Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Data- and Model-Driven Gaze Control for an Active-Vision System

Models of visual attention provide a general approach to control the activities of active vision systems. We introduce a new model of attentional control that differs in important aspects from conventional ones. We divide the selection into two stages, which is more suitable for the system as well as explaining different phenomena found in natural visual attention, such as the dispute between early and late selection. The proposed model is especially designed for use in dynamic scenes. Our approach aims at modeling as much of a general active vision system as possible and designing clean interfaces for the integration of the remaining specific aspects needed in order to solve specific problems.
Hepatocellular carcinoma: molecular interactions between hepatitis C virus and p53 in hepatocarcinogenesis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most important primary hepatic cancer and is a common cancer type worldwide. Many aetiological factors have been related to HCC development, such as liver cirrhosis, hepatitis viruses and alcohol consumption. Inactivation of the p53 tumour suppressor gene is one of the most common abnormalities in many tumours, including HCC. p53 is of crucial importance for the regulation of the cell cycle and the maintenance of genomic integrity. In HCC, hepatitis B and C virus (HBV and HCV) effect carcinogenic pathways, independently leading to anomalies in p53 function. Several authors have reported that some HCV proteins, such as the core, NS5A and NS3 proteins, interact with p53 and prevent its correct function. The mechanisms of action of these HCV proteins in relation to p53 are not completely clear, but they might cause its cytoplasmic retention or accumulation in the perinuclear region where the protein is not functional. The identification of the interactions between p53 and HCV proteins is of great importance for therapeutic strategies aimed at reducing the chronicity and/or carcinogenicity of the virus.
Loss of RUNX1/AML1 arginine‐methylation impairs peripheral T cell homeostasis

RUNX1 (previously termed AML1) is a frequent target of human leukaemia‐associated gene aberrations, and it encodes the DNA‐binding subunit of the Core‐Binding Factor transcription factor complex. RUNX1 expression is essential for the initiation of definitive haematopoiesis, for steady‐state thrombopoiesis, and for normal lymphocytes development. Recent studies revealed that protein arginine methyltransferase 1 (PRMT1), which accounts for the majority of the type I PRMT activity in cells, methylates two arginine residues in RUNX1 (R206 and R210), and these modifications inhibit corepressor‐binding to RUNX1 thereby enhancing its transcriptional activity. In order to elucidate the biological significance of these methylations, we established novel knock‐in mouse lines with non‐methylable, double arginine‐to‐lysine (RTAMR‐to‐KTAMK) mutations in RUNX1. Homozygous Runx1KTAMK/KTAMK mice are born alive and appear normal during adulthood. However, Runx1KTAMK/KTAMK mice showed a reduction in CD3+ T lymphoid cells and a decrease in CD4+ T cells in peripheral lymphoid organs, in comparison to their wild‐type littermates, leading to a reduction in the CD4+ to CD8+ T‐cell ratio. These findings suggest that arginine‐methylation of RUNX1 in the RTAMR‐motif is dispensable for the development of definitive haematopoiesis and for steady‐state platelet production, however this modification affects the role of RUNX1 in the maintenance of the peripheral CD4+ T‐cell population.
Escherichia coli ribonuclease III activity is downregulated by osmotic stress: consequences for the degradation of bdm mRNA in biofilm formation

During the course of experiments aimed at identifying genes with ribonuclease III (RNase III)‐dependent expression in Escherichia coli, we found that steady state levels of bdm mRNA were dependent on cellular concentrations of RNase III. The half‐lives of adventitiously overexpressed bdm mRNA and the activities of a transcriptional bdm‘–’cat fusion were observed to be dependent on cellular concentrations of RNase III, indicating the existence of cis‐acting elements in bdm mRNA responsive to RNase III. In vitro and in vivo cleavage analyses of bdm mRNA identified two RNase III cleavage motifs, one in the 5′‐untranslated region and the other in the coding region of bdm mRNA, and indicated that RNase III cleavages in the coding region constitute a rate‐determining step for bdm mRNA degradation. We also discovered that downregulation of the ribonucleolytic activity of RNase III is required for the sustained elevation of RcsB‐induced bdm mRNA levels during osmotic stress and that cells overexpressing bdm form biofilms more efficiently. These findings indicate that the Rcs signalling system has an additional regulatory pathway that functions to modulate bdm expression and consequently, adapt E. coli cells to osmotic stress.
Integrated Mining of Social and Collaborative Information for Music Recommendation

