Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blink Reflex in Episodic and Chronic Migraine.

Introduction Activation of the trigeminovascular system and sensitization of brainstem trigeminal nuclei play a significant role in the physiopathology of migraine. Our aim was to investigate blink reflex (BR) and its recovery in episodic and chronic migraine patients. Methods Twenty-eight chronic migraine patients, thirty-two episodic migraine without aura patients and thirty healthy controls were included in the study. The study was performed using a portable electromyography device with a software specifically prepared for BR. Blink reflex assessments were performed in patients during the pain-free period and in healthy controls using the 'standard method - double stimulation' technique in 200 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, 2000 ms, and 5000 ms intervals. Results Blink reflex recovery was significantly increased in both patient groups as compared to the control group in 200 ms interstimulus interval (ISI) on both sides (p<0.005). Moreover, when it was compared to the control group, recovery was also significantly increased in the chronic migraine group in 2000 ms ISI on the right side and in 5000 ms ISI on the left side as well as in 500 and 1000 ms ISIs on the left side in the migraine without aura group (p<0.002, p<0.003). R2 recovery curve was noted to be higher in both patient groups as compared to the control group, although could not be demonstrated statistically in all intervals. A statistically significant increase was observed in the migraine group without auras compared with the controls (p <0,037, p <0,011) in the left side at 500 and 1000 ms ISIs. For all intervals in our study, although the increase in recovery was not statistically significant, it was noted that the R2 recovery curve was higher in the patient groups, with respect to the normals. The increase in R2 recovery noted in both patient groups suggested increased sensitization of the trigeminal structures. Significantly increased recovery in low ISI (200 ms) in the two patient groups as compared to the control group raised the thought that the migraine brain goes through two different excitability periods (ictal and interictal). Conclusion In conclusion, similar to the previous studies, the findings of this study suggested that there was a reduction in central inhibitory mechanisms during interictal period in migraine patients.
Resource-Size Matters: Improving Neural Named Entity Recognition with Optimized Large Corpora

This study improves the performance of neural named entity recognition by a margin of up to 11% in terms of F-score on the example of a low-resource language like German, thereby outperforming existing baselines and establishing a new state-of-the-art on each single open-source dataset (CoNLL 2003, GermEval 2014 and Tübingen Treebank 2018). Rather than designing deeper and wider hybrid neural architectures, we gather all available resources and perform a detailed optimization and grammar-dependent morphological processing consisting of lemmatization and part-of-speech tagging prior to exposing the raw data to any training process. We test our approach in a threefold monolingual experimental setup of a) single, b) joint, and c) optimized training and shed light on the dependency of downstream-tasks on the size of corpora used to compute word embeddings.
Association of polymorphisms in Pit-1 gene with growth and feed efficiency in meat-type chickens

