Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of speech production in phonological decoding during visual word recognition: evidence from phonotactic repair

ABSTRACT The phonological decoding of non-native letter sequences during visual word recognition has been shown to be influenced by phonotactic constraints of the reader's native language [Hallé, P. A. , Dominguez, A. , Cuetos, F. , & Segui, J. (2008). Phonological mediation in visual masked priming: Evidence from phonotactic repair. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 34(1), 177–192]. We investigate the mechanisms underlying such phonotactic repair. We focus on a phonotactic constraint in French, according to which words cannot begin with /tl/. Native speakers of French are known to perceive word-initial /tl/ as /kl/. Using a visual priming paradigm, we show that the same phonotactic repair also occurs when the cluster “tl” is presented visually, but, crucially, only when participants’ speech production system is available; under articulatory suppression the repair fails to occur. Together, these results show that the speech production system is actively involved in phonological decoding during reading.
On predicting the popularity of newly emerging hashtags in Twitter

Because of Twitter’s popularity and the viral nature of information dissemination on Twitter, predicting which Twitter topics will become popular in the near future becomes a task of considerable economic importance. Many Twitter topics are annotated by hashtags. In this article, we propose methods to predict the popularity of new hashtags on Twitter by formulating the problem as a classification task. We use five standard classification models (i.e., Naive bayes, k-nearest neighbors, decision trees, support vector machines, and logistic regression) for prediction. The main challenge is the identification of effective features for describing new hashtags. We extract 7 content features from a hashtag string and the collection of tweets containing the hashtag and 11 contextual features from the social graph formed by users who have adopted the hashtag. We conducted experiments on a Twitter data set consisting of 31 million tweets from 2 million Singapore-based users. The experimental results show that the standard classifiers using the extracted features significantly outperform the baseline methods that do not use these features. Among the five classifiers, the logistic regression model performs the best in terms of the Micro-F1 measure. We also observe that contextual features are more effective than content features.
Identification of 3 Distinct HIV-1 Founding Strains Responsible for Expanding Epidemic Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in 9 Chinese Cities

Objectives:To investigate the epidemiological relationships between HIV-1 strains that are spread among the men who have sex with men (MSM) populations of 9 cities across China and to analyze the origins and divergence times of the major epidemic strains found in the MSM population. Methods:A total of 583 HIV-1-positive subjects were recruited from high-risk MSM populations in 9 cities across China between 2009 and 2011. Nucleotide sequences of 1.0-kb pro-RT regions were amplified and sequenced. Phylogenetic and Bayesian molecular clock analyses were performed. Results:The overall distribution of HIV-1 genotypes was as follows: CRF01_AE, 62.1%; CRF07_BC, 18.2%; subtype B (United States–European), 15.9%; subtype B', 0.7%; other recombinants, 3.1%. In addition to the 2 distinct CRF01_AE clusters [cluster 1 (n = 157, 26.9%) and cluster 2 (n = 196, 33.6%)] previously reported by our group, we identified a novel CRF07_BC cluster (cluster 3) (n = 94, 16.1%) unique to China's MSM population whose strains were homologous and could be detected in all 9 cities. These 3 lineages of HIV-1 strains (clusters 1–3) accounted for 76.7% (447 of 583) of infections among MSM in China as a whole. Clusters 1, 2, and 3 were estimated to have been introduced into the MSM population in 1999, 2001, and 2001, respectively, indicating that the newly identified CRF07_BC cluster 3 is not a young lineage. However, it spread quickly in recent years. Conclusions:We identified 3 distinct HIV-1 lineages (clusters 1–3) responsible for the recent upsurge of the AIDS epidemic among MSM in China. These 3 HIV-1 variants are spread widely among MSM throughout China, demonstrating remarkable founding effects.
Discovery and design of carbohydrate-based therapeutics

