Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coexistence of Placobdella costata (Fr. Müller, 1846) (Hirudinida: Glossiphoniidae) and mud turtle Emys orbicularis

Emys orbicularis is receding from Europe, mainly due to anthropogenic habitat changes. Its parasite, Placobdella costata, is widely distributed within both the former and the present distribution range of the host. Though closely associated with the mud turtle, it may have other hosts (birds, amphibians, reptiles). Its reproductive period coincides with that of its host’s migration to the breeding grounds, thus facilitating dispersal of the parasite. Based on literature data we have analyzed the geographic spread of P. costata and mud turtle to observe the possible overlap of their habitats. Observations on the population of mud turtle and the associated leech species (P. costata) were carried out in eastern Poland — Podlasie Lowland. The studies were conducted in spring and summer in 1986–1993. The leeches were collected from the turtles caught in the water and on land. Observations showed that most leeches were found on turtles inhabiting the lake or moving to a breeding area. The greatest intensity of invasion was observed in June and July and that most leeches were observed in female E. orbicularis characterized by greater length of the carapace and weight, compared with males and juvenile individuals.
Metagenomic Analysis of the Dynamic Changes in the Gut Microbiome of the Participants of the MARS-500 Experiment, Simulating Long Term Space Flight

A metagenomic analysis of the dynamic changes of the composition of the intestinal microbiome of five participants of the MARS-500 experiment was performed. DNA samples were isolated from the feces of the participants taken just before the experiment, upon 14, 30, 210, 363 and 510 days of isolation in the experimental module, and two weeks upon completion of the experiment. The taxonomic composition of the microbiome was analyzed by pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments. Both the taxonomic and functional gene content of the microbiome of one participant were analyzed by whole metagenome sequencing using the SOLiD technique. Each participant had a specific microbiome that could be assigned to one of three recognized enterotypes. Two participants had enterotype I microbiomes characterized by the prevalence of Bacteroides, while the microbiomes of two others, assigned to type II, were dominated by Prevotella. One participant had a microbiome of mixed type. It was found that (1) changes in the taxonimic composition of the microbiomes occurred in the course of the experiment, but the enterotypes remained the same; (2) significant changes in the compositions of the microbiomes occurred just 14-30 days after the beginning of the experiment, presumably indicating the influence of stress factors in the first stage of the experiment; (3) a tendency toward a reversion of the microbiomes to their initial composition was observed two weeks after the end of the experiment, but complete recovery was not achieved. The metagenomic analysis of the microbiome of one of the participants showed that in spite of variations in the taxonomic compositions of microbiomes, the “functional” genetic composition was much more stable for most of the functional gene categories. Probably in the course of the experiment the taxonomic composition of the gut microbiome was adaptively changed to reflect the individual response to the experimental conditions. A new, balanced taxonomic composition of the microbiome was formed to ensure a stable gene content of the community as a whole without negative consequences for the health of the participants.
Understanding of the risk of HIV infection among the elderly in Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa

Abstract The literature pertaining to the elderly shows that HIV infection among this population is on the increase, suggesting that the elderly population engages in activities risky for HIV infection. Reports on such behaviour include frequent sexual relations with much younger people and having multiple partners. A study was carried out in Ga-Rankuwa, a black township in Gauteng Province, South Africa to explore and describe the understanding of these elderly people regarding their risks of HIV infection and AIDS. Using a qualitative, exploratory design, three focus-group interviews were conducted with 32 women aged over 50 years. Findings revealed that older persons have knowledge about transmission of HIV infection and AIDS. However, a few had misconceptions as to how HIV infection is transmitted, as they believed that poor nutrition and sharing facilities play a role. Knowledge of mechanisms of protecting themselves against infection, such as use of a condom during coitus and wearing gloves when caring for infected family members, was also evident. The elderly indicated that they would prefer an older person, who they could identify with, to educate them more about HIV infection and AIDS. Although majority of participants had knowledge of how HIV is transmitted, and issues that put them at risk of transmission, a few the older persons had misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted due to lack of knowledge, as they believed that poor nutrition and sharing facilities can transmit infection. The lack of knowledge underscores the importance of addressing sexual risk with older people. It was very clear that more needs to be done in terms of education campaigns to dispel the myths of HIV infection and to empower the elderly.
Normalized gradient fields and mutual information for motion correction of DCE-MRI images

Dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) of the kidney typically displays spatial motion and undesired artefacts due to unavoidable patient movement and physiological pulsations, with the effect of corrupting voxel-wise signal intensity changes arising from contrast agent wash-in and wash-out. Image registration is a necessary tool to counteract such motion artefacts and to estimate physiological parameters reliably. In this work, we present a fluid-registration-based method for deformable multimodal image registration based on normalized gradients, particularly well suited to handle the motion challenges in DCE-MRI time series. We evaluate and confirm that both normalized gradients and mutual information are high-performing cost functionals for co-registration of DCE-MRI time series. Further, there are indications that normalized gradients have better performance than mutual information on this kind of images. These results promote normalized gradients as a promising tool for proper motion correction of DCE-MRI images applied in the clinic or in biomedical research.
The implementation of dynamic heteroskedasticity convertible SVM model in financial time series

In this paper, in order to overcome the deficiency of the traditional SVM, a positive mapping between price volatilities and sample periods of underlying financial time series has been assumed according to the theorems of behavioral finance. By embedding this mapping into the constraint equations of the classic SVM algorithm, an improved SVM model named DHC-SVM (Dynamic Heteroskedasticity Convertible SVM) is proposed for the financial price forecasting. Comparing to the classic SVM model, the experimental results on the real-time HS300 index data illustrates that the DHC-SVM has the advantage both in higher accuracy and better stability.
Performing procedures on the newly deceased for teaching purposes: what if we were to ask?

BACKGROUND Performance of procedures on the recently dead for physician training is controversial. It has been suggested that permission be obtained. We investigated whether patients and family members would grant such permission or if even this request might anger the recently bereaved. METHODS Physicians administered identical surveys to adult emergency department patients and family members in Brooklyn and Oslo to determine their willingness to consent for teaching of specific invasive techniques in the event of their own death or that of a family member. Demographic factors and location (culture) were assessed for effects. RESULTS Willingness to consent was directly related to age of decedent and inversely related to perceived invasiveness of the procedure at both sites. In every scenario, respondents in Brooklyn were much less willing to grant permission (2- to 2.5-fold) than were those in Oslo. In Oslo, respondents were more willing to consent for their own bodies to be used as training tools than that of a relative. In Brooklyn, 48.5% would be angry if approached for permission compared with only 8.4% in Oslo (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS Asking for permission to perform procedures on the recently deceased for physician training purposes may often anger the bereaved. The emotional response to the consent request may be culturally determined. Increased willingness of individuals to permit the use of their bodies in the immediate postmortem period suggests that a preauthorization program similar to organ donor cards might be acceptable, successful, and ethical.
Extractive and Abstractive Event Summarization over Streaming Web Text

During crises, information is critical for responders and victims. When the event is significant, as in the case of hurricane Sandy, the amount of content produced by traditional news outlets, relief organizations, and social media vastly overwhelms those trying to monitor the situation. The ensuing digital overload that accompanies large scale disasters suggests an opportunity for automatic summarization --the implied task here is to monitor an event as it unfolds over time by processing an associated stream of documents and producing a rolling update summary containing the most salient information with respect to the event (which we also refer to as the query).
Scalable visualization of propagating internet phenomena

