Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation of a periodic motor program in C. elegans

A three-part motor program mediates a defecation every 45 sec in well- fed wild-type Caenorhabditis elegans. Individual worms maintain this 45 sec rhythm with an SD of about 3 sec. We present evidence that the defecation cycle is controlled by an endogenous clock, most likely a neuronal pattern generator. The phase of the behavioral rhythm can be reset like pattern generators in other animals. The rhythm was reset by stimulating a well-characterized neuronal circuit mediating response to light touch. Also, animals that spontaneously stopped feeding interrupted their defecation rhythms. When they resumed feeding these animals reactivated the motor program in phase with the previously established rhythm, indicating that an endogenous clock continues to run even when the behavior is not expressed. Control of the defecation rhythm is independent of expression of the motor program. Most previously isolated mutations that affect the motor program (Thomas, 1990) do not alter the rhythm of the behavior; the motor steps themselves are defective but not the timing of their activation. Laser kills of identified motor neurons that affect particular parts of the motor program also did not change the defecation rhythm. Another sensory stimulus, food, strongly modulates defecation behavior: animals away from food rarely activated the motor program, and food dilution resulted in a graded lengthening of the cycle period. To elucidate further the relationship between feeding and defecation rhythms we studied a mutation, dec-8(sa200), that caused worms to continue to activate the motor program in the absence of food. The mutant did not require the presence of food to activate the motor program, although food made the rhythm more precise. In the presence of food, dec- 8(sa200) animals exhibited tandem activations of the defecation motor program; the principal activation was followed by a more variable second activation. Further experiments suggested that the tandem activations of the motor program are not due to the activity of multiple oscillators.
Leucine-Rich Repeat Kinase 2 Modulates Retinoic Acid-Induced Neuronal Differentiation of Murine Embryonic Stem Cells

Background Dominant mutations in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are the most prevalent cause of Parkinson's disease, however, little is known about the biological function of LRRK2 protein. LRRK2 is expressed in neural precursor cells suggesting a role in neurodevelopment. Methodology/Principal Findings In the present study, differential gene expression profiling revealed a faster silencing of pluripotency-associated genes, like Nanog, Oct4, and Lin28, during retinoic acid-induced neuronal differentiation of LRRK2-deficient mouse embryonic stem cells compared to wildtype cultures. By contrast, expression of neurotransmitter receptors and neurotransmitter release was increased in LRRK2+/− cultures indicating that LRRK2 promotes neuronal differentiation. Consistently, the number of neural progenitor cells was higher in the hippocampal dentate gyrus of adult LRRK2-deficient mice. Alterations in phosphorylation of the putative LRRK2 substrates, translation initiation factor 4E binding protein 1 and moesin, do not appear to be involved in altered differentiation, rather there is indirect evidence that a regulatory signaling network comprising retinoic acid receptors, let-7 miRNA and downstream target genes/mRNAs may be affected in LRRK2-deficient stem cells in culture. Conclusion/Significance Parkinson's disease-linked LRRK2 mutations that associated with enhanced kinase activity may affect retinoic acid receptor signaling during neurodevelopment and/or neuronal maintenance as has been shown in other mouse models of chronic neurodegenerative diseases.
A Framework for Combining Ontology and Schema Matchers with Dempster-Shafer

Ontologies, at least in the form of taxonomies, have proved rather successful, and are employed in many fields, as far apart as biology and finance. Reaching an agreement over a single ontology has proved difficult, and to obtain actual interoperability it is necessary to map the different ontologies. Mapping one entity between a source ontology and one in a target ontology means to compare the first entity with all the entities in the second ontology: matchers analyse different aspects of the entities to identify the similarities. A single matcher can analyse only some aspects, and often has to rely on uncertain information. Therefore combining the outcomes of different matchers can yield better results. In this paper I present a framework that uses Dempster-Shafer as a model for interpreting and combining results computed by the matchers.
Look before you seek: Preview adds a fixed benefit to all searches

Knowing in advance what to look for speeds up search, but how this knowledge guides search is poorly understood. The little available evidence suggests that previewing the target produces larger reductions in search times for harder searches. To investigate this issue further, we performed seven experiments in which subjects searched for an oddball target after previewing the target, distracter, or an unrelated square. Consistent with previous studies, harder searches showed bigger reductions in search time for an informative preview. However, the same data replotted using the reciprocal of search time showed a remarkably different result: The informative preview showed a fixed additive increase in reciprocal search time across all searches regardless of difficulty. This is a nontrivial outcome because it cannot be explained using a simple relationship between search times in the informative and uninformative preview conditions. We interpret our findings by proposing that the reciprocal of search time reflects the strength of an underlying accumulating signal related to the distinctiveness or salience of the target over the distracters and that preview additively increases this signal for all searches. This in turn implies that the top-down signals related to target preview and bottom-up signals related to target-distracter salience sum linearly.
Syntax-driven bindings of Spanish clitic pronoun

