Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Searching for genes predisposing to common dyslipidemias

9 INTRODUCTION 11 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 12 1. OVERVIEW OF LIPOPROTEIN METABOLISM 14 1.2 HDL 14 2. Clinical and metabolic characteristics of familial low HDL-C and FCHL disorders . 15 2.1 Low HDL-cholesterol 15 2.2 Familial combined hyperlipidemia 16 2.3 The metabolic syndrome and type 2 DM 17 3. COMPLEX TRAITS AND THE ISOLATED POPULATION OF FINLAND 18 4. STRATEGIES FOR MAPPING GENES UNDERLYING COMPLEX TRAITS . 23 4.1 Human Genome Project 24 4.1. 1 Comparative genomic approach 26 4.2 Qualitative and quantitative traits 26 4.3 Statistical methods for mapping complex disease genes 27 4.3. 1 Parametric linkage analysis 27 4.3. 2 Non-parametric linkage analysis: Allele-sharing methods 28 4.3. 3 Variance component linkage analysis 29 4.3. 4 Association analysis 29 4.3. 5 Linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis 30 4.3. 6 Genome-wide association studies 30 4.4 Haplotype blocks and the HapMap project 30 4.5 DNA microarray 31 5. GENETICS OF LOW HDL-C AND FCHL DISORDERS 32 5.1 Candidate genes of low HDL-C 32 5.2 Candidate genes of FCHL 34 5.3 Some important candidate genes of low HDL-C and FCHL 35 5.4 Chromosomal loci identified for low HDL-C 37 5.5 Chromosomal loci identified for FCHL 38 5.6 Chromosome 1q21 region 39 AIMS OF THE PRESENT STUDY 41 MATERIALS AND METHODS 42 1. TABLE OF MATERIALS AND METHODS 42 2. SUBJECTS 43 2.1 Study sample 1: Low HDL-C families 43 2.2. Study sample 2: FCHL families 44 3. LIPID MEASUREMENTS 45
Improved Sequential Decoding of H.264 Video with VLC Resynchronization

Data partitioning in H.264 Extended Profile video coding enables unequal error protection, which is particularly interesting for wireless applications. It has been shown that sequential decoding of the prediction residuals encoded in low- priority packets can drastically improve the quality of the decoded video. We present a detailed analysis of such a sequential decoder and propose additional synchronization side information as a simple means to further increase its performance. I. I NTRODUCTION
Survey and Analysis of the Statistical Reasoning among Senior Middle School Students in China and the Comparative Research with the Dutch

As for the students in senior middle school in China,the intuition and misconception students used in statistical reasoning assessment(SRA) were common.They had difficulties in understanding "a small sample was more likely to deviate from the population",independence;and they tend to make mistakes about "Equiprobability bias","Good samples had to represent a high percentage of the population","Groups could only be compared if they were the same size" and "Law of small numbers". Compared with the Dutch,the Grade 3 students in senior middle school in China got lower scores in the 8 correct reasoning scales,but their misconceptions’ scales demonstrated a different result: in some scales,Chinese students got higher scores,while in other scales,they got lower ones.
Prominent and Persistent Extraneural Infection in Human PrP Transgenic Mice Infected with Variant CJD

Background The evolution of the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) epidemic is hazardous to predict due to uncertainty in ascertaining the prevalence of infection and because the disease might remain asymptomatic or produce an alternate, sporadic-like phenotype. Methodology/Principal Findings Transgenic mice were produced that overexpress human prion protein with methionine at codon 129, the only allele found so far in vCJD-affected patients. These mice were infected with prions derived from variant and sporadic CJD (sCJD) cases by intracerebral or intraperitoneal route, and transmission efficiency and strain phenotype were analyzed in brain and spleen. We showed that i) the main features of vCJD infection in humans, including a prominent involvement of the lymphoid tissues compared to that in sCJD infection were faithfully reproduced in such mice; ii) transmission of vCJD agent by intracerebral route could lead to the propagation of either vCJD or sCJD-like prion in the brain, whereas vCJD prion was invariably propagated in the spleen, iii) after peripheral exposure, inefficient neuroinvasion was observed, resulting in an asymptomatic infection with life-long persistence of vCJD prion in the spleen at stable and elevated levels. Conclusion/Significance Our findings emphasize the possibility that human-to-human transmission of vCJD might produce alternative neuropathogical phenotypes and that lymphoid tissue examination of CJD cases classified as sporadic might reveal an infection by vCJD-type prions. They also provide evidence for the strong propensity of this agent to establish long-lasting, subclinical vCJD infection of lymphoreticular tissues, thus amplifying the risk for iatrogenic transmission.
An insight on complexity measures and classification in microarray data