Objective The pituitary specific transcription factor-1 (Pit-1) gene is responsible for pituitary development and growth hormone expression and is regarded as a pivotal candidate gene for growth and production in chickens. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the association of Pit-1 polymorphisms with growth and feed efficiency traits in yellow meat-type chickens. Methods In the present study, five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of Pit-1 were selected and genotyped by high-throughput matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry in 724 meat-type chickens. Results Association analysis showed that rs13687126 of Pit-1 was strongly associated with body weight gain (BWG) and feed intake (FI) (p<0.05), and that rs13687128 was significantly correlated with body weight at 70 days of age (BW70), BWG and feed conversion ratio (FCR) (p<0.05). SNP rs13905622 was strongly related to BW70 and FCR (p<0.05). Furthermore, birds with the GG genotype of rs13687126 had larger BWG and FI than those with the AG genotype (p<0.05). Individuals with the TT genotype of rs13687128 were significantly higher BW70 and BWG than those of the CT and CC genotype, while FCR was just the opposite (p<0.05). For rs13905622, the AA chickens showed strongly larger BW70 and lower FCR compared with the AT and TT chickens (p<0.05). Additionally, an ACA haplotype based on rs13687126, rs13687128, and rs13905622 had significant effects on BW70 and FCR (p<0.05). Conclusion Our studies thus provide crucial evidence for the relationship between polymorphisms of Pit-1 and growth and feed efficiency traits which may be useful for meat-type chicken breeding programs.
COSTS OF HOME-BASED TELEMEDICINE PROGRAMS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Objectives: The aim of this study was to systematically investigate existing literature on the costs of home-based telemedicine programs, and to further summarize how the costs of these telemedicine programs vary by equipment and services provided. Methods: We undertook a systematic review of related literature by searching electronic bibliographic databases and identifying studies published from January 1, 2000, to November 30, 2017. The search was restricted to studies published in English, results from adult patients, and evaluation of home telemedicine programs implemented in the United States. Summarized telemedicine costs per unit of outcome measures were reported. Results: Twelve studies were eligible for our review. The overall annual cost of providing home-based telemedicine varied substantially depending on specific chronic conditions, ranging from USD1,352 for heart failure to USD206,718 for congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and diabetes as a whole. The estimated cost per-patient-visit ranged from USD24 for cancer to USD39 for CHF, COPD, or chronic wound care. Conclusions: The costs of home-based telemedicine programs varied substantially by program components, disease type, equipment used, and services provided. All the selected studies indicated that home telemedicine programs reduced care costs, although detailed cost data were either incomplete or not presented in detail. A comprehensive analysis of the cost of home-based telemedicine programs and their determinants is still required before the cost efficiency of these programs can be better understood, which becomes crucial for these programs to be more widely adopted and reimbursed.
Sources of hepatic glycogen synthesis in mice fed with glucose or fructose as the sole dietary carbohydrate

The positional analysis of hepatic glycogen enrichment from deuterated water (2H2O) by 2H NMR has been applied previously to resolve the contributions of glucose and fructose to glycogen synthesis in rodents fed a high sucrose diet. To further validate this method, this analysis was applied to mice fed with synthetic diets whose carbohydrate components consisted solely of either glucose or fructose.
Effects of feed intake restriction during late pregnancy on the function, anti-oxidation capability and acute phase protein synthesis of ovine liver

Objective An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of feed intake restriction during late pregnancy on the function, anti-oxidation capability and acute phase protein synthesis of ovine liver. Methods Eighteen time-mated ewes with singleton fetuses were allocated to three groups: restricted group 1 (RG1, 0.18 MJ ME/kg W0.75 d, n = 6), restricted group 2 (RG2, 0.33 MJ ME/kg W0.75 d), n = 6) and a control group (CG, ad libitum, 0.67 MJ ME/kg W0.75 d, n = 6). The feed restriction period was from 90 days to 140 days of pregnancy. Results The ewe’s body weight, liver weights, water, and protein content of liver in the restricted groups were reduced compared with the CG group (p<0.05), but the liver fat contents in the RG1 group were higher than those of the CG group (p<0.05). The increased hepatic collagen fibers and reticular fibers were observed in the restricted groups with the reduction of energy intake. The concentrations of nonesterified free fatty acids in the RG1 and RG2 groups were higher than those of the CG group with the reduction of energy intake (p<0.05), but there were decreased concentrations of lipoprotein lipase and hepatic lipase in both restricted groups compared with the CG group (p<0.05). In addition, the increased concentrations of β-hydroxybutyric acid, triglycerides, malondialdehyde, total antioxidant capacity and activities of superoxide dismutase activity and catalase were found in the RG1 group, and the concentrations of cholinesterase in the RG1 group were reduced compared with the CG group (p<0.05). For the concentrations of acute phase proteins, the C-reactive protein (CRP) in the RG1 group were reduced compared with the CG group, but there were no differences in haptoglobin relative to the controls (p>0.05). Conclusion The fat accumulation, increased hepatic fibrosis, antioxidant imbalance and modified synthesis of acute phase proteins were induced in ewe’s liver by maternal malnutrition during late pregnancy, which were detrimental for liver function to accommodate pregnancy.
The “speed limit” for macromolecular crystal growth

