Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Los recorridos de estudio e investigación y la modelización matemática en la enseñanza universitaria de las ciencias experimentales

Este trabajo se centra en el papel de la modelizacion matematica en los primeros cursos universitarios de Ciencias Experimentales. Situandonos en el ambito de la Teoria Antropologica de lo Didactico, nuestra propuesta se basa en el diseno e implementacion de los denominados «Recorridos de Estudio e Investigacion» como nuevos dispositivos didacticos que tienen una doble funcion: integrar en el curriculo las cuestiones a las que responden los contenidos matematicos que los estudiantes deben aprender y articularlos mediante un proceso de modelizacion que permite «recubrir» el curriculo considerado, dotandolo de una clara funcionalidad.
Evaluating 3D-2D correspondences for accurate camera pose estimation from a single image

Due to occlusion, appearance and disappearance of points, and noise distribution in image data, no matter what algorithms are used to register a 3D model and its projective image, they are always likely to introduce false matches. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to evaluate the established correspondences for more accurate camera pose estimation. The novel algorithm is based on two novel rigid motion constraints that represent necessary conditions for any pair of a 3D and a 2D point to represent a real 3D-2D correspondence. We then prove that as long as 3D-2D point matches satisfy the two novel rigid motion constraints, they are theoretically guaranteed to represent real correspondences. A large number of experiments based on both computer simulation and real images have indeed demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is accurate and robust for the evaluation of established correspondences and thus, leading to more accurate and robust camera pose estimation.
The p47phox−/− Mouse Model of Chronic Granulomatous Disease Has Normal Granuloma Formation and Cytokine Responses to Mycobacterium avium and Schistosoma mansoni Eggs

ABSTRACT Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is a genetic disorder of NADPH oxidase in which phagocytes are defective in generating reactive oxidants. CGD patients suffer from recurrent infections and exuberant and persistent tissue granuloma formation. We hypothesized that abnormal granulomata in CGD may result from aberrant T-cell-mediated cytokine responses. To assess Th-1-type cytokine responses and granulomata, we challenged p47phox−/− and wild-type mice with avirulent (SmD) or virulent (SmT) variants ofMycobacterium avium 2-151. To assess Th-2-type cytokine responses and granulomata, we used Schistosoma mansoni eggs (SME). Mononuclear cells were harvested, and cytokine responses were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay or reverse transcriptase PCR. Following SmD or SmT challenge, splenocytes from p47phox−/− and wild-type mice generated similar polar Th-1 responses (increased levels of gamma interferon and basal levels of interleukin 4 [IL-4] and IL-5). By 8 weeks after SmT challenge, exuberant splenic granulomata developed in p47phox−/− and wild-type mice. After SME challenge, thoracic lymph node mononuclear cells from p47phox−/− and wild-type mice generated similar mixed Th-1 and Th-2 cytokine responses to SME antigen and concanavalin A. Peak lung granuloma sizes and rates of regression were similar in p47phox−/− and wild-type mice. These results suggest that exuberant granulomatous inflammation in CGD is probably not the result of skewing of T-cell responses toward the Th-1 or Th-2 pole. Appropriate regression of established tissue granulomata in p47phox−/− mice challenged with SME suggests that abnormal granuloma formation in CGD is stimulus dependent and is not an invariant feature of the disease.
Effect of the Menstrual Cycle and Hormonal Contraceptives on Human Papillomavirus Detection in Young, Unscreened Women

