Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PRIOR: deep reinforced adaptive video streaming with attention-based throughput prediction

Video service providers have deployed dynamic video bitrate adaptation services to fulfill user demands for higher video quality. However, fluctuations and instability of network conditions inhibit the performance promotion of adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms. Existing rule-based approaches fail to guarantee accurate throughput estimates, and learning-based algorithms are considerably sensitive to the variability of network. Therefore, how to gain effective and stable throughput estimates has become one of the critical challenges to further enhancing ABR methods. To eliminate this concern, we propose PRIOR, an ABR algorithm that fuses an effective throughput prediction module and a state-of-the-art multi-agent reinforcement learning method to provide a high quality of experience (QoE). PRIOR aims to maximize the QoE metric by straightforwardly utilizing accurate throughput estimates rather than past throughput measurements. Specifically, PRIOR employs a light-weighted prediction module with attention mechanism to obtain effective future throughput. Considering the excellent features introduced by the HTTP/3 protocol, we apply PRIOR to trace-driven simulations and real-world scenarios over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/3. Trace-driven emulation illustrates that PRIOR outperforms existing ABR schemes over HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/3, and our prediction module can also reinforce the performance of other ABR algorithms. Extensive results on real-world evaluation demonstrate the superiority of PRIOR over existing state-of-the-art ABR schemes.
Perspectives on the Collection of Health-related Data in Long-term Care

Innovative applications in assistive environments capable of collecting health-related data can be used to support older and/or frail individuals in need of assistance in their daily lives and can partly mitigate nursing challenges in an aging society. In this study, we used an online survey to explore participants’ opinions on the long-term collection of personal health-related data by means of existing (lifelogging) technologies from the perspectives of 1) the individual in need of care, 2) the caregiving relative, and 3) the professional caregiver. Data from N = 1082 participants were considered for statistical analyses, in which differences between the perspectives of the three stakeholders were calculated. Results revealed significant differences in the perceptions of, and attitudes towards, health data collection. Greater acceptance was observed regarding the willingness to gather data and the perception of its usefulness. Nonetheless, our findings disclosed that – especially from the perspective as a professional caregiver – respondents reached highest values in the acceptance and perceived meaningfulness of collecting data of vital parameters, as well as regarding the permission to access these data by relevant others (e.g., nursing staff and medical professionals). Insights from this study about an accepted collection of the health-relevant data from pervasive technology, and/or requirements necessary for its barrier-free adoption process, enable providing an optimized technology development and an enriched assistance of older and frail individuals in aging societies.
Emotion Recognition Using the Fusion of Frontal 2-channel EEG Signals and Peripheral Physiological Signals

Emotion states are a direct response of human beings to the state of the external environment. Emotion recognition based on EEG signals is currently one of the important technical methods in the field of affective computing. However, the excessive number of EEG channels may lead to high dimensions and large computing time. To solve this problem, we study the feasibility of using EEG channels in the hairless area of the prefrontal to recognize emotions. Furthermore, we innovatively propose to use peripheral physiological signals to supplement the missing EEG channels for emotion recognition. Then we use the DEAP dataset to verify the feasibility of the proposed method. The results show that the 2-channel EEG signals acquired from FP1 and FP2 position can achieve comparable accuracy and F1 score than that of using 18-channel EEG signals. Furthermore, the feature matrix fused the peripheral physiological has achieved better accuracy and F1 score than that of using 18-channel EEG signals. In addition, the training time can be greatly decreased by the fused feature matrix. The research in this paper is of great significance to the future development of emotion recognition based on multi-modal physiological signals acquired by wearable devices.
Image Processing Pipeline to Compute Homologous Recombination Score

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) occur frequently in eukaryotic cells, and the homologous recombination pathway (HR) is one of the major pathways required to repair these breaks. However, tumor cells that are able to repair DSBs are unlikely to die due to damage incurred by DNA damaging chemotherapies, such as platinum compounds. While platinum-based therapies have been effective in treating various cancers, they also carry harsh side effects, and thus ideally platinum should be used when the probability of treatment resistance is low. HR scores provide a measure for patients' tumor's HR capacity and have been shown to predict their chemotherapy response and long-term survival. Calculating this score manually from immunofluorescence microscopy images for each patient is error-prone and time-consuming. Herein, we propose an image processing pipeline that takes as input imaging data from three emission channels (representing nuclei, S-phase cells, and HR-mediated repair in a tumor slice) from an epifluorescence microscope and computes the HR score. Our open-source methodology forms a rationale to develop similar approaches in predicting chemotherapeutic responses and facilitating to make treatment decisions.
Saponin-based PAK-1 inhibitors as promising agents for struggle against SARS-CoV-2 infection