The Internet has recently been impacted by a number of large distributed attacks that achieve exponential growth through self-propagation. Some of these attacks have exploited vulnerabilities for which advisories had been issued and for which patches and detection signatures were available. It is increasingly apparent, however, that such prevention and detection mechanisms are inadequate, and that the attacker's time to exploit is shrinking relative to the defender's ability to learn of a new attack and patch systems or update intrusion detection signatures. We introduce visual, scalable techniques to detect phenomena such as distributed denial-of-service attacks and worms. It is hoped that these new approaches will enable detection of such events at an early stage and enable local response actions even before the publication of advisories about a new vulnerability and the availability of patches.
Preserving the Khmer Smile: Classifying and Restoring the Faces of Bayon

The Bayon temple is known for its numerous massive stone faces with serene smiles, often referred to as the 'Khmer Smile. ' Many of these sculptures are, however, only partially preserved, making it difficult to see the original appearance of these faces. To restore the Bayon faces, we propose a novel method that builds upon the matrix recovery theory. The method achieves accurate restoration by adopting a two-step shape recovery strategy. Rough restoration and clustering processes are first carried out using the entire database to group similar samples together. Then refined restoration using high resolution data is executed in each cluster to restore higher details while retaining the characteristics of each face. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.
A Case of IgG4-Related Disease with Bronchial Asthma and Chronic Rhinosinusitis in Korea

IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) is characterized by a systemic involvement of tumor-like lesions with IgG4-positive plasmacytes. We experienced a case of IgG4-RD developed in a patient with bronchial asthma (BA) and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). A 55-yr-old female patient with BA and CRS complained of both eyes and neck swelling as well as a recurrent upper respiratory infection in recent 1 yr. The serum levels of IgG4, creatinine, and pancreatic enzymes were elevated. A biopsy of the submandibular gland showed an abundant infiltration of IgG4-positive plasmacytes. Her symptoms remarkably improved after the treatment of a systemic steroid that has been maintained without recurrence. We report a rare case of IgG4-RD developed in a patient with BA and CRS. Graphical Abstract
Nucleosome Acidic Patch Promotes RNF168- and RING1B/BMI1-Dependent H2AX and H2A Ubiquitination and DNA Damage Signaling

Histone ubiquitinations are critical for the activation of the DNA damage response (DDR). In particular, RNF168 and RING1B/BMI1 function in the DDR by ubiquitinating H2A/H2AX on Lys-13/15 and Lys-118/119, respectively. However, it remains to be defined how the ubiquitin pathway engages chromatin to provide regulation of ubiquitin targeting of specific histone residues. Here we identify the nucleosome acid patch as a critical chromatin mediator of H2A/H2AX ubiquitination (ub). The acidic patch is required for RNF168- and RING1B/BMI1-dependent H2A/H2AXub in vivo. The acidic patch functions within the nucleosome as nucleosomes containing a mutated acidic patch exhibit defective H2A/H2AXub by RNF168 and RING1B/BMI1 in vitro. Furthermore, direct perturbation of the nucleosome acidic patch in vivo by the expression of an engineered acidic patch interacting viral peptide, LANA, results in defective H2AXub and RNF168-dependent DNA damage responses including 53BP1 and BRCA1 recruitment to DNA damage. The acidic patch therefore is a critical nucleosome feature that may serve as a scaffold to integrate multiple ubiquitin signals on chromatin to compose selective ubiquitinations on histones for DNA damage signaling.
Performance Analysis of Contemporary Light-Weight Block Ciphers on 8-bit Microcontrollers

This work presents a performance analysis of software implementations of ciphers that are specially designed for the domain of ubiquitous computing. The analysis focuses on the special properties of embedded devices that need to be taken into account like cost (given by memory consumption) and energy requirements. The discussed ciphers include DESL, HIGHT, SEA, and TEA/XTEA. Assembler implementations of the ciphers for an 8-bit AVR microcontroller platform were analyzed and compared with a byte-oriented AES implementation. While all ciphers fail to outperform AES on the discussed 8-bit platform, TEA/XTEA and SEA at least consume significantly less memory than the AES.
Unveiling the Acoustic Properties that Describe the Valence Dimension