Importance of the field: Till now, the importance of carbohydrates has been underscored, if compared with the two other major classes of biopolymers such as oligonucleotides and proteins. Recent advances in glycobiology and glycochemistry have imparted a strong interest in the study of this enormous family of biomolecules. Carbohydrates have been shown to be implicated in recognition processes, such as cell–cell adhesion, cell–extracellular matrix adhesion and cell–intruder recognition phenomena. In addition, carbohydrates are recognized as differentiation markers and as antigenic determinants. Due to their relevant biological role, carbohydrates are promising candidates for drug design and disease treatment. However, the growing number of human disorders known as congenital disorders of glycosylation that are being identified as resulting from abnormalities in glycan structures and protein glycosylation strongly indicates that a fast development of glycobiology, glycochemistry and glycomedicine is highly desirable. Areas covered in this review: The topics give an overview of different approaches that have been used to date for the design of carbohydrate-based therapeutics; this includes the use of native synthetic carbohydrates, the use of carbohydrate mimics designed on the basis of their native counterpart, the use of carbohydrates as scaffolds and finally the design of glyco-fused therapeutics, one of the most recent approaches. The review covers mainly literature that has appeared since 2000, except for a few papers cited for historical reasons. What the reader will gain: The reader will gain an overview of the current strategies applied to the design of carbohydrate-based therapeutics; in particular, the advantages/disadvantages of different approaches are highlighted. The topic is presented in a general, basic manner and will hopefully be a useful resource for all readers who are not familiar with it. In addition, in order to stress the potentialities of carbohydrates, several examples of carbohydrate-based marketed therapeutics are given. Take home message: Carbohydrates are a rich class of natural compounds, possessing an intriguing and still not fully understood biological role. This richness offers several strategies for the design of carbohydrate-based therapeutics.
Detecting source code changes to maintain the consistence of behavioral model

It is well-known that as software system evolves, the source code tends to deviate from its design model so that maintaining their consistence is challenging. Our objective is to detect code changes that influence designed program behaviour which are referred as design level changes and update the behavioural model timely and automatically to maintain consistence. We propose an approach that filters out low-level source code changes that do not influence program behaviour, abstracts code changes into updating operations for behavioral model, and automates the integration and update of activity diagrams to maintain consistence. We've recognised that it is not uncommon for developers to introduce quick and dirty implementation that unnecessarily increases program complexity or introduces suboptimal behaviour changes. So while merging code changes into behaviour model, our approach also calculates cyclometric complexity variation before and after the process so that developers can be alerted of significant and/or detrimental changes. Our tool allows the user to approve the change in code before merging and updating the model.
Micromachined High Aspect Ratio PDMS Elastic Micropost Arrays for Studying Traction Forces of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

PDMS micropost arrays were fabricated, characterized, and used to analyze the traction force generated by vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells. The micropost array was fabricated with diameters between 3-7μm, with edge to edge spacing of 5 and 7m, and height to diameter aspect radio up to 8. The spring constant of micropost used in cell culturing experiment is 20.94nN/m and the smallest traction force exerted from VSM cell is 8.05nN. The force generated by VSM cells cultured on top of micropost was in the nano Newton (N) range and it can be obtained by measuring the micropost deflection using optical microscopy images. The high aspect ratio micropost can be used to measure the traction forces of cells with weaker contractile forces in the nN-pN range.
The multi angular descriptor (MAD): a binary and gray images descriptor for shape recognition

In this paper, we present the Multi Angular Descriptor (MAD), a new shape descriptor for shape based object recognition and image retrieval. In the binary case, the MAD descriptor captures the angular view to multi resolution rings from each contour point. Placing the rings in different heights enables capturing multi-level global/local features. In gray level, it captures the weighted distribution over relative positions of the shape points to multi resolution rings around the centroid. The multi angular descriptor is robust to noise and small deformations. Flexible parameters makes the MAD descriptor tunable to specific unique characteristics of the different tasks. The extension of the (MAD) descriptor to gray level shapes, can be seen as an extension of a shape context descriptor to be used with low quality gray level images avoiding poor results of the binarization process. Testing the proposed descriptor on the MNIST dataset [16] and a private dataset using two matching techniques gave better results comparing to the Shapes Context and the Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) descriptors.
Higher Rank Principal Kronecker Model for Triply Selective Fading Channels With Experimental Validation

