by cytological work, in vivo links between the structural proteins of the synaptonemal complex and the proteins of the recombination process have not previously been made. The central element of the synaptonemal complex is traversed by DNA at sites of recombination and presents a logical place to look for interactions between these components. There are four known central element proteins, three of which have previously been mutated. Here, we complete the set by creating a null mutation in the Syce1 gene in mouse. The resulting disruption of synapsis in these animals has allowed us to demonstrate a biochemical interaction between the structural protein SYCE2 and the repair protein RAD51. In normal meiosis, this interaction may be responsible for promoting homologous synapsis from sites of recombination.
Exploring the Use of Shape Change in Home Appliances

Vacuum cleaners are mundane, rigid, and at best manually reconfigurable. This paper investigates the potential of adding value to them by designing shape-changing interfaces. We present the conceptualization and design process of three prototypes that allow real-time reconfiguration of vacuum cleaners. Through discussion and reflection on design implications and experiences of the design process, we conclude that shape-change can contribute to designing engaging, functional, and aesthetic home appliances.
Principles of Private Firm Valuation

Preface. CHAPTER 1: The Value of Fair Market Value. CHAPTER 2: Creating and Measuring the Value of Private Firms. CHAPTER 3: The Restructuring of Frier Manufacturing. CHAPTER 4: Valuation Models and Metrics: Discounted Free Cash Flow and the Method of Multiples. CHAPTER 5: Estimating the Cost of Capital. CHAPTER 6: The Value of Liquidity: Estimating the Size of the Liquidity Discount. CHAPTER 7: Estimating the Value of Control. CHAPTER 8: Taxes and Firm Value. CHAPTER 9: Valuation and Financial Reports: The Case of Measuring Goodwill Impairment. Notes. Index.
The effect of consumer switching costs on market power of cable television providers

This paper empirically evaluates the effect of consumer switching costs on market power of cable television providers. To do so I propose an algorithm to estimate supply side parameters when the demand side is represented by consumers with persistent heterogeneity in tastes and state-dependent utility. Under such conditions, regardless of whether consumers are forward-looking or behave in a myopic way, the demand schedule introduces dynamics into the producer problem. Presence of multiple state variables makes full solution to the producer dynamic programming problem difficult or computationally infeasible. Therefore, I estimate supply side parameters from the optimality conditions for the dynamic controls. Using data from the paid television markets in US, I estimate cost functions of the cable television providers. In these markets, persistent consumer heterogeneity and state dependence due to switching costs requires producers to keep track of the entire distribution of consumer types which enters states space of a dynamic programming problem. Preliminary estimates of the consumer switching costs are $149 and $238 for cable and satellite providers respectively. The estimates of the supply side parameters imply average cost of providing service per subscriber of $2.19 and average per subscriber price-cost margin of $16.52. Counterfactual simulations suggest that without switching costs cable prices would be 28 percent higher with satellite competitors and 51 percent higher in case of static monopoly scenario.
The financing of disadvantaged entrepreneurs: are enterprise programmes overcoming the finance gap?

Purpose – This paper asks whether enterprise programmes are overcoming the finance gap faced by their disadvantaged participants. Specifically, the paper seeks to assessthe level of finance invested by participants on a leading UK enterprise programme, the New Entrepreneur Scholarships (NES). Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on a postal and e‐survey of participants on a leading UK enterprise programme, reporting on 472 respondents. Three capital structure variables (personal investment, external private investment and grants) are employed to analyse the importance of various types of funding in NES businesses. These figures are compared with published data about use of different types of finance, including principal sources of funding, in UK start‐ups. Descriptive statistics of perceptions of under‐capitalisation, and needs for additional funding, are also reported.Findings – NES Scholars make significantly lower start‐up investment than is typical in UK small businesses, particularly in terms.
Direct torque control for BLDCM based on optimized sliding mode observer

Direct torque control for brushless DC motor is a kind of control strategy with fast dynamic response and small torque ripple. The key issue of torque calculation is the estimation of back EMF. For that this paper proposes an optimized back electromotive force (back-EMF) sliding mode observer (SMO), a continuous smooth arc-tangent function is introduced into the observer in order to weaken chattering phenomenon, then the sliding and convergence condition is proved. Flux observation of conventional DTC could be omitted by three-phase Hall position sensor. Space voltage vector is selected by the output of cascade control of rotor speed and torque. Simulation results show that the suggested method can accurately estimate back EMF, the direct torque control for BLDCM can be satisfactorily realized.
Speaker Recognition System Using Combined Vector Quantization and Discrete Hidden Markov model

This paper presents a speaker verification system using a combination of Vector Quantization (VQ) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to improve the HMM performance. A Malay spoken digit database which contains 100 speakers is used for the testing and validation modules. It is shown that, by using the proposed combination technique, a total success rate (TSR) of 99.97% is achieved and it is an improvement of 11.24% in performance compared to HMM. For speaker verification, true speaker rejection rate, impostor acceptance rate and equal error rate (EER) are also improved significantly compared to HMM.