A simple “diffusion‐to‐capture” model is used to estimate the upper limit to the growth rate of macromolecular crystals under conditions when the rate limiting process is the mass transfer of sample from solution to the crystal. Under diffusion‐limited crystal growth conditions, this model predicts that the cross‐sectional area of a crystal will increase linearly with time; this prediction is validated by monitoring the growth rate of lysozyme crystals. A consequence of this analysis is that when crystal growth is diffusion‐limited, micron‐sized crystals can be produced in ~1 s, which would be compatible with the turnover time of many enzymes. Consequently, the ability to record diffraction patterns from sub‐micron sized crystals by X‐ray Free Electron Lasers and micro‐electron diffraction technologies opens the possibility of trapping intermediate enzyme states by crystallization.
Towards an Embodied Semantic Fovea: Semantic 3D scene reconstruction from ego-centric eye-tracker videos

Incorporating the physical environment is essential for a complete understanding of human behavior in unconstrained every-day tasks. This is especially important in ego-centric tasks where obtaining 3 dimensional information is both limiting and challenging with the current 2D video analysis methods proving insufficient. Here we demonstrate a proof-of-concept system which provides real-time 3D mapping and semantic labeling of the local environment from an ego-centric RGB-D video-stream with 3D gaze point estimation from head mounted eye tracking glasses. We augment existing work in Semantic Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (Semantic SLAM) with collected gaze vectors. Our system can then find and track objects both inside and outside the user field-of-view in 3D from multiple perspectives with reasonable accuracy. We validate our concept by producing a semantic map from images of the NYUv2 dataset while simultaneously estimating gaze position and gaze classes from recorded gaze data of the dataset images.
Defending against the advanced persistent threat: Detection of disguised executable files

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is one of the most serious types of cyber attacks, which is a new and more complex version of multi-step attack. Within the APT life cycle, the most common technique used to get the point of entry is spear-phishing emails which may contain disguised executable files. This paper presents the disguised executable file detection (DeFD) module, which aims at detecting disguised exe files transferred over the connections. The detection is based on a comparison between the MIME type of the transferred file and the file name extension. This module was experimentally evaluated and the results show successful detection of disguised executable files.
MeSH-based dataset for measuring the relevance of text retrieval

Creating simulated search environments has been of a significant interest in infor-mation retrieval, in both general and bio-medical search domains. Existing collec-tions include modest number of queries and are constructed by manually evaluat-ing retrieval results. In this work we pro-pose leveraging MeSH term assignments for creating synthetic test beds. We select a suitable subset of MeSH terms as queries, and utilize MeSH term assignments as pseudo-relevance rankings for retrieval evaluation. Using well studied retrieval functions, we show that their performance on the proposed data is consistent with similar findings in previous work. We further use the proposed retrieval evaluation framework to better understand how to combine heterogeneous sources of textual information.
Inhibition of tumor–microenvironment interaction and tumor invasion by small-molecule allosteric inhibitor of DDR2 extracellular domain

Significance To effectively prevent cancer spread from primary tumor sites, new treatments need to target tumor cells, the cells and extracellular matrix within the tumor environment, and communicating pathways between these sites simultaneously. The collagen receptor discoidin domain receptor 2 (DDR2) has been implicated as such a target. Here, we describe the identification and characterization of a small molecule inhibitor of DDR2 that uniquely acts in an allosteric manner via the extracellular domain to selectively inhibit the action of DDR2 in tumor cells and tumor stromal cancer-associated fibroblasts. In experimental mouse models of breast cancer, WRG-28 inhibits DDR2 signaling and tumor cell invasion. The action of the collagen binding receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) discoidin domain receptor 2 (DDR2) in both tumor and tumor stromal cells has been established as critical for breast cancer metastasis. Small molecule inhibitors that target the extracellular domain of RTKs are rare, as they have classically been regarded as too small to block binding with large polypeptide ligands. Here, we report the identification and characterization of a selective, extracellularly acting small molecule inhibitor (WRG-28) of DDR2 that uniquely inhibits receptor–ligand interactions via allosteric modulation of the receptor. By targeting DDR2, WRG-28 inhibits tumor invasion and migration, as well as tumor-supporting roles of the stroma, and inhibits metastatic breast tumor cell colonization in the lungs. These findings represent an approach to inhibiting tumor–stromal interactions and support the development of allosteric inhibitors of DDR2, such as WRG-28, as a promising approach to antimetastasis treatment.
Progression from the Common Lymphoid Progenitor to B/Myeloid PreproB and ProB Precursors during B Lymphopoiesis Requires C/EBPα