The serine/threonine p21-activating PAK kinases which act as important mediators of the Rho family of GTPases (Rho GTPases) Cdc42•GTP and Rac•GTP. PAK1 is one of the key molecules in the regulation of cytoskeletal actin assembly, phenotypic signaling, gene expression, and directly affects many cellular processes such as cell motility, invasion, metastasis, cell growth, angiogenesis, cell cycle progression. To date, several sulphated steroidal saponins have been reported to block the PAK1-dependent growth of A549 lung cancer. In this study, we investigated molecular interactions of N-triterpene saponins and PAK1 in silico molecular docking, and further evaluated the binding affinities. Molecular docking simulation was performed through AutoDock 4.2. 2. an automated docking tool. We found that N-triterpene saponin 2 had the higher binding affinity towards PAK1 targeted protein. To the best of our knowledge, no report on N-triterpene saponins as a PAK1 inhibitor.
Culture Change, Human-Centered Design, and Ethical by Design as Transactional Cornerstone Concepts in the Development of Technology for Supporting Aging

There is a great deal of untapped potential for technology to support older adults, but to realise this potential technology development must go beyond good usability and addressing perceived needs to complement older adults’ holistic lived experiences. This paper presents culture change, human-centered design, and ethical by design as complementary concepts that can be leveraged to gain a deeper understanding of how to better design, develop, and evaluate technology to support older adults. The application of these concepts is framed by the theory of transactionalism, whereby there is reciprocal dynamic interplay between how these concepts impact technology, technologists and other stakeholders, and ultimately the concepts themselves in the context of technology development. New paradigms such as the ones discussed in this paper can result in technologies that are better aligned with more complex and fundamental aspects of human nature.
“I was still very young”: agency, stigma and HIV care strategies at school, baseline results of a qualitative study among youth in rural Kenya and Uganda

Adolescents and young adults living with HIV (AYAH) have the lowest rates of retention in HIV care and antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence, partly due to the demands of school associated with this life stage, to HIV‐related stigma and to fears of serostatus disclosure. We explore the implications of school‐based stigma and disclosure on the development of agency during a critical life stage in rural Kenya and Uganda.
From innovative thinking to pharmaceutical industry implementation: Some success stories

In industry, successful innovation involves not only developing new statistical methodology, but also ensuring that this methodology is implemented successfully. This includes enabling applied statisticians to understand the method, its benefits and limitations and empowering them to implement the new method. This will include advocacy, influencing in‐house and external stakeholders, such that these stakeholders are receptive to the new methodology. In this paper, we describe some industry successes and focus on our colleague, Andy Grieve's role in these.
Cell architecture: surrounding muscle cells shape gland cell morphology in the C. elegans pharynx

The acquisition and maintenance of shape is critical for the normal function of most cells. Here we investigate the morphology of the pharyngeal glands of C. elegans . These unicellular glands have long cellular processes that extend discrete lengths through the pharyngeal musculature and terminate at ducts connected to the pharyngeal lumen. From a genetic screen we identified several mutants that affect pharyngeal gland morphology. The most severe such mutant is an allele of sma-1 , which encodes a β -spectrin required for embryonic elongation, including elongation of the pharynx. In sma-1 mutants, gland projections form normally but become increasingly abnormal over time, acquiring additional branches, outgrowths and swelling, suggestive of hypertrophy. Rather than acting in pharyngeal glands, sma-1 functions in the surrounding musculature, suggesting that pharyngeal muscles play a critical role in maintenance of gland morphology by restricting their growth, and analysis of other mutants known to affect pharyngeal muscles supports this hypothesis. We suggest that gland morphology is maintained by a balance of forces from the muscles and the glands.
Hierarchical Clustering to Determine Missing Values of Yeast Gene

: The data to cluster does not pass all the input values on filtering data and hence missing values are identified. The problem of identifying missing values in yeast gene dataset is resolved using hierarchical clustering for the whole yeast gene data. The proposed calculation and analysis on identifying missing values are figured out using the two sets namely small and large yeast gene expression dataset. Both the small and large yeast gene expression dataset samples are processed and compared for clustering methods: single linkage, complete linkage, average linkage and centeroid linkage. The performance metrics correlation and distance are determined for these four methods to prove the best clustering range.
Light Reflection Spectrum Comparison of Pesticides Free Foods, Organic Foods and Conventional Farming Foods for VIS NIR Filter Creation