Microarray data classification has been typically seen as a difficult challenge for machine learning researchers mainly due to its high dimension in feature while sample size is small. However, this type of data presents other complications such as overlapping between classes, dataset shift, class imbalance, non-linearity, or features extracted under extremely different distributions. This paper intends to analyze in depth the theoretical complexity of several popular binary datasets, by making use of complexity measures, and then connecting it with the empirical results obtained by four widely-used classifiers. Two different situations are covered: datasets with only training set and datasets originally divided into training and test sets. In both cases it is demonstrated that there exists a correlation between the complexity measures and the actual error rates, which can facilitate in the future how to deal with a given dataset. Finally, we present a case study on Prostate dataset, improving the test classification accuracy from 53% to 97%.
Perception of string quartet synchronization

Timing variation in small group musical performance results from intentional, expressive, and unintentional, error components in individual player timing. These timing fluctuations produce variability in between-player note asynchrony and require timing adjustments to keep the ensemble together. The size of the adjustments relative to the asynchrony (correction gain) affects the amount and nature of asynchrony variability. We present new listening tests to estimate thresholds for perception of between-player asynchrony variability and to determine whether listeners use differences in the nature of the variability, as well as in its magnitude, to judge asynchrony. In two experiments, computer-simulated ensemble performances of a 48-note excerpt from Haydn Op. 74 No. 1 were generated. Between-player note asynchrony was systematically manipulated in terms of level of within-player timing variability (Experiment 1) and correction gain (Experiment 2). On each trial, participants listened to two samples, one (“target”) with more between-player asynchrony variability than the other (“test”), and reported which was “less together. ” In both experiments, the test sample correction gain was fixed at the statistically optimal value of 0.25 and the within-player timing variability was minimal (zero except for random variability in the initial note). In Experiment 1 the target correction gain was fixed at 0.25 and the timing variability was adjusted over trials by a staircase algorithm designed to converge on the level of asynchrony variability giving 75% correct identification. In Experiment 2 the timing variability in the target was set at half that in Experiment 1 and the correction gain was varied to converge on 75% correct identification. Our results show that the between-player asynchrony variability giving 75% correct identification in Experiment 2 was significantly lower than in Experiment 1. This finding indicates that people are sensitive to both the degree of variance and the micro-structure of the time-series of the asynchronies caused by differences in correction gain when judging lack of togetherness in quartet performance.
Removal of Ocular Artifacts from EEG: A Comparison of Adaptive Filtering Method and Regression Method Using Simulated Data

We recently proposed an adaptive filtering method for removing ocular artifacts from EEG recordings. In this study, the accuracy of this method is evaluated quantitatively using simulated data and compared with the accuracy of the time domain regression method. The results show that when transfer of ocular signal to EEG channel is frequency dependent, or when there is a time delay, the adaptive filtering method is more accurate in recovering the true EEG signals
The neuroscience of attention : attentional control and selection