In this paper we present an analysis of the relationship between the Spanish clitic pronoun system and the Binding Theory. Spanish clitic pronouns have a dual behaviour; in the proclitic case, they behave like independent lexical units, hence proper clitic, but on the enclitic case they are hence morphological affixes (i.e. inflexions). In the first case, the clitics stand for pronouns, therefore it is necessary that the sentences in which they intervene follow the Binding Principles. We present the analysis for reflexives, double clitic and object control verbs constructions.
The role of explicit alignment in self-organized flocking

Flocking is an self-organized behavior that is widely observed in nature from simple organisms such as crickets and locusts to more complex ones such as birds and quadruplets. It can be defined as the coherent and aligned motion of a group of animals at a certain direction. Coherence is the tendency of the individuals to stay together and alignment is a consequence of minimizing collisions at the individual level. In this paper, we study the alignment component of the flocking behavior in a swarm of robots. We implemented two different controllers: one with only a cohesion behavior, namely the no-alignment controller, and the other with both cohesion and alignment behaviors, namely the alignment-enabled controller. In both controllers, only a proportion of robots, called informed robots, are provided with the desired goal direction. In particular, we study the effect of three different parameters on flocking performances. The three parameters are the size of the swarm, noise in the cohesion behavior and the proportion of informed robots. Under the effect of these parameters, we perform a comparative study of the two controllers. We perform simulation-based experiments and evaluate the accuracy of the flock to move in a desired goal direction. The experiments are conducted in stationary and non-stationary environments: in the stationary environment, the goal direction and the informed robots do not change during the experiment, whereas in the non-stationary environment, both the goal direction and the informed robots change over time. The results show that i) the alignment behavior results in a more aligned motion in larger swarms; ii) smaller swarms without an alignment behavior can follow the goal direction more accurately; iii) noise in the no-alignment controller helps to achieve a more aligned motion in large swarms and iv) the swarm needs enough informed robots to follow accurately the goal direction and to adapt to non-stationary environments. Keywords-flocking; self-organization; swarm robotics; swarm intelligence
Automatic synthesis of multi-agent motion tasks based on LTL specifications

In this paper we propose a methodology for automatically synthesizing motion task controllers based on linear temporal logic (LTL) specifications. The proposed design of the underlying multi-agent controllers possesses a special structure that allows for implicit satisfaction of basic liveness and safety specifications. The resulting closed loop system is of hybrid nature combining the continuous dynamics of the underlying system with the automatically synthesized switching logic that enforces the LTL specification. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified through non-trivial computer simulations.
Clinical Features and Molecular Diagnosis of Chikungunya Fever from South India

Abstract An epidemic of Chikungunya fever of unprecedented magnitude occurred in many parts of India in early 2006 after an interval of 33 years, and there has been a resurgence in some parts of South India since June 2007. The article highlights clinical manifestations of infection and various molecular tests that were used for diagnoses of Chikungunya virus infection. Of particular interest is the real-time loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT LAMP) assay, which is rapid and cost-effective and can be adopted at ill-equipped laboratories. Clinical symptoms were characterized by a triad of fever, rash, and severe rheumatic manifestations. RT LAMP identified 20 additional Chikungunya virus—positive cases, compared with reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Chikungunya virus was isolated from 20 randomly selected samples. Genotyping of the virus isolates revealed that the East Central South African genotype of Chikungunya virus was the etiologic agent of this epidemic. Molecular diagnosis is an important tool to identify such new vectorborne viral illnesses.
Depressive symptoms among community-dwelling, post-stroke elders in Hong Kong.

