Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Absence of Functional Peroxisomes from Mouse CNS Causes Dysmyelination and Axon Degeneration

Peroxisomal metabolism is essential for normal brain development both in men and in mice. Using conditional knock-out mice, we recently showed that peroxisome deficiency in liver has a severe and persistent impact on the formation of cortex and cerebellum, whereas absence of functional peroxisomes from the CNS only causes developmental delays without obvious alteration of brain architecture. We now report that a substantial fraction of the latter Nes-Pex5 knock-out mice survive into adulthood but develop progressive motoric and coordination problems, impaired exploration, and a deficit in cognition and die before the age of 6 months. Histopathologically, both the white and gray matter of the CNS displayed a region-specific accumulation of neutral lipids, astrogliosis and microgliosis, upregulation of catalase, and scattered cell death. Nes-Pex5 knock-out mice featured a dramatic reduction of myelin staining in corpus callosum, whereas cerebellum and other white matter tracts were less affected or unchanged. This was accompanied by a depletion of alkenylphospholipids in myelin and differentially reduced immunoreactivity of myelin proteins. EM analysis revealed that myelin wrappings around axons did still form, but they showed a reduction in thickness relative to axon diameters. Remarkably, multifocal axonal damage occurred in the corpus callosum. Thereby, debris accumulated between axolemma and inner myelin surface and axons collapsed, although myelin sheaths remained present. These anomalies of myelinated axons were already present in juvenile mice but aggravated in adulthood. Together, loss of CNS peroxisomal metabolism both affects myelin sheaths and axonal integrity possibly via independent pathways.
Tai Chi for Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms and Quality of Life in Elderly Patients with Benign Prostate Hypertrophy: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Tai chi exercise has been recommended as suitable for the improvement of health in the elderly. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of tai chi on lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTSs), quality of life (QoL), and sex hormone levels in patients with benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH). The elderly patients with BPH were randomized to receive tai chi or usual care. Fifty-six participants were randomized into either the tai chi group (n = 28) or the control group (n = 28). After 12 weeks of treatment, the tai chi group showed significant improvement in LUTS and QoL. There was a significant effect of tai chi on testosterone but no significant effect on insulin or glucose. No serious adverse events were observed during the study period. In conclusion, our results suggest that 12 weeks of tai chi may improve LUTS and QoL in elderly patients with BPH.
Utilization of Fuel Consumption Data in an Ecodriving Incentive System for Heavy-Duty Vehicle Drivers

Driver behavior is one of the greatest factors determining fuel consumption and, thus, carbon dioxide emissions from a heavy-duty vehicle. The difference in fuel consumption can be up to 30%, depending on the driver. Education, monitoring, and feedback are ways of guiding drivers toward more fuel-efficient driver behavior. An incentive system related to fuel consumption is one way of giving feedback. The greatest challenge facing transportation companies with such incentive systems is fair measurement of the driver's fuel consumption. This paper focuses on that challenge. As a result of this paper, a method for utilizing fuel consumption data in an incentive system has been developed for the case company Tampere City Transport. Measurement of fuel consumption is based on groups, which are formed by runs with similar vehicles, routes, and time of day. The individual driver's average fuel consumption in a specific group is then compared with the average fuel consumption of all drivers in that specific group.
Political and Artistic Radicalism in the 20th Century: A Situationist Solution for an International Value Conflict

At 50 years from May ’68 and 150 years from the moment when Marx’s Capital was published, revisiting the Situationist International appears to be one of the most urgent tasks that any attentive observer of the effects of the French “intellectual revolution” must fulfil in order to explain the cultural synchronicities and mutual interdependencies between the European (Leftist) cultural revolutions of the 20 th century. On the one hand, the S.I. explicitly aimed to overcome the collapse of May ’68, considered an aborted and failed revolution, by engaging a radical agenda for the reformation of the so-called “society of the spectacle”, ideologically framed by Debord. On the other hand, in the light of the Thesis and the multiple manifestos that the S.I. movement developed as a cultural program, the ex-partisans of Lettrism conceived their social and political measures, supported by artistic productions, as an intended and necessary radicalization of capitalist detours , at the end of which society emerges from “constructed lived situations” through which individuals can resist to alienation and to the consequences of commodity fetishism that expresses the mediation of social relations through consumption objects. There through, in the first part of my article I will explain the manner in which the S.I. ideologically puzzled a set of objectives, concepts and methods inspired by the Marxist thought and the May ’68 program, as main coordinates that prepare the axiological radicalization developed by Situationism as a two folded-process of political and artistic radicalism. The second part of this research endeavours to reframe the cultural and artistic coordinates of Situationism in order to explain it as one of the last and, arguably, most politicized, avant-gardes of the 20 th century.
RapidRoute: Fast Assembly of Communication Structures for FPGA Overlays