The C/EBPα transcription factor is required for myelopoiesis, with prior observations suggesting additional contributions to B lymphopoiesis. Cebpa expression is evident in common lymphoid progenitor (CLP) and preproB cells but is absent in proB and preB cells. We previously observed that marrow lacking the Cebpa +37 kb enhancer is impaired in producing B cells upon competitive transplantation. Additionally, a Cebpa enhancer/promoter-hCD4 transgene is expressed in B/myeloid CFU. Extending these findings, pan-hematopoietic murine Cebpa enhancer deletion using Mx1-Cre leads to expanded CLP, fewer preproB cells, markedly reduced proB and preB cells, and reduced mature B cells, without affecting T cell numbers. In contrast, enhancer deletion at the proB stage using Mb1-Cre does not impair B cell maturation. Further evaluation of CLP reveals that the Cebpa transgene is expressed almost exclusively in Flt3+ multipotent CLP versus B cell–restricted Flt3− CLP. In vitro, hCD4+ preproB cells produce both B and myeloid cells, whereas hCD4− preproB cells only produce B cells. Additionally, a subset of hCD4− preproB cells express high levels of RAG1-GFP, as seen also in proB cells. Global gene expression analysis indicates that hCD4+ preproB cells express proliferative pathways, whereas B cell development and signal transduction pathways predominate in hCD4− preproB cells. Consistent with these changes, Cebpa enhancer–deleted preproB cells downmodulate cell cycle pathways while upregulating B cell signaling pathways. Collectively, these findings indicate that C/EBPα is required for Flt3+ CLP maturation into preproB cells and then for proliferative Cebpaint B/myeloid preproB cells to progress to Cebpalo B cell–restricted preproB cells and finally to Cebpaneg proB cells.
Joint WiFi Offloading and Resource Allocation for RF-Powered Wireless Networks Assisted by Ambient Backscatter

We consider the problem of joint dynamic WiFi offloading and resource allocation for radio frequency (RF) powered wireless systems assisted by ambient backscatter, where a cellular base station (BS), a WiFi access point (AP), and multiple energy harvesting (EH) mobiles coexist. In the system, each mobile can dynamically access the cellular network or the WiFi network. When the mobile accesses the WiFi network, it can either adopt the ambient backscatter technique to backscatter ambient RF signals for data transfer (i.e., backscatter mode), or harvest energy from ambient RF signals and then utilize the harvested energy to transmit data (i.e., harvest-then-transmit (HTT) mode). When the mobile accesses the cellular network, it can only work in HTT mode, since the communication range of the ambient backscatter technique is limited nowadays which may not be suitable for data transmission in the cellular network. We first formulate two dynamic WiFi offloading and resource allocation problems for the cases without and with concurrent ambient backscatter (i.e., multiple mobiles can backscatter signals concurrently), aiming to minimize the weighted sum of energy consumption and data transmission time of all mobiles. Then, we develop an asymptotically optimal algorithm and a suboptimal algorithm for the cases without and with concurrent ambient backscatter, respectively. Finally, we validate and evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through numerical analyses.
Feature Extraction from Electronic Health Records of Diabetic Nephropathy Patients with Convolutioinal Autoencoder

This paper describes a feature extraction technology from event sequence of lab tests in electronic health record (EHR) for modeling diabetic nephropathy. We used a stacked convolutional autoencoder which can extract both local and global temporal information from the event sequence. The extracted features can be interpreted as similarities to a small number of typical sequences of lab tests. The extracted features in our prototyping experiment were promising for understanding of the long-term course of the disease.
Soft error mitigation in asynchronous networks on chip

