Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Murine Cytomegalovirus Infection of Neural Stem Cells Alters Neurogenesis in the Developing Brain

Background Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) brain infection causes serious neuro-developmental sequelae including: mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and sensorineural hearing loss. But, the mechanisms of injury and pathogenesis to the fetal brain are not completely understood. The present study addresses potential pathogenic mechanisms by which this virus injures the CNS using a neonatal mouse model that mirrors congenital brain infection. This investigation focused on, analysis of cell types infected with mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) and the pattern of injury to the developing brain. Methodology/Principal Findings We used our MCMV infection model and a multi-color flow cytometry approach to quantify the effect of viral infection on the developing brain, identifying specific target cells and the consequent effect on neurogenesis. In this study, we show that neural stem cells (NSCs) and neuronal precursor cells are the principal target cells for MCMV in the developing brain. In addition, viral infection was demonstrated to cause a loss of NSCs expressing CD133 and nestin. We also showed that infection of neonates leads to subsequent abnormal brain development as indicated by loss of CD24(hi) cells that incorporated BrdU. This neonatal brain infection was also associated with altered expression of Oct4, a multipotency marker; as well as down regulation of the neurotrophins BDNF and NT3, which are essential to regulate the birth and differentiation of neurons during normal brain development. Finally, we report decreased expression of doublecortin, a marker to identify young neurons, following viral brain infection. Conclusions MCMV brain infection of newborn mice causes significant loss of NSCs, decreased proliferation of neuronal precursor cells, and marked loss of young neurons.
Cardiovascular risk and status assessment

This work focuses on the development of models to support the assessment of a patient's global cardiovascular condition. Three types of models, based on different types of information, have been developed: long term cardiovascular risk models, that evaluate the risk of occurring of cardiovascular event within a long period of time (years); short term cardiovascular risk models, to assess the risk of death within a short period of time (months); cardiovascular status assessment models, to estimate the current cardiovascular condition of a patient. Three major drawbacks of current cardiovascular tools are addressed: reduced number of risk factors considered by each individual tool, inappropriateness of these tools to incorporate empirical clinical expertise and incapacity of these tools to deal with incomplete information. Methodologies and preliminary results, obtained under FP7 HeartCycle project, as well as future directions of research are also presented in this paper.
A framework for capturing the relationship between usability and software architecture

Usability is increasingly recognized as an essential factor that determines the success of software systems. Practice shows that for current software systems, most usability issues are detected during testing and deployment. Fixing usability issues during this late stage of the development proves to be very costly. Some usability-improving modifications such as usability patterns may have architectural implications. We believe that the software architecture may restrict usability. The high costs associated with fixing usability issues during late-stage development prevent developers from making the necessary adjustments for meeting all the usability requirements. To improve upon this situation, we have investigated the relationship between usability and software architecture to gain a better understanding of how the architecture restricts the level of usability. Our article makes a number of contributions; a framework is presented that expresses the relationship between usability and software architecture. The framework consists of an integrated set of design solutions such as usability patterns and usability properties that have been identified in various cases in industry, modern day software and literature surveys. These solutions, in most cases, have a positive effect on usability but are difficult to retrofit into applications because they have architectural impact. Our framework may be used to guide and inform the architectural design phase. This may decrease development costs by reducing the amount of usability issues that need to be fixed during the later stages of development. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Isoflurane Increases Neuronal Cell Death Vulnerability by Downregulating miR-214

Since accumulating evidence suggests the application of anesthetics may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we investigated the cytotoxicity of inhaled general anesthesia in neurons and its underlying mechanism. Using primary cultured rat hippocampal neurons as the study model, here we show that isoflurane increases vulnerability to intracellular or extracellular amyloid β with or without serum deprivation. This isoflurane-induced effect is mediated by the downregulation of miR-214 level that lead to an elevated expression of Bax, a prominent target for miR-214. We conclude that isoflurane increases cell death in the presence of amyloid β by increasing Bax level through downregulating miR-214. Our data provide a new insight for inhaled anesthetics toxicity and indicate a possible mechanistic link between anesthetic application and neurodegenration in AD.
Clinical decision rules in rheumatoid arthritis: do they identify patients at high risk for osteoporosis? Testing clinical criteria in a population based cohort of patients with rheumatoid arthritis recruited from the Oslo Rheumatoid Arthritis Register

