Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuroarchitecture of Aminergic Systems in the Larval Ventral Ganglion of Drosophila melanogaster

Biogenic amines are important signaling molecules in the central nervous system of both vertebrates and invertebrates. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, biogenic amines take part in the regulation of various vital physiological processes such as feeding, learning/memory, locomotion, sexual behavior, and sleep/arousal. Consequently, several morphological studies have analyzed the distribution of aminergic neurons in the CNS. Previous descriptions, however, did not determine the exact spatial location of aminergic neurite arborizations within the neuropil. The release sites and pre-/postsynaptic compartments of aminergic neurons also remained largely unidentified. We here used gal4-driven marker gene expression and immunocytochemistry to map presumed serotonergic (5-HT), dopaminergic, and tyraminergic/octopaminergic neurons in the thoracic and abdominal neuromeres of the Drosophila larval ventral ganglion relying on Fasciclin2-immunoreactive tracts as three-dimensional landmarks. With tyrosine hydroxylase- (TH) or tyrosine decarboxylase 2 (TDC2)-specific gal4-drivers, we also analyzed the distribution of ectopically expressed neuronal compartment markers in presumptive dopaminergic TH and tyraminergic/octopaminergic TDC2 neurons, respectively. Our results suggest that thoracic and abdominal 5-HT and TH neurons are exclusively interneurons whereas most TDC2 neurons are efferent. 5-HT and TH neurons are ideally positioned to integrate sensory information and to modulate neuronal transmission within the ventral ganglion, while most TDC2 neurons appear to act peripherally. In contrast to 5-HT neurons, TH and TDC2 neurons each comprise morphologically different neuron subsets with separated in- and output compartments in specific neuropil regions. The three-dimensional mapping of aminergic neurons now facilitates the identification of neuronal network contacts and co-localized signaling molecules, as exemplified for DOPA decarboxylase-synthesizing neurons that co-express crustacean cardioactive peptide and myoinhibiting peptides.
Systematic winter sea-surface temperature biases in the northern Arabian Sea in HiGEM and the CMIP3 models

Analysis of 20th century simulations of the High resolution Global Environment Model (HiGEM) and the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) models shows that most have a cold sea-surface temperature (SST) bias in the northern Arabian Sea during boreal winter. The association between Arabian Sea SST and the South Asian monsoon has been widely studied in observations and models, with winter cold biases known to be detrimental to rainfall simulation during the subsequent monsoon in coupled general circulation models. However, the causes of these SST biases are not well understood. Indeed this is one of the first papers to address causes of the cold biases. The models show anomalously strong north-easterly winter monsoon winds and cold air temperatures in north-west India, Pakistan and beyond. This leads to the anomalous advection of cold, dry air over the Arabian Sea. The cold land region is also associated with an anomalously strong meridional surface temperature gradient during winter, contributing to the enhanced low-level convergence and excessive precipitation over the western equatorial Indian Ocean seen in many models.
MOVE: A Generic Service Composition Framework for Service Oriented Architectures

One main requirement for virtual organizations are shortterm collaborations between business partners to provide efficient and individualized services to customers. The MOVE project targets at a methodology and a software framework to support such flexible collaborations based on process oriented design and communication by Web services. MOVEs framework supports the graphical design and verification of business processes, the execution and supervision of processes in transaction-oriented environment, and the dynamic composition and optimization of processes. A business process may be composed from a set of Web services, deployed itself as Web service and executed in the framework. The automated composition of processes from Web services is implemented with methods from AI-planning. We map Web service descriptions, domain knowledge and customer requests into PDDL, an input language of AI-planners. We show the performance of our program with one typical AI planning system and give some implementation details. Finally we conclude with some remarks about further research.
Oligonucleotide probe for detection of the enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) adherence factor of localized adherent EPEC

The enteropathogenic Escherichia coli adherence factor (EAF) probe detects isolates of enteropathogenic E. coli that exhibit localized adherence to HEp-2 cells. A 21-base oligonucleotide probe was constructed on the basis of a sequence from within the 1-kb EAF probe and was shown to have greater sensitivity and specificity than the EAF fragment probe in detecting localized adherent E. coli.
Depth-Enhanced Hough Forests for Object-Class Detection and Continuous Pose Estimation

Much work on the detection and pose estimation of objects in the robotics context focused on object instances. We propose a novel approach that detects object classes and finds the pose of the detected objects in RGB-D images. Our method is based on Hough forests, a variant of random decision and regression trees that categorize pixels and vote for 3D object position and orientation. It makes efficient use of dense depth for scale-invariant detection and pose estimation. We propose an effective way to train our method for arbitrary scenes that are rendered from training data in a turn-table setup. We evaluate our approach on publicly available RGB-D object recognition benchmark datasets and demonstrate stateof-the-art performance in varying background and view poses, clutter, and occlusions.
Gaussian Mixture Model Coupled with Independent Component Analysis for Palmprint Verification