This paper proposes a higher rank principal Kronecker model (PKM) for simulating triply selective fading channels. To construct the PKM, the channel correlation matrices are decomposed using the higher order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) method. The proposed PKM-HOSVD model improves upon the original Kronecker model by using higher rank approximation of the channel correlation matrices rather than the rank-1 approximation. The proposed PKM-HOSVD model was validated by extensive field experiments conducted for 4 × 4 multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems in both indoor and outdoor environments. The carrier frequencies used included 800 MHz, 2.2 GHz, and 5.2 GHz. The channel correlation matrices calculated from the measured channel coefficients were then decomposed via the proposed PKM-HOSVD method. The quality of the decomposition was evaluated by not only the mean square error but also the correlation matrix distance. These results indicate that many practical channels must use higher rank approximation rather than the commonly used rank-1 approximation (or the Kermoal method) to achieve satisfactory decomposition accuracy. In addition, the predicted channel capacity by the proposed channel simulation model achieves better accuracy than the original rank-1 channel simulation model.
Silver Nanoparticles Based Ink with Moderate Sintering in Flexible and Printed Electronics

Printed electronics on flexible substrates has attracted tremendous research interest research thanks its low cost, large area production capability and environmentally friendly advantages. Optimal characteristics of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) based inks are crucial for ink rheology, printing, post-print treatment, and performance of the printed electronics devices. In this review, the methods and mechanisms for obtaining Ag NPs based inks that are highly conductive under moderate sintering conditions are summarized. These characteristics are particularly important when printed on temperature sensitive substrates that cannot withstand sintering of high temperature. Strategies to tailor the protective agents capping on the surface of Ag NPs, in order to optimize the sizes and shapes of Ag NPs as well as to modify the substrate surface, are presented. Different (emerging) sintering technologies are also discussed, including photonic sintering, electrical sintering, plasma sintering, microwave sintering, etc. Finally, applications of the Ag NPs based ink in transparent conductive film (TCF), thin film transistor (TFT), biosensor, radio frequency identification (RFID) antenna, stretchable electronics and their perspectives on flexible and printed electronics are presented.
Sperm DNA integrity in cancer patients before and after cytotoxic treatment.

BACKGROUND We assessed sperm DNA fragmentation index (DFI) in cancer patients before and after treatment to evaluate if sperm DNA integrity is compromised by cancer itself or its treatment. METHODS In a prospective study, DFI was assessed in 127 patients diagnosed with testicular germ cell tumours (TGCT), Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and various malignancies. The severity of cancer and tumour markers at diagnosis was recorded. Follow-up DFI after treatment was available in 52 patients who were mostly less severely affected. RESULTS In patients diagnosed with TGCT, HL and various malignancies, pretreatment DFI levels were not significantly different from that of proven fertile controls, but in patients with NHL an increased DFI was found. An overall significant decrease in post-treatment DFI (13.2% range 5.0-70.5) compared with pretreatment values (17.1% range 5.1-66.6) was found (P = 0.040). In TGCT patients, post-treatment DFI was significantly higher in patients who were treated with radiotherapy (16.9% range 11.5-39.9) compared with that in patients treated with chemotherapy (CT) alone (10.9% range 5.5-39.9) (P = 0.037). In HL patients, the type of treatment or number of CT cycles was not associated with DFI. Overall, post-treatment DFI in cancer patients was not significantly different from that of proven fertile controls. CONCLUSIONS In this study, the presence of cancer does not seem to negatively affect the sperm DNA integrity in TGCT and HL patients; only NHL patients showed increased DFI at the time of diagnosis compared with healthy controls. Our results confirm previous reports that DFI decreases significantly following various anti-cancer treatments. In contrast, radiotherapy in TGCT patients is associated with an increase in DFI compared with CT treatment alone.
A Small Domain in the N Terminus of the Regulatory α-Subunit Kv2.3 Modulates Kv2.1 Potassium Channel Gating

