Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Membrane capacitance in frog cut twitch fibers mounted in a double vaseline-gap chamber

In experiments on cut muscle fibers mounted in a double Vaseline-gap chamber, electrical measurements are usually made by measuring the voltage V1(t) in one end pool and by passing current I2(t) from the other end pool to the central pool, which is usually clamped to earth potential. The voltage in the current-passing end pool is denoted by V2(t). This article describes how the value of the holding current, Ih, and the values of delta V2(infinity)/delta V1(infinity) and delta I2(infinity)/delta V1(infinity) that are associated with a small change in V1(t) can be used to estimate the linear cable parameters rm, ri, and re in a cut fiber that has been equilibrated with a Cs-containing internal solution. rm, ri, and re represent, respectively, the resistance of the plasma membranes, the internal longitudinal resistance, and the external longitudinal resistance under the Vaseline seals, all for a unit length of fiber. The apparent capacitance, Capp, of the preparation is defined to equal integral of infinity 0 delta I2,tr(t) dt/delta V1(infinity), in which delta I2,tr(t) represents the transient component of current that is associated with a change in V1(t) of amplitude delta V1(infinity). A method is described to estimate cm, the capacitance of the plasma membranes per unit length of fiber, from Capp and the values of rm, ri, and re. In experiments carried out with a tetraethylammonium chloride (TEA.Cl) solution at 13- 14 degrees C in the central pool, cm remained stable for as long as 3-4 h. The values of cm, 0.19 microF/cm on average, and their variation with fiber diameter are similar to published results from intact fibers. This article also describes the different pathways that are taken by the current that flows from the current-passing end pool to the central pool. Approximately two-thirds of delta I2,tr(t) flows across the capacitance of the plasma membranes in the central-pool region. The rest flows either across plasma membranes that are under the two Vaseline seals or directly from the current-passing end pool to the central pool, across the external longitudinal resistance under the Vaseline seal. [There is also a current that flows directly from the voltage-measuring end pool to the central pool but this does not contribute to delta I2,tr(t). ]
Simplifying the Management of Large Photo Collections

With digital still cameras, users can easily collect thousands of photos. Our goal is to make organizing and browsing photos simple and quick, while retaining scalability to large collections. To that end, we created a photo management application concentrating on areas that improve the overall experience without neglecting the mundane components of such an application. Our application automatically divides photos into meaningful events such as birthdays or trips. Several user interaction mechanisms enhance the user experience when organizing photos. Our application combines a light table for showing thumbnails of the entire photo collection with a tree view that supports navigating, sorting, and filtering photos by categories such as dates, events, people, and locations. A calendar view visualizes photos over time and allows for the quick assignment of dates to scanned photos. We fine-tuned our application by using it with large personal photo collections provided by several users.
HIV Controllers with HLA-DRB1*13 and HLA-DQB1*06 Alleles Have Strong, Polyfunctional Mucosal CD4+ T-Cell Responses

ABSTRACT A small percentage of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals, termed elite controllers, are able to spontaneously control HIV replication in blood. As the gastrointestinal mucosa is an important site of HIV transmission and replication as well as CD4+ T-cell depletion, it is important to understand the nature of the immune responses occurring in this compartment. Although the role of the HIV-specific CD8+ T-cell responses in mucosal tissues has been described, few studies have investigated the role of mucosal HIV-specific CD4+ T cells. In this study, we assessed HIV-specific CD4+ T-cell responses in the rectal mucosa of 28 “controllers” (viral load [VL] of <2,000 copies/ml), 14 “noncontrollers” (VL of >10,000 copies/ml), and 10 individuals on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) (VL of <75 copies/ml). Controllers had higher-magnitude Gag-specific mucosal CD4+ T-cell responses than individuals on HAART (P < 0.05), as measured by their ability to produce gamma interferon (IFN-γ), interleukin-2 (IL-2), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and macrophage inflammatory protein 1β (MIP-1β). The frequency of polyfunctional mucosal CD4+ T cells was also higher in controllers than in noncontrollers or individuals on HAART (P < 0.05). Controllers with the strongest HIV-specific CD4+ T-cell responses possessed class II HLA alleles, HLA-DRB1*13 and/or HLA-DQB1*06, previously associated with a nonprogression phenotype. Strikingly, individuals with both HLA-DRB1*13 and HLA-DQB1*06 had highly polyfunctional mucosal CD4+ T cells compared to individuals with HLA-DQB1*06 alone or other class II alleles. The frequency of polyfunctional CD4+ T cells in rectal mucosa positively correlated with the magnitude of the mucosal CD8+ T-cell response (Spearman's r = 0.43, P = 0.005), suggesting that increased CD4+ T-cell “help” may be important in maintaining strong CD8+ T-cell responses in the gut of HIV controllers.
STATISTICAL MODELING OF LOW-LATITUDE LONG-DISTANCE HF IONOSPHERIC MULTI-MODE CHANNELS