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effect of the menstrual cycle and oral contraceptive pill (OCP) use on the prevalence, incidence, and persistence of human papillomavirus (HPV). METHODS: A longitudinal study was conducted among 2,065 women aged 18–29 years. The women returned a self-collected cervicovaginal sample and filled out a questionnaire. A total of 1,812 women participated at all three time points, month 0, month 6, and month 12. RESULTS: Low- and high-risk HPV prevalence at study entry was 8.9% and 11.8%, respectively. The annual incidence of low-risk HPV infections was 12.5% and the persistence was 2.0%. For high-risk HPV, the incidence and persistence was 12.1% and 4.5%, respectively. These results did not differ between OCP users and nonusers. A significant relationship between high-risk HPV detection and the timing of sampling was found when OCP users and nonusers were analyzed separately. In the second half of the menstrual cycle, high-risk HPV detection decreased in nonusers (P=.007) and increased in OCP users (P=.021). When women used OCPs continuously, high-risk HPV detection returned to the level of the first half of the menstrual cycle. CONCLUSION: High-risk HPV detection was significantly influenced by sample timing in the menstrual cycle when analyzed separately for OCP users and women with a natural menstrual cycle. This may have implications in the future, when high-risk HPV detection may become a primary screening tool in cervical cancer prevention. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Simulations of chlorophyll fluorescence incorporated into the Community Land Model version 4

Several studies have shown that satellite retrievals of solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provide useful information on terrestrial photosynthesis or gross primary production (GPP). Here, we have incorporated equations coupling SIF to photosynthesis in a land surface model, the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Land Model version 4 (NCAR CLM4), and have demonstrated its use as a diagnostic tool for evaluating the calculation of photosynthesis, a key process in a land surface model that strongly influences the carbon, water, and energy cycles. By comparing forward simulations of SIF, essentially as a byproduct of photosynthesis, in CLM4 with observations of actual SIF, it is possible to check whether the model is accurately representing photosynthesis and the processes coupled to it. We provide some background on how SIF is coupled to photosynthesis, describe how SIF was incorporated into CLM4, and demonstrate that our simulated relationship between SIF and GPP values are reasonable when compared with satellite (Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite; GOSAT) and in situ flux‐tower measurements. CLM4 overestimates SIF in tropical forests, and we show that this error can be corrected by adjusting the maximum carboxylation rate (Vmax) specified for tropical forests in CLM4. Our study confirms that SIF has the potential to improve photosynthesis simulation and thereby can play a critical role in improving land surface and carbon cycle models.
Cardiometabolic Risk Pro fi les and Carotid Atherosclerosis in Individuals With Prediabetes Identi fi ed by Fasting Glucose , Postchallenge Glucose , and Hemoglobin A 1 c Criteria

RESULTSdPoor agreement existed for A1C and FPG criteria for identification of subjects with prediabetes (k coefficient = 0.332). No differences in cardiometabolic risk profiles were observed among the three groups of individuals with prediabetes by A1C only, FPG only, and both A1C and FPG. Poor agreement also existed for A1C and 2-PG criteria for identification of individuals with prediabetes (k coefficient = 0.299). No significant differences in cardiometabolic risk factors were observed between IGT-only and individuals with prediabetes by A1C and 2-PG. Compared with subjects with prediabetes identified by A1C only, IGT-only individuals exhibited a worse cardiometabolic risk profile, with significantly higher systolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, 2-h postchallenge insulin, triglycerides, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and carotid IMT, and lower HDL cholesterol levels and insulin sensitivity.
Soil Mineral Composition Matters: Response of Microbial Communities to Phenanthrene and Plant Litter Addition in Long-Term Matured Artificial Soils