BACKGROUND Depressive symptoms adversely affect functional recovery among post-stroke elders. Such symptoms manifest when elders face difficulties in realistic daily living after being discharged. AIMS The aim of this study was to examine (1) the prevalence of depressive symptoms among community-dwelling post-stroke elders, (2) the relationship between depressive symptoms and demographic and clinical characteristics among community-dwelling post-stroke elders, and (3) the demographic and clinical factors that differentiate post-stroke elders with and without depressive symptoms. METHODS A descriptive cross-sectional survey was performed on 50 post-stroke elders from a geriatric day clinic. FINDINGS Depressive symptoms were highly prevalent (68%) among the community-dwelling post-stroke elders. Depressive symptoms were negatively correlated with social support network, social support satisfaction and functional independence. Lastly, poor social support satisfaction and lower functional independence was found to differentiate those post-stroke elders with and without depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION The inclusion of psychosocial assessment and delivery of appropriate psychosocial interventions to post-stroke elders are recommended.
“You have shown me my end”: Attitudes toward presymptomatic testing for familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a lethal degenerative motor neuron disease. Approximately, 5–10% of cases of ALS are familial (FALS), inherited primarily as an autosomal dominant trait. Recently, mutations in Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1) have been identified; 15–20% of familial cases carry this mutation, providing a marker for diagnosis, carrier testing, and prenatal detection. We assessed understanding of genetics of FALS in relatives of patients cared for at the Forbes Norris MDA/ALS Research Center in San Francisco. A total of 25 participants completed a questionnaire and semistructured interview. Of these, 60% would have gene testing for themselves; 36% believed testing of children or adolescents was a good idea. Overall knowledge of genetics of FALS was limited. Also, 24% of respondents understood the inheritance pattern of FALS; 64% were aware that not all individuals who had the gene would show symptoms in their lifetime. Families were confused about whether they would receive results from linkage studies. We recommend that: (1) physicians refer relatives of newly diagnosed individuals for genetic counseling and possibly psychological counseling; (2) investigators ensure that participants comprehend the purpose of gene identification is for research, not disclosure of individual results; (3) families be helped to understand how to keep abreast of medical and genetic advances; (4) following the model of Huntington disease (HD), consensus guidelines for FALS genetic counseling and testing be developed. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Unsupervised metric learning by Self-Smoothing Operator

In this paper, we propose a diffusion-based approach to improve an input similarity metric. The diffusion process propagates similarity mass along the intrinsic manifold of data points. Our approach results in a global similarity metric which differs from the query-specific one for ranking produced by label propagation [26]. Unlike diffusion maps [7], our approach directly improves a given similarity metric without introducing any extra distance notions. We call our approach Self-Smoothing Operator (SSO). To demonstrate its wide applicability, experiments are reported on image retrieval, clustering, classification, and segmentation tasks. In most cases, using SSO results in significant performance gains over the original similarity metrics, with also very evident advantage over diffusion maps
A Pattern Approach to Mobile Interaction DesignDie Verwendung von Patterns beim Entwerfen mobiler Applikationen

Abstract There are many limitations and benefits of mobile technology and the specific situation of mobile users adds complexity through additional parameters that designers need to address. This makes designing user interfaces and user interaction for mobile applications a very complex task. To address this complexity we propose an interaction design approach using patterns for mobile interaction design. We present an iterative user centered development process which integrates the usage of an interaction pattern library within the interaction design process. By using the pattern approach, not only functional and interaction requirements but also architectural issues are considered. In addition we present tools for designers that enable them to use the pattern library according to the categorization of functionality and interaction representing the dimensions of a design task especially in mobile environments. The proposed method guides developers in their task to design interaction that matches the project´s requirements.
Prevention by methylprednisolone of increased circulating tumor necrosis factor-alpha levels and lung injury associated with systemic inflammatory response syndrome due to intraperitoneal hyperthermia.

UNLABELLED We previously demonstrated that intraperitoneal hyperthermic perfusion (IPHP), which is performed clinically as a treatment for patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer, can lead to increased serum tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), and acute lung injury. Glucocorticoids inhibit the production and actions of TNF-alpha. We investigated whether pretreatment with methylprednisolone (MPS) may modulate serum TNF-alpha and lung injury in patients subjected to IPHP. Serum TNF-alpha was not detected in the patients pretreated with MPS, whereas serum TNF-alpha increased in the control patients (45.7 +/- 8.3 pg/mL, mean +/- SEM) after IPHP. Postoperative lung injury scores were significantly lower in patients pretreated with MPS than in the control patients (P < 0.001). IMPLICATIONS Pretreatment with methylprednisolone attenuates the increase in circulating tumor necrosis factor-alpha and prevents lung injury in this systemic inflammatory syndrome due to intraperitoneal hyperthermic perfusion.
Controller-Dynamic-Linearization-Based Model Free Adaptive Control for Discrete-Time Nonlinear Systems

A new type of model free adaptive control (MFAC) method, including MFAC scheme designs with the compact-form-dynamic-linearization-based controller (CFDLc) and partial-form-dynamic-linearization-based controller (PFDLc), is presented for a class of discrete-time SISO nonlinear systems. The proposed method is a pure data-driven control method since the controller is independent of the model of the controlled plant, and controller parameter tuning is merely based on the measured I/O data of the controlled plant in closed loop. Differing from the MFAC prototype, the proposed method uses the dynamic linearization approach not only on ideal controller but also on the plant. The stability of the CFDLc-MFAC and PFDLc-MFAC is guaranteed by rigorous theoretical analysis, and the effectiveness is evaluated on simulation examples and a three-tank liquid control experimental system.
Opinum: statistical sentiment analysis for opinion classification

