Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
rain substrates of learning and retention in mild cognitive impairment iagnosis and progression to Alzheimer ’ s disease

Understanding the underlying qualitative features of memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can provide critical information for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study sought to investigate the utility of both learning and retention measures in (a) the diagnosis of MCI, (b) predicting progression to AD, and (c) examining their underlying brain morphometric correlates. A total of 607 participants were assigned to three MCI groups (high learning–low retention; low learning–high retention; low learning–low retention) and one control group (high learning–high retention) based on scores above or below a 1.5 SD cutoff on learning and retention indices of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Our results demonstrated that MCI individuals with predominantly a learning deficit showed a widespread pattern of gray matter loss at baseline, whereas individuals with a retention deficit showed more focal EC ongitudinal outcome R morphometry gray matter loss. Moreover, either learning or retention measures provided good predictive value for longitudinal clinical outcome over two years, although impaired learning had modestly better predictive power than impaired retention. As expected, impairments in both measures provided the best predictive power. Thus, the conventional practice of relying solely on the use of delayed recall or retention measures in studies of amnestic MCI misses an important subset of older adults at risk of developing AD. Overall, our results highlight the importance of including learning measures in addition to retention measures of M
Enacting intersectional multilayered citizenship: Kurdish women’s politics

Abstract Focusing on the institutional aspects of the Kurdish women’s movement in Turkey since the 1990s the article shows how it established a consciousness within the Kurdish national movement that gender equality is a cornerstone of democracy and ethnic rights. We frame this through theories of enacting intersectional multilayered citizenship and identify three key interventions: autonomous women’s assemblies, women’s quotas in pro-Kurdish rights parties and the co-chair system where all elected positions within the pro-Kurdish parties are jointly occupied by a male and female. These have achieved a better representation of women in formal politics, rendered gender equality and sexual violence legitimate subjects of politics and contributed to establishing an aspiration for a more dialogic political ethos. While the women’s movement’s close affiliation with the Kurdish national movement has been highly effective, it also in part circumscribes gender roles to fit its agendas.
EBP 50 interacts with EGFR and regulates EGFR signaling to affect the prognosis of cervical cancer patients

Ezrin-radixin-moesin-binding phosphoprotein-50 (EBP50) has a role in the occurrence and progression of multiple types of tumors. However, its role in cervical cancer (CC) remain unknown. EBP50 was reported to interact with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and regulate EGFR signaling in CC HeLa cells. In this study, the effect of EBP50 expression on CC cell proliferation and prognosis of CC patients by regulating EGFR signaling was investigated. We found that EBP50 expression level was significantly downregulated in CC tissues. EBP50 expression negatively correlated with CC cell proliferation, cell cycle and the activation of EGFR-mediated ERK signaling. EBP50 knockdown abolished its inhibition on EGF-induced ERK activation, suggesting EBP50 regulated EGFR signaling. In order to further explore EBP50 regulated EGFR signaling via interaction, we constructed EBP50_DD mutant which disrupted its interaction with EGFR. EBP50_DD overexpression attenuated the inhibition of EBP50_WT on EGFR-mediated ERK signaling, further revealing EBP50 regulated EGFR signaling via its interaction with EGFR. EGFR activation was associated with poor prognosis of CC patients. EBP50 could not predict the prognosis of all CC patients. However, after ruling out patients with egfr/ErbB mutation or copy number variation (CNV) and (chemo)radiation, which caused continuous EGFR activation and affected the prognosis of patients, respectively, EBP50 expression level exhibited the prognosis prediction ability, revealing EBP50 affected prognosis of CC patients via regulating EGFR signaling. In conclusion, EBP50 played an important role in CC cell proliferation and prognosis prediction of CC patients by interacting with EGFR and regulating EGFR signaling. EBP50 might be a potential precise therapeutic target or prognostic marker for CC patients.
DETECTING SPIDER MITE DAMAGE IN COTTON THROUGH SPECTRAL MIXTURE ANALYSIS OF AVIRIS IMAGERY

Few papers have addressed the issue of detection or identification of field-level features in agricultural field crops with hyperspectral remote sensing (Green et al., 1998; Gat et al., 1999). Multispectral images have been used to identify certain field stresses and anomalies such as diseases, weeds, and mites (Brown et al., 1994; Peñuelas et al., 1995; Summy, et al., 1997) but the limited spectral coverage may not allow unique identification, only that an anomaly is present. The large amount of information available for analysis in hyperspectral imagery permits the application of advanced image analysis techniques designed to extract unique data features from high dimensional data sets and reduce complexity to make the data more interpretable. Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA) assumes that a small number of spectra representing the scene components of interest (endmembers) can describe most of the spectral variation in a scene and be used to “unmix” the pixels and determine the relative fractional abundance of each component on a per-pixel basis. This approach could allow discrimination of one plant stress from another through identification of unique spectral features or differences in the shapes of the spectral curves. The abundance maps produced could indicate both the spatial extent and severity of stresses. This would permit a farm manager or scout to locate precisely the identified stress in a field, providing for guided field scouting and precision application of appropriate control measures such as pesticides or biological control agents. This procedure has been well documented in geological and ecological studies (Adams et al., 1995; Adams and Smith, 1986; Elmore et al., 2000; Mustard, 1993; Okin et al., 2001; Roberts et al., 1993; Roberts et al., 1998; Smith et al., 1990) but has had little to no application in precision agriculture.
Journal of Literary Semantics