One of the main challenges in emotion recognition from speech is to discriminate emotions in the valence domain (positive versus negative). While acoustic features provide good characterization in the activation/arousal dimension (excited versus calm), they usually fail to discriminate between sentences with different valence attributes (e.g., happy versus anger). This paper focuses on this dimension, which is key in many behavioral problems (e.g., depression). First, a regression analysis is conducted to identify the most informative features. Separate support vector regression (SVR) models are trained with various feature groups. The results reveal that spectral and F0 features produce the most accurate predictions of valence. Then, sentences with similar activation, but with different valence are carefully studied. The discriminative power in valence domain of individual features is studied with logistic regression analysis. This controlled experiment reveals differences between positive and negative emotions in the F0 distribution (e.g., positive skew-ness). The study also uncovers characteristic trends in the spectral domain.
A Comparative Study of Empirical Mode Decomposition-Based Filtering for Impact Signal

The Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN) has been used to propose a new method for filtering time series originating from nonlinear systems. The filtering method is based on fuzzy entropy and a new waveform. A new waveform is defined wherein Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs)—which are obtained by CEEMDAN algorithm—are firstly sorted in ascending order (the sorted IMFs is symmetric about center point, because at any point, the mean value of the envelope line defined by the local maxima and the local minima is zero), and the energy of the sorted IMFs are calculated, respectively. Finally, the new waveform with axial symmetry can be obtained. The complexity of the new waveform can be quantified by fuzzy entropy. The relevant modes (noisy signal modes and useful signal modes) can be identified by the difference between the fuzzy entropy of the new waveform and the next adjacent new waveform. To evaluate the filter performance, CEEMDAN and sample entropy, Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) and fuzzy entropy, and EEMD and sample entropy were used to filter the synthesizing signals with various levels of input signal-to-noise ratio (SNRin). In particular, this approach is successful in filtering impact signal. The results of the filtering are evaluated by a de-trended fluctuation analysis (DFA) algorithm, revised mean square error (RMSE), and revised signal-to-noise ratio (RSNR), respectively. The filtering results of simulated and impact signal show that the filtering method based on CEEMDAN and fuzzy entropy outperforms other signal filtering methods.
Automatic vehicle number plate detection and recognition

License plate recognition (LPR) plays a significant role throughout this busy world, owing to the rise in vehicles day by day. Stealing of vehicles, breaking traffic rules, coming into restricted space also are increasing linearly, thus to dam this act registration code recognition is intended. Among the fundamental process steps such as detection of number plate, segmentation of characters and recognition of each characters, segmentation plays an important art, since the accuracy of recognition is based on how perfect the segmentation is done. To avoid problems like unwanted illumination, tilt that degrades the segmentation which in turn affects the recognition accuracy numerous algorithms are developed for this work. This paper presents a strong technique for localisation, segmentation and recognition of the characters within the located plate. Images from still cameras or videos are obtained and regenerated in to grayscale images. Hough lines are determined using Hough transform and therefore the segmentation of grey scale image generated by finding edges for smoothing image is employed to cut back the quantity of connected part and then connected part is calculated. Finally, single character within the registration code is detected. The aim is to indicate that the planned technique achieved high accuracy by optimizing numerous parameters that has higher recognition rate than the standard ways.
A 60mW 1.15mA/channel Class-G Stereo Headphone Driver with 111dB DR and 120dB PSRR

A 60mW 111dB DR Class-G Stereo Headphone Driver is described. The driver utilizes higher-order loop filter to achieve PSRR of 120dB at the GSM TDMA rate of 217Hz. A driver architecture that combines Class-G and a split Class-AB/B amplifier reduces the quiescent current to 1.15mA/channel. A dual-voltage charge-pump with a single flying capacitor enables Class-G operation by adjusting the supply rails as a function of the input signal. The driver supports battery range of 2.65V–4.5V and occupies an area of 2.3mm2 in 0. 18µm CMOS technology.
Superhumps of CC Cancri Revisited