Contents Contributors 1. Attentional Selection for Locations, Features and Objects in Vision Jens-Max Hopf, Carsten N. Boehler, George R. Mangun, Mircea A. Schoenfeld, and Hans-Jochen Heinze 2. Involuntary attention Joseph B. Hopfinger and Emily L. Parks 3. Thalamic Control of Visual Attention Sabine Kastner, Yuri B. Saalmann, and Keith A. Schneider 4. Visual Attention: Computational Problems, Strategies, and Mechanisms John K. Tsotsos, Albert L. Rothenstein, Evgueni Simine, and Andrei Zaharescu 5. Orienting to the Environment: Separate Contributions of Dorsal and Ventral Frontoparietal Attention Networks Carlo Sestieri, Gordon L. Shulman, and Maurizio Corbetta 6. Midbrain and Forebrain Systems for Bottom-up Control of Spatial Attention Eric I. Knudsen 7. Attention and Action in the Frontal Eye Fields Katherine M. Armstrong, Robert J. Schafer, Mindy H. Chang, and Tirin Moore 8. Attention and the Parietal Lobe Michael E. Goldberg, Angela Gee, Anna Ipata, James W. Bisley, and Jacqueline Gottlieb 9. A Stage Theory of Attention and Action Jeffrey D. Schall and Geoffrey F. Woodman 10. Top-Down Biases in Visual Short-Term Memory Mark Stokes and Anna C. Nobre 11. Conflict control loop theory of cognitive control Marie K. Krug and Cameron S. Carter 12. Emotional influences on Visuospatial Attention Harlan M. Fichtenholtz and Kevin S. LaBar Index
Integrating Color Constancy into Multi-view Video Coding

Color constancy is the ability to remove the dependency of illuminant and show the intrinsic color of objects. A novel multi-view video coding scheme integrated with color constancy algorithms is introduced in this paper. Color constancy algorithms based on gray-edge hypothesis are selected. The new scheme takes color constancy as a preprocessing to make the sequence independent of the illuminant conditions. Based on the examination of the scene change in the sequence, the key frames are picked out and the parameters of color constancy are determined. The illuminant information is sent into the encoder along with the illuminant independent sequence, and then it is used to solve the color cast problem of multi-view coding at the decoder. Both visual quality and coding performance prove that this novel scheme can lower the bitrates and gain better color quality.
Show-through watermarking of duplex printed documents

A technique for watermarking duplex printed pages is presented. The technique produces visible watermark patterns like conventional watermarks embedded in paper fabric. Watermark information is embedded in halftones used to print images on either side. The watermark pattern is imperceptible when images printed on either side are viewed independently but becomes visible when the sheet of paper is held up against a light. The technique employs clustered dot halftones and embeds the watermark pattern as controlled local phase variations. Illumination with a back-light superimposes the halftone patterns on the two sides. Regions where the front and back-side halftones are in phase agreement appear lighter in show-through viewing, whereas regions over which the front and back side halftones are in phase disagreement appear darker. The image printed on one side has a controlled variation of the halftone phase and the one printed on the other side provides a constant phase reference. The watermark pattern is revealed when the sheet is viewed in "show-through mode" superimposing the halftones on the two sides. Threshold arrays for the halftone screens are designed to allow incorporation of a variety of halftone patterns while minimizing artifacts in images printed using these halftones.
Complementary Metaproteomic Approaches to Assess the Bacterioplankton Response toward a Phytoplankton Spring Bloom in the Southern North Sea