The present paper explores the semantics of Hemingway’s ‘plain style’ in The Sun Also Rises by combining corpus linguistic methodology with event semantics theory. The focus of the study is on how the narrator of the novel segments experienced situations in terms of semantic events. Corpus linguistic analysis shows that the ‘plain style’ of the narrative section of the novel is realized by means of coordinated clauses and that the narrator’s event segmentation is associated with a small set of preferred lexical items. These results are interpreted in terms of event semantics to show that preferred lexical items are indicative of event types typical of the narrative section. The semantic analysis of relations between coordinated clauses indicates that these relations are not simply about the juxtaposition of disjoined events. Finally, the study demonstrates that an approach combining corpus linguistic methodology with insights from event semantics can offer new understanding of the propositional meaning of literary texts, and the way narrators encode experienced situations.
Methods for Estimating Term Structure of Interest Rates

This paper compares different interpolation algorithms for constructing yield curves: cubic splines, linear and quadratic programming, binomial functions and parametric methods. Results confirm that the constrained Schaefer method produces smoother and more stable curves than does unconstrained Schafer’s approximation, cubic splines, or discrete approximation. Adding monotonicity constraints in Schaefer method does not increase computational burden as it does in the discrete approximation. My experiments found that adding monotonicity constraints on cubic spline method is unfeasible. I also experimented with three well know parsimonious functional approximations of the term structure: the Nelson-Siegel, Svensson and Bliss exponential functions. Accompanying MATLAB software package is available from the author’s website and illustrates practical application using U.S. treasury bond market data set.
ERK 1 / 2 phosphorylation in the hippocampus is associated with abnormal anxiety-related and social behaviors in Fmr 1 knockout mice

Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is one of the leading causes of mental retardation. In order to further investigate the role of phosphorylated ERK1/2 (p-ERK1/2) in abnormal behaviors in FXS, a series of behavioral experiments were used to compare anxiety-related responses and social interactions in Fmr1 knockout (KO) mice and wild type (WT) mice. In the open field test, velocity travel in the central area was increased in the KO mice compared with WT mice (P<0.01). Time mice spending in center was significantly decreased in KO mice (P<0.05). In the elevated plus maze test, the percentage of number of entrances was significantly decreased in open arm and increase in close arm (P<0.05) in KO mice compared with WT mice. In the three-chambered social approach test, KO mice exhibited significantly more approaches to the wire cup containing an acquaintance mouse than WT mice (P<0.05). Western blotting was used to detect ERK1/2 and p-ERK1/2 expression in hippocampal CA1 and CA3 region of Fmr1 KO mice and WT mice Expression of pERK1/2 of KO mice markedly increased in the hippocampal CA1 region compared with the WT group (P<0.05), while expression of ERK1/2 had no significant difference (P>0.05). The results show that ERK1/2 phosphorylation in the hippocampus is associated with abnormal anxiety-related and social behaviors in Fmr1 knockout mice. Altered ERK1/2 phosphorylation may play an important role in abnormal anxiety-related responses and social interactions in FXS patients. These findings suggest that ERK1/2 might be suitable as a new drug target for pharmacological treatment of FXS.
for Coastal and Ocean Mapping Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping 5-2004 On the Uncertainty of Archive Hydrographic Datasets

As the international hydrographic community continues to address the question of the irreducible uncertainty in modern surveys, we must ask how we do the same with archived Vertical Beam Echosounder (VBES) and leadline datasets. The ONR funded Strataform project surveyed an area of the New Jersey shelf around 3912’N 7250’W using an EM1000 Multibeam Echosounder (MBES). This area is also covered by NOAA surveys from 193638 (assumed to be leadline) and 1975-76 (VBES). By comparison of the archival soundings to the MBES data, estimates of measurement error for the archival surveys are constructed as a function of depth. The analysis shows that archival leadline smoothsheets are heavily biased in deeper water because of ‘hydrographic rounding’ and may be unrecoverable, but that the VBES data appear approximately unbiased and may be used to construct products compatible with modern surveys. Estimates of uncertainty for a surface model generated from the archive data are then constructed, taking into account measurement, interpolation, and hydrographic uncertainty (addressing the problems of unobserved areas and surface reconstruction stability). Finally, the paper addresses the generality of the method, and its implications for the community’s duty to convey our uncertainty to the end user.
Combination of serum HMGB-1 and serum miR-126 achieve high predictive power to detect proliferative diabetic retinopathy : a Chinese population-based study