O aumento agressivo das frequencias de operacao de sinais de relogio em tecnologias submicronicas profundas chegou ao seu limite. O uso de relogios globais nao e mais viavel em tais tecnologias, o que fomenta a popularizacao do paradigma Globalmente Assincrono, Localmente Sincrono na construcao de sistemas integrados complexos, onde se empregam ilhas sincronas de logica interconectadas atraves de comunicacao assincrona. Redes intrachip assincronas proveem um modelo de comunicacao baseado em troca de pacotes e paralelismo de comunicacao escalavel quando comparado com arquiteturas de comunicacao tradicionais, como as baseadas em barramentos compartilhados. Devido a estas caracteristicas, tal tipo de redes vem revelando beneficios, quando comparadas com suas equivalentes sincronas, para construir as arquiteturas many-cores do futuro, e isto em termos de ambos, desempenho e dissipacao de potencia. Um dos proximos desafios para as arquiteturas de comunicacao em questao e a confiabilidade, na forma de robustez a efeitos de evento unico (em ingles, single event effects ou SEEs), quando o circuito sofre impactos de particulas geradas por radiacao ionizante. Isto ocorre porque a diminuicao continua das geometrias de dispositivos semicondutores em tecnologias sucessivas aumenta cada vez mais a sensibilidade destes a tais efeitos. Ao contrario do que ocorre em circuitos sincronos, variacoes de atraso induzidas por radiacao em geral nao geram qualquer impacto, exceto por possiveis perdas de desempenho, em circuitos logicos assincronos construidos usando tecnicas quase insensiveis a atrasos (em ingles quasi-delay insensitive ou QDI). Contudo, a inversao de valores de bits em dispositivos de armazenamento pode corromper o estado do circuito sem possivel solucao de recuperacao, mesmo no caso de assincronos. Este trabalho propoe um novo conjunto de tecnicas aplicaveis a redes intrachip assincronas, que visa o aumento de robustez contra efeitos de evento unico. Apresentam-se estudos de caso praticos de tais tecnicas e avaliam-se as mesmas em ambientes que simulam casos reais de uso. Os resultados obtidos mostram que o aumento de robustez alcancado sobre redes intrachip tem o potencial de tornar esta arquitetura de comunicacao a principal candidata para integrar as novas geracoes de dispositivos de silicio complexos construidos com o emprego de nodos tecnologicos avancados tais como 32 nm, 28 nm, 20 nm e abaixo
Towards J.A.R.V.I.S. for Software Engineering: Lessons Learned in Implementing a Natural Language Chat Interface

Virtual assistants have demonstrated the potential to significantly improve the digital experiences of information technology workers. We, at Phase Change Software, are working on developing a virtual assistant MIA that helps software developers with program comprehension. This work summarizes the key lessons learned and identiﬁes open questions during the initial implementation of the MIA chat interface.
High-fidelity facial reflectance and geometry inference from an unconstrained image

We present a deep learning-based technique to infer high-quality facial reflectance and geometry given a single unconstrained image of the subject, which may contain partial occlusions and arbitrary illumination conditions. The reconstructed high-resolution textures, which are generated in only a few seconds, include high-resolution skin surface reflectance maps, representing both the diffuse and specular albedo, and medium- and high-frequency displacement maps, thereby allowing us to render compelling digital avatars under novel lighting conditions. To extract this data, we train our deep neural networks with a high-quality skin reflectance and geometry database created with a state-of-the-art multi-view photometric stereo system using polarized gradient illumination. Given the raw facial texture map extracted from the input image, our neural networks synthesize complete reflectance and displacement maps, as well as complete missing regions caused by occlusions. The completed textures exhibit consistent quality throughout the face due to our network architecture, which propagates texture features from the visible region, resulting in high-fidelity details that are consistent with those seen in visible regions. We describe how this highly underconstrained problem is made tractable by dividing the full inference into smaller tasks, which are addressed by dedicated neural networks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our network design with robust texture completion from images of faces that are largely occluded. With the inferred reflectance and geometry data, we demonstrate the rendering of high-fidelity 3D avatars from a variety of subjects captured under different lighting conditions. In addition, we perform evaluations demonstrating that our method can infer plausible facial reflectance and geometric details comparable to those obtained from high-end capture devices, and outperform alternative approaches that require only a single unconstrained input image.