Background: Preliminary clinical criteria based on age, inflammation, and immobility have been proposed to identify which patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) should be examined by dual energy x ray absorptiometry (DXA) to diagnose osteoporosis. The three item criteria have not been evaluated in male patients with RA or in the entire female RA population. Objectives: (1) To test the proposed criteria in a cohort of men and women thought to be representative of the entire underlying RA population. (2) To develop clinical decision rules, which could be applied to all patients with RA irrespective of corticosteroid use. Methods: Clinical and demographic data were collected from a total of 287 representative patients with RA (235 (82%) women, 52 (18%) men, age range 25.3–73.1 years) from the Oslo RA register (completeness 85%). Bone mineral density (BMD) was measured in spine L2–4 (anterior-posterior view) and femoral neck by DXA. The criteria were applied and sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated. Results: Mean age (SD) for the women and men with RA was 56.8 (11.0) years and 61.5 (10.2) years; disease duration was 15.5 (9.5) years and 14.7 (8.6) years. Of the women 163 (69%) were postmenopausal. One hundred and seventeen (50%) women and 28 (54%) men fulfilled the three item criteria. For the diagnosis of osteoporosis (T score ≤−2.5) using the original three item criteria sensitivity in women and men was 74% and 67%, specificity 57% and 50%, PPV 32% and 29% and NPV 89% and 83%, and including weight and ever use of corticosteroids in a five item criteria sensitivity increased to 82% and 83%, specificity decreased to 45% and 45%, PPV was 29% and 31%, and NPV was 90% and 90% respectively. Conclusion: The novel five item criteria (age, weight, inflammation, immobility, and ever use of corticosteroids) are a more accurate tool to identify patients with RA and osteoporosis than the original three item criteria (age, inflammation, and immobility). The clinical decision rules have an acceptable sensitivity and provide a practical tool for the doctor to identify patients with RA who should have a DXA measurement performed.
Guided differential testing of certificate validation in SSL/TLS implementations

Certificate validation in SSL/TLS implementations is critical for Internet security. There is recent strong effort, namely frankencert, in automatically synthesizing certificates for stress-testing certificate validation. Despite its early promise, it remains a significant challenge to generate effective test certificates as they are structurally complex with intricate syntactic and semantic constraints. This paper tackles this challenge by introducing mucert, a novel, guided technique to much more effectively test real-world certificate validation code. Our core insight is to (1) leverage easily accessible Internet certificates as seed certificates, and (2) diversify them by adapting Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. The diversified certificates are then used to reveal discrepancies, thus potential flaws, among different certificate validation implementations. We have implemented mucert and extensively evaluated it against frankencert. Our experimental results show that mucert is significantly more cost-effective than frankencert. Indeed, 1K mucerts (i.e., mucert-mutated certificates) yield three times as many distinct discrepancies as 8M frankencerts (i.e., frankencert-synthesized certificates), and 200 mucerts can achieve higher code coverage than 100,000 frankencerts. This improvement is significant as it incurs much cost to test each generated certificate. We have analyzed and reported 20+ latent discrepancies (presumably missed by frankencert), and reported an additional 357 discrepancy-triggering certificates to SSL/TLS developers, who have already confirmed some of our reported issues and are investigating causes of all the reported discrepancies. In particular, our reports have led to bug fixes, active discussions in the community, and proposed changes to relevant IETF’s RFCs. We believe that mucert is practical and effective for helping improve the robustness of SSL/TLS implementations.
Soft assignment vs hard assignment coding for bag of visual words

In image classification and retrieval, the semantic gap is the major challenge. It characterizes the difference between human perception of a concept and how it can be represented using machine level language. Bag of visual words is a well-known efficient method for image representation, however it showed some limitations. The loss of information during the vector quantization process is one of these limitations. Many approaches were proposed in order to deal with this, such as the soft-assignment technique and sparse or local coding schemes. This paper aims to compare and evaluate the extent that has the soft-assignment approach especially the recently proposed locality-constrained linear coding over the traditional hard assignment methods.
The importance of Fourier phases for the morphology of gravitational clustering

ABSTRA C T The phases of the Fourier modes appearing in a plane-wave expansion of cosmological density fields play a vital role in determining the morphology of gravitationally developed clustering. We demonstrate this qualitatively and quantitatively using simulations. In particular, we use cross-correlation and rank-correlation techniques to quantify the agreement between a simulated distribution and phase-only reconstructions. The phase-only reconstructions exhibit a high degree of correlation with the original distributions, showing how meaningful spatial reconstruction of cosmological density fields depends more on phase accuracy than on amplitudes.
A Kalman-fuzzy application for rate adaptation in IEEE 802.11 based multihop ad hoc networks