The fate of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil is determined by a suite of biotic and abiotic factors, and disentangling their role in the complex soil interaction network remains challenging. Here, we investigate the influence of soil composition on the microbial community structure and its response to the spiked model PAH compound phenanthrene and plant litter. We used long-term matured artificial soils differing in type of clay mineral (illite, montmorillonite) and presence of charcoal or ferrihydrite. The soils received an identical soil microbial fraction and were incubated for more than two years with two sterile manure additions. The matured artificial soils and a natural soil were subjected to the following spiking treatments: (I) phenanthrene, (II) litter, (III) litter + phenanthrene, (IV) unspiked control. Total community DNA was extracted from soil sampled on the day of spiking, 7, 21, and 63 days after spiking. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal internal transcribed spacer amplicons were quantified by qPCR and subjected to denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). DGGE analysis revealed that the bacterial community composition, which was strongly shaped by clay minerals after more than two years of incubation, changed in response to spiked phenanthrene and added litter. DGGE and qPCR showed that soil composition significantly influenced the microbial response to spiking. While fungal communities responded only in presence of litter to phenanthrene spiking, the response of the bacterial communities to phenanthrene was less pronounced when litter was present. Interestingly, microbial communities in all artificial soils were more strongly affected by spiking than in the natural soil, which might indicate the importance of higher microbial diversity to compensate perturbations. This study showed the influence of soil composition on the microbiota and their response to phenanthrene and litter, which may increase our understanding of complex interactions in soils for bioremediation applications.
Gender differences in mental health service utilization among respondents reporting depression in a national health survey

This study examined whether people who selfreported depression sought mental health treatment in the year after being interviewed, and how gender affected utilization. Depression data were obtained from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2000-01), and linked to medical records in Ontario (n = 24,677). Overall, women had higher rates of mental health service utilization, but there were no gender differences in rates of specialist care. The gender difference in mental health contact was greater for those without depression, as opposed to those with depression. Among those without depression, women were significantly more likely than men to use mental health services; however, rates were similar for women and men with depression. This finding suggests that men may be more likely than women to delay seeing a doctor for minor mental health concerns, but will seek help once a problem reaches a threshold.
Testing antimicrobial susceptibilities of adherent bacteria by a method that incorporates guidelines of the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards

Membrane filters (0.22-microns pore size) were colonized with 10(4) CFU of logarithmic-phase bacteria per filter under laminar flow conditions in a Modified Robbins Device. Colonized filters were then placed upon agar dilution plates for MIC determinations. Subsequently, filters were transferred to control plates and incubated to obtain MBCs.
Enumeration and Characterization of Bacterial Colonists of a Submersed Aquatic Plant, Eurasian Watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum L.)

A simple procedure for enumerating and grouping the bacterial colonists of Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum L.) is described. Colony characteristics of bacteria associated with M. spicatum were better defined and more stable on nutrient-poor, diluted nutrient broth agar than on high-nutrient media. Acinetobacter, Cytophaga, Flavobacterium, Moraxella, Pseudomonas and/or Alcaligenes, and Vibrio/Aeromonas spp. , as well as two highly fastidious unidentified bacterial groups (gram-negative rods and gram-negative cocci), were associated with cultured watermilfoil during January, February, May, June, July, and August 1988. In Lake Wingra (Madison, Wis.), Micrococcus spp. and enterobacters were also associated with Eurasian watermilfoil during July, August, and October 1987.
A 2D software system for expedite analysis of CFD problems in complex geometries

EasyCFD_G, a 2D software tool for fluid dynamics and heat transfer applications, is presented. The underlying physical and numerical principles are described, including mesh generation. The software is based on quadrilateral structured and unstructured meshes, rendering it with great versatility in geometrical terms. Amenable problems include multi‐domain simulations with fluid and solid regions, thermal effects and mixing of different fluids, in stationary or turbulent regime. For illustration, a few example problems are presented, covering different physical situations, including comparison with benchmark data. Due to its versatility, fast learning curve and easy and intuitive utilization, this software tool represents a great value for educational purposes. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput. Appl. Eng. Educ. 24:27–38, 2016; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21668
Adaptación del CTH-URL para la competición ALBAYZIN 2008

En esta comunicacion describimos el sistema de sintesis de voz presentado a la competicion Albayzin 2008. Es un sistema que sigue un esquema clasico de concatenacion de unidades basado en corpus. Cabe destacar que los costes de seleccion se han ajustado mediante un metodo basado en algoritmos geneticos y que no se ha utilizado ningun sistema de prediccion prosodica. Se construyeron dos sistemas preliminares que diferian en el algoritmo de generacion de forma de onda escogiendo el que se presenta a la competicion mediante un test perceptual.
Middle latency auditory evoked potentials during repeated transitions from consciousness to unconsciousness

