Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dietary Methyl Donor Depletion Suppresses Intestinal Adenoma Development

The role of folate one-carbon metabolism in colorectal cancer development is controversial, with nutritional intervention studies producing conflicting results. It has been reported that ApcMin/+ mice maintained on a diet deficient in the methyl donors folic acid, methionine, choline, and vitamin B12, and supplemented with homocysteine, show a greater than 95% reduction in intestinal tumor development. The present study extends these findings and shows that tumor protection afforded by dietary methyl donor deficiency (MDD) is long-lasting. After 11 weeks of MDD, tumor protection persisted for at least an additional 7 weeks of methyl donor repletion (22.2 ± 3.5 vs. 70.2 ± 4.6 tumors per mouse; P < 0.01). Sustained tumor protection was associated with a reduction in intestinal crypt length (26%, P < 0.01), crypt cell division and crypt fission, and an increase in apoptosis of both normal crypts and tumors (4.9- and 3.2-fold, respectively, P < 0.01). MDD also caused a significant reduction in the number of Dclk1-positive cells in the intestine (62%, P < 0.01), a long-lived crypt cell with cancer stem cell potential. Several undesirable effects associated with methyl donor restriction (e.g., reduced body weight gain) were shown to be transient and readily reversible following methyl donor repletion. Taken together, these results indicate that even temporary dietary methyl donor restriction in adenoma-prone mice can induce persistent changes to the intestinal epithelium and provide long-lasting tumor protection. These data also suggest that transient reductions in dietary methyl donor consumption should be considered when studying the impact of folate on colon cancer risk in humans. Cancer Prev Res; 9(10); 812–20. ©2016 AACR.
Microelectrode arrays in combination with in vitro models of spinal cord injury as tools to investigate pathological changes in network activity: facts and promises

Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) represent an important tool to study the basic characteristics of spinal networks that control locomotion in physiological conditions. Fundamental properties of this neuronal rhythmicity like burst origin, propagation, coordination, and resilience can, thus, be investigated at multiple sites within a certain spinal topography and neighboring circuits. A novel challenge will be to apply this technology to unveil the mechanisms underlying pathological processes evoked by spinal cord injury (SCI). To achieve this goal, it is necessary to fully identify spinal networks that make up the locomotor central pattern generator (CPG) and to understand their operational rules. In this review, the use of isolated spinal cord preparations from rodents, or organotypic spinal slice cultures is discussed to study rhythmic activity. In particular, this review surveys our recently developed in vitro models of SCI by evoking excitotoxic (or even hypoxic/dysmetabolic) damage to spinal networks and assessing the impact on rhythmic activity and cell survival. These pathological processes which evolve via different cell death mechanisms are discussed as a paradigm to apply MEA recording for detailed mapping of the functional damage and its time-dependent evolution.
Cognitive bias and depression in psychiatrically disturbed children and adolescents.

The relation between cognitive distortion and depression, found in adult affective disorders, has not previously been demonstrated in childhood affective disorders. Therefore, a Cognitive Bias Questionnaire for Children (CBQC) was developed to examine this relation in a sample of 39 psychiatrically disturbed children and adolescents. The depressed-distorted (DD) scale from the CBQC was significantly correlated with psychiatric and self-reported ratings of depression and could significantly discriminate affective from non-affective disorders. These results are discussed in terms of their limitations and in terms of other evidence suggesting that child, adolescent, and adult depressives share similar cognitive attributes.
Nonverbal Cognition in Deaf Children Following Cochlear Implantation: Motor Sequencing Disturbances Mediate Language Delays

We assessed profoundly deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) (N = 24) and age-matched normal-hearing children (N = 31) on several nonverbal cognition measures: motor sequencing, tactile discrimination, response inhibition, visual-motor integration, and visual-spatial processing. The results revealed that the children with CIs showed disturbances solely on motor sequencing and that performance on this task was significantly correlated with scores on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th Edition (CELF–4). These findings suggest that a period of auditory deprivation before cochlear implantation affects motor sequencing skills, which in turn may mediate the language delays displayed by some deaf children with CIs.
User-assisted alignment of Arabic historical manuscripts

