Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mesencephalic Astrocyte-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (MANF) Is Highly Expressed in Mouse Tissues With Metabolic Function

Mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor (MANF) and cerebral dopamine neurotrophic factor (CDNF) form a family of atypical growth factors discovered for their neuroprotective properties in the central nervous system (CNS) in animal models of neurodegenerative diseases. Although their mechanism of protective action still remains unclear, it has been suggested that both MANF and CDNF promote cell survival through regulating the unfolded protein response (UPR), thereby relieving endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Recent studies identified MANF for its emerging roles in metabolic function, inflammation and pancreatic β-cells. We have found that MANF deletion from the pancreas and β-cells leads to postnatal depletion of β-cells and diabetes. Moreover, global MANF-deficiency in mice results in severe diabetes-independent growth retardation. As the expression pattern of MANF in mouse tissues has not been extensively studied, we set out to thoroughly investigate MANF expression in embryonic and adult mice using immunohistochemistry, histochemical X-gal staining, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR). We found that MANF is highly expressed in brain neurons regulating energy homeostasis and appetite, as well as in hypothalamic nuclei producing hormones and neuropeptides important for different body functions. Strong expression of MANF was also observed in peripheral mouse tissues and cells with high secretory and metabolic function. These include pituitary gland and interestingly we found that the anterior pituitary gland is smaller in MANF-deficient mice compared to wild-type mice. Consequently, we found reduction in the number of growth hormone- and prolactin-producing cells. This combined with increased expression of UPR genes, reduced number of proliferating cells in the anterior pituitary and dysregulated expression of pituitary hormones might contribute to the severe growth defect seen in the MANF knockout mice. Moreover, in this study we compared MANF and CDNF levels in mouse tissues. Unlike MANF, CDNF protein levels are generally lower in mouse tissues, and the highest levels of CDNF was observed in the tissues with high-energy demands and oxidative roles, including heart, muscle, testis, and brown adipose tissue.
Multi-Stage Current-Steering Amplifier Design Based on Extended gm/ID Methodology

A methodology to optimally design multi-stage current-steering CMOS amplifiers is described. The optimal device operating conditions and sizes are directly calculated from design constraints, such as desired voltage gain, and frequency bandwidth. The proposed design algorithm is based on an analytical approach, which extends the conventional gm/ID lookup table methodology. Examples are provided to show effectiveness of the proposed approach.
This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 14th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation

Live patching has become a common technique to keep long-running system services secure and up-to-date without causing downtimes during patch application. However, to safely apply a patch, existing live-update methods require the entire process to enter a state of quiescence, which can be highly disruptive for multi-threaded programs: Having to halt all threads (e.g., at a global barrier) for patching not only hampers quality of service, but can also be tremendously difﬁcult to implement correctly without causing deadlocks or other synchronization issues. In this paper, we present W F P ATCH , a wait-free approach to inject code changes into running multi-threaded programs. Instead of having to stop the world before applying a patch, W F P ATCH can gradually apply it to each thread individually at a local point of quiescence, while all other threads can make uninterrupted progress. We have implemented W F P ATCH as a kernel service and user-space library for Linux 5.1 and evaluated it with Open-LDAP, Apache, Memcached, Samba, Node.js, and MariaDB on Debian 10 (“buster”). In total, we successfully applied 33 different binary patches into running programs while they were actively servicing requests; 15 patches had a CVE number or were other critical updates. Applying a patch with W F P ATCH did not lead to any noticeable increase in request latencies – even under high load – while applying the same patch after reaching global quiescence increases tail latencies by a factor of up to 41 × for MariaDB.
THE EMANCIPATORY SYSTEMS APPROACH TO STRUCTURING THE COERCIVE ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS a

The main research objective of this paper is to critically reassess the conceptual foundations and the methodological and methodical development of the Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) - as a relevant representative of the emancipatory paradigm - in order to determine the conditions, ways and achievements of its application in structuring the coercive management problems in organizations. The scientific instrumentarium corresponding to this research aim is critical systems thinking with its three key commitments to: a) critical awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of any research instrument - a theory, a methodology, a method, a technique, a model - for managing the problem situations, including the CSH, as the emancipatory systems approach to management, b) improvement of structuring those coercive problems in organizations, in which the sources of coercion can be identified, and c) pluralism - respect the different perceptions and interpretations of problem situations in organizations, and enable the combined use of selected research instruments. The main research result is the knowledge that the CSH - considering its conceptual foundations, and methodological and methodical development - enables to reveal the normative contents of the proposed designs of organizational systems, i.e. enables to identify the stakeholders who benefit from the proposed changes implementation. Based on this finding, it can be concluded that through the use of the critically heuristic categories and dialectical debate between those involved and those affected by the designs, but who are not included in decision making, the CSH endeavours to - in application - support the process of improving the position of all stakeholders.
A Communication Perspective on Video Lottery Terminals

