Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identication of Independent Kinematic Regions of the Face during Speech Production

This paper reports our progress on the empirical modeling of facial biomechanics during speech pro- duction. Our model is based on decomposing the fa- cial surface into anite set of linearly independent kinematic regions, which is used as a basis to rep- resent the total facial motion. The main algorithm, based on the column-pivoted QR factorization, is re- viewed and compared to other techniques commonly used in statistical regression. The results show that the former technique is more robust to variations in the speech data, and detects regions with a higher measure of independency.
Association of PER2 Genotype and Stressful Life Events with Alcohol Drinking in Young Adults

Background Clock genes govern circadian rhythms and shape the effect of alcohol use on the physiological system. Exposure to severe negative life events is related to both heavy drinking and disturbed circadian rhythmicity. The aim of this study was 1) to extend previous findings suggesting an association of a haplotype tagging single nucleotide polymorphism of PER2 gene with drinking patterns, and 2) to examine a possible role for an interaction of this gene with life stress in hazardous drinking. Methods Data were collected as part of an epidemiological cohort study on the outcome of early risk factors followed since birth. At age 19 years, 268 young adults (126 males, 142 females) were genotyped for PER2 rs56013859 and were administered a 45-day alcohol timeline follow-back interview and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Life stress was assessed as the number of severe negative life events during the past four years reported in a questionnaire and validated by interview. Results Individuals with the minor G allele of rs56013859 were found to be less engaged in alcohol use, drinking at only 72% of the days compared to homozygotes for the major A allele. Moreover, among regular drinkers, a gene x environment interaction emerged (p = .020). While no effects of genotype appeared under conditions of low stress, carriers of the G allele exhibited less hazardous drinking than those homozygous for the A allele when exposed to high stress. Conclusions These findings may suggest a role of the circadian rhythm gene PER2 in both the drinking patterns of young adults and in moderating the impact of severe life stress on hazardous drinking in experienced alcohol users. However, in light of the likely burden of multiple tests, the nature of the measures used and the nominal evidence of interaction, replication is needed before drawing firm conclusions.
Reasoning about State Constraints in the Situation Calculus

In dynamic systems, state constraints are formulas that hold in every reachable state. It has been shown that state constraints can be used to greatly reduce the planning search space. They are also useful in program verification. In this paper, we propose a sound but incomplete method for automatic verification and discovery of ∀*∃* state constraints for a class of action theories that include many planning benchmarks. Our method is formulated in the situation calculus, theoretically based on Skolemization and Herbrand Theorem, and implemented with SAT solvers. Basically, we verify a state constraint by strengthening it in a novel and smart way so that it becomes a state invariant. We experimented with the blocks world, logistics and satellite domains, and the results showed that, almost all known state constraints can be verified in a reasonable amount of time, and meanwhile succinct and intuitive related state constraints are discovered.
File repair with cluster based distributed storage system

Heteregenous distributed storage systems consists of nodes which have different CPU powers and communication bandwiths while erasure codes that are commonly used on them significantly vary in their use of these resources. Clustering the nodes of a distributed storage system based on the resource costs and assigning appropriate erasure codes to each cluster can improve the performance of file repair operations. A simulaton study shows that this approach can reduce file repair costs somewhere between 6 percent to 44 percent by dividing nodes in three clusters and using HSRC, EMBR and HMBR erasure codes on these clusters.
Hydrogen Peroxide Induces a Long‐Lasting Inhibition of the Ca2+‐Dependent Glutamate Release in Cerebrocortical Synaptosomes Without Interfering with Cytosolic Ca2+