Annually recurring phytoplankton spring blooms are characteristic of temperate coastal shelf seas. During these blooms, environmental conditions, including nutrient availability, differ considerably from non-bloom conditions, affecting the entire ecosystem including the bacterioplankton. Accordingly, the emerging ecological niches during bloom transition are occupied by different bacterial populations, with Roseobacter RCA cluster and SAR92 clade members exhibiting high metabolic activity during bloom events. In this study, the functional response of the ambient bacterial community toward a Phaeocystis globosa bloom in the southern North Sea was studied using metaproteomic approaches. In contrast to other metaproteomic studies of marine bacterial communities, this is the first study comparing two different cell lysis and protein preparation methods [using trifluoroethanol (TFE) and in-solution digest as well as bead beating and SDS-based solubilization and in-gel digest (BB GeLC)]. In addition, two different mass spectrometric techniques (ESI-iontrap MS and MALDI-TOF MS) were used for peptide analysis. A total of 585 different proteins were identified, 296 of which were only detected using the TFE and 191 by the BB GeLC method, demonstrating the complementarity of these sample preparation methods. Furthermore, 158 proteins of the TFE cell lysis samples were exclusively detected by ESI-iontrap MS while 105 were only detected using MALDI-TOF MS, underpinning the value of using two different ionization and mass analysis methods. Notably, 12% of the detected proteins represent predicted integral membrane proteins, including the difficult to detect rhodopsin, indicating a considerable coverage of membrane proteins by this approach. This comprehensive approach verified previous metaproteomic studies of marine bacterioplankton, e.g., detection of many transport-related proteins (17% of the detected proteins). In addition, new insights into e.g., carbon and nitrogen metabolism were obtained. For instance, the C1 pathway was more prominent outside the bloom and different strategies for glucose metabolism seem to be applied under the studied conditions. Furthermore, a higher number of nitrogen assimilating proteins were present under non-bloom conditions, reflecting the competition for this limited macro nutrient under oligotrophic conditions. Overall, application of different sample preparation techniques as well as MS methods facilitated a more holistic picture of the marine bacterioplankton response to changing environmental conditions.
The joy of cheques: trust, paper and eighty somethings

A cheque is a paper document that orders the transfer of money between bank accounts. Whilst an eighty-year-old in the UK is predicted on average to live at least another ten years, cheques may not. Despite many older peoples extensive use of cheques, UK banks are eager to abolish them and design electronic alternatives that are less costly to process and less vulnerable to fraud. This paper reports on two qualitative studies that explored the banking experiences of 23 people over eighty years old. Cheques support financial collaboration with others in ways that digital payment systems do not. We argue that whilst it might be possible to improve the design of digital payment systems to better support financial collaboration, the case for retaining and enhancing cheques is stronger. Rather than replace cheques, we must design ways of making them less costly to process and better linked to electronic payment methods.
Cyclic Prefix Reduction Technique for OFDM System OverMultipath Fading Channels

This paper presents a technique to reduce Cyclic Prefix (CP) length for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in multipath fading channels. To reduce the CP length, a Time-domain Equalizer (TEQ), using long training OFDM symbols in the preambles, is used immediately after the channel. It can cancel the residual Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter Carrier Interference (ICI) caused by the CP length being shorter than the Channel Impulse Response (CIR). This method reduces size of the CP, and consequently leading to system performance improvement.
Electronically Tunable Differential Integrator: Linear Voltage Controlled Quadrature Oscillator

A new electronically tunable differential integrator (ETDI) and its extension to voltage controlled quadrature oscillator (VCQO) design with linear tuning law are proposed; the active building block is a composite current feedback amplifier with recent multiplication mode current conveyor (MMCC) element. Recently utilization of two different kinds of active devices to form a composite building block is being considered since it yields a superior functional element suitable for improved quality circuit design. The integrator time constant (τ) and the oscillation frequency (ω o) are tunable by the control voltage (V) of the MMCC block. Analysis indicates negligible phase error (θ e) for the integrator and low active ω o-sensitivity relative to the device parasitic capacitances. Satisfactory experimental verifications on electronic tunability of some wave shaping applications by the integrator and a double-integrator feedback loop (DIFL) based sinusoid oscillator with linear f o variation range of 60 KHz~1.8 MHz at low THD of 2.1% are verified by both simulation and hardware tests.
Closed-loop Petri Net model for implementing an affective-state expressive robotic face

A closed-loop Petri Net (PN) model was developed to exhibit, maintain and, withdraw facial expressions of six basic affective states, in a human-like manner, on a robotic face. The PN model was aimed to enable execution of major facial muscles-like-interactions between segments of a latex-made facial mask. The muscle-like interactions were based upon the widely accepted and used facial action coding systems. In order to validate the PN model, the facial mask, mounted on a 3-D printed artificial skull, was used as a robotic face. Human facial muscles like movements, generated on the surface of the facial mask, were able to express positive and negative affective states. Audio signals were used as stimuli for eliciting expressions of affective states. Results show that an event driven discrete model would suffice deterministic representation of a finite number of affective states on an artificial robotic face.
A Comparative Study of Cross-Lingual Sentiment Classification