Video Lottery Terminals (VLT) are associated with pathological gambling and with most of the requests for help in combating gambling addiction. Embeddedness of a person in his or her social network is among the communicational factors that may help explain this phenomenon. To verify this, we compared ego networks of VLT gamblers, of gamblers of games with low request for help and of VLT gamblers in treatment (n = 90). The networks of regular VLT gamblers are small and dense and offer little social support. Gamblers in treatment also have small networks, but they are less dense, have more components and offer more social support. Networks of gamblers with low requests for assistance are approximately twice the size as those of VLT gamblers, are sparser and offer more companionship. In conclusion, the VLT gambler is not an isolated individual, but rather an individual ‘shut-in’ a small network of tightly knitted relationships.
METHODS FROM INFORMATION EXTRACTION FROM LIDAR INTENSITY DATA AND MULTISPECTRAL LIDAR TECHNOLOGY

Abstract. LiDAR is a consolidated technology for topographic mapping and 3D reconstruction, which is implemented in several platforms On the other hand, the exploitation of the geometric information has been coupled by the use of laser intensity, which may provide additional data for multiple purposes. This option has been emphasized by the availability of sensors working on different wavelength, thus able to provide additional information for classification of surfaces and objects. Several applications ofmonochromatic and multi-spectral LiDAR data have been already developed in different fields: geosciences, agriculture, forestry, building and cultural heritage. The use of intensity data to extract measures of point cloud quality has been also developed. The paper would like to give an overview on the state-of-the-art of these techniques, and to present the modern technologies for the acquisition of multispectral LiDAR data. In addition, the ISPRS WG III/5 on ‘Information Extraction from LiDAR Intensity Data’ has collected and made available a few open data sets to support scholars to do research on this field. This service is presented and data sets delivered so far as are described.
Pre-treatment With Fasudil Prevents Neomycin-Induced Hair Cell Damage by Reducing the Accumulation of Reactive Oxygen Species

Ototoxic drug-induced hair cell (HC) damage is one of the main causes of sensorineural hearing loss, which is one of the most common sensory disorders in humans. Aminoglycoside antibiotics are common ototoxic drugs, and these can cause the accumulation of intracellular oxygen free radicals and lead to apoptosis in HCs. Fasudil is a Rho kinase inhibitor and vasodilator that has been widely used in the clinic and has been shown to have neuroprotective effects. However, the possible application of fasudil in protecting against aminoglycoside-induced HC loss and hearing loss has not been investigated. In this study, we investigated the ability of fasudil to protect against neomycin-induced HC loss both in vitro and in vivo. We found that fasudil significantly reduced the HC loss in cochlear whole-organ explant cultures and reduced the cell death of auditory HEI-OC1 cells after neomycin exposure in vitro. Moreover, we found that fasudil significantly prevented the HC loss and hearing loss of mice in the in vivo neomycin damage model. Furthermore, we found that fasudil could significantly inhibit the Rho signaling pathway in the auditory HEI-OC1 cells after neomycin exposure, thus further reducing the neomycin-induced accumulation of reactive oxygen species and subsequent apoptosis in HEI-OC1 cells. This study suggests that fasudil might contribute to the increased viability of HCs after neomycin exposure by inhibition of the Rho signaling pathway and suggests a new therapeutic target for the prevention of aminoglycoside-induced HC loss and hearing loss.
Mobilizing Breast Cancer Prevention Research Through Smartphone Apps: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Background: Breast cancer rates have been increasing worldwide, particularly among young women, suggesting important interactions between genes and health behaviors. At the same time, mobile technology, including smartphones applications (apps), has emerged as a new tool for delivering healthcare and health-related services. As of 2018, there were nearly 600 publicly available breast cancer apps designed to provide disease and treatment information, to manage disease, and to raise overall awareness. However, the extent to which apps are incorporated into breast cancer prevention research is unknown. Therefore, the objective of this review was to determine how mobile applications are being used for breast cancer prevention among women across the cancer control continuum. Methods: Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we searched PubMed and Web of Science Core Collection databases using the keywords breast cancer, smartphone, mobile application, and phone app. Full-length journal articles available in English that addressed the research question were included. We categorized articles by prevention type (primary, secondary, and tertiary) and phase of research (protocol, development, feasibility, pilot, measurement, and effectiveness), and identified common themes and gaps. Results: Our search yielded 82 studies (69 unique) that used apps in breast cancer prevention research across 20 countries. Approximately half of the named apps were publicly available. The majority (73%) of studies targeted tertiary prevention; 15% targeted secondary and 13% targeted primary prevention. Apps were used across all phases of research with the predominant phase being feasibility in tertiary prevention (34%), effectiveness in secondary prevention (63%), and development (30%) and effectiveness (30%) in primary prevention. Common uses included assessing outcomes relevant to clinical care coordination, quality of life, increasing self-efficacy and screening behaviors, and tracking and managing health behaviors. Conclusions: We identified the following gaps: few effectiveness studies in tertiary prevention, minimal use of apps for breast cancer etiology or early detection, and few interventions in those at average risk of breast cancer. These findings suggest that while mobile apps can inform breast cancer prevention across the continuum, more work is needed to incorporate apps into primary prevention.
Children's Acquisition of Homogeneity in Plural Definite Descriptions