The rapid growth of information enables a large increase in needs of recommendation. To satisfy this need, Collaborative Filtering and Social Filtering are adopted as solutions for personalized music recommendation. Contemporary recommender systems based on collaborative filtering and social filtering always suffer problems of unreliable item similarity, rating sparsity, lack of rating and un-robust evaluation measure. For problems of un-reliable item similarity, rating sparsity and lack of rating, in this paper, we propose an innovative recommender system named Music Recommendation by Social and Collaborative Filtering (MRSCF) by considering playcount and tag information simultaneously. For problem of un-robust evaluation measure, we employ Recommendation evaluation by Normalized Discount Cumulative Gain (RNDCG) to make the evaluation more solid. The experimental results show that, our proposed approach can achieve the higher quality of music recommendation than other state-of-the-art recommender systems in terms of RNDCG and RMSE (Root Mean Square Error).
A Compact Transmission-Line Metamaterial Antenna With Extended Bandwidth

A wideband and compact planar antenna is proposed using a doubly resonant transmission-line metamaterial (TL-MTM) structure. The antenna consists of two TL-MTM arms that resonate at different frequencies. Each arm comprises a microstrip transmission-line loaded with five spiral inductors and is well matched to 50 Omega through an embedded series meandered line. Each arm is designed to work as a single antenna at its own resonant frequency, determined by the loading spiral inductance, where a zero insertion phase occurs. A wideband antenna matching is enabled when these two resonances suitably merge together. A fabricated prototype has dimensions of lambdao/4 times lambdao/7 times lambdao/29, yielding a vertical linear electric field polarization, and provides a 100-MHz bandwidth (-10 dB) with a measured radiation efficiency of 65.8% at 3.30 GHz.
Chronic Administration of Daidzein, a Soybean Isoflavone, Improves Endothelial Dysfunction and Attenuates Oxidative Stress in Streptozotocin‐induced Diabetic Rats

The effect of chronic daidzein, a soybean isoflavone, on aortic reactivity of streptozotocin‐diabetic rats was studied. Male diabetic rats received daidzein for 7 weeks a week after diabetes induction. Contractile responses to KCl and phenylephrine (PE) and relaxation response to acetylcholine (ACh) were obtained from aortic rings. Maximum contractile response of endothelium‐intact rings to PE was significantly lower in daidzein‐treated diabetic rats relative to untreated diabetic rats, and endothelium removal abolished this difference. Endothelium‐dependent relaxation to ACh was significantly higher in daidzein‐treated diabetic rats as compared with diabetic rats and pretreatment of rings with nitric oxide synthase inhibitor N(G)‐nitro‐l‐arginine methyl ester and/or indomethacin attenuated it. Two‐month diabetes also resulted in an elevation of malondialdehyde (MDA) and decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, and daidzein treatment significantly reversed the increased MDA content and reduced activity of SOD. Therefore, chronic treatment of diabetic rats with daidzein could prevent some abnormal changes in vascular reactivity in diabetic rats through nitric oxide and prostaglandin‐related pathways, and via attenuation of oxidative stress in aortic tissue and endothelium integrity seems essential for this effect. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Geometric design of turbo roundabouts

