Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning transport operators for image manifolds

We describe an unsupervised manifold learning algorithm that represents a surface through a compact description of operators that traverse it. The operators are based on matrix exponentials, which are the solution to a system of first-order linear differential equations. The matrix exponents are represented by a basis that is adapted to the statistics of the data so that the infinitesimal generator for a trajectory along the underlying manifold can be produced by linearly composing a few elements. The method is applied to recover topological structure from low dimensional synthetic data, and to model local structure in how natural images change over time and scale.
Risky Business : Young Adults ’ Sexual Attitudes and their Impact on Intervention Effectiveness

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) disproportionately affect youth under the age of twentyfive. This study will identify how certain sexual attitudes held by young adults impact the effectiveness of interventions aimed at increasing safe sex. We coded these attitudes with the Sociosexual Orientation Index (SOI), and ran regression analysis of pre-survey data obtained from 321 female college students residing in Central Pennsylvania. We hypothesize that the higher the SOI, the less effective the intervention. The findings will provide information to potentially improve the design and targeting of intervention content to reduce risky sex.
Recent advances in networking

Professors often rely on textbooks to teach undergraduate and graduate networking courses. While there are many good introductory textbooks, there are very few books on advanced networking topics that could be suitable to graduate courses in networking. To fill this gap, SIGCOMM Education Committee has launched a community project to develop a high-quality, open-source, edited eBook on “Recent Advances in Networking”. This eBook will be distributed online via the SIGCOMM website. This eBook is composed of nine chapters chosen after a highly selective review process by the editorial board. The selected chapters cover advanced networking topics and accompanying teaching material (slides and exercises). All the source code of the eBook and the teaching material are kept on a version controlled repository that will be accessible for the entire SIGCOMM community. We expect that releasing such high quality teaching material will be beneficial for a large number of students and professors. The teaching material will be updated on a regular basis to reflect new advances in our field. We will also be adding new chapters on more emerging topics in the future volumes. We wish to thank all there authors for providing such high quality chapters. We are also grateful to the reviewers and the editorial board for spending many hours on each chapter to ensure a coherent level amongst all the chapters. We hope you enjoy reading this eBook and find it a useful resource.
The von Willebrand Inhibitor ARC1779 Reduces Cerebral Embolization After Carotid Endarterectomy: A Randomized Trial

Background and Purpose— Inhibition of von Willebrand factor offers a novel approach to prevention of stroke and myocardial ischemia but has not yet been demonstrated to show efficacy on clinically relevant end points. ARC1779 is an aptamer that inhibits the prothrombotic function of von Willebrand factor by binding to the A1 domain of von Willebrand factor and thereby blocking its interaction with glycoprotein. Phase 1 studies suggest it inhibits platelet aggregation with less increase in bleeding than conventional antiplatelet agents. The effect of ARC 1779 on cerebral emboli immediately after carotid endarterectomy was investigated in a randomized clinical trial. Methods— Patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy were randomized double-blind to ARC1779 or placebo administered intravenously. Transcranial Doppler recording, to detect cerebral embolic signals, was performed in the first 3 hours postoperatively. The primary end point was time to first embolic signals. Results— Thirty-six patients were recruited, 18 in each arm. The Kaplan-Meier median time to first embolic signals was 83.6 minutes for ARC1779 compared with 5.5 minutes for placebo. Using Cox proportional hazards embolic signals occurred statistically significantly later on ARC1779 (P=0.007). Reduced embolic signals counts were correlated with inhibition of von Willebrand factor activity (P=0.03). Increased perioperative bleeding and anemia were seen with ARC1779. Conclusions— von Willebrand factor inhibition reduces thromboembolism in humans. It may play a role in treatment of stroke and myocardial ischemia. The extent to which bleeding complications occur in nonoperated patients needs to be assessed in further studies. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00742612.
Combinational digital circuit synthesis using Cartesian Genetic Programming from a NAND gate template