The classification of opinion texts in positive and negative can be tackled by evaluating separate key words but this is a very limited approach. We propose an approach based on the order of the words without using any syntactic and semantic information. It consists of building one probabilistic model for the positive and another one for the negative opinions. Then the test opinions are compared to both models and a decision and confidence measure are calculated. In order to reduce the complexity of the training corpus we first lemmatize the texts and we replace most named-entities with wildcards. We present an accuracy above 81% for Spanish opinions in the financial products domain.
DriveSafe: An app for alerting inattentive drivers and scoring driving behaviors

This paper presents DriveSafe, a new driver safety app for iPhones that detects inattentive driving behaviors and gives corresponding feedback to drivers, scoring their driving and alerting them in case their behaviors are unsafe. It uses computer vision and pattern recognition techniques on the iPhone to assess whether the driver is drowsy or distracted using the rear-camera, the microphone, the inertial sensors and the GPS. We present the general architecture of DriveSafe and evaluate its performance using data from 12 drivers in two different studies. The first one evaluates the detection of some inattentive driving behaviors obtaining an overall precision of 82% at 92% of recall. The second one compares the scores between DriveSafe vs the commercial AXA Drive app obtaining a better valuation to its operation. DriveSafe is the first app for smartphones based on inbuilt sensors able to detect inattentive behaviors evaluating the quality of the driving at the same time. It represents a new disruptive technology because, on the one hand, it provides similar ADAS features that found in luxury cars, and on the other hand, it presents a viable alternative for the “blackboxes” installed in vehicles by the insurance companies.
Making existing technology safer in healthcare

Background Technology, equipment and medical devices are vital for effective healthcare throughout the world but are associated with risks. These risks include device failure, inappropriate use, insufficient user-training and inadequate inspection and maintenance. Further risks within the developing world include challenging conditions of temperature and humidity, poor infrastructure, poorly trained service providers, limited resources and supervision, and inappropriately complex equipment being supplied without backup training for its use or maintenance. Methods This document is the product of an expert working group established by WHO Patient Safety to define the measures being taken to reduce these risks. It considers how the provision of safer technology services worldwide is being enhanced in three ways: through non-punitive and open reporting systems of technology-related adverse events and near-misses, with classification and investigation; through healthcare quality assessment, accreditation and certification; and by the investigation of how appropriate design and an understanding of the conditions of use and associated human factors can improve patient safety. Results and discussion Many aspects of these steps remain aspirational for developing countries, where highly disparate needs and a vast range of technology-related problems exist. Here, much greater emphasis must be placed on failsafe, durable and user-friendly design—examples of which are described.
A Vision for PetaByte Data Management and Analyis Services for the Arecibo Telescope

We survey the initial steps of a project to build a data manage ment and data mining system for astronomy data generated by the Arecibo Telescope. The total amount of data that our project will have to manage will approach one Petabyte over five years. We describe some o f the scientific challenges from the astronomy side, and we discuss initial thoughts on how to add ress these challenges through novel data
Metabolomic profiling to characterize acute intestinal ischemia/reperfusion injury

Sepsis and septic shock are the leading causes of death in critically ill patients. Acute intestinal ischemia/reperfusion (AII/R) is an adaptive response to shock. The high mortality rate from AII/R is due to the severity of the disease and, more importantly, the failure of timely diagnosis. The objective of this investigation is to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis to characterize urine metabolomic profile of AII/R injury in a mouse model. Animals were exposed to sham, early (30 min) or late (60 min) acute intestinal ischemia by complete occlusion of the superior mesenteric artery, followed by 2 hrs of reperfusion. Urine was collected and analyzed by NMR spectroscopy. Urinary metabolite concentrations demonstrated that different profiles could be delineated based on the duration of the intestinal ischemia. Metabolites such as allantoin, creatinine, proline, and methylamine could be predictive of AII/R injury. Lactate, currently used for clinical diagnosis, was found not to significantly contribute to the classification model for either early or late ischemia. This study demonstrates that patterns of changes in urinary metabolites are effective at distinguishing AII/R progression in an animal model. This is a proof-of-concept study to further support examination of metabolites in the clinical diagnosis of intestinal ischemia reperfusion injury in patients. The discovery of a fingerprint metabolite profile of AII/R will be a major advancement in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of systemic injury in critically ill patients.