Abstract: We studied the action of H2O2 on the exocytosis of glutamate by cerebrocortical synaptosomes. The treatment of synaptosomes with H2O2 (50–150 µM) for a few minutes results in a long‐lasting depression of the Ca2+‐dependent exocytosis of glutamate, induced by KCl or by the K+‐channel inhibitor 4‐aminopyridine. The energy state of synaptosomes, as judged by the level of phosphocreatine and the ATP/ADP ratio, was not affected by H2O2, although a transient decrease was observed after the treatment. H2O2 did not promote peroxidation, as judged by the formation of malondialdehyde. In indo‐1‐loaded synaptosomes, the treatment with H2O2 did not modify significantly the KCl‐induced increase of [Ca2+]i. H2O2 inhibited exocytosis also when the latter was induced by increasing [Ca2+]i with the Ca2+ ionophore ionomycin. The effects of H2O2 were unchanged in the presence of superoxide dismutase and the presence of the Fe3+ chelator deferoxamine. These results appear to indicate that H2O2, apparently without damaging the synaptosomes, induces a long‐lasting inhibition of the exocytosis of glutamate by acting directly on the exocytotic process.
Fault Tolerance in a Distributed CHORUS/MiX System

Within a distributed system, resources may be shared between nodes. The system should continue to operate even if individual nodes fail due to hardware or software errors. This may result in the loss of resources that were hosted on the failed node, but it may be possible to continue to provide access to some resources by hosting them on another node. This paper describes mechanisms that allow the failover of resources from failed nodes. Failover is currently restricted to disk volumes and file systems. The failover mechanisms maintain the correct semantics at the UNIX system call level for operations from surviving nodes that were in progress at the time of the failure, including non-idempotent operations. Minimal resource and performance overheads are imposed for the normal running case, and in contrast to replication techniques, state is recovered and rebuilt at the time of a failover.
Indirect excitons in a potential energy landscape created by a perforated electrode

We report on the principle and realization of an excitonic device: a ramp that directs the transport of indirect excitons down a potential energy gradient created by a perforated electrode at constant voltage. The device provides an experimental proof of principle for controlling exciton transport with electrode density gradients. We observed that the exciton transport distance along the ramp increases with increasing exciton density. This effect is explained in terms of disorder screening by repulsive exciton-exciton interactions.
Otorhinolaryngologic manifestations of leprosy

Leprosy is often looked upon with dread because of its propensity to cause deformities and disabilities, with resultant stigmatization, and continues to be an important health problem in several parts of the developing world. According to World Health Organization (WHO) data, at the beginning of 2005, the global registered prevalence of leprosy was more than 286,000, and the number of new cases detected during 2004 was over 407,000. Of these, 47% were multibacillary cases, and 4% had severe disabilities. 1 Full control of leprosy has eluded attempts in many countries including India, Nepal, and Brazil. The causative organism, Mycobacterium leprae , infects mucosal, peripheral neural, and reticuloendothelial tissues. Depending on their immune response to the bacillus, patients present with different clinicopathologic manifestations, namely polar tuberculoid or lepromatous, borderline tuberculoid or lepromatous, mid-borderline, and pure neuritic forms. The most common manifestations of leprosy are hypoesthetic skin patches, cutaneous infiltration, peripheral nerve thickening, and “glove and stocking” sensory loss. Trophic ulcers, paralytic deformities, and resorption of extremities lead to the final picture of the polar lepromatous form of leprosy. Advanced lepromatous leprosy can involve most organs in the body, including structures in the ear, nose, and throat. Fortunately, the more advanced manifestations of otorhinolaryngologic involvement are becoming less common with the widespread use of multidrug therapy, but subtler presentations may be missed if not looked for.
Neural correlate of subjective sensory experience gradually builds up across cortical areas