Objectives: Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) refers to a more advanced stage of DR, which is one of the main microvascular complications of diabetes mellitus (DM), and in the present study, serum HMGB-1 and serum miR-126 were assessed as possible diagnostic biomarkers in a novel cohort of patients with PDR. Methods: The present study included 119 patients with type 2 DM (T2DM). Among them, 36 had PDR (PDR group), 43 had non-PDR (NPDR group) and 40 had no DR (T2DM group). Additionally, 30 healthy subjects (Control group) were also enrolled. Serum samples were collected from all subjects and HMGB-1 levels were detected by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) was conducted to detect serum miR-126 expression. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to assess the predictive power of the markers. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis was used to study correlations between the variables. Results: The concentrations of HMGB-1 in the serum samples were significantly higher, whereas the levels of serum miR-126 were lower, in patients with PDR as compared with other three groups of participants. ROC curve analysis showed that the combination of serum HMGB-1 and serum miR-126 had greater diagnosis capacity with an AUC (the areas under the ROC curve) of 0.884 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.811-0.956, P<0.001). Serum HMGB-1 and miR-126 were closely associated with several parameters of PDR patients, including duration of DM, HbA1c, TNF-α, and VEGF levels. Conclusions: Taken together, our findings indicate a potential benefit of using serum HMGB-1 and serum miR-126 in a panel to improve diagnostic accuracy in PDR.
The Effects Of Contrast With Compression Therapy On Muscle Recovery Post Exercise

This study investigated the effect of combing contrast with compression therapy as a post exercise recovery modality. Previous research indicates that contrast and compression alone can potentially enhance recovery but the combination of the two is yet to be explored. Ten recreationally trained males between 18 and 35 were recruited (years 21.25 ± 2.12; height 182.1 ± 8.5 cm; weight 88.04 ± 19.49 kg) in a randomized control trial with a repeated measure (within subject) crossover design. The conditions were randomly assigned by dominant/non-dominant arm and contrast with compression (CwC) or control (CON) in which one arm was used for each condition. Participants completed 30 eccentric elbow flexor repetitions and were subsequently tested at six timepoints (pre, immediate post, 1 h, 24 h, 48 h, and 72 h) for power, strength, swelling, range of motion (ROM), and perceived soreness. The CwC condition received treatment after post testing, at 24 h and 48 h; the CON condition did not receive any treatment. CwC resulted significantly improved recovery in power, strength, and swelling (p ≤ 0.05). However, no difference was seen in ROM and perceived soreness. Conclusion: CwC can be used as a post exercise recovery technique to improve muscular performance and reduce swelling in recreationally trained individuals.
Analyzing Movie Viewers’ Intention of Using Smartphones as Movie-viewing Media

This study examined movie viewers’ intentions to use smartphones when they watched movies. We used the results of an interview to investigate movie viewers’ behaviors and characteristics. We adopted the results of Q methodology that showed four different types of groups. We investigated movie viewers’ intentions by employing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed that the four categories had different characteristics.
Teacher Assessment Biases and Future Academic Achievement

This study examines whether teachers systematically assess students differently based on their weight, height, gender and ethnicity (external attributes). Our identification strategy combines teacher assessments in maths and literacy (non-blind with respect to external attributes) with externally marked standardized tests (blind with respect to external attributes) with within-student comparisons across subjects, allowing us to control for unobserved factors fixed across assessment methods (e.g. students’ ability in each subject) as well as unobserved factors that are fixed across subjects (e.g. general performance in school). Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children that is linked to anonymous teacher assessments and objective national test scores, our results show that teachers give a more favourable math rating to children who are taller, leaner, male or of Asian ethnicity (relative to children from Englishspeaking homes). We test for mechanisms leading to these biases and find that neither the child’s classroom behaviours nor socioemotional skills drive our results. We find that students who are under-assessed in math perform worse in future national academic tests, suggesting that negative teacher perceptions may help to perpetuate the math achievement gap that exists by gender, obesity status, and some ethnic groups. JEL codes: J15, J16, I14
DELIVERABLE D 1 . 4 Diagnostic methods for automotive fuel cell systems