Studies have been reported in the literature on High Frequency (HF) radio channels in mid-latitude areas more frequently than in low latitudes, where the ionospheric channels might behave differently. This paper reports a statistical model of HF sky wave channel complex impulse response and its parameters, i.e., channel gain, path gain, phase shift, and delay spread statistics, derived from both simulation and measurement on a 3044 km link in Indonesia. Evaluations show that multipaths observed with respect to their propagation delays form multiple clusters corresponding to different propagation modes. The channel gain is found to be Rayleigh distributed, whereas the rms and maximum delay spread exhibit Rayleigh and Gaussian distributions, respectively. This model can be used in performance evaluation of digital communication schemes in low-latitude HF channels.
McFTP: A Framework to Explore and Prototype Multi-core Thermal Managements on Real Processors

Nowadays, multi-core processor architectures have been widely adopted in main domains e.g., embedded, general-purpose, real-time systems, etc. Diverse thermal managements have been proposed to manage the temperature under various constraints. This has made the selection of the right thermal management policy difficult. Designers need to validate any resource distribution decision in design phase on the target architecture, e.g., by using a re-configurable thermal framework running in the user-space. In this paper, we first analyze the requirements that such a framework should satisfy. Then, we propose McFTP: a thermal framework fulfilling all the requirements. For this purpose, an intermediate interface is defined to isolate thermal management policies from the low-level implementations. A set of commonly used temperature control mechanisms are implemented as a library which can be accessed via the interface. With these features, McFTP can not only implement a thermal management policy at high-level of abstraction, but also execute the user-defined task-set for real thermal evolution. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of McFTP by implementing it with two works in the literature on a Dell hardware platform.
An autonomous pareto optimality achieving algorithm beyond Aloha games with spatial reuse

Aloha games with spatial reuse study the interactions among a group of selfish transmit-receive pairs which share a common collision channel using slotted-Aloha-like protocols. These Tx-Rx pairs are allowed to reuse the channel if they cause negligible interference to each other. Our work in [1] has proved the existence of a Least Fixed Point (LFP) which is the most energy-efficient operating point as well as the unique Nash Equilibrium (NE) in such games. Based on the earlier derived conditions for the stability of this NE and the way to converge to this NE, it is possible to design a self-adaptive algorithm for the players to self-adjust their target rates based on a set of pre-installed rules so that the network always achieves Pareto optimal bandwidth utilization. In this paper, we implement such an algorithm in a fully distributed manner, which requires no information exchange among the players. Each player repeatedly measures its current throughput and uses the measured value to make myopic best response to the current channel idle rate. Our simulations show that the system indeed achieves close to Pareto optimal performance while guaranteeing a certain degree of fairness. The algorithm is robust and can handle various practical issues such as the dynamic arrival/departure of players, parameter estimation errors, etc.
Blind joint angle and frequency estimation based on uniform rectangular acoustic vector sensor array

A novel algorithm has been proposed for joint angle and frequency estimation based on uniform rectangular acoustic vector sensors array. The joint angle and frequency problem is linked to a parafac quadrilinear model. Exploiting this link, it drives a quadrilinaear decomposition-based joint angle and frequency algorithm. This proposed algorithm has improved angle and frequency estimation compared to ESPRIT method and parafac trilinear decomposition method. Simulation results illustrate performance of this algorithm. Keywordsjoint ;angle-frequency estimation; acoustic vector sensors;rectangular array;quadrilinear decomposition
Development of the cerebellum: simple steps to make a ‘little brain’