— A method for determination of food contaminants, including pesticides, is described in this document. Using Visible Near InfraRed spectroscopy results obtained from food samples with different levels of pollution, the creation of pesticides free food filters were realized. Methodology and data extraction are meticulously addressed. Finally, implementation of these filters in an embedded device, communicating with smartphone application is discussed allowing users to monitor food contaminants.
Carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of structural bone carbonate

Soro Mik’aya Patjxa archaeological materials Soro Mik’aya Patjxa is an open-air site covering approximately 2800m in the Andean Altiplano, Peru [1]. Nineteen radiocarbon assays along with material evidence indicate non-permanent use of the site by mobile hunter-gatherers for at least 1000 years between 8.0-6.5ka (cal. 95%). Seventeen previously reported assays were on charred plant remains recovered from secure pitfeature contexts. Two new assays taken on human bone from two individuals are consistent with the previous results with determinations ranging between 7.5 and 7.0ka (cal. 95%; Table ESM1 ). The material assemblage, including over 80,000 artifacts recovered from 50m of excavation, consisted primarily of flaked stone artifacts with lesser amounts of bone, groundstone, red ocher, and charred plant remains. Artifact recovery was primarily achieved by using 5mm excavation mesh in plow-zone contexts and 1mm mesh in feature contexts. Ceramics were rare in plow-zone contexts and absent from feature contexts. Sixteen human individuals were recovered, primarily from secure burial pits. At least two pits did not contain human burials, one of which contained large pieces of informal groundstone. Lithic tools consisted primarily of bifaces, especially projectile points consistent with Middle and Late Archaic traditions of the region [2]. Faunal remains consisted primarily of large-bodied mammals—most likely vicuña or taruca.
Covert detection of own-name and semantic violations in task-irrelevant speech, in a realistic Virtual Café

Detecting that someone has said your name is one of the most famous examples for incidental processing of supposedly-unattended speech. However, empirical investigation of this so-called “cocktail party effect” has yielded conflicting results. We present a novel empirical approach for revisiting this effect under highly ecological conditions, by immersing participants in a multisensory virtual café environment and using realistic stimuli and tasks. Participants listened to conversational speech from a character sitting across from them, while a barista in the back of the café called out food orders. Unbeknownst to them, the barista sometimes called orders containing their own name or semantic violations. We used combined measurements of brain activity (EEG), eye-gaze and galvanic skin response to assess the response-profile to these two probes in the task-irrelevant barista-stream. Both probes elicited unique neural and physiological responses relative to control stimuli, indicating that the system indeed processed these words and detected their unique status, despite being task-irrelevant. Interestingly, these responses were covert in nature and were not accompanied by gaze-shifts towards the barista character. This pattern demonstrates that under these highly ecological conditions, listeners incidentally pick up information from task-irrelevant speech, emphasizing the dynamic and non-binary nature of attention in real-life environments.
A systematic review of measurement instruments applicated skin and nail of the foot

The aim of this article is to complete a systematic review of patient reported outcomes measures (PROM) and outcome measures (OM) applied to the skin and nail of the foot. A database search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PEDRo, PUBMED and SCOPUS for English language articles published between 1995 and 2015 was conducted, focussing on articles that provided validity or reliability data. Two independent reviewers completed the study selection, quality appraisal and data extraction. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Español tool (CASPe) was used to assess the study quality. Studies that did not meet inclusion criteria or were not focused on skin or nails were excluded. 496 articles were reviewed. After the successive stages of exclusion, only studies 11 were relevant to this revision. Each of the 11 articles displayed a similar threat to validity, relating to likelihood ratios, operator blinding and responsiveness. A comparison between the different questionnaires showed good agreement across a range of aspects of methodological quality. This review concludes that both kinds of instruments (PROM and OM) provide an accurate and reliable method to measure the health status of the skin and nails.
Early Life Exposure to Queen Mandibular Pheromone Mediates Persistent Transcriptional Changes in the Brain of Honey bee Foragers