Plural definite descriptions give rise to homogeneity effects: the positive The trucks are blue and the negative The trucks aren't blue are both neither true nor false when some of the trucks are blue and some are not, that is, when the group of trucks is not homogeneous with respect to the property of being blue (Löbner, 1987, 2000; Schwarzschild, 1994; Križ, 2015b). The only existing acquisition studies related to the phenomenon have examined children's comprehension only of the affirmative versions of such sentences, and moreover have yielded conflicting data; while one study reports that preschoolers interpret definite plurals maximally (Munn et al., 2006, see also Royle et al., 2018), two other studies report that preschoolers allow non-maximal interpretations of definite plurals where adults do not (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Caponigro et al., 2012). Moreover, there is no agreed upon developmental trajectory to adult homogeneity. In this paper, we turn to acquisition data to investigate the predictions of a recent analysis of homogeneity that treats homogeneous meanings as the result of a scalar implicature (Magri, 2014). We conducted two experiments targeting 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children's interpretations of plural definite descriptions in positive and negative sentences, and tested the same children on standard cases of scalar implicature. The experiments revealed three distinct subgroups of children: those who interpreted the plural definite descriptions existentially and failed to compute implicatures; those who both accessed homogeneous interpretations and computed implicatures; and finally, a smaller subgroup of children who appeared to access homogeneous interpretations without computing implicatures. We discuss the implications of our findings, which appear to speak against the implicature theory as the adult-like means of generating homogeneous meanings.
The Development of Controllable Magnetic Driven Microphysiological System

Current research has enabled the use of microphysiological systems and creation of models for alveolar and pulmonary diseases. However, bottlenecks remain in terms of medium- and long-term regulation of cell cultures and their functions in microchannel systems, as well as in the enhancement of in vitro representation of alveolar models and reference values of the data. Currently used systems also require on-chip manufacturing of complex units, such as pumps, tubes, and other cumbersome structures for maintaining cells in culture. In addition, system simplification and minimization of all external and human factors major challenges facing the establishment of in vitro alveolar models. In this study, a magnetically driven dynamic alveolus cell-culture system has been developed to use controlled magnetic force to drive a magnetic film on the chip, thereby directing the fluid within it to produce a circulating flow. The system has been confirmed to be conducive with regard to facilitating uniform attachment of human alveolar epithelial cells and long-term culture. The cell structure has been recapitulated, and differentiation functions have been maintained. Subsequently, reactions between silica nanoparticles and human alveolar epithelial cells have been used to validate the effects and advantages of the proposed dynamic chip-based system compared to a static environment. The innovative concept of use of a magnetic drive has been successfully employed in this study to create a simple and controllable yet dynamic alveolus cell-culture system to realize its functions and advantages with regard to in vitro tissue construction.
Delay Measurement and Split-Step Time-Domain Analysis of Ring Resonator All-Pass Filters

Single-ring all-pass filters with various coupling ratios are designed, fabricated, and characterized to assess the validity of the split-step time-domain modeling approach, which is considered for direct simulation of time-domain characteristics, such as optical delay, of various ring resonator devices. When the coupling ratio of the single-ring all-pass filter is 0.4 and 0.8, the delay time is measured to be about 145 and 42 ps respectively, which is comparable to the time-domain modeling results of 151 and 47 ps respectively. The measurements for two- and three-ring all-pass filters are also found to agree quite well with the simulation results. With these results it is confirmed that the split-step time-domain model could be efficiently incorporated into an optical-communication simulation module for ring resonator delay components in an all-optical packet switching system.
The Situational Behavior Orientation of Instructional Supervision: A Multisite Study

This study was aimed at disclosing the instructional behavior orientation at public middle schools in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia. The focuses of this study were: (1) design of the instructional supervision behavior orientation, (2) implementa-tion of the instructional supervision behavior orientation, and (3) outcomes of the instructional behavior orientation. This research employed qualitative approach with multisite study design. Data were collected by using interview, documen-tation, and obser-vation. Data were analyzed by using the combination of inter-active and modified analysis. Results of this research revealed that the instruc-tional supervision behavior orientation turned out to be the situational orientation of instructional behavior comprising 4 (four) orientation, i,e. Showing directively, Showing persuasively, Participating interactively and Trusting delegative-ly. Such orientations turned out to significantly relate to teachers’ competency and performance enhancement.
APPLICATION OF CDM-PI-P CONTROLLER FOR SO2 EMISSION CONTROL PROCESS