The deliverable presents the obtained measurement and analysis results of the accelerated ageing test protocols and different diagnostic methods (polarization curves, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, linear sweep voltammetry), which were performed at FESB on an already conditioned 50 cm2 (single) fuel cell provided by ElringKlinger to verify the available data and gather any missing data points. In collaboration with SINTEF, an idea of new, time-efficient, direct measurement approach of low-frequency intercept in the impedance spectrum, as the quick indicator of catalyst degradation which can provide the possibility to determine the current state of the fuel cell from just one parameter value, is also briefly given at the end of this deliverable, which is very promising for the future implementation in the fuel cell control system, but the direct identification approach will be further explored. University of FrancheComté /FCLab contribution in WP1 is to develop diagnostic strategies to ensure the FC System Air Line (FCSAL) State-of-Health (SoH) monitoring. Three diagnostic strategies are implemented and validated on data gathered from previous FC LAB projects. The diagnostic approaches are based on data-driven diagnostic techniques – algorithms are fed by physical signals such as stack voltage and pressure signal measurements. Guidelines for implementation of each strategy in the Giantleap project on data to be recorded on FCEB prototype from Bosch are provided.
Literature Review on Automatic Speech Recognition

Automatic speech recognition, which was considered to be a concept of science fiction and which has been hit by number of performance degrading factors, is now an important part of information and communication technology. Improvements in the fundamental approaches and development of new approaches by researchers have lead to the advancement of ASRs which were just responding to a set of sounds to sophisticated ASRs which responds to fluently spoken natural language. Using artificial neural networks (ANNs), mathematical models of the low-level circuits in the human brain, to improve speech-recognition performance, through a model known as the ANN-Hidden Markov Model (ANNHMM) have shown promise for large-vocabulary speech recognition systems. Achieving higher Recognition accuracy, low Word error rate, developing speech corpus depending upon the nature of language and addressing the issues of sources of variability through approaches like Missing Data Techniques & Convolutive Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, are the major considerations for developing an efficient ASR. In this paper, an effort has been made to highlight the progress made so far for ASRs of different languages and the technological perspective of automatic speech recognition in countries like China, Russian, Portuguese, Spain, Saudi Arab, Vietnam, Japan, UK, SriLanka, Philippines, Algeria and India.
An Investigation of China’s Import Demand for Technically Specified Natural Rubber (TSR) from Thailand

Approximately 90 percent of rubbers produced in Thailand are for exporting and the major importer is China, which is accounted for 56.60 percent of exported rubbers from Thailand. A substantial exported rubber is in the form of Technically Specified Natural Rubber (TSR) or block rubbers to produce tires. This article aims to analyze China’s import demand for TSR from Thailand and other countries including Japan and South Korea. The investigation found that Chinese consumers’ behavior has considered TSR as normal goods. Furthermore, information from trading partners and this comparative study would be beneficial to stakeholders to implement policies when Chinese importing circumstance has been changed.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TO INFORMATION SEEKING AND RETRIEVAL CALLED HERMENEUS

Information seekers always have a question in mind even when they do not know exactly what it is. How an information seeking and retrieval system can support users while they are still shaping their information needs? We resorted to the hermeneutic circle philosophical concept of Heidegger and Gadamer to provide the principles of such a system. In our implementation users are able to develop their ideas while browsing the information and the concepts that represent the information. We chose ontologies to implement this hermeneutic approach. Ontologies improve information retrieval systems regarding its retrieval and presentation of information, which make the task of finding information more effective, efficient, and interactive. We called our framework Hermeneus, which in Greek means the interpreter or translator. Hermeneus works as an intermediary that facilitates the user to move from the initial state of information need to the goal state of resolution. Our system intends to be the bridge between the user’s question and the answer to be found while she or he navigates in the ontology concepts and the instances of these concepts in a back and forth way.
Interaction of the Electromagnetic Radiation with the Surface of Palladium Hydride Cathodes

The change of the electronic density of metallic Pd due to the hydride formation and to the build-up of the double layer, rising at the metal-dielectric interface when an electric field is applied, is involved in the variation of the metal dielectric function. A model including also metal surface roughness has been developed to take into account such modifications.
Using basic syntactic relations for sentiment analysis

The paper describes a rule-based approach to sentiment analysis. The developed algorithm aims at classifying texts into two classes: positive or negative. We distinguish two types of sentiments: abstract sentiments, which are relevant to the whole text, and sentiments referring to some particular object in the text. As opposed to many other rule-based systems, we do not regard the text as a bag of words. We strongly believe that such classical method of text processing as syntactic analysis can considerably enhance sentiment analysis performance. Accordingly, we first parse the text and then take into account only the phrases that are syntactically connected to relevant objects. We use the dictionary to determine whether such a phrase is positive or negative and assign it a weight according to the importance of the object it is connected with. Than we calculate all these weights and some other factors and decide whether the whole text is positive or negative. The algorithm showed competitive results at ROMIP track 2012.