We can implement relocatable, bus-based communication structures on Xilinx FPGAs using RapidWright while delivering competitive frequency, single digit speedups in execution time, and orders of magnitude reduction in memory usage over Xilinx Vivado 2017.2. We develop RapidRoute, a custom router that exploits symmetry in placement and routing of bus endpoints, caching of reusable route segments, selective multi-threading of the router engine, and abutment-friendly tiling heuristics. The key idea is to reduce the amount of work necessary to generate these communication structures through the use of search heuristics, parallelism, and reuse. We are able to outperform Vivado router by as much as 8× for topologies ranging from 1D rings, torii, and meshes, while taking 1000× lower memory footprint, and delivering timing with 0.2ns of Vivado. RapidRoute opens the door to building a family of custom routing tools for constructing FPGA overlays for various application domains.
Automation of “ground truth” annotation for multi-view RGB-D object instance recognition datasets

Aiming at reducing the labour intensity associated with the acquisition of ground truth annotations for object instance recognition datasets, this paper discusses a novel multi-view recognition method to automate the annotation (object instances and associated poses) of individual images in multi-view RGB-D datasets. In combination with recent single-view object recognition techniques, the supplementary information provided by multiple vantage points results in a rich and integrated representation of the environment, in the form of a 3D reconstructed scene as well as object hypotheses therein. We argue that such a representation facilitates improved recognition to an extent that the recovered results, obtained by means of a suitable 3D hypotheses verification stage, closely resemble the ground truth of the scene under consideration. On two large datasets, totalling more than 3500 object instances, our method yields 99.1% and 93.2% correct automatic annotations. These results corroborate our approach for the task at hand.
Uniform Strategies

: We consider turn-based game arenas for which we investigate uniformity properties of strategies. These properties involve bundles of plays, that arise from some semantical motive. Typically, we can represent constraints on allowed strategies, such as being observation-based. We propose a formal language to specify uniformity properties and demonstrate its relevance by rephrasing various known problems from the literature. Note that the ability to correlate diﬀerent plays cannot be achieved by any branching-time logic if not equipped with an additional modality, so-called R in this contribution. We also study an automated procedure to synthesize strategies subject to a uniformity property, which strictly extends existing results based on, say standard temporal logics. We exhibit a generic solution for the synthesis problem provided the bundles of plays rely on any binary relation deﬁnable by a ﬁnite state transducer. This solution yields a non-elementary procedure.
The Effect of WiFi Ofﬂoading on Pricing Wireless Services

WiFi oﬄoading has been recently proposed as a cost-eﬀective solution for coming up against the unprecedented increase in the mobile data traﬃc volume. However, apart from reducing the operational costs of a network operator, WiFi oﬄoading can be also promoted as an alternative low-cost access service for users with low willingness-to-pay. In this paper, we consider a monopolistic scenario of a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) oﬀering LTE and WiFi access services and ﬁnd the optimal pricing decisions. We further illustrate that the presence of reluctant users to switch to the WiFi service could increase the proﬁts of the MVNO.
Efficient Double Basis Semi-systolic Multipliers over GF(2m) Using Coupled Polynomials

In finite field, the best choice of the polynomial basis (PB)multiplication is selected by a sparse irreducible polynomialto obtain advantageous space and time complexity. In thispaper, we introduce a new polynomial basis representation,called the coupled polynomial basis (CPB). By using thisbasis representation, the irreducible polynomial can beconverted into F ? £U ? , where ? 1 and? This polynomial is called the coupledpolynomial. The modified polynomials are abundant, and area half of the Hamming weight as compared with the originalpolynomials. Here combining the relation of PB and CPB, weobtain low-complexity semi-systolic double basis multiplieras compared with existing multipliers.
Infant Feeding Websites and Apps: A Systematic Assessment of Quality and Content