We observed the 2001 November superoutburst of CC Cnc. This observation makes the first detailed coverage of a superoutburst of this object. The best-determined mean superhump period is 0.075518 +/- 0.000018 d, which is 2.7% longer than the reported orbital period. This fractional superhump excess is a quite typical value for a normal SU UMa-type dwarf nova, excluding the previously raised possibility that CC Cnc may have an anomalously large fractional superhump excess. During the superoutburst plateau, the object showed a decrease of the superhump period at dot(P)/P = -10.2(1.3) x 10^(-5), which is one of the largest negative period derivative known in all SU UMa-type dwarf novae.
Ablation of Neurons Expressing Agouti-Related Protein Activates Fos and Gliosis in Postsynaptic Target Regions

We have developed a mouse model in which a specific population of inhibitory neurons can be selectively ablated by the action of diphtheria toxin (DT). The model involves targeting the human DT receptor to the agouti-related protein (Agrp) locus so that systemic administration of DT kills all of the AgRP-expressing neurons, resulting in starvation of the mice. Ablation of AgRP neurons results in robust (5- to 10-fold) activation of Fos gene expression in many brain regions that are innervated by AgRP neurons, including the arcuate nucleus (ARC), the paraventricular nucleus, the medial preoptic area, the lateral septum, and nucleus of the solitary tract. As expected, there is robust increase in GFAP staining (astrocytes) as well as IBA1 and CD11b staining (microglia) in the ARC in response to AgRP neuron ablation. There is also a dramatic increase of these markers in most, but not all, postsynaptic targets of AgRP axons. We used a genetic approach to reduce melanocortin signaling, which attenuated Fos activation in some brain regions after ablation of AgRP neurons. We suggest that loss of inhibitory signaling onto target neurons results in unopposed excitation that is responsible for the activation of Fos and that dysregulation of these neuronal circuits is responsible for starvation. Furthermore, glial cell activation in target areas of AgRP neurons appears to be a result of excitotoxicity.
Catalytic activities of Werner protein are affected by adduction with 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal

4-Hydroxy-2-nonenal (HNE) is a reactive α,β-unsaturated aldehyde generated during oxidative stress and subsequent peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Here, Werner protein (WRN) was identified as a novel target for modification by HNE. Werner syndrome arises through mutations in the WRN gene that encodes the RecQ DNA helicase which is critical for maintaining genomic stability. This hereditary disease is associated with chromosomal instability, premature aging and cancer predisposition. WRN appears to participate in the cellular response to oxidative stress and cells devoid of WRN display elevated levels of oxidative DNA damage. We demonstrated that helicase/ATPase and exonuclease activities of HNE-modified WRN protein were inhibited both in vitro and in immunocomplexes purified from the cell extracts. Sites of HNE adduction in human WRN were identified at Lys577, Cys727, His1290, Cys1367, Lys1371 and Lys1389. We applied in silico modeling of the helicase and RQC domains of WRN protein with HNE adducted to Lys577 and Cys727 and provided a potential mechanism of the observed deregulation of the protein catalytic activities. In light of the obtained results, we postulate that HNE adduction to WRN is a post-translational modification, which may affect WRN conformational stability and function, contributing to features and diseases associated with premature senescence.
Near-lossless image compression: minimum-entropy, constrained-error DPCM

A near-lossless image compression scheme is presented. It is essentially a DPCM system with a mechanism incorporated to minimize the entropy of the quantized prediction error sequence. With a "near-lossless" criterion of no more than a d gray level error for each pixel, where d is a small non-negative integer, trellises describing all allowable quantized prediction error sequences are constructed. A set of "contexts" is defined for the conditioning prediction error model and an algorithm that produces minimum entropy conditioned on the contexts is presented. Finally, experimental results are given.