Rate adaptation has become one of the basic techniques in enhancing the capacity in todays multihop 802.11 WLANs. It is designed to cope with the status of wireless channels and achieve higher system spectral efficiency by exploiting the multi-rate capability provided by the IEEE 802.11 physical layer (PHY). As such, one of key aspects in designing rate adaptation scheme is the prior knowledge of the channel state. This becomes challenging when considering a fading channel conditions, where time varying channel gains cause random frame losses that need to be distinguished from those due to collisions and strong interference. In this paper, a new rate adaptation scheme that adopts a Kalman filter to predict the channel conditions is proposed. By predicting the future signal-to-interference noise ratio (SINR), the losses due to poor received signal and that of strong interference are taken into consideration. Furthermore, and to ensure correct operation of Kalman filter, the application of fuzzy logic controller has been explored for online tuning of Kalman Filter parameters. By tracking the covariance value of the measured interference instants, Qt, the convergence of the Kalman filter can be observed and corrective measures using fuzzy logic can be applied to prevent divergence. The soundness of the proposed rate adaptation scheme is demonstrated by comparing with existing approaches through discrete event simulation environment.
SUBCORTICAL AND CERVICAL SOMATOSENSORY EVOKED POTENTIALS IN CERVICAL SPONDYLOTIC MYELOPATHY

Aim of Work: To determine whether the diagnostic yield of SEPs in cervical spondylotic myelopathy can be improved by assessing separately dorsal column and dorsal horn responses to stimulation of the median nerve in patients with cervical spondylotic myelopathy. Material and Methods: The study was carried out on 20 patients with cervical spondylotic myelopathy and 20 healthy controls. Somatosensory evoked potentials to median nerve stimulation were studied. The following montages were used: Erb's point ipsilateral to stimulation, Erb's point contralateral to stimulation (N9), spinous process of 5 cervical vertebra, anterior cervical (N13), parietal scalp contralateral to stimulation, parietal scalp ipsilateral to stimulation (N20), parietal scalp contralateral to stimulation and shoulder contralateral to stimulation (P9, P14). Results: Abnormal N13 potential, P14 and N20 was found in 17 (85 %), 10 (50 %) and 6 (30 %) of cases respectively. Thus normal N20 coexist with a abnormal P14 in four patients . Abnormalities of scalp and cervical SEPs, defined respectively as abnormal N20 or P14 on the one hand and abnormal N13 on the other were combined in three different patterns, and distributed as follows: 9 patients (45 %) had normal scalp SEPs with abnormal cervical responses; 8 patients (40 %) showed abnormalities of both scalp and cervical SEPs; in two patients (10 %) normal cervical responses were associated with abnormal Subcortical & Cervical SEP in Cervical Spon. Myelopathy Mahammad & Naggar 694 scalp SEPs on both sides. Thus, about half of the patients with an isolated abnormality of the cervical N13 response would have been considered as having normal upper limb SEPs if recorded with a conventional frontal montage, which does not allow a selective assessment of this variable. In nine patients there was an increased signal on T2-weighted MRI scans of the cord at the cervical level. Conclusions: The cervical potential N13 and the subcortical potential P14 are reliable in diagnosing cervical spondylotic myelopathy. They are more frequently abnormal than the cortical N20 potential.
From motor imitation to social cognition: The role of self-other control

: In social interaction, people have a tendency to copy observed actions. This automatic imitation is crucial for understanding others’ feelings behind actions, but can also result in potential conflicts between motor representations of self and other. Therefore, we need to distinguish our own motor plan from that of others and identify the conflicts. This capacity was termed self-other control (SOC). Similar to imitation control, higher levels of social cognition, such as theory of mind, perspective-taking, and empathy, also involve the processing of information about self and others. Much evidence suggested that SOC was a domain-general mechanism, as imitation control and other socio-cognitive processes in the brain shared the same SOC system to distinguish between information of self and other and regulate conflicts thereof. Some recent studies showed that, comparing with inhibitory control (IC) which was to suppress one’s own prepotent responses, SOC played a more pivotal role in social cognition, and the effect of IC on social cognition was moderated by SOC. In addition, the domain-generality of SOC indicates that in the future, individuals with certain socio-cognitive deficits (such as autism and alexithymia) would benefit from rehabilitation via motor-imitation control training.
How do the Chinese and Japanese manage their joint ventures? : a comparative perspective

Studies of international joint ventures (IJVs) in China continue to accumulate. Many were originally informed from various historical, economic, political, sociological, and geographical perspectives. More recently, international management theory and research has made some progress. Attention may likewise switch from the initial founding of I.lVs towards their subsequent operation and management and eventual maturation. In addition, it will become more possible to compare different international approaches and perspectives upon such. For that reason, this study seeks to explore and explain why conflicting interests arise in Japanese Affiliated Enterprises (JAEs) in China and how Chinese and Japanese perspectives differ. It therefore applies a theoretical model of IJV founding and development derived from the works of Harrigan, Parkhe and others to a sample of eighty-one JAEs and four short case studies. It concentrates upon the variables of founding motives, partner selection, control and conflict, performance, and investment environment and places their development into an overall context. A range of historical, economic, political, cultural, and personality factors are identified in the process and future developmental/research possibilities specified.
Hadoop: Addressing challenges of Big Data