In this paper we present a new scheme for Palmprint verification. The pro- posed method can be viewed as a combination of Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) followed by Independent Component Analysis (ICA I and ICA II) applied directly on the pixels. This approach follows the path opened by previous works making use of GMM followed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discrim- inate Analysis (LDA) projection methods for face recognition and is expected to be efficient to tackle major variations in the data. Extensive experiments have been carried out on PolyU palmprint database. We show that ICA I performs better than PCA, LDA and ICA II in the non Mixture Model case, while in the Mixture Model case, ICA II MM outperforms the three other Mixture Models (PCA MM, LDA MM, ICA I MM). Moreover, using artificially corrupted data (noisy palmprints), we show the robustness of Mixture Model approaches to noise, a property which can be very interesting in realistic situations.
Networking Challenges and Prospective Impact of Broadcast-Oriented Wireless Networks-on-Chip

The cost of broadcast has been constraining the design of manycore processors and of the algorithms that run upon them. However, as on-chip RF technologies allow the design of small-footprint and high-bandwidth antennas and transceivers, native low-latency (a few clock cycles) and low-power (a few pJ/bit) broadcast support through wireless communication can be envisaged. In this paper, we analyze the main networking design aspects and challenges of Broadcast-oriented Wireless Network-on-Chip (BoWNoC), which are basically reduced to the development of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols able to handle hundreds of cores. We evaluate the broadcast performance and scalability of different MAC designs, to then discuss the impact that the proposed paradigm could exert on the performance, scalability and programmability of future manycore architectures, programming models and parallel algorithms.
Identification of 9,13-dicis-retinoic acid as a major plasma metabolite of 9-cis-retinoic acid and limited transfer of 9-cis-retinoic acid and 9,13-dicis-retinoic acid to the mouse and rat embryos.

9-Cis-retinoic acid (9-cis-RA) has been proposed to be the endogenous ligand of retinoid X receptors. We examined the plasma pharmacokinetics of 9-cis-RA and its metabolites in nonpregnant female NMRI mice after oral dosing with 50 mg 9-cis-RA/kg body weight. Furthermore, we studied the metabolism of 9-cis-RA and its transfer to the embryo following oral administration of the precursor 9-cis-retinaldehyde (9-cis-RAL; 100 mg/kg body weight) to pregnant mice and rats on gestational days 11 and 13, respectively. Following 9-cis-RA administration, plasma levels of 9-cis-RA reached their maximum within 40-60 min and then declined in a monoexponential manner with an apparent half-life of 64 +/- 32 min. A great variety of polar metabolites of 9-cis-RA was found; among them, the beta-glucuronides of 9-cis-RA (9-cis-RAG) and of 9-cis-4-oxo-RA (9-cis-4-oxo-RAG) could be identified. A further prominent polar metabolite of 9-cis-RA in mouse plasma was shown to be an additional RA isomer (distinct from 13-cis-RA and all-trans-RA) whose concentrations weeesimilarly high as those of 9-cis-RA. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Qualitative Neuropsychological Measures: Normative Data on Executive Functioning Tests from the Framingham Offspring Study

Background/Study Context: Studies have found that executive functioning is affected early in the pathophysiological processes associated with Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. There also exists a range of functioning on executive tasks during normal aging. Although qualitative data are commonly utilized in clinical practice for evaluating subtle changes in cognitive functioning and diagnostic discernment, it is not clear whether error responses used in clinical practice are also evident as normative behavior. Methods: As part of an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests, executive functioning measures (i.e., Trail Making Test Part B, Similarities and Verbal Fluency tests) were administered via standardized administration prescript. Regression analyses were used to determine associations between vascular aging indices and qualitative performance measures. Descriptive statistics are included for 1907 cognitively normal individuals. Results: Results suggest that although qualitative errors do occur, they are relatively infrequent within a presumably cognitively normal sample. Error commission rates on executive functioning tests are significantly associated with both age and education. Conclusion: Provided is a baseline profile of errors committed on tests of executive function across a range of age and educational levels. The normative data sets are included, stratified by age and educational achievement, for which to compare qualitative test performance of clinical and research populations.
The Prospects, Practices, and Prescriptions for the Pursuit of Happiness