Recent work has demonstrated the existence of regulatory K+ channel α-subunits that are electrically silent but capable of forming heterotetramers with other pore-forming subunits to modify their function. We have investigated the molecular determinant of the modulatory effects of Kv2.3, a silent K+ channel α-subunit specific of brain. This subunit induces on Kv2.1 channels a marked deceleration of activation, inactivation, and closing kinetics. We constructed chimeras of the Kv2.1 and Kv2.3 proteins and analyzed the K+currents resulting from the coexpression of the chimeras with Kv2.1. The data indicate that a region of 59 amino acids in the N terminus, adjacent to the first transmembrane segment, is the major structural element responsible for the regulatory function of Kv2.3. The sequence of this domain of Kv2.3 is highly divergent compared with the same region in the other channels of the Kv2 family. Replacement of the regulatory fragment of Kv2.3 by the equivalent of Kv2.1 leads to loss of modulatory function, whereas gain of modulatory function is observed when the Kv2.3 fragment is transferred to Kv2.1. Thus, this study identifies a N-terminus domain involved in Kv2.1 channel gating and in the modulation of this channel by a regulatory α-subunit.
Multidimensional Drug Profiling By Automated Microscopy

We present a method for high-throughput cytological profiling by microscopy. Our system provides quantitative multidimensional measures of individual cell states over wide ranges of perturbations. We profile dose-dependent phenotypic effects of drugs in human cell culture with a titration-invariant similarity score (TISS). This method successfully categorized blinded drugs and suggested targets for drugs of uncertain mechanism. Multivariate single-cell analysis is a starting point for identifying relationships among drug effects at a systems level and a step toward phenotypic profiling at the single-cell level. Our methods will be useful for discovering the mechanism and predicting the toxicity of new drugs.
Investigation of Transmission Schemes for Millimeter-Wave Massive MU-MIMO Systems

A massive multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system working at millimeter-wave frequencies is a new concept that has appeared in recent years. In such systems, the sparsity of the beamspace channel matrix makes the channel rank reduction and limited feedback realizable. Based on these preferable features, this paper introduces two kinds of beamspace transformation and exploits their corresponding beamspace characters. Then, the spatial division multiple access (SDMA) and the interference suppression precoding are investigated separately. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of these two traditional schemes, the authors focus on the design of the limited-feedback-based multiuser transmission schemes for millimeter-wave massive MIMO systems. An enhanced SDMA scheme is first proposed in this paper, which utilizes the beamspace sparsity and overcomes the challenges of channel information acquisition and interference control from a general perspective. Based on these, we analyze the interuser interference condition and further propose a joint transmission scheme, which incorporates a double-precoding-based SDMA and an interference suppression precoding. The performances of the proposed schemes are also evaluated via simulation, which show that high system sum-rate capacity could be achieved with only low computational complexity and a small amount of feedback.
Acute Resistance Exercise: Physiological and Biomechanical Alterations During a Subsequent Swim-Training Session.