This work aims to simplify the tiresome manual comparison of two similar Arabic historical manuscripts. We developed a system that determines the difference between two manuscripts by comparing their components, while ignoring page breaks and different warping among consecutive rows; i.e., we treat each manuscript as one long row of components. We compare two components (blocks of pixels) by extracting features from the columns of their bounding rectangles. We adopted the edit distance, which is computed using dynamic time warping (DTW) on the feature domain, to measure similarity between components. The user selects the region to align in two manuscripts and the system return its alignment with visual clues that indicate the distance between the aligned components. In our current implementation, our system provides good results and requires less interaction for manuscripts at good quality that do not include touching components. We tested our system on different Arabic manuscripts of various qualities and received encouraging results.
The Inhibitory Role of B7-H4 in Antitumor Immunity: Association with Cancer Progression and Survival

B7-H4 is one of the most recently identified members of B7 superfamily of costimulatory molecules serving as an inhibitory modulator of T-cell response. B7-H4 is broadly expressed in human peripheral tissues and inducibly expressed in immune cells. The expression of B7-H4 has been observed in various types of human cancer tissues, and its soluble form has been detected in blood samples from cancer patients. However, its precise physiological role is still elusive, as its receptor has not been identified and the expression levels are not consistent. This paper summarizes the pertinent data on the inhibitory role of B7-H4 in antitumor immunity and its association with cancer progression and survival in human patients. The paper also discusses the clinical significance of investigating B7-H4 as potential markers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and as therapeutic targets.
Roughage levels in feedlot rations

vitro digestibility tended to be greater with ammoniation. In the second trial, very high levels of ammonia, urea or glucose were added. Levels of insoluble protein were much higher in this trial than the other. This reflects the high variability of corn silage. Recovery of nitrogen added as ammonia averaged 82 percent while all of the nitrogen added as urea was recovered. The amounts of insoluble crude protein present increased similarly with addition of both urea and ammonia. Addition of soluble carbohydrate (glucose) had no effect on insoluble protein content. Results suggest that NPN addition to corn silage may increase the content of insoluble, potential bypass protein. Whether this increased insoluble protein does escape ruminal digestion remains to be proven. A number of feeding studies froin Michigan with ammoniated corn silage suggest that ammoniated corn silage is used more efficiently by cattle. If increased protein bypass is responsible, ammoniation should prove most useful for starting cattle fed low protein rations.
The Tower: Modelling, Analysis and Construction of Bending Active Tensile Membrane Hybrid Structures

The project is the result of an interdisciplinary research collaboration between CITA, KET and Fibrenamics exploring the design of integrated hybrid structures employing bending active elements and tensile membranes with bespoke material properties and detailing. Hybrid structures are defined here as combining two or more structural concepts and materials together to create a stronger whole. The paper presents the methods used and developed for design, simulation, evaluation and production, as well as the challenges and obstacles to overcome to build a complex hybrid tower structure in an outside context.
A general practitioner or a specialist for your infected smartphone?

With explosive growth in the number of mobile devices, the mobile malware is rapidly spreading as well, and the number of encountered malware families is increasing. Existing solutions, which are mainly based on one malware detector running on the phone or in the cloud, are no longer effective. Main problem lies in the fact that it might be impossible to create a unique mobile malware detector that would be able to detect different malware families with high accuracy, being at the same time lightweight enough not to drain battery quickly and fast enough to give results of detection promptly. The proposed approach to mobile malware detection is analogous to general practitioner versus specialist approach to dealing with a medical problem. Similarly to a general practitioner that, based on indicative symptoms identifies potential illnesses and sends the patient to an appropriate specialist, our detection system distinguishes among symptoms representing different malware families and, once the symptoms are detected, it triggers specific analyses. A system monitoring application operates in the same way as a general practitioner. It is able to distinguish between different symptoms and trigger appropriate detection mechanisms. As an analogy to different specialists, an ensemble of detectors, each of which specifically trained for a particular malware family, is used. The main challenge of the approach is to define representative symptoms of different malware families and train detectors accordingly to them. The main goal of the poster is to foster discussion on the most representative symptoms of different malware families and to discuss initial results in this area obtained by using Malware Genome project dataset.
Statistical shape models of plant leaves

The shapes of plant leaves are of great importance to plant biologists and botanists, as they can help in distinguishing plant species, measuring their health, analyzing their growth patterns, and understanding relations between various species. We propose a statistical model that uses the Squared Root Velocity Function representation and a Riemannian elastic metric to model the observed variability in the shape of plant leaves. We show that under this representation, one can compute sample means and principal modes of variations and can characterize the observed shapes using probability models, such as Gaussians, on the tangent spaces at the sample means. The approach is fully automatic and does not require precomputing correspondences between the shapes. We validate these statistical models by analyzing their classification performance on standard benchmarks and show their utility as generative models for random sampling.
The Role of Affect Analysis in Dialogue Act Identification