Turbo roundabouts are lately a more common choice in designing multilane roundabouts. First guidelines for geometric design of this particular roundabout layout were developed by a Dutch Information and Technology Platform CROW in 2008. Soon after, a number of European countries began to develop their own regulations on turbo roundabouts, adjusted to their traffic cultures and their local conditions. In order to present the diversity of design approaches for turbo roundabout planning in various European regions, comparative analysis of turbo roundabout design procedures described in Slovenian technical specifications, Serbian design manual, German working document, and Croatian and Dutch guidelines is made. Relevant influential parameters used in these procedures are commented. Study presented in this paper may contribute to the success of turbo roundabout planning procedure.
AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

As social networking sites (SNSs) become increasingly global, the issues of cultural differences in participation patterns become acute. However, current research offers only limited insights into the role of culture behind SNS usage. Aiming to fill this gap, this study adopts a ‘privacy calculus’ perspective to study the differences between German and American SNS users. Results of structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis reveal distinct variability in the cognitive patterns of American and German subjects. We contribute to the theory by rejecting the universal nature of privacy-calculus processes. From a practical standpoint, our results signal that SNS providers cannot rely on the “proven” means in ensuring user participation when crossing geographic boundaries. When financial means are limited, SNS providers should direct their investments into enhancing platform enjoyment and granting users with more control and, paradoxically, lobbying for more legalistic safeguards of user privacy.
Language perception activates the hand motor cortex: implications for motor theories of speech perception

The precise mechanisms of how speech may have developed are still unknown to a large extent. Gestures have proven a powerful concept for explaining how planning and analysing of motor acts could have evolved into verbal communication. According to this concept, development of an action‐perception network allowed for coding and decoding of communicative gestures. These were manual or manual/articulatory in the beginning and then became increasingly elaborate in the articulatory mode. The theory predicts that listening to the ‘gestures’ that compose spoken language should activate an extended articulatory and manual action‐perception network. To examine this hypothesis, we assessed the effects of language on cortical excitability of the hand muscle representation by transcranial magnetic stimulation. We found the hand motor system to be activated by linguistic tasks, most notably pure linguistic perception, but not by auditory or visuospatial processing. The amount of motor system activation was comparable in both hemispheres. Our data support the theory that language may have evolved within a general and bilateral action‐perception network.
Holistic Processing Is Finely Tuned for Faces of One's Own Race

Recognizing individual faces outside one's race poses difficulty, a phenomenon known as the other-race effect. Most researchers agree that this effect results from differential experience with same-race (SR) and other-race (OR) faces. However, the specific processes that develop with visual experience and underlie the other-race effect remain to be clarified. We tested whether the integration of facial features into a whole representation—holistic processing—was larger for SR than OR faces in Caucasians and Asians without life experience with OR faces. For both classes of participants, recognition of the upper half of a composite-face stimulus was more disrupted by the bottom half (the composite-face effect) for SR than OR faces, demonstrating that SR faces are processed more holistically than OR faces. This differential holistic processing for faces of different races, probably a byproduct of visual experience, may be a critical factor in the other-race effect.
7.4 A 256b-wordlength ReRAM-based TCAM with 1ns search-time and 14× improvement in wordlength-energyefficiency-density product using 2.5T1R cell

Ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) is used in search engines for network and big-data processing [1]-[6]. Nonvolatile TCAM (nvTCAM) was developed to reduce cell area (A), search energy (ES), and standby power beyond what can be achieved using SRAM-based TCAM (sTCAM) [1]-[2]: particularly in applications with long idle times and frequent-search-few-write operations. nvTCAMs were previously designed using diode-4T2R (D4T2R) with STT-MTJ [3], 2T2R with phase-change memory [4], 4T2R and 3T1R with ReRAM [5,6]. However, these NV devices suffer from the following issues: 1) High ES requirements due to cell-DC-current (IDC-CELL) as well as large match-line (ML) parasitic load (CML), particularly when word-length (WDL) is long; 2) Large A due to the use of two NVM (2R) devices [3]-[5] or in-cell control logic [6]; 3) Limited WDL caused by small ML current-ratio (IML-ratio ≅ IML-MIS/N*IML-M) between mismatch current (IML-MIS) and the leakage-current (IML-M) from cells on a ML, particularly when NVM resistance (R)-ratio (=RHRS /RLRS) between high-R (HRS, RHRS) and low-R (LRS, RLRS) states is small due to process variation; 4) Long search delays (TSD) due to large CML and small IML-ratio. This work proposes 1) a 2.5T1R cell to reduce A, CML, and ES as well as increase IML-ratio; and 2) a region-splitter (RS) sense amplifier (SA) to achieve robust sensing with a smaller ML-Voltage (VML) swing (VMLS) to reduce TSD and ES.
Impairment versus deficiency in neuropsychological assessment: Implications for ecological validity