Evolutionary synthesis of combinational digital circuits is a promising research area and many a success has been achieved in this field. This paper presents a new technique for the synthesis of combinational circuits by using Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) and uniform NAND gate based templates. Using a uniform gate template implies an ease in the fabrication process but in some instances, the number of gates required may increase which can be optimized by CGP. The mutation operator has been used for achieving convergence. A 2-bit multiplier and 4-bit odd parity generator circuits have been evolved for experimentation and comparison to previous results. The results obtained are compared to earlier work done in the same field. Moreover, the relationship of evolution time (in terms of number of generations) to the population size has been established and analyzed.
The Peptide Vaccine Combined with Prior Immunization of a Conventional Diphtheria-Tetanus Toxoid Vaccine Induced Amyloid β Binding Antibodies on Cynomolgus Monkeys and Guinea Pigs

The reduction of brain amyloid beta (Aβ) peptides by anti-Aβ antibodies is one of the possible therapies for Alzheimer's disease. We previously reported that the Aβ peptide vaccine including the T-cell epitope of diphtheria-tetanus combined toxoid (DT) induced anti-Aβ antibodies, and the prior immunization with conventional DT vaccine enhanced the immunogenicity of the peptide. Cynomolgus monkeys were given the peptide vaccine subcutaneously in combination with the prior DT vaccination. Vaccination with a similar regimen was also performed on guinea pigs. The peptide vaccine induced anti-Aβ antibodies in cynomolgus monkeys and guinea pigs without chemical adjuvants, and excessive immune responses were not observed. Those antibodies could preferentially recognize Aβ 40, and Aβ 42 compared to Aβ fibrils. The levels of serum anti-Aβ antibodies and plasma Aβ peptides increased in both animals and decreased the brain Aβ 40 level of guinea pigs. The peptide vaccine could induce a similar binding profile of anti-Aβ antibodies in cynomolgus monkeys and guinea pigs. The peptide vaccination could be expected to reduce the brain Aβ peptides and their toxic effects via clearance of Aβ peptides by generated antibodies.
The Lincoln Large-Vocabulary HMM CSR

The work described here focuses on recognition of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) pilot database [17], a new CSR database which supports 5K, 20K, and up to 64K- word CSR tasks. The original Lincoln Tied-Mixture HMM CSR was implemented using a time-synchronous beam-pruned search of a static network [14] and does not extend well to this task because the recognition network would be too large for currently practical workstations. Therefore, the recognizer has been converted to a stack decoder-based search strategy[1,7,16]. This decoder has been shown to function effectively on up to 64K-word recognition of continuous speech. This paper describes the acoustic modeling techniques and the implementation of the stack decoder used to obtain these results.
Situation Awareness Inferred From Posture Transition and Location: Derived From Smartphone and Smart home Sensors

Situation awareness may be inferred from user context such as body posture transition and location data. Smartphones and smart homes incorporate sensors that can record this information without significant inconvenience to the user. Algorithms were developed to classify activity postures to infer current situations; and to measure user's physical location, in order to provide context that assists such interpretation. Location was detected using a subarea-mapping algorithm; activity classification was performed using a hierarchical algorithm with backward reasoning; and falls were detected using fused multiple contexts (current posture, posture transition, location, and heart rate) based on two models: “certain fall” and “possible fall. ” The approaches were evaluated on nine volunteers using a smartphone, which provided accelerometer and orientation data, and a radio frequency identification network deployed at an indoor environment. Experimental results illustrated falls detection sensitivity of 94.7% and specificity of 85.7%. By providing appropriate context the robustness of situation recognition algorithms can be enhanced.
IKKβ Overexpression Leads to Pathologic Lesions in Stratified Epithelia and Exocrine Glands and to Tumoral Transformation of Oral Epithelia