When a sensory stimulus is presented, many cortical areas are activated, but how does the representation of a sensory stimulus evolve in time and across cortical areas during a perceptual judgment? We investigated this question by analyzing the responses from single neurons, recorded in several cortical areas of parietal and frontal lobes, while trained monkeys reported the presence or absence of a mechanical vibration of varying amplitude applied to the skin of one fingertip. Here we show that the strength of the covariations between neuronal activity and perceptual judgments progressively increases across cortical areas as the activity is transmitted from the primary somatosensory cortex to the premotor areas of the frontal lobe. This finding suggests that the neuronal correlates of subjective sensory experience gradually build up across somatosensory areas of the parietal lobe and premotor cortices of the frontal lobe.
Two-level bargain game for spectrum leasing in cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, when the primary user (PU) who has a minimum transmission rate requirement is experiencing a bad channel condition, it can resort to the cooperation with the secondary users (SUs) in exchange for a fraction of its licensed spectrum. However, due to the selfish nature, the SUs may not act as cooperatively as to meet the PU's Quality of Service (QoS) requirement. On the other hand, the SUs may not exploit efficiently the benefit from cooperation if they compete with each other and collaborate with the PU independently. Therefore, how to stimulate the SUs to form a group to cooperate with the PU while guarantee the PU's QoS requirement are critical challenges. In this paper, we propose a two-level bargain framework to address the aforementioned problems. In the proposed framework, the interaction between the PU and the SUs are modeled as the first level bargain game while the second level bargain game is used to formulate the SUs' decision making process on spectrum sharing. We analyze the optimal actions of the PU and the SU and derive the theoretic results for the one-PU one-SU scenario. To find the solutions for the one-PU multi-SU scenario, we propose a revised numerical searching algorithm and prove its convergence. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme through simulations.
Degenerative Changes in the Ligamentum Teres of the Hip: Cadaveric Study With Magnetic Resonance Arthrography, Anatomical Inspection, and Histologic Examination

Objective: Review and classify the pathologic abnormalities of the ligamentum teres in degenerative hip joints. Material and Methods: Eleven cadaveric hip joints were examined with magnetic resonance arthrography and were then sectioned. The appearance of the ligamentum teres and its attachment seen by inspection of the anatomical sections was correlated with findings seen at magnetic resonance imaging. Histologic evaluation was done. Results: Magnetic resonance arthrographic and histologic findings showed a spectrum of ligamentum teres degeneration. The thickest ligamentum teres revealed mucoid and fibromatous degeneration with microscopic tear. Ligamentum teres with intermediate thickness revealed fatty replacement with and without fibromatous degeneration, fibromatous degeneration with and without mucoid degeneration, and eosinophilic change. The thinnest ligamentum teres was near-complete disruption of the ligament. Conclusions: The ligamentum teres revealed degenerative changes that were similar histologically to degenerative changes in tendons. Magnetic resonance arthrography provided a sensitive technique for demonstration of the ligamentum teres and various patterns of degeneration.
Risk factors for fetal macrosomia: the importance of a positive oral glucose challenge test.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate whether minor abnormalities of glucose metabolism without gestational diabetes are a risk factor for fetal overgrowth. DESIGN A sample of 1883 unselected white mother-infant pairs were screened for gestational diabetes using a 50 g 1-h oral glucose challenge test (GCT) in two periods of pregnancy: early (16-20 weeks) and late (26-30 weeks). METHODS The effects of risk factors (glucose metabolism, previous history of mothers, obesity, multiparity and age of mothers) were estimated using a multinomial logit model. RESULTS The level of risk was related to gestational age at the appearance of an abnormal GCT. Patients with an abnormal GCT in the early and late periods of pregnancy (Group 1) had a risk of delivering a large for gestational age (LGA) infant seven times higher than the control group (normal GCT in both periods), and patients with a normal GCT in the early period and an abnormal GCT in the late period (Group 2) showed a risk three times higher than the control group. Among the historical risk factors for LGA infants, such as maternal obesity, multiparity, previous gestational diabetes and previous delivery of an infant weighing 4000 g or more, only the latter was associated with fetal overgrowth with a risk level 4.7 higher than the control group. Group 1 patients had a significantly higher incidence of pregnancy-induced hypertension and preterm birth. There were no differences in the frequency of 5-min Apgar score < 7 and metabolic complications among the infants of all groups. We found a significantly higher rate of shoulder dystocia in Group 1 infants than in infants in the other groups. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that a positive GCT at 26-30 weeks is the most important risk factor for fetal overgrowth. This result was strongly enforced in patients who had also shown a positive early GCT at 16-20 weeks.
Decision-Making With Potentially Biased Advisors