How behavior in insect societies is regulated remains a fundamental question in sociobiology. In hymenopteran societies, the queen plays a crucial role in regulating group behavior by affecting individual behavior, physiology, and lifespan through worker gene expression. Honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens signal their presence via the queen mandibular pheromone (QMP). While QMP has been shown to influence the behavior of young workers, we know little about its long-term molecular impacts on workers and whether these pheromone effects depend on an early sensitive period in the life of a worker. Here we demonstrate that QMP treatment strongly impacts long-term forager gene expression in the mushroom bodies, antennal lobes, and antennae, but only if bees were treated early in life (1-2 days of age). Contrary to our expectation, foraging activity was not impacted by QMP treatment in the long-term, but genes important for division of labor, learning, chemosensory perception and aging were differentially expressed in the antennae and brain tissues, suggesting that QMP influences diverse physiological and behavioral processes in workers. Overall, our study suggests a sensitive period early in the life of workers, where the queens’ presence or absence has strong and potentially livelong effects on transcriptional activity in the central and peripheral nervous system. Significance statement Despite our increasing understanding of how social cues affect gene expression and behavior in social animals, we still know little about the importance of sensitive periods in cue perception for the long-term regulation of gene expression. Honey bees live in complex societies and queen pheromones play a central role in the regulation of worker behavior and division of labor. We tested the exposure to queen pheromone presence and found that there is a sensitive period in the early adult life of workers. Understanding and identifying sensitive periods and their effect on long-term gene transcription in workers in response to changes in the environment will lay an important foundation for a better understanding of how queens shape colony life.
Timesweeper: Accurately Identifying Selective Sweeps Using Population Genomic Time Series

Despite decades of research, identifying selective sweeps, the genomic footprints of positive selection, remains a core problem in population genetics. Of the myriad methods that have been developed to tackle this task, few are designed to leverage the potential of genomic time-series data. This is because in most population genetic studies of natural populations only a single period of time can be sampled. Recent advancements in sequencing technology, including improvements in extracting and sequencing ancient DNA, have made repeated samplings of a population possible, allowing for more direct analysis of recent evolutionary dynamics. Serial sampling of organisms with shorter generation times has also become more feasible due to improvements in the cost and throughput of sequencing. With these advances in mind, here we present Timesweeper, a fast and accurate convolutional neural network-based tool for identifying selective sweeps in data consisting of multiple genomic samplings of a population over time. Timesweeper population genomic time-series data by first simulating training data under a demographic model appropriate for the data of interest, training a one-dimensional Convolutional Neural Network on said simulations, and inferring which polymorphisms in this serialized dataset were the direct target of a completed or ongoing selective sweep. We show that Timesweeper is accurate under multiple simulated demographic and sampling scenarios, identifies selected variants with high resolution, and estimates selection coefficients more accurately than existing methods. In sum, we show that more accurate inferences about natural selection are possible when genomic time-series data are available; such data will continue to proliferate in coming years due to both the sequencing of ancient samples and repeated samplings of extant populations with faster generation times, as well as experimentally evolved populations where time-series data are often generated. Methodological advances such as Timesweeper thus have the potential to help resolve the controversy over the role of positive selection in the genome. We provide Timesweeper as a Python package for use by the community.
Remote Adipose Tissue-Derived Stromal Cells of Patients with Lung Adenocarcinoma Generate a Similar Malignant Microenvironment of the Lung Stromal Counterpart

Cancer alters both local and distant tissue by influencing the microenvironment. In this regard, the interplay with the stromal fraction is considered critical as this latter can either foster or hamper the progression of the disease. Accordingly, the modality by which tumor may alter distant niches of stromal cells is still unclear, expecially at early stages. In this short report we attempt to better understand the biology of this cross talk. In our “autologous stromal experimental setting”, we found that remote adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (mediastinal AMSC) obtained from patients with lung adenocarcinoma sustain proliferation and clonogenic ability of A549 and human primary lung adenocarcinoma cells similarly to the autologous stromal lung counterpart (LMSC). This effect is not observed in lung benign diseases as the hamartochondroma. This finding was validated by conditioning benign AMSC with supernatants from LAC up to 21 days. The new reconditioned media of the stromal fraction so obtained, was able to increase cell proliferation of A549 cells at 14 and 21 days similarly to that derived from AMSC of patients with lung adenocarcinoma. The secretome generated by remote AMSC revealed overlapping to the corresponding malignant microenvironment of the autologous local LMSC. Among the plethora of 80 soluble factors analysed by arrays, a small pool of 5 upregulated molecules including IL1-β, IL-3, MCP-1, TNF-α and EGF, was commonly shared by both malignant-like autologous A- and LMSC derived microenvironments vs those benign. The bioinformatic analysis both revealed that these proteins were strictly and functionally interconnected to the lung fibrosis and proinflammation and that miR-126, 101, 486 and let-7-g were their main targets. Accordingly, we found that in lung cancer tissues and blood samples from the same set of patients here employed, miR-126 and miR-486 displayed the highest expression levels in tissue and blood, respectively.