HAPPINESS IS A CENTRAL criterion of mental health (Keyes, 2005; Taylor & Brown, 1988) and has been found to be associated with numerous tangible bene! ts, such as enhanced physical health, reduced psychopathology, greater productivity, more ful! lling relationships, and even longer life (see Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005, for a review). Thus, an important goal for psychology is advancing knowledge about how to help people increase their levels of happiness, positivemental health, and personal thriving. During the last decade, researchers have made a great deal of progress investigating intentional ways to increase happiness—yielding both theory (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005) and empirical evidence (see Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009, for a meta-analysis) supporting the notion that happiness levels can be increased. Furthermore, growing research is pointing to the optimal conditions under which happiness-enhancing activities work to increase well-being, as well as the processes underlying these strategies’ success (Lyubomirsky & Layous, 2013). Finally, preliminary studies suggest that increasing happiness through positive activities may lead to multiple favorable downstream effects on people’s health, work, and relationships (e.g., Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008). Although the concept of happiness is widely understood by laypeople, it is important to de! ne it scienti! cally. Our de! nition corresponds to the growing consensus that happiness (or subjective well-being) comprises a global feeling that life is going well (i.e., general satisfaction with life), as well as the frequent experience of positive emotions and infrequent experience of negative emotions (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999). Notably, although our de! nition of happiness does not explicitly include meaning and purpose in life (concepts that laypeople typically associate with overall well-being), research has shown that satisfaction with life, positive emotions, and (fewer) negative emotions are highly correlated with these constructs (Ryff, 1989). Despite the growing body of evidence supporting the notion that happiness can be improved, some contemporary theories indicate that trying to increase one’s happiness levels is futile—an endeavor doomed from the start. This pessimism is rooted in several assumptions about the nature of well-being, including the in"uence
Multi-Objective Optimization for Self-Adjusting Weighted Gradient in Machine Learning Tasks

Much of the focus in machine learning research is placed in creating new architectures and optimization methods, but the overall loss function is seldom questioned. This paper interprets machine learning from a multi-objective optimization perspective, showing the limitations of the default linear combination of loss functions over a data set and introducing the hypervolume indicator as an alternative. It is shown that the gradient of the hypervolume is defined by a self-adjusting weighted mean of the individual loss gradients, making it similar to the gradient of a weighted mean loss but without requiring the weights to be defined a priori. This enables an inner boosting-like behavior, where the current model is used to automatically place higher weights on samples with higher losses but without requiring the use of multiple models. Results on a denoising autoencoder show that the new formulation is able to achieve better mean loss than the direct optimization of the mean loss, providing evidence to the conjecture that self-adjusting the weights creates a smoother loss surface.
Shifting from a developmental retelling framework to independent reading and retelling: Case study

While practices such as think alouds, questioning, and summarization strategies have been shown through research to have promise for improving reading comprehension, these strategies may or may not be spontaneously used by students during independent reading. This study uses a qualitative case study design to explore how second grade students transferred a retelling for comprehension framework into their independent reading for understanding, with particular attention to the steps employed and support evidenced for higher level thinking. Theoretical concepts included transfer of learning and scaffolding. Study participants, selected using purposeful sampling, included 12 second grade students from two classes in a K-5 public school in Arizona. Data was collected through focus group interviews and documents that included student work in the form of Graphic Organizer (GO! ) Journal and Shape GO! Map worksheets, which revealed student thinking about stories. Interpretational coding was used to uncover important themes. Study findings indicate that student responses changed after retelling instruction suggesting that students were able to transfer the framework. Findings also indicate that students engaged in higher level thinking through connections, comparisons, and assertions made within the framework’s elements. Implications for social change include change in teaching practice, which could provide second grade students a tool that builds reading comprehension and is transferable to individual reading.
Deep Learning Architecture for Univariate Time Series Forecasting

This paper studies the problem of applying machine learning with deep architecture to time series forecasting. While these techniques have shown promise for modeling static data, applying them to sequential data is gaining increasing attention. This paper overviews the particular challenges present in applying Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machines (CRBM) to univariate time-series forecasting and provides a comparison to common algorithms used for time-series prediction.
Outcome of Burkholderia cepacia colonisation in an adult cystic fibrosis centre