Abstract Neuropsychological test interpretation has relied on pre- and postmorbid comparisons, as exemplified by the use of demographically adjusted normative data. We argue that, when the assessment goal is to predict real-world functioning, this interpretive method should be supplemented by “absolute” scores. Such scores are derived from comparisons with the general healthy adult population (i.e., demographically unadjusted normative data) and reflect examinees’ current ability, that is, the interaction between premorbid and injury/disease-related factors. In support of this view, we found that substantial discrepancies between demographically adjusted and absolute scores were common in a traumatic brain injury sample, especially in participants with certain demographic profiles. Absolute scores predicted selected measures of functional outcome better than demographically adjusted scores and also classified participants’ functional status more accurately, to the extent that these scores diverged. In conclusion, the ecological validity of neuropsychological tests may be improved by the consideration of absolute scores. (JINS, 2009, 15, 94–102.)
Exploitation des structures régulières et des spécifications locales pour le développement correct de systèmes réactifs de grande taille

Le travail decrit dans cette these s'inscrit dans le contexte du developpement et de la validation des systemes reactifs synchrones. Il vise a tirer parti de certaines formes de structuration des programmes durant le processus de developpement et de validation. Nous etudions premierement l'utilisation d'operateurs reguliers de types "iterateurs" qui permettent d'exprimer assez facilement des programmes reguliers manipulant des tableaux. Nous montrons aussi comment, au moment de la validation, on peut tirer partie de ces structures regulieres pour rendre la preuve d'une propriete plus simple. Nous nous interessons ensuite a la specification dite "par contrat" ou un couple (assume, guarantee) est associe a chaque composant pour specifier les hypotheses sur l'environnement et les proprietes satisfaites par le composant sous ces hypotheses. Nous montrons l'interet de tels contrats a la fois en terme de specification et de verification pour le cas particulier des systemes synchrones. Nous proposons une serie d'algorithmes de transformations de programmes (aussi bien autour de l'utilisation des iterateurs que des contrats) utilisable comme pre-processeur d'objectifs de preuve pour les outils de validation. Nos propositions, notamment sur l'aspect langage des iterateurs, ont repondu a des besoins rencontres dans les applications industrielles, particulierement autour du langage Lustre, auquel nous appliquons nos resultat. Ces propositions seront bientot incluses dans la version industrielle du langage.
A Marital Patterns Test for use in Psychiatric Research

The importance of personality in determining the likelihood and form of psychiatric and psychosomatic disease is recognized, but relatively little attention has been paid to the intimate personal relationships of adults which both express and to some extent modify their personalities. The neglect of this field in psychiatry has been underlined recently by Post and Wardle (1962) and by Kreitman (1964).
On sample size for sensitivity and specificity in prospective diagnostic accuracy studies