The task of sentiment classification relies heavily on sentiment resources, including annotated lexicons and corpus. However, the sentiment resources in different languages are imbalanced. In particular, many reliable English resources are available on the Web, while reliable Chinese resources are scarce till now. Cross-lingual sentiment classification is a promising way for addressing the above problem by leveraging only English resources for Chinese sentiment classification. In this study, we conduct a comparative study to explore the challenges of cross-lingual sentiment classification. Different schemes for cross-lingual sentiment classification based on two dimensions have been compared empirically. Lastly, we propose to combine the different individual schemes into an ensemble. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Map-Adaptive Artificial Intelligence for Video Games

This paper proposes an approach to automatically adapt game AI to the environment of the game (i.e., the socalled map). In the approach, a particular map is first analysed for specific features. Subsequently, an automatically established decision tree is applied to adapt the game AI according to the features of the map. Experiments that test our approach are performed in the RTS game Spring. From our results we may conclude that the approach can be used to automatically establish effective strategies dependent on the map of a game.
How to Synchronize Biological Clocks

This paper is concerned with a novel algorithm to study networks of biological clocks. A new set of conditions is established that can be used to verify whether an existing network synchronizes or to give guidelines to construct a new synthetic network of biological oscillators that synchronize. The methodology uses the so-called contraction theory from dynamical system theory and Gershgorin disk theorem. The strategy is validated on two examples: a model of glycolisis in yeast cells and a synthetic network of Repressilators that synchronizes.
Embodiment-specific representation of robot grasping using graphical models and latent-space discretization

We study embodiment-specific robot grasping tasks, represented in a probabilistic framework. The framework consists of a Bayesian network (BN) integrated with a novel multi-variate discretization model. The BN models the probabilistic relationships among tasks, objects, grasping actions and constraints. The discretization model provides compact data representation that allows efficient learning of the conditional structures in the BN. To evaluate the framework, we use a database generated in a simulated environment including examples of a human and a robot hand interacting with objects. The results show that the different kinematic structures of the hands affect both the BN structure and the conditional distributions over the modeled variables. Both models achieve accurate task classification, and successfully encode the semantic task requirements in the continuous observation spaces. In an imitation experiment, we demonstrate that the representation framework can transfer task knowledge between different embodiments, therefore is a suitable model for grasp planning and imitation in a goal-directed manner.
Common-onset masking simulated with a distributed-code model

A distributed-coding model incorporating lateral inhibition in a simulated nerve network has been successful in accounting for many properties of backward masking (Bridgeman, 1971, 1978), linking modeling with neurophysiology and psychophysics. Metacontrast is a variety of backward masking that is of particular interest in uncovering properties of visual coding because target and mask do not overlap in time or space, and it is the first stimulus that is reduced in visibility, not the second. The lateral inhibitory model can also simulate common-onset masking, where a target and mask appear simultaneously but the mask disappears after a variable delay, and it can reproduce qualitatively the effects of attention on object substitution by varying the time interval over which sensory codes are analyzed.
Pooled Versus Reserved Inventory Policies in a Two-Echelon Supply Chain

We consider a two-echelon supply chain with two retailers and one supplier. The retailers are supplied by the supplier who makes all the decisions and bears all the inventory risk. Throughout this paper, we consider two different inventory systems: a reserved inventory system and a pooled inventory system. With the reserved inventory system, the supplier keeps separate inventories for each retailer. In contrast, the pooled inventory is shared by the two retailers and the supplier makes the inventory decision based on the joint demand. Under different scenarios such as whether wholesale price is a decision variable, we study and analyze the supplier's decisions in the reserved and the pooled inventory systems. In addition, we compare the profit of the supplier and retailers in the two different systems under normally distributed demands.