We present a qualitative analysis of the lexicon of dialogue acts: we explore the relationship between the communicative goal of an utterance and its affective lexicon as well as the salience of specific word classes for each speech act. Thought not constituting any deep understanding of the dialogue, automatic dialogue act labeling is a task that may be relevant for a wide range of applications in both human-computer and human-human interaction. The experiments described in this paper fit in the scope of a research study whose long-term goal is to build an unsupervised classifier that simply exploits the lexical semantics of utterances to automatically annotate dialogues with the proper speech acts.
Detailed Analysis of Skype Traffic

Skype is beyond any doubt the VoIP application in the current Internet application spectrum. Its amazing success has drawn the attention of telecom operators and the research community, both interested in knowing its internal mechanisms, characterizing its traffic, understanding its users' behavior. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of traffic streams generated by voice and video communications, and the signaling traffic generated by Skype. Our approach is twofold, as we make use of both active and passive measurement techniques to gather a deep understanding on the traffic Skype generates. From extensive testbed experiments, we devise a source model which takes into account: i) the service type, i.e., SkypeOut calls or calls between two Skype clients, ii) the selected source Codec, iii) the adopted transport layer protocol, and iv) network conditions. Leveraging on the use of an accurate Skype classification engine that we recently proposed, we study and characterize Skype traffic based on extensive passive measurements collected from our campus LAN.
Physics-Based Device-Level Power Electronic Circuit Hardware Emulation on FPGA

Accurate models of power electronic devices are necessary for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulators. This paper proposes a digital hardware emulation of device-level models for the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and the power diode on the field programmable gate array (FPGA). The hardware emulation utilizes detailed physics-based nonlinear models for these devices, and features a fully paralleled implementation using an accurate floating-point data representation in VHSIC hardware description language (VHDL) language. A dc-dc buck converter circuit is emulated to validate the hardware IGBT and diode models, and the nonlinear circuit simulation process. The captured oscilloscope results demonstrate high accuracy of the emulator in comparison to the offline simulation of the original system using Saber software.
On Death and Dying

One of the most famous psychological studies of the late twentieth century, "On Death and Dying" grew out of an interdisciplinary seminar on death, originated and conducted by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. In "On Death and Dying," Dr. Kubler-Ross first introduced and explored the now-famous idea of the five stages of dealing with death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. With simple interviews and conversations, she gives the reader a better understanding of how iminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve the patient, and the patient's family, bringing hope, solace, and peace of mind to all involved.
Hypersonic-Flow Governing Equations with Electromagnetic Files

The paper deals with the formulation of a consistent set of governing equations apt to describe the physical phenomenology comprising the hypersonic flow field of an ionized gas mixture and the electromagnetic field. The governing equations of the flow field and those of the electromagnetic field are revisited in sequence and differences or similarities with past treatments are pointed out and discussed. The equations governing the flow field hinge on the customary balance of masses, momenta and energies. The equations governing the electromagnetic field are introduced both directly in terms of the Maxwell equations and by recourse to the scalar and vector potentials. The theory of linear irreversible thermodynamics based on the entropy-balance equation is also revisited for the purpose of obtaining, consistently with the presence of the electromagnetic field, the phenomenological relations required to bring the governing equations into a mathematically closed form. Old problems, such as, for example, the influence of the medium compressibility on chemical-relaxation rates or the importance of cross effects among generalized fluxes and forces, are re-discussed; additional problems, such as the necessity to consider the tensorial nature of the transport properties because of the presence of the magnetic field, are pointed out. A nonconventional choice of first-tensorial-order generalized forces and corresponding fluxes is proposed which appears to offer more simplicity and better convenience from a conceptual point of view when compared to alternative definitions customarily used in the literature. The applicability domain of the present formulation is clearly outlined and recommendations for further work are given.
Dynamic Emotion Model in 3D Affect Space for a Mascot-Type Facial Robot

Humanoid and android robots are emerging as a trend shifts from industrial robot to personal robot. So human-robot interaction will increase. Ultimate objective of humanoid and android would be a robot like a human. In this aspect, implementation of robot's facial expression is necessary in making a human-like robot. This paper proposes a dynamic emotion model for a mascot-type robot to display similar facial and more recognizable expressions.
Recent Advances in the Epidemiological Study of Minor Psychiatric Disorders 1