Hadoop is an open source cloud computing platform of the Apache Foundation that provides a software programming framework called MapReduce and distributed file system, HDFS. It is a Linux based set of tools that uses commodity hardware, which are relatively inexpensive, to handle, analyze and transform large quantity of data. Hadoop Distributed File System, HDFS, stores huge data set reliably and streams it to user application at high bandwidth and MapReduce is a framework that is used for processing massive data sets in a distributed fashion over a several machines. This paper gives a brief overview of Big Data, Hadoop MapReduce and Hadoop Distributed File System along with its architecture.
The Neural and Computational Basis of Controlled Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff during Task Performance

People are capable, at will, of trading speed for accuracy when performing a task; they can focus on performing accurately at the cost of being slow, or emphasize speed at the cost of decreased accuracy. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of this ability. We show increased baseline activity during speed emphasis in a network of areas related to response preparation and execution, including the premotor areas of the frontal lobe, the basal ganglia, the thalamus, and the dorsolateral prefrontal and left parietal cortices. Furthermore, speed emphasis was associated with reduced transient response-related activation in several of these structures, suggesting that because of the greater baseline activity under speed emphasis, less activation is needed in these structures to reach response threshold, consistent with the assumptions of several computational theories. Moreover, we identify the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as providing the top-down control signal that increases this baseline activity.
HomozygosityMapper—an interactive approach to homozygosity mapping

Homozygosity mapping is a common method for mapping recessive traits in consanguineous families. In most studies, applications for multipoint linkage analyses are applied to determine the genomic region linked to the disease. Unfortunately, these are neither suited for very large families nor for the inclusion of tens of thousands of SNPs. Even if less than 10 000 markers are employed, such an analysis may easily last hours if not days. Here we present a web-based approach to homozygosity mapping. Our application stores marker data in a database into which users can directly upload their own SNP genotype files. Within a few minutes, the database analyses the data, detects homozygous stretches and provides an intuitive graphical interface to the results. The homozygosity in affected individuals is visualized genome-wide with the ability to zoom into single chromosomes and user-defined chromosomal regions. The software also displays the underlying genotypes in all samples. It is integrated with our candidate gene search engine, GeneDistiller, so that users can interactively determine the most promising gene. They can at any point restrict access to their data or make it public, allowing HomozygosityMapper to be used as a data repository for homozygosity-mapping studies. HomozygosityMapper is available at http://www.homozygositymapper. org/.
Achieving World Trade Organization Compliance for Export Processing Zones While Maintaining Economic Competitiveness for Developing Countries

Export processing zones (EPZs) are statutorily created investment parks that developing countries establish to attract foreign investment in exchange for government-granted fiscal incentives. At their core, EPZs are a quid pro quo between host governments and investor companies: in exchange for the promise of job creation, technological transfer, economic development, and compliance with export performance requirements, investor companies receive substantial fiscal incentives, such as tax and tariff exemptions. Most EPZ statutes are inconsistent with Article 3.1(a) of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement) because EPZ incentives qualify as prohibited export subsidies. Fortunately, many developing countries have received exemptions from this prohibition to maintain their EPZ systems. The exemptions, however, are set to permanently expire for many countries on December 31, 2015, spurring the need for EPZ reform. This Note proposes a framework for achieving WTO-compliance for EPZ statutes by conditioning EPZ incentives on an investor company’s implementation of standards of corporate social responsibility. This proposal will permit developing countries to Copyright © 2013 by James J. Waters. † Duke University School of Law, J.D. /LL.M. in International and Comparative Law expected 2014; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, B.S. 2010. I graciously thank my advisor, Professor Laurence Helfer, for his invaluable guidance in writing this Note and throughout law school. I am extremely appreciative of all the members of the Duke Law Journal for their tireless hard work that has made publishing this Note possible. I am grateful to the entire staff of the National Commission for Free Zones of Nicaragua for their helpful insights and expertise on EPZs, as well as to Leonardo Martinez for his indispensable wisdom. Finally, I thank my parents and brothers, Richard and Charlie, for their continuous support and encouragement. WATERS IN PRINTER PROOF (DO NOT DELETE) 10/9/2013 12:36 PM 482 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 63:481 maintain fiscal incentives—thus helping preserve their economic competitiveness as attractive destinations for foreign investment— while also offsetting potential harm that the mandatory elimination of EPZ export requirements may cause to developing-country industries.