With the world full of situations in which information that is potentially useful to decision-making is dispersed among various individuals, research into how this information can be efficiently shared has been the focus of a large body of research in recent years. Intuitively, it seems that even the most self-interested agents would benefit from sharing at least some of their private information, and by considering the sender-receiver game, the simplest Bayesian game with communication, it is possible to examine this belief. Previous research has studied the sender-receiver game in detail in order to characterize the associated equilibrium and determine properties of optimal decision-making strategies. However, a key assumption among current literature is that both players know the preference divergence between the sender and receiver, but this is not always true. In order to close the gap in research that currently exists, this paper examines the sender-receiver game when the preference divergence is unknown to the receiver, but in a situation when commitment to a mechanism is possible. The results reveal that any optimal mechanism maximizing the expected utility of the receiver must take a rather simple form in which he chooses the sender’s favorite action in general, but if the recommendation is above or below a certain threshold, the decision rule becomes independent of the information. The results have many real-world implications and suggest that when commitment is possible, even when the receiver doesn’t know how great the preference divergence is, expected utilities, a priori, can be increased. The analysis also suggests that disclosure of preferences by the sender may actually decrease expected outcomes. JEL classification: C; C7; C79; D; D8; D81; D82; D83; D84.
Representation and Inference for Open-Domain QA: Strength and Limits of two Italian Semantic Lexicons

The paper reports on the results of the exploitation of two Italian lexicons (ItalWordNet and SIMPLE-CLIPS) in an Open-Domain Question Answering application for Italian. The intent is to analyse the behavior of the lexicons in application in order to understand what are their limits and points of strength. The final aim of the paper is contributing to the debate about usefulness of computational lexicons in NLP, by providing evidence from the point of view of a particular application.
Vertebrate ancient opsin and melanopsin: divergent irradiance detectors

Both vertebrates and invertebrates respond to light by utilising a wide-ranging array of photosensory systems, with diverse photoreceptor organs expressing a characteristic photopigment, itself consisting of an opsin apoprotein linked to a light-sensitive retinoid chromophore based on vitamin A. In the eye, the pigments expressed in both cone and rod photoreceptors have been studied in great depth and mediate contrast perception, measurement of the spectral composition of environmental light, and thus classical image forming vision. By contrast, the molecular basis for non-visual and extraocular photoreception is far less understood; however, two photopigment genes have become the focus of much study, the vertebrate ancient ( va ) opsin and melanopsin ( opn4 ). In this review, we discuss the history of discovery for each gene, as well as focusing on the evolution, expression profile, functional role and broader physiological significance of each photopigment. Recently, it has been suggested independently by Arendt et al. and Lamb that an ancestral opsin bifurcated in early metazoans and evolved into two quite different photopigments, one expressed in rhabdomeric photoreceptors and the other in ciliary photoreceptors. This interpretation of the evolution of the metazoan eye has provided a powerful framework for understanding photobiological organization. Their proposal, however, does not encompass all current experimental observations that would be consistent with what we term a central “ Evolution of Photosensory Opsins with Common Heredity (EPOCH) ” hypothesis to explain the complexity of animal photosensory systems. Clearly, many opsin genes ( e.g. va opsin) simply do not fit neatly within this scheme. Thus, the review concludes with a discussion of these anomalies and their context regarding the phylogeny of photoreceptor and photopigment development.
Cardiovascular events associated with rofecoxib in a colorectal adenoma chemoprevention trial.