When calculating a rate for a given disorder, it is necessary to have a clear and communicable definition of what constitutes a 'case'. The history of psychiatric epidemiology can be seen as a progre~sion towards the realization of this necessIty. The requirements for defining a case may be summarized as follows: (1) Symptoms should be clearly and explicitly defined; (2) This definition should be consistent with general clinical usage; (3) A technique for eliciting and recording symptoms should be laid down; (4) Symptoms should be used to build up specific diagnostic classes which conform to accepted clinical practice; (5) The classification rules must be precise and explicit. This 'list implies a degree of clinical consensus over the definition of both symptoms and disease classes. In practice, the acceptance of a technique of case-finding in epidemiological work itself contributes to our clinical consensus (Morris 1957). These requirements apply to the investigation of any medical disorder, but there are particular difficulties for the epidemiologist interested in the study of depression (Bebbington 1978). The concept of depressive illness was derived from clinical experience with severely ill patients in the psychiatric hospitals of the developed world. The move to research in the community possibly involves change in the definition of disorder. Howevel',it was always known that inpatients represent only a part, perhaps a small part, of the total amount of psychiatric illness. The first true psychiatric community surveys (true in the sense that they were based upon an attempt to find cases in a sample population rather than to describe service utilization) date from before World War II. The commonest method of case finding was to obtain information from key figures in the community about persons who might be suffering from mental illness. These people were then interviewed, sometimes by psychiatrists, sometimes by research assistants (e.g. Brugger 1933, Roth & Luton 1942, Stromgren 1948, Book 1953). Such a technique is
Optimization of rateless coding for multimedia multicasting

Fountain codes are a class of recently proposed efficient erasure error-control codes. However, the original design of fountain codes, despite being highly efficient for erasure channels, has very poor progressive decoding performance. The purpose of this paper is to design and optimize unequal error protection (UEP) fountain codes to maximize the throughput of multimedia communication systems while providing different levels of guaranteed QoS for heterogenous users. A random interleaved rateless code design is proposed to solve the formulated constraint optimization problem. Numerical results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed design with optimal parameters compared to existing UEP designs.
Survey and Comparison of Parallelization Techniques for Genetic Algorithms Cs 294-1 Final Project

This paper surveys a number of parallelization techniques for genetic algorithms, focusing on two: the distributed genetic algorithm and the distributed tness computation. While parallelization of serial algorithms usually requires certain amount of tricks and twitches, the genetic algorithms are parallel by their nature. This feature of genetic algorithms is widely exploited and there exists a number of ways in which a given algorithm may be parallelized. In addition to examining several parallel designs, this paper compares the performance of two implementations (the distributed genetic algorithm and distributed tness computation) on dual-prcessor SunSPARC 20 for optimization of a simple function f (x) = (x c) 10 (described in detail in 6]).
ADAPTIVE CONTROL FOR A CLASS OF STOCHASTIC PASSIVE HOPFIELD NETWORKS

The paper presents passivity conditions for a class of stochastic Hopfield neural networks with state-dependent noise and with Markovian jumps. Our contributions are mainly based on the stability analysis of the class of stochastic neural networks considered, using infinitesimal generators of appropriate stochastic Lyapunov-type functions. The passivity conditions derived are expressed in terms of the solutions of some specific systems of linear matrix inequalities. The theoretical results are illustrated by a simplified adaptive control problem for a dynamic system with chaotic behaviour.
Distortion exponents of source transmission over two-way relaying cooperative networks

In this paper, we consider the source transmission in a three-node, half-duplex, and two-way relaying network, where two users communicate with the help of one relay. The relay employs the decodeand- forward (DF) based relaying protocol. We study the distortion exponent that characterizes the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) behavior of the end-to-end distortion of the reconstructed signal at each user node. We first provide an upper bound on the achievable distortion exponents of two-way relaying communications, which is tight at large bandwidth ratio. We then investigate the performance of various coding and transmission schemes, including the conventional one-way relaying strategies and source-channel coding in two-way relaying with single-rate coding or limited channel state feedback. We derive the achievable distortion exponents of all these schemes and illustrate the effect of the bandwidth ratio, feedback resolution, and relaying strategies on the optimal distortion exponent.