The design of a study of disease screening tests may be based on hypothesis tests for the sensitivity and specificity of the tests. The case‐control study requires knowledge of the disease status of patients at the time of enrollment. This may not be possible in a prospective setting, when the gold standard is obtained subsequent to the initial screening and the number of diseased individuals is random and can not be fixed by design. Several ad hoc procedures for determining the total sample size are commonly used by practitioners, for example, the prevalence inflation method. The properties of these methods are not well understood. We develop a formal method for sample size and power calculations based on the unconditional power properties of the test statistics. The approach provides novel insights into the behaviour of the commonly used methods. We find that the ad hoc prevalence inflation method may serve as a useful approximation to our rigorous framework for sample size determination in the prospective set‐up. The design of a large population‐based study of mammography for breast cancer screening illustrates the key issues. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
No relationship between territory size and the risk of cuckoldry in birds

It has been suggested that male birds adjust their territory size in order to prevent potential intruders from gaining extra-pair copulations. The risk of cuckoldry is supposed to be highest when the distance between a female and the neighbouring males is shortest. This paper describes the variation in territory size of the chiffchaff, Phylloscopus collybita, in relation to the breeding cycle. Contrary to the risk of cuckoldry hypothesis, chiffchaff territories were larger prior to the fertile period of the females and at a minimal size during the fertile period. A review of the literature shows little, if any, evidence of a peak in territory size during the fertile period of the females for most species studied. It is suggested that territoriality is in need of an operational definition. Without such a definition, it is difficult to make and test predictions about the adaptive basis of variation in territory size. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Selective Induction of the Tumor Marker Glutathione S-Transferase P1 by Proteasome Inhibitors*[boxs]

Exposure of cells to a wide variety of chemoprotective compounds confers resistance to a broad set of carcinogens. For a subset of the chemoprotective compounds, protection is generated by an increase in the abundance of phase 2 detoxification enzymes such as glutathione S-transferases (GSTs). Transcription factor Nrf2, which is sequestered in the cytoplasm by Keap1 (Kelch-like ECH-associated protein-1) under unstimulated conditions, regulates the induction of phase 2 enzymes. In this study, to explore the role of the proteasome in the detoxification response, we tested the effect of proteasome inhibitors such as MG132, clasto-lactacystin β-lactone, and lactacystin on the induction of GST isozymes and found that these inhibitors selectively induced the class Pi GST isozyme (GST P1). Down-regulation of the proteasome by antisense oligonucleotides or RNA interference indeed resulted in significant up-regulation of GST P1, suggesting that a decline in the proteasome activity could be directly or indirectly linked to the induction of GST P1. From the functional analysis of various deletion constructs of the upstream regulatory region of the GST P1 promoter, GST P1 enhancer I was identified as the response element for proteasome inhibition. Overexpression of the wild-type and dominant-negative forms of Nrf2 and Keap1 had little effect on the induction of GST P1 not only by the proteasome inhibitor, but also by phase 2-inducing isothiocyanate, suggesting that there may be a process of GST P1 induction distinct from other phase 2 gene induction mechanisms. Because GST P1 is highly and specifically induced during early hepatocarcinogenesis as well as in hepatocellular carcinoma cells, these data may provide a potential critical role for the proteasome in the induction of a cellular defense program associated with carcinogenesis.
Solvent Supercritical Fluid Technologies to Extract Bioactive Compounds from Natural Sources: A Review

Supercritical fluid technologies offer a propitious method for drug discovery from natural sources. Such methods require relatively short processing times, produce extracts with little or no organic co-solvent, and are able to extract bioactive molecules whilst minimising degradation. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) provides a range of benefits, as well as offering routes to overcome some of the limitations that exist with the conventional methods of extraction. Unfortunately, SFE-based methods are not without their own shortcomings; two major ones being: (1) the high establishment cost; and (2) the selective solvent nature of CO2, i.e., that CO2 only dissolves small non-polar molecules, although this can be viewed as a positive outcome provided bioactive molecules are extracted during solvent-based SFE. This review provides an update of SFE methods for natural products and outlines the main operating parameters for extract recovery. Selected processing considerations are presented regarding supercritical fluids and the development and application of ultrasonic-assisted SFE methods, as well as providing some of the key aspects of SFE scalability.