Background: Colonisation with Burkholderia cepacia is a poor prognostic indicator in subjects with cystic fibrosis (CF), but outcome prediction is impossible since patients are colonised by different strains with differing pathogenicity. The clinical course of a large cohort of CF patients colonised with UK epidemic (ET12) B cepacia was followed for 5 years and compared with that of the remaining patients in the clinic. Methods: Pulmonary function, nutritional state, and lung pathogen colonisation were recorded for 5 years before December 1997 or death for all 107 patients who had attended the Liverpool adult CF clinic since 1993. For each patient a time line from study entry to date of death or 1997 was constructed. In 1993 potential risk factors including age and sex were subjected to Cox proportional hazards analysis using the end point of mortality as the outcome variable. The analysis was supplemented by time varying covariables that described the change in FEV1, BMI, and colonisation status across time, and the excess risk associated with B cepacia colonisation was calculated. Subsequently, in those patients who died between 1993 and 1997, predictive factors for death were compared within groups using complete 5 year data. Results: Thirty seven patients had been colonised by epidemic B cepacia and these patients had four times the mortality of the remainder (p<0.01). In 1993 univariate predictors of mortality were age (alive 19.6 (0.64) v dead 23.8 (1.44); p<0.005) and baseline FEV1 (alive 68.6 (2.5)% predicted v dead 43.2 (4.8)%; p<0.001) with a trend for BMI (p=0.07). However, following time varying covariate Cox proportional hazards analysis, only lower FEV1 (hazards ratio 1.1, 95% confidence limits 1.06 to 1.14; p<0.001) and colonisation with B cepacia (hazards ratio 7.92, confidence limits 2.65 to 23.69; p<0.001) were identified as significant factors for death. Surviving B cepacia patients had similar initial lung function to the remaining surviving patients but had an accelerated loss of lung function over the study period (colonised –1.9% predicted per year v non-colonised –0.3% predicted per year; p<0.05). Deceased patients colonised with B cepacia had better spirometric results than the remaining deceased patients 5 years before death (p<0.05) but lost lung function at a greater rate than non-colonised patients (colonised –6.2% predicted per year v non-colonised –1.9% predicted per year; p<0.05). Conclusions: This study confirms the excess mortality associated with epidemic B cepacia colonisation and shows that those with poor spirometric values are at the greatest risk.
Specific neuroanatomical changes in chemosensory mutants of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans

Eight of nineteen chemotactic mutants of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans have morphological defects in the sensory endings of neurons at the tip of the head. The mutants were obtained as worms swimming away from attractant or found amongst male potency mutants or mutants exhibiting erratic behavior. The nineteen mutants fall into at least twelve complementation groups. Mutants E1034 and E1035, alleles of che‐1, show morphological alterations in the sensory endings of amphidial neurons and inner labial type 2 neurons, both prospective chemosensory neurons. Both mutants contain noncomplementing ts sterile mutations linked to the chemosensory mutation. E1066 shows abnormalities in all the sheath cells associated with the sensory neurons and in the bundling pattern of the amphidial neurons. El 126 is structurally abnormal only in the sensory endings of inner labial type 2 neurons, supporting a chemosensory role for these neurons. E1033 (cke‐2) and El 124 (cke‐3) cause defects in the ciliary structure of all but one type of ciliated sensory neuron in the head. E1062 is grossly defective in head structure and the structure of the male copulatory organ, suggesting these opposite ends of the nematode rich in sensory structures share gene functions in embryogenesis. Our study illustrates the possibilities for genetic dissection of the development of a small set of nerves in a simple organism.
The ETRAMP Family Member SEP2 Is Expressed throughout Plasmodium berghei Life Cycle and Is Released during Sporozoite Gliding Motility

The early transcribed membrane proteins ETRAMPs belong to a family of small, transmembrane molecules unique to Plasmodium parasite, which share a signal peptide followed by a short lysine-rich stretch, a transmembrane domain and a variable, highly charged C-terminal region. ETRAMPs are usually expressed in a stage-specific manner. In the blood stages they localize to the parasitophorous vacuole membrane and, in described cases, to vesicle-like structures exported to the host erythrocyte cytosol. Two family members of the rodent parasite Plasmodium berghei, uis3 and uis4, localize to secretory organelles of sporozoites and to the parasitophorous membrane vacuole of the liver stages. By the use of specific antibodies and the generation of transgenic lines, we showed that the P. berghei ETRAMP family member SEP2 is abundantly expressed in gametocytes as well as in mosquito and liver stages. In intracellular parasite stages, SEP2 is routed to the parasitophorous vacuole membrane while, in invasive ookinete and sporozoite stages, it localizes to the parasite surface. To date SEP2 is the only ETRAMP protein detected throughout the parasite life cycle. Furthermore, SEP2 is also released during gliding motility of salivary gland sporozoites. A limited number of proteins are known to be involved in this key function and the best characterized, the CSP and TRAP, are both promising transmission-blocking candidates. Our results suggest that ETRAMP members may be viewed as new potential candidates for malaria control.
Effects of AlN Coating Layer on High Temperature Characteristics of Langasite SAW Sensors

High temperature characteristics of langasite surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices coated with an AlN thin film have been investigated in this work. The AlN films were deposited on the prepared SAW devices by mid-frequency magnetron sputtering. The SAW devices coated with AlN films were measured from room temperature to 600 °C. The results show that the SAW devices can work up to 600 °C. The AlN coating layer can protect and improve the performance of the SAW devices at high temperature. The SAW velocity increases with increasing AlN coating layer thickness. The temperature coefficients of frequency (TCF) of the prepared SAW devices decrease with increasing thickness of AlN coating layers, while the electromechanical coupling coefficient (K2) of the SAW devices increases with increasing AlN film thickness. The K2 of the SAW devices increases by about 20% from room temperature to 600 °C. The results suggest that AlN coating layer can not only protect the SAW devices from environmental contamination, but also improve the K2 of the SAW devices.