Background Internet websites and smartphone apps have become a popular resource to guide parents in their children’s feeding and nutrition. Given the diverse range of websites and apps on infant feeding, the quality of information in these resources should be assessed to identify whether consumers have access to credible and reliable information. Objective This systematic analysis provides perspectives on the information available about infant feeding on websites and smartphone apps. Methods A systematic analysis was conducted to assess the quality, comprehensibility, suitability, and readability of websites and apps on infant feeding using a developed tool. Google and Bing were used to search for websites from Australia, while the App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android were used to search for apps. Specified key words including baby feeding, breast feeding, formula feeding and introducing solids were used to assess websites and apps addressing feeding advice. Criteria for assessing the accuracy of the content were developed using the Australian Infant Feeding Guidelines. Results A total of 600 websites and 2884 apps were screened, and 44 websites and 46 apps met the selection criteria and were analyzed. Most of the websites (26/44) and apps (43/46) were noncommercial, some websites (10/44) and 1 app were commercial and there were 8 government websites; 2 apps had university endorsement. The majority of the websites and apps were rated poor quality. There were two websites that had 100% coverage of information compared to those rated as fair or poor that had low coverage. Two-thirds of the websites (65%) and almost half of the apps (47%) had a readability level above the 8th grade level. Conclusions The findings of this unique analysis highlight the potential for website and app developers to merge user requirements with evidence-based content to ensure that information on infant feeding is of high quality. There are currently no apps available to consumers that address a variety of infant feeding topics. To keep up with the rapid turnover of the evolving technology, health professionals need to consider developing an app that will provide consumers with a credible and reliable source of information about infant feeding, using quality assessment tools and evidence-based content.
High scale IVC & RVC over Bluetooth

Without any stationary infrastructure or centralized operation or management if there is a communication between two movable or fixed collaborative way of network is the Ad or between vehicle and nearby fixed equipment, normally said to be road side equipments is the Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET ) which is a sub concept of Mobile Ad to be Intelligent VANET. It incorporates the ad effective and efficient communication between vehicles on process shows optimum performance in the nearest areas and on roads as well as low and high density areas. To enlighten these points here the analysis of some of the important metrics is described. in VANET is assumed to be an intelligent device with abilities of communicating with its neighbors and other vehicles in the network. While assigning a unique address to vehicle depends on mobility pattern. Here a centralized addressing scheme for behind the same single Hoping and Multi Hopping technique is discussed.
Circuit-extension handshakes for Tor achieving forward secrecy in a quantum world

Abstract We propose a circuit extension handshake for Tor that is forward secure against adversaries who gain quantum computing capabilities after session negotiation. In doing so, we refine the notion of an authenticated and confidential channel establishment (ACCE) protocol and define pre-quantum, transitional, and post-quantum ACCE security. These new definitions reflect the types of adversaries that a protocol might be designed to resist. We prove that, with some small modifications, the currently deployed Tor circuit extension handshake, ntor, provides pre-quantum ACCE security. We then prove that our new protocol, when instantiated with a post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism, achieves the stronger notion of transitional ACCE security. Finally, we instantiate our protocol with NTRU-Encrypt and provide a performance comparison between ntor, our proposal, and the recent design of Ghosh and Kate.
Metaplastic Changes in Chronic Cholecystitis: Implications for Early Diagnosis and Surgical Intervention to Prevent the Gallbladder Metaplasia-Dysplasia-Carcinoma Sequence

Background Metaplastic features of the gallbladder epithelium are considered to be the precursors of gallbladder cancer. Considering the possible role of chronic inflammatory changes in the development of these lesions and the rationale for performing an early prophylactic cholecystectomy, we performed a retrospective study to assess the prevalence of gallbladder metaplasia in patients who underwent cholecystectomy due to underlying cholelithiasis. Methods We reviewed the routine histopathology reports of 86 patients with chronic cholecystitis, who underwent elective cholecystectomy, to assess the prevalence of gallbladder metaplasia in the course of chronic cholecystitis. We further attempted to evaluate the existence of any correlations between the presence of the gallbladder metaplasia and the type of lithiasis, as well as the gallbladder wall thickness. Results The overall prevalence of metaplastic features in the resected specimens was 25.6%. Dysplastic changes were more frequent in gallbladder specimens with concurrent metaplasia. Moreover, in presence of metaplastic changes, we observed an increase of the average gallbladder wall thickness. Finally, metaplastic and dysplastic changes were associated with the presence of micro-lithiasis rather than macro-lithiasis. Conclusions Gallbladder metaplastic changes appear to be more frequent in cases of micro-lithiasis and seem to be associated with a chronic thickening of the gallbladder wall. Taking into account the usually sub-clinical course of this group of patients, when compared to patients with macro-lithiasis, further studies are needed to evaluate a possible role of prophylactic cholecystectomy in this population to prevent the long term evolution of these early changes to cancerous lesions.
Linear Current-to-Time Converter

In this work, a new current-to-time converter (CDC) based on current-starved inverter is proposed. The time delay of the output pulse edges is linearly proportional to a control current. The benefits of the proposed topology are simple circuit topology, linear current-to-time characteristic with positive or negative slope for both rising and falling edges. The circuit is designed and tested using 0.35um CMOS process under 3V supply voltage. The linearity error is less than 2.1% in a range of 5nsec of time delays with a clock frequency of 50MHz.
Ontologies in Biological Data Visualization