This paper focuses on the sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ) emission control using PI-P controller by considering Coefficient Diagram Method (CDM) as a candidate. To analyse the removal efficiency of SO 2 , Liquid-Gas absorption column with mixing unit is modelled using SIMULINK in MATLAB platform. Sulphuric acid containing hydrogen peroxide is used as a scrubbing liquid. To compute the parameters of the CDM-PI-P controller, process is approximated as First Order Plus Time Delay (FOPTD) transfer function model. Performance of the CDM-PI-P controller is analysed and compared with conventional control techniques such as Ziegler-Nichols PI controller (ZN-PI) and Internal Model Control based PI controller (IMC-PI) in terms of time domain performance measures such as settling time, rise time, overshoot (t s , t r , %M p ) and error indices (ISE, IAE, ITAE). The simulation results prove that the CDM-PI-P controller provides most consistent performance as compared to the conventional controllers.
Chapter 4 Latent Fingerprint Image Segmentation Using Deep Neural Network

We present a deep artificial neural network (DANN) model that learns latent fingerprint image patches using a stack of restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs), and uses it to perform segmentation of latent fingerprint images. Artificial neural networks (ANN) are biologically inspired architectures that produce hierarchies of maps through learned weights or filters. Latent fingerprints are fingerprint impressions unintentionally left on surfaces at a crime scene. Tomake identifications or exclusions of suspects, latent fingerprint examiners analyze and compare latent fingerprints to known fingerprints of individuals. Due to the poor quality and often complex image background and overlapping patterns characteristic of latent fingerprint images, separating the fingerprint region of interest from complex image background and overlapping patterns is very challenging. Our proposed DANN model based on RBMs learns fingerprint image patches in two phases. The first phase (unsupervised pre-training) involves learning an identity mapping of the input image patches. In the second phase, fine-tuning and gradient updates are performed to minimize the cost function on the training dataset. The resulting trained model is used to classify the image patches into fingerprint and non-fingerprint classes. We use the fingerprint patches to reconstruct the latent fingerprint image and discard the non-fingerprint patches which contain the structured noise in the original latent fingerprint. The proposed model is evaluated by comparing the results from the state-of-the-art latent fingerprint segmentation models. The results of our evaluation show the superior performance of the proposed method. J. Ezeobiejesi (B) · B. Bhanu Center for Research in Intelligent Systems, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA e-mail: jezeobie@cs.ucr. edu B. Bhanu e-mail: bhanu@cris.ucr. edu © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 B. Bhanu and A. Kumar (eds.), Deep Learning for Biometrics, Advances in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61657-5_4 83 84 J. Ezeobiejesi and B. Bhanu
JAK 2 / STAT 5 Signaling Pathway Mediates

Jeonghan Lim, Soo-Jin Jeong, Wonil Koh, Ihn Han, Hyo-Jung Lee, Tae-Rin Kwon, Ji Hoon Jung, Jung Hyo Kim, Hyo-Jeong Lee, Eun-Ok Lee, Sun-Hyung Kim, Min-Ho Lee and Sung-Hoon Kim* College of Oriental Medicine, Kyung Hee University, 1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea Chosun Nursing College, 280 Seosuk-dong, Dong-gu, Kwangju, 501-825, Republic of Korea College of Life Science, Kyung Hee University, 1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea
Functional Connectivity of Heschl’s Gyrus Associated With Age-Related Hearing Loss: A Resting-State fMRI Study

A large proportion of older adults experience hearing loss. Yet, the impact of hearing loss on the aging brain, particularly on large-scale brain networks that support cognition and language, is relatively unknown. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify hearing loss-related changes in the functional connectivity of primary auditory cortex to determine if these changes are distinct from age and cognitive measures known to decline with age (e.g., working memory and processing speed). We assessed the functional connectivity of Heschl’s gyrus in 31 older adults (60–80 years) who expressed a range of hearing abilities from normal hearing to a moderate hearing loss. Our results revealed that both left and right Heschl’s gyri were significantly connected to regions within auditory, sensorimotor, and visual cortices, as well as to regions within the cingulo-opercular network known to support attention. Participant age, working memory, and processing speed did not significantly correlate with any connectivity measures once variance due to hearing loss was removed. However, hearing loss was associated with increased connectivity between right Heschl’s gyrus and the dorsal anterior cingulate in the cingulo-opercular network even once variance due to age, working memory, and processing speed was removed. This greater connectivity was not driven by high frequency hearing loss, but rather by hearing loss measured in the 0.5–2 kHz range, particularly in the left ear. We conclude that hearing loss-related differences in functional connectivity in older adults are distinct from other aging-related differences and provide insight into a possible neural mechanism of compensation for hearing loss in older adults.