BACKGROUND Selective inhibition of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) may be associated with an increased risk of thrombotic events, but only limited long-term data have been available for analysis. We report on the cardiovascular outcomes associated with the use of the selective COX-2 inhibitor rofecoxib in a long-term, multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial designed to determine the effect of three years of treatment with rofecoxib on the risk of recurrent neoplastic polyps of the large bowel in patients with a history of colorectal adenomas. METHODS A total of 2586 patients with a history of colorectal adenomas underwent randomization: 1287 were assigned to receive 25 mg of rofecoxib daily, and 1299 to receive placebo. All investigator-reported serious adverse events that represented potential thrombotic cardiovascular events were adjudicated in a blinded fashion by an external committee. RESULTS A total of 46 patients in the rofecoxib group had a confirmed thrombotic event during 3059 patient-years of follow-up (1.50 events per 100 patient-years), as compared with 26 patients in the placebo group during 3327 patient-years of follow-up (0.78 event per 100 patient-years); the corresponding relative risk was 1.92 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.19 to 3.11; P=0.008). The increased relative risk became apparent after 18 months of treatment; during the first 18 months, the event rates were similar in the two groups. The results primarily reflect a greater number of myocardial infarctions and ischemic cerebrovascular events in the rofecoxib group. There was earlier separation (at approximately five months) between groups in the incidence of nonadjudicated investigator-reported congestive heart failure, pulmonary edema, or cardiac failure (hazard ratio for the comparison of the rofecoxib group with the placebo group, 4.61; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.50 to 18.83). Overall and cardiovascular mortality was similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Among patients with a history of colorectal adenomas, the use of rofecoxib was associated with an increased cardiovascular risk.
The new england journal of medicine Effect of Early versus Deferred Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV on Survival

Mari M. Kitahata, M.D., M.P.H. , Stephen J. Gange, Ph.D., Alison G. Abraham, Ph.D., Barry Merriman, M.A., Michael S. Saag, M.D., Amy C. Justice, M.D., Ph.D., Robert S. Hogg, Ph.D., Steven G. Deeks, M.D., Joseph J. Eron, M.D., John T. Brooks, M.D., Sean B. Rourke, Ph.D., M. John Gill, M.B. , Ch.B. , Ronald J. Bosch, Ph.D., Jeffrey N. Martin, M.D., M.P.H. , Marina B. Klein, M.D., Lisa P. Jacobson, Sc.D. , Benigno Rodriguez, M.D., Timothy R. Sterling, M.D., Gregory D. Kirk, M.D., Ph.D., Sonia Napravnik, Ph.D., Anita R. Rachlis, M.D., Liviana M. Calzavara, Ph.D., Michael A. Horberg, M.D., Michael J. Silverberg, Ph.D., Kelly A. Gebo, M.D., M.P.H. , James J. Goedert, M.D., Constance A. Benson, M.D., Ann C. Collier, M.D., Stephen E. Van Rompaey, Ph.D., Heidi M. Crane, M.D., M.P.H. , Rosemary G. McKaig, Ph.D., Bryan Lau, Ph.D., Aimee M. Freeman, M.A., and Richard D. Moore, M.D., for the NA-ACCORD Investigators*
BeBoP: A cost effective predictor infrastructure for superscalar value prediction

Up to recently, it was considered that a performance-effective implementation of Value Prediction (VP) would add tremendous complexity and power consumption in the pipeline, especially in the Out-of-Order engine and the predictor infrastructure. Despite recent progress in the field of Value Prediction, this remains partially true. Indeed, if the recent EOLE architecture proposition suggests that the OoO engine need not be altered to accommodate VP, complexity in the predictor infrastructure itself is still problematic. First, multiple predictions must be generated each cycle, but multi-ported structures should be avoided. Second, the predictor should be small enough to be considered for implementation, yet coverage must remain high enough to increase performance. To address these remaining concerns, we first propose a block-based value prediction scheme mimicking current instruction fetch mechanisms, BeBoP. It associates the predicted values with a fetch block rather than distinct instructions. Second, to remedy the storage issue, we present the Differential VTAGE predictor. This new tightly coupled hybrid predictor covers instructions predictable by both VTAGE and Stride-based value predictors, and its hardware cost and complexity can be made similar to those of a modern branch predictor. Third, we show that block-based value prediction allows to implement the checkpointing mechanism needed to provide D-VTAGE with last computed/predicted values at moderate cost. Overall, we establish that EOLE with a 32.8KB block-based D-VTAGE predictor and a 4-issue OoO engine can significantly outperform a baseline 6-issue superscalar processor, by up to 62.2% and 11.2% on average (gmean), on our benchmark set.