The cerebellum is a pre-eminent model for the study of neurogenesis and circuit assembly. Increasing interest in the cerebellum as a participant in higher cognitive processes and as a locus for a range of disorders and diseases make this simple yet elusive structure an important model in a number of fields. In recent years, our understanding of some of the more familiar aspects of cerebellar growth, such as its territorial allocation and the origin of its various cell types, has undergone major recalibration. Furthermore, owing to its stereotyped circuitry across a range of species, insights from a variety of species have contributed to an increasingly rich picture of how this system develops. Here, we review these recent advances and explore three distinct aspects of cerebellar development – allocation of the cerebellar anlage, the significance of transit amplification and the generation of neuronal diversity – each defined by distinct regulatory mechanisms and each with special significance for health and disease.
The block-based trace cache

The trace cache is a recently proposed solution to achieving high instruction fetch bandwidth by buffering and reusing dynamic instruction traces. This work presents a new block-based trace cache implementation that can achieve higher IPC performance with more efficient storage of traces. Instead of explicitly storing instructions of a trace, pointers to blocks constituting a trace are stored in a much smaller trace table. The block-based trace cache renames fetch addresses at the basic block level and stores aligned blocks in a block cache. Traces are constructed by accessing the replicated block cache using block pointers from the trace table. Performance potential of the blockbased trace cache is quantified and compared with perfect branch prediction and perfect fetch schemes. Comparing to the conventional trace cache, the block-based design can achieve higher IPC, with less impact on cycle time.
Xist Exon 7 Contributes to the Stable Localization of Xist RNA on the Inactive X-Chromosome

To equalize X-linked gene dosage between the sexes in mammalian females, Xist RNA inactivates one of the two X-chromosomes. Here, we report the crucial function of Xist exon 7 in X-inactivation. Xist exon 7 is the second-largest exon with a well-conserved repeat E in eutherian mammals, but its role is often overlooked in X-inactivation. Although female ES cells with a targeted truncation of the Xist exon 7 showed no significant differences in their Xist expression levels and RNA stability from control cells expressing wild-type Xist, compromised localization of Xist RNA and incomplete silencing of X-linked genes on the inactive X-chromosome (Xi) were observed in the exon 7-truncated mutant cells. Furthermore, the interaction between the mutant Xist RNA and hnRNP U required for localization of Xist RNA to the Xi was impaired in the Xist exon 7 truncation mutant cells. Our results suggest that exon 7 of Xist RNA plays an important role for stable Xist RNA localization and silencing of the X-linked genes on the Xi, possibly acting through an interaction with hnRNP U.
Eye-Hand Coordination during Dynamic Visuomotor Rotations

Background for many technology-driven visuomotor tasks such as tele-surgery, human operators face situations in which the frames of reference for vision and action are misaligned and need to be compensated in order to perform the tasks with the necessary precision. The cognitive mechanisms for the selection of appropriate frames of reference are still not fully understood. This study investigated the effect of changing visual and kinesthetic frames of reference during wrist pointing, simulating activities typical for tele-operations. Methods using a robotic manipulandum, subjects had to perform center-out pointing movements to visual targets presented on a computer screen, by coordinating wrist flexion/extension with abduction/adduction. We compared movements in which the frames of reference were aligned (unperturbed condition) with movements performed under different combinations of visual/kinesthetic dynamic perturbations. The visual frame of reference was centered to the computer screen, while the kinesthetic frame was centered around the wrist joint. Both frames changed their orientation dynamically (angular velocity = 36°/s) with respect to the head-centered frame of reference (the eyes). Perturbations were either unimodal (visual or kinesthetic), or bimodal (visual+kinesthetic). As expected, pointing performance was best in the unperturbed condition. The spatial pointing error dramatically worsened during both unimodal and most bimodal conditions. However, in the bimodal condition, in which both disturbances were in phase, adaptation was very fast and kinematic performance indicators approached the values of the unperturbed condition. Conclusions this result suggests that subjects learned to exploit an “affordance” made available by the invariant phase relation between the visual and kinesthetic frames. It seems that after detecting such invariance, subjects used the kinesthetic input as an informative signal rather than a disturbance, in order to compensate the visual rotation without going through the lengthy process of building an internal adaptation model. Practical implications are discussed as regards the design of advanced, high-performance man-machine interfaces.
Utilization of infertility services: how much does money matter?