Alterations in nuclear factor kappaB (NFκB) signaling have been related with several diseases and importantly also with cancer. Different animal models with increased or diminished NFκB signaling have shown that NFκB subunits and their regulators are relevant to the pathophysiology of different organs and tissues. In particular, both the deletion of the regulatory subunit β of the kinase of the inhibitor of NFκB (IKKβ) and its overexpression in epidermis lead to the development of skin inflammatory diseases not associated with tumoral lesions. In this work, we have studied the consequences of IKKβ overexpression in other organs and tissues. We found that elevated IKKβ levels led to altered development and functionality of exocrine glands (i.e., mammary glands) in transgenic female mice. In oral epithelia, increased IKKβ expression produced lichenoid inflammation with abundant granulocytes, macrophages, and B cells, among other inflammatory cells. This inflammatory phenotype was associated with high incidence of tumoral lesions in oral epithelia, contrary to what was found in skin. Moreover, IKKβ also increased the malignant progression of both spontaneous and experimentally induced oral tumors. These results highlight the importance of IKKβ in epithelial and glandular homeostasis as well as in oral tumorigenesis and open the possibility that IKKβ activity might be implicated in the development of oral cancer in humans. Mol Cancer Res; 9(10); 1329–38. ©2011 AACR.
Versatility of Cooperative Transcriptional Activation: A Thermodynamical Modeling Analysis for Greater-Than-Additive and Less-Than-Additive Effects

We derive a statistical model of transcriptional activation using equilibrium thermodynamics of chemical reactions. We examine to what extent this statistical model predicts synergy effects of cooperative activation of gene expression. We determine parameter domains in which greater-than-additive and less-than-additive effects are predicted for cooperative regulation by two activators. We show that the statistical approach can be used to identify different causes of synergistic greater-than-additive effects: nonlinearities of the thermostatistical transcriptional machinery and three-body interactions between RNA polymerase and two activators. In particular, our model-based analysis suggests that at low transcription factor concentrations cooperative activation cannot yield synergistic greater-than-additive effects, i.e., DNA transcription can only exhibit less-than-additive effects. Accordingly, transcriptional activity turns from synergistic greater-than-additive responses at relatively high transcription factor concentrations into less-than-additive responses at relatively low concentrations. In addition, two types of re-entrant phenomena are predicted. First, our analysis predicts that under particular circumstances transcriptional activity will feature a sequence of less-than-additive, greater-than-additive, and eventually less-than-additive effects when for fixed activator concentrations the regulatory impact of activators on the binding of RNA polymerase to the promoter increases from weak, to moderate, to strong. Second, for appropriate promoter conditions when activator concentrations are increased then the aforementioned re-entrant sequence of less-than-additive, greater-than-additive, and less-than-additive effects is predicted as well. Finally, our model-based analysis suggests that even for weak activators that individually induce only negligible increases in promoter activity, promoter activity can exhibit greater-than-additive responses when transcription factors and RNA polymerase interact by means of three-body interactions. Overall, we show that versatility of transcriptional activation is brought about by nonlinearities of transcriptional response functions and interactions between transcription factors, RNA polymerase and DNA.
KAGIANA: An Excel-Based Tool for Retrieving Summary Information on Arabidopsis Genes

Various public databases provide Arabidopsis gene information via the internet. It is useful to abstract information obtained from such databases. We have developed the KAGIANA tool, which allows a user to retrieve summary information obtained from selective databases and to access pages for a gene of interest in those databases. The tool is based on Microsoft Excel and provides several macro programs for gene expression analyses. It can assist plant biologists in accessing omics information for plant biology. The KAGIANA tool is freely available at http://pmnedo.kazusa. or.jp/kagiana/.
Highly efficient wireless energy harvesting system using metamaterial based compact CP antenna