We have investigated the relationship between changes in the middle latency auditory evoked potentials during alternating periods of consciousness and unconsciousness produced by propofol infusion combined with spinal anaesthesia for total knee replacement. Eleven patients completed the study, of whom two had recollection of events after the onset of the anaesthetic. There were no significant differences in heart rate or systolic arterial pressure between any conscious and unconscious period. With the first change from consciousness to unconsciousness, latencies of Na, Pa and Nb increased from mean (SD) starting values of 20.0 (1.4), 31.7 (1.0) and 42.8 (1.6)ms to 22.5 (2.0), 39.3 (2.1) and 57.8 (4.4)ms, respectively. During successive transitions from unconsciousness to consciousness, awake latencies were slightly higher than those of baseline awake, whereas anaesthetised latencies were similar to the ones obtained during the first period of unconsciousness. The consistent changes demonstrated, suggest that the auditory evoked potentials could represent a reliable indicator of potential awareness during anaesthesia.
Predicting Human Trajectories in Multi-Class Settings

In recent years, autonomous navigation has become of increasing prominence with companies like Uber, Google, and Tesla building their state-of-theart self-driving cars. There are other opportunities, however, for self-navigating vehicles in non-road settings, including social robots that can navigate crowded spaces. Examples include driving through malls, walking dogs through populated parks, or helping blind pedestrians navigate around others. In navigating crowded areas, autonomous agents must adopt a set of common sense rules and social conventions in interacting with other objects in the same proximity. For example, when humans are deciding how to walk on a crowded sidewalk, they plan where to move next by considering their immediate neighbors’ personal spaces as well as understanding who has the right-of-way. Similarly, autonomous robots should also adopt a model of movement that fluidly circumvents humans by predicting their trajectories and roughly complying with the same common sense rules as those they share space with. Additionally, a good model should also capture that interactions between a biker and a cart-driver are different than between a biker and a pedestrian or another biker. Hence, the model should account for different ”classes” of scene occupants. In this paper, we build a GRU, a recently explored RNN-variant that has been shown to be more computationally efficient and produce models comparable to that of LSTMs [10]. The GRU uses a gated architecture to solve problems that traditionally plague normal RNNs (namely the exploding and vanishing gradient problems). In the past decade, gated RNNvariants have championed sequence-learning problems and provide great promise for our approach to trajectory-learning. Our input to the neural network is a 25-frame sequence of an object’s positions and it’s neighbors’ hidden states. The output is the object’s position at the next frame. In our case, the hidden state of the GRU is equivalent to the object’s past trajectory, hence the network’s prediction is some function of the past trajectory. 2 Related Work
Une approche bayésienne non paramétrique pour l'apprentissage d'un dictionnaire de taille adaptative

L'apprentissage de dictionnaire pour la representation parcimonieuse est maintenant bien connu dans le cadre de la resolution de probi emes inverses en traitement d'image. Generalement , le nombre d'atomes du dictionnaire est fixe a l'avance. Nous proposons une methode qui apprend automatiquement un dictionnaire de taille adaptee grâce a un mod ele Bayesien non parametrique de type Buffet Indien. Le niveau de bruit est aussi estime avec precision , de sorte que presqu'aucun reglage des param etres n'est necessaire. Les resultats comparatifs de debruitage illustrent la pertinence de la methode proposee.
A Dyadic Growth Approach to Partner Regulation Attempts on Changes in Drinking and Negative Alcohol-Related Consequences