PURPOSE To examine the acute effect of dry-land strength training on physiological and biomechanical parameters in a subsequent swim-training session. METHODS Twelve male swimmers (age 19.0 ± 2.2 y, peak oxygen uptake [VO2peak] 65.5 ± 11.4 mL∙kg-1∙min-1) performed a 5x200-m test with progressively increasing intensity. Blood lactate concentration (BL) was measured after each 200-m bout, and the speed corresponding to 4 mmol∙L-1 (V4) was calculated. In the experimental (EXP) and control (CON) conditions, swimmers participated in a swim-training session consisting of 1000-m warm-up, a bout of 10-s tethered swimming sprint, and 5x400-m at V4. In EXP, swimmers completed a dry-land strength-training session (load: 85% of 1-repetition maximum) 15 min before the swimming session. In CON, swimmers performed the swimming session only. VO2, BL, arm-stroke rate (SR), arm-stroke length (SL), and arm-stroke efficiency (ηF) were measured during the 5x400-m. RESULTS Force in the 10-s sprint was no different between conditions (P = .61), but fatigue index was higher in the EXP condition (P = .03). BL was higher in EXP and showed large effect size at the 5th 400-m repetition compared with CON (6.4 ± 2.7 vs 4.6 ± 2.8 mmol∙L-1, d = 0.63). During the 5x400-m, ηF remained unchanged, SL was decreased from the 3rd repetition onward (P = .01), and SR showed a medium increment in EXP (d = 0.23). CONCLUSIONS Strength training completed 15 min before a swim-training session caused moderate changes in biomechanical parameters and increased BL concentration during swimming. Despite these changes, swimmers were able to maintain force and submaximal speed during the endurance-training session.
Anticipatory Grief in New Family Caregivers of Persons With Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia

Anticipatory grief is the process of experiencing normal phases of bereavement in advance of the loss of a significant person. To date, anticipatory grief has been examined in family caregivers to individuals who have had Alzheimer disease (AD) an average of 3 to 6 years. Whether such grief is manifested early in the disease trajectory (at diagnosis) is unknown. Using a cross-sectional design, we examined differences in the nature and extent of anticipatory grief between family caregivers of persons with a new diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n=43) or AD (n=30). We also determined whether anticipatory grief levels were associated with caregiver demographics, caregiving burden, depressive symptoms, and marital quality. The mean anticipatory grief levels were high in the total sample, with AD caregivers endorsing significantly more anticipatory grief than MCI caregivers. In general, AD caregivers endorsed difficulty in functioning, whereas MCI caregivers focused on themes of “missing the person” they once knew. Being a female caregiver, reporting higher levels of objective caregiving burden, and higher depression levels each had independent, statistically significant relationships with anticipatory grief. Given these findings, family caregivers of individuals with mild cognitive deficits or a new AD diagnosis may benefit from interventions specifically addressing anticipatory grief.
Improving MANET Simulation Results - Deploying Realistic Mobility and Radio Wave Propagation Models

Recent research has shown the poor accuracy of widely used simulators in the area of wireless networks. Beside many other parameters two are of particular interest: (i) the mobility model, and (ii) the radio wave propagation model. The first is responsible for the network topology and the latter for the perception of transmitted data. Both have strong impact on the performance of mobile ad-hoc networks, e.g. the performance of routing protocols changes with these models. We developed a framework combining a realistic mobility model and radio wave propagation model. To generate mobility multiple well understood random mobility models are combined in a scenario graph. The graph also includes obstacles which restrict the movement and the radio wave propagation. The radio wave propagation is calculated using a ray-tracing approach. We present an extensive simulation study on the effect of the mobility and radio wave propagation on simulation results.
Towards Synergistic Integration of Context-Based and Scenario-Based Development

Scenario-based models of reactive systems divide complex specifications into artifacts corresponding to separate aspects of overall system behavior, as they may appear, e.g., in a robot’s requirements document or user manual. The advantages of scenario-based development include intuitiveness and clarity, the ability to execute or simulate specifications of early prototypes and of final systems, and the ability to verify the specification for early detection of conflicts, omissions, and errors. In this position paper we discuss two issues that emerge when applying scenario-based development in complex cases: (a) simple scenarios become unwieldy when subjected to a growing number of conditions, exceptions and refinements, and (b) it is hard to understand and maintain a large ‘flat’ specification, consisting of many independently-specified scenarios, simple as they may individually be. We address these by basing certain facets of scenario design on context , an increasingly popular foundational consideration in software engineering. We first show how one can incorporate context into the graphical language of live sequence charts (LSC) using existing LSC idioms. We then outline two other possibilities: (i) enriching the LSC language, or (ii) embedding LSCs within hierarchical state machines, namely, statecharts. We believe that this research can contribute to the broader goals of developing complex and powerful systems in intuitive and robust ways.