This paper presents a highly efficient 2.4 GHz wireless energy harvesting system comprising of a metamaterial based circularly polarized (CP) antenna and a power management circuit. The antenna is designed at 2.4 GHz using a circular slotted truncated corner square patch radiator placed on reactive impedance surface (RIS) for antenna size miniaturization, better impedance matching and to improve the front-to-back ratio. The power management system integrates a matching circuit with a single stage Dickson charge pump and an ultra low power with high efficiency DC/DC boost converter/charger. The Dickson charge pump uses three Schottky diodes to minimize the losses at high frequency. The DC-DC converter (BQ25504) is capable of acquiring and managing low power levels. The measured axial ratio (boresight) is below 3-dB for the entire 2.40-2.48 GHz band and the 10-dB return loss band is from 2.35-2.49 GHz. The gain (boresight) of the antenna is around 4.6 dBic at 2.44 GHz. The proposed antenna shows an improvement in front-to-back ratio of around 3 dB with size reduction of approximately 22%. The power management system generates an output voltage level of 1.5 volts at -10 dBm and 4 volts at 0 dBm input RF power respectively. The overall efficiency of the proposed energy harvesting system is above 28%.
Customizing 6LoWPAN networks towards Internet-of-Things based ubiquitous healthcare systems

Embedded devices with enhanced communication capabilities, Internet of Things (IoT), are able to perform a wide variety of different tasks at present. One rapidly increasing application domain is healthcare. In this paper, we present an IoT-based architecture and system implementation for healthcare applications. The presented IoT-based system provides a cost-effective and easy way to analyze and monitor, either remotely or on the spot, real-time health data such as Electrocardiogram (ECG) and Electromyography (EMG) data. Health data is transmitted by utilizing IPv6 over low power wireless area networks (6LoWPAN). Our efficient customization of the 6LoWPAN network for health data provides energy efficient and reliable transmission in different scenarios that is required in several healthcare applications.
Antecedents of parenting efficacy among Chinese immigrant parents in Canada

Parents’ beliefs about their ability to competently fulfill the duties of the parenting role have received limited research attention. The literature to date has emphasized the correlates and consequences of this construct, but relatively little work has examined factors that promote the development of parents’ efficacy beliefs. This dissertation research fills this gap by investigating predictors of parenting efficacy beliefs among immigrant Chinese families in Western Canada. Parenting efficacy beliefs were predicted to be influenced by support and encouragement from like-minded peers, and the successful completion of parenting tasks (mastery). This research explored these hypotheses by evaluating three questions. First, the research evaluated whether the receipt of support from Chineseand Canadian-based sources, as well as spousal support would be associated with higher levels of parenting efficacy, as well as whether this association varied based on immigrant parents’ social context. There was no evidence that parents’ use of Chinese and Canadian supports was associated with feelings of efficacy, regardless of parents’ social context. The hypothesis that spousal support would be positively associated with parenting efficacy
Towards Language Acquisition by an Attention-Sharing Robot

This paper describes our preliminary research on "attention-sharing" in infants' language acquisition. Attention-sharing is the activity of paying one's attention to someone else's attentional target. This enables one to observe others' sensory-input (what they are perceiving from the target) and motor-output (what they are doing in response to the target). Being inspired by lack of attention-sharing in autistic children, we assumed that observation of others' behavior by attention-sharing plays an indispensable role in symbol acquisition. As a test-bed for attention-sharing, we are developing a robot that can follow people's attentional targets by means of monitoring their gaze-direction.
Wind turbine sensor fault tolerant control via a multiple-model approach