ABSTRACT Background: Many individuals engage in regulation attempts to manage or reduce their partner's alcohol use. Research on partner social control behaviors has shown that regulation attempts generally factor into negative (i.e., punishing) and positive (i.e., rewarding) dimensions. In the alcohol domain, partner drinking has been associated with poorer relationship functioning through punishment. Objectives: This research applied a dyadic growth model approach to investigate changes in alcohol consumption and negative alcohol-related consequences over 6 months, and evaluated whether partner regulation attempts (punishment and reward) were influential (i.e., successful) in these changes. Methods: Married couples (N = 123 dyads) completed web-based measures of partner regulation attempts, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related consequences three times over a 6-month period. Results: Results from dyadic growth curve analyses showed that partner punishment was significantly associated with increases in alcohol-related consequences—and marginally associated with increases in alcohol consumption—over the 6-month period. Partner reward was associated with decreases in consumption over the study period. These effects were not different for husbands and wives. Conclusion/Importance: Results support previous research demonstrating deleterious impact of partner punishing control strategies and provide important implications for future interventions and treatment.
Structural Basis for Selective Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor-A (VEGF-A) Binding to Neuropilin-1*

Background: Neuropilin is an essential cell surface receptor for VEGF-A in angiogenesis. Results: VEGF-A164 uniquely physically engages neuropilin using two distinct regions. Conclusion: These data establish the structural basis for selective VEGF-A splice form binding to neuropilin. Significance: Understanding VEGF receptor binding will advance therapeutic targeting of pathological angiogenesis. Neuropilin-1 (Nrp1) is an essential receptor for angiogenesis that binds to VEGF-A. Nrp1 binds directly to VEGF-A with high affinity, but the nature of their selective binding has remained unclear. Nrp1 was initially reported to bind to the exon 7-encoded region of VEGF-A and function as an isoform-specific receptor for VEGF-A164/165. Recent data have implicated exon 8-encoded residues, which are found in all proangiogenic VEGF-A isoforms, in Nrp binding. We have determined the crystal structure of the exon 7/8-encoded VEGF-A heparin binding domain in complex with the Nrp1-b1 domain. This structure clearly demonstrates that residues from both exons 7 and 8 physically contribute to Nrp1 binding. Using an in vitro binding assay, we have determined the relative contributions of exon 7- and 8-encoded residues. We demonstrate that the exon 8-encoded C-terminal arginine is essential for the interaction of VEGF-A with Nrp1 and mediates high affinity Nrp binding. Exon 7-encoded electronegative residues make additional interactions with the L1 loop of Nrp1. Although otherwise conserved, the primary sequences of Nrp1 and Nrp2 differ significantly in this region. We further show that VEGF-A164 binds 50-fold more strongly to Nrp1 than Nrp2. Direct repulsion between the electronegative exon 7-encoded residues of the heparin binding domain and the electronegative L1 loop found only in Nrp2 is found to significantly contribute to the observed selectivity. The results reveal the basis for the potent and selective binding of VEGF-A164 to Nrp1.
Hormonal contraception in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: choices, challenges, and noncontraceptive benefits

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine disorder among women of reproductive age characterized by chronic anovulation and polycystic ovary morphology and/or hyperandrogenism. Management of clinical manifestations of PCOS, such as menstrual irregularities and hyperandrogenism symptoms, includes lifestyle changes and combined hormonal contraceptives (CHCs). CHCs contain estrogen that exerts antiandrogenic properties by triggering the hepatic synthesis of sex hormone-binding globulin that reduces the free testosterone levels. Moreover, the progestogen present in CHCs and in progestogen-only contraceptives suppresses luteinizing hormone secretion. In addition, some types of progestogens directly antagonize the effects of androgens on their receptor and also reduce the activity of the 5α reductase enzyme. However, PCOS is related to clinical and metabolic comorbidities that may limit the prescription of CHCs. Clinicians should be aware of risk factors, such as age, smoking, obesity, diabetes, systemic arterial hypertension, dyslipidemia, and a personal or family history, of a venous thromboembolic event or thrombophilia. This article reports a narrative review of the available evidence of the safety of hormonal contraceptives in women with PCOS. Considerations are made for the possible impact of hormonal contraceptives on endocrine, metabolic, and cardiovascular health.