In computer science, an ontology is essentially a graph-based knowledge representation in which each node corresponds to a concept and each edge specifies a relation between two concepts. Ontological development in biology can serve as a focus to discuss the challenges and possible research directions for ontologies in visualization. The principle challenges are the dynamic and evolving nature of ontologies, the ever-present issue of scale, the diversity and richness of the relationships in ontologies, and the need to better understand the relationship between ontologies and the data analysis tasks scientists wish to support. Research directions include visualizing ontologies; visualizing semantically or ontologically annotated texts, documents, and corpora; automated generation of visualizations using ontologies; and visualizing ontological context to support search. Although this discussion uses issues of ontologies in biological data visualization as a springboard, these topics are of general relevance to visualization.
Detection and Tracking of Very Small Low Contrast Objects

We present a Kalman tracking algorithm that can track a number of very small, low contrast objects through an image sequence taken from a static camera. The issues that we have addressed to achieve this are twofold. Firstly, the detection of small objects comprising a few pixels only, moving slowly in the image, and secondly, tracking of multiple small targets even though they may be lost either through occlusion or in noisy signal. The approach uses a combination of wavelet filtering for detection with an interest operator for testing multiple target hypotheses based within the framework of a Kalman tracker. We demonstrate the robustness of the approach to occlusion and for multiple targets.
Visibility Improvement by Detail Eenhancement on Medical Images

Improving visibility on medical images is crucially important for facilitating diagnostic accuracy. We propose a method which aims at improving visibility on medical images by means of detail enhancement. The core techniques we employ to achieve detail enhancement are coefficient estimation and coefficient refinement, and all are manipulated in wavelet domain. Our method enables visually hidden information to be revealed and blurred texture to be restored without significantly altering averaged optical density and dynamic range of medical images. Moreover, the proposed method enables the level for detail enhancement to be scalably selectable, through which an optimally enhanced image can be obtained for viewer¡¦s reference.
Delay Estimation for On-Chip VLSI Interconnect using Weibull Distribution Function

In deep sub-micrometer (DSM) regime the on-chip interconnect delay is significantly more dominating than the gate delay. Several approaches have been proposed to capture the interconnect delay accurately and efficiently. By interpreting the impulse response of a linear circuit as a probability distribution function (PDF), Elmore first estimated the interconnect delay. Several other approaches like PRIMO, AWE, h-Gamma, WED, D2M etc. have been reported so far, which are shown to be more accurate delay estimation compared to Elmore delay metric. But they suffer from computational complexity when using in the total IC design processes. Our work presents a closed form formula for interconnect delay. The delay metric is derived by matching circuit moments to the Weibull distribution. The delay metric can be easily implemented for both step and ramp inputs by using a single look-up table. Experiments validate the effectiveness of the delay metric for nets from a real industrial design.
Elderly Migration, State Taxes, and What They Reveal ∗

Empirical results obtained from the 2000 Census elderly migration data using a general gravity model of migration flows confirm earlier findings of the ‘same sign problem’ in the literature, which means that the elderly both migrate from and to states where taxes are higher. The same sign problem is mainly an aggregation problem, and it can be attributed to the heterogeneity in public policies across states that attract the most migrants as well as across states that lose the most migrants. We propose that in a state-level aggregated dataset, it is possible to control for heterogeneity in states’ public policies by controlling for some characteristics of either the origin or the destination state. In a gravity equation estimation for elderly migration, when controlled for heterogeneity, the same sign problem fades away, and the gravity equation shows clearer patterns for elderly migration. In particular, local amenities, tax exemptions, and low inheritance taxes are shown to be significant variables in attracting the elderly into a state.
Yin Yang 1 extends the Myc-related transcription factors network in embryonic stem cells

The Yin Yang 1 (YY1) transcription factor is a master regulator of development, essential for early embryogenesis and adult tissues formation. YY1 is the mammalian orthologue of Pleiohomeotic, one of the transcription factors that binds Polycomb DNA response elements in Drosophila melanogaster and mediates Polycomb group proteins (PcG) recruitment to DNA. Despite several publications pointing at YY1 having a similar role in mammalians, others showed features of YY1 that are not compatible with PcG functions. Here, we show that, in mouse Embryonic Stem (ES) cells, YY1 has genome-wide PcG-independent activities while it is still stably associated with the INO80 chromatin-remodeling complex, as well as with novel RNA helicase activities. YY1 binds chromatin in close proximity of the transcription start site of highly expressed genes. Loss of YY1 functions preferentially led to a down-regulation of target genes expression, as well as to an up-regulation of several small non-coding RNAs, suggesting a role for YY1 in regulating small RNA biogenesis. Finally, we found that YY1 is a novel player of Myc-related transcription factors and that its coordinated binding at promoters potentiates gene expression, proposing YY1 as an active component of the Myc transcription network that links ES to cancer cells.