This paper presents a new strategy for wind turbine fault tolerant control (FTC) to optimise the wind energy captured by a wind turbine operating at low wind speeds. The FTC strategy uses Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy observers with state feedback control to maintain nominal wind turbine control without changes in both the fault and fault-free cases. The proposed strategy obviates the need for sensor fault residual evaluation and observer switching by using a fuzzy proportional multiple integral observer (PMIO) to mask i.e. `implicitly compensate' the sensor fault(s) from the controller input and provide good estimation over a wide range of sensor fault scenarios. The proposed FTC method is applied to a 5 MW offshore wind turbine (OWT) benchmark model.
Validation of c-reactive protein in the early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis in a tertiary care hospital in Kenya.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate utility of C-reactive protein (CRP) in the early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis in a tertiary care Newborn Unit in Kenya. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Newborn Unit, Kenyatta National Hospital. SUBJECTS All neonates admitted to Newborn Unit, Kenyatta National Hospital during the study period with suspected sepsis based on specified clinical criteria. RESULTS Of the 310 infants, there were 83 episodes of proven sepsis and 94 episodes of probable sepsis. Using the standard CRP cut-off value of 5 mg/dl, a sensitivity of 95.2% in proven sepsis and 98.9% for probable septic episodes were noted. In proven sepsis, a specificity of 85.3%, positive predictive value of 80.6%, and a negative predictive value of 96.5% were noted. In probable sepsis, a specificity of 83.3%, positive predictive value of 80.9% and a negative predictive value of 99.1% were noted. The overall accuracy in proven sepsis was 96.5%, and in probable sepsis was noted to be 99.1%. Sub-analysis showed a lower positive predictive value (61.5%) for early onset sepsis compared to 93% for late onset sepsis. Repeat CRP tests were done in 33 babies. Twenty two of the 29 with proven/probable infection had a ten-fold increase in CRP levels, but levels were noted to be low or reducing in seven (24.1%) babies showing signs of improvement clinically. Using a receiver operator characteristic curve, the optimal cut-off point for CRP was found to be 5 mg/dl. CONCLUSIONS Serum CRP is an accurate indicator of neonatal sepsis, with high sensitivity, specificity and predictive values, at the standard cut-off of 5. CRP is a better screening test for late-onset than early-onset neonatal sepsis. The standard recommended CRP cut -off point of 5 is appropriate for local use.
Steiner Point Removal with Distortion O(log k)

In the Steiner point removal (SPR) problem, we are given a weighted graph $G=(V,E)$ and a set of terminals $K\subset V$ of size $k$. The objective is to find a minor $M$ of $G$ with only the terminals as its vertex set, such that the distance between the terminals will be preserved up to a small multiplicative distortion. Kamma, Krauthgamer and Nguyen [KKN15] used a ball-growing algorithm with exponential distributions to show that the distortion is at most $O(\log^5 k)$. Cheung [Che17] improved the analysis of the same algorithm, bounding the distortion by $O(\log^2 k)$. We improve the analysis of this ball-growing algorithm even further, bounding the distortion by $O(\log k)$.
Immunogenicity of Intensively Decellularized Equine Carotid Arteries Is Conferred by the Extracellular Matrix Protein Collagen Type VI

The limited biocompatibility of decellularized scaffolds is an ongoing challenge in tissue engineering. Here, we demonstrate the residual immunogenicity of an extensively decellularized equine carotid artery (dEACintens) and identify the involved immunogenic components. EAC were submitted to an elaborated intensified decellularization protocol with SDS/sodium desoxycholate for 72 h using increased processing volumes (dEACintens), and compared to dEACord prepared by an ordinary protocol (40 h, normal volumes). Matrix integrity was checked via correlative volumetric visualization which revealed only minor structural changes in the arterial wall. In dEACintens, a substantial depletion of cellular components was obvious for smooth muscle actin (100%), MHC I complexes (97.8%), alphaGal epitops (98.4% and 91.3%) and for DNA (final concentration of 0.34±0.16 ng/mg tissue). However, dEACintens still evoked antibody formation in mice after immunization with dEACintens extracts, although to a lower extent than dEACord. Mouse plasma antibodies recognized a 140 kDa band which was revealed to contain collagen VI alpha1 and alpha2 chains via mass spectrometry of both 2D electrophoretically separated and immunoprecipitated proteins. Thus, even the complete removal of cellular proteins did not yield non-immunogenic dEAC as the extracellular matrix still conferred immunogenicity by collagen VI. However, as lower antibody levels were achieved by the intensified decellularization protocol, this seems to be a promising basis for further development.