OBJECTIVE To estimate the effects of financial access and other individual characteristics on the likelihood that a woman pursues infertility treatment and the choice of treatment type. DATA SOURCE/STUDY SETTING The 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. STUDY DESIGN We use a binomial logit model to estimate the effects of financial access and individual characteristics on the likelihood that a woman pursues infertility treatment. We then use a multinomial logit model to estimate the differential effects of these variables across treatment types. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHOD This study analyzes the subset of 1,210 women who meet the definition of infertile or subfecund from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We find that income, insurance coverage, age, and parity (number of previous births) all significantly affect the probability of seeking infertility treatment; however, the effect of these variables on choice of treatment type varies significantly. Neither income nor insurance influences the probability of seeking advice, a relatively low cost, low yield treatment. At the other end of the spectrum, the choice to pursue assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs)-a much more expensive but potentially more productive option-is highly influenced by income, but merely having private insurance has no significant effect. In the middle of the spectrum are treatment options such as testing, surgery, and medications, for which "financial access" increases their probability of selection. CONCLUSIONS Our results illustrate that for the sample of infertile of subfecund women of childbearing age studied, and considering their options, financial access to infertility treatment does matter.
Isometric Torque Control for Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation With Time-Varying Input Delay

Previous results have shown experimental evidence that the muscle response to neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) is delayed; the time lag is often referred to as electromechanical delay. NMES closed-loop control methods have been developed to compensate for a known constant input delay. However, as a muscle fatigues, this delay increases. This paper develops a feedback controller that robustly compensates for the time-varying delay of an uncertain muscle model during isometric contractions. The controller is proven to yield global uniformly ultimately bounded torque tracking error. Experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of the developed controller and the time-varying nature of the delayed response.
Health outcomes of continuous positive airway pressure versus oral appliance treatment for obstructive sleep apnea: a randomized controlled trial.

RATIONALE Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and mandibular advancement device (MAD) therapy are commonly used to treat obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Differences in efficacy and compliance of these treatments are likely to influence improvements in health outcomes. OBJECTIVES To compare health effects after 1 month of optimal CPAP and MAD therapy in OSA. METHODS In this randomized crossover trial, we compared the effects of 1 month each of CPAP and MAD treatment on cardiovascular and neurobehavioral outcomes. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Cardiovascular (24-h blood pressure, arterial stiffness), neurobehavioral (subjective sleepiness, driving simulator performance), and quality of life (Functional Outcomes of Sleep Questionnaire, Short Form-36) were compared between treatments. Our primary outcome was 24-hour mean arterial pressure. A total of 126 patients with moderate-severe OSA (apnea hypopnea index [AHI], 25.6 [SD 12.3]) were randomly assigned to a treatment order and 108 completed the trial with both devices. CPAP was more efficacious than MAD in reducing AHI (CPAP AHI, 4.5 ± 6.6/h; MAD AHI, 11.1 ± 12.1/h; P < 0.01) but reported compliance was higher on MAD (MAD, 6.50 ± 1.3 h per night vs. CPAP, 5.20 ± 2 h per night; P < 0.00001). The 24-hour mean arterial pressure was not inferior on treatment with MAD compared with CPAP (CPAP-MAD difference, 0.2 mm Hg [95% confidence interval, -0.7 to 1.1]); however, overall, neither treatment improved blood pressure. In contrast, sleepiness, driving simulator performance, and disease-specific quality of life improved on both treatments by similar amounts, although MAD was superior to CPAP for improving four general quality-of-life domains. CONCLUSIONS Important health outcomes were similar after 1 month of optimal MAD and CPAP treatment in patients with moderate-severe OSA. The results may be explained by greater efficacy of CPAP being offset by inferior compliance relative to MAD, resulting in similar effectiveness. Clinical trial registered with https://www.anzctr. org.au (ACTRN 12607000289415).
Prediction of neuropsychological impairment in multiple sclerosis: comparison of conventional magnetic resonance imaging measures of atrophy and lesion burden.

BACKGROUND Cognition and magnetic resonance imaging correlations are well established in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), but it is unclear whether lesion burden or atrophy accounts for most of the predictive variance. These indices have been directly compared in only a few studies. No such study included measurement of the third ventricle, which was strongly predictive of neuropsychological competence in the early literature. Furthermore, few studies accounted for the influence of age, premorbid intelligence, or depression. OBJECTIVE To determine if conventional measures of lesion burden or atrophy predict cognitive dysfunction in MS while accounting for age, premorbid intelligence, and depression. METHODS We studied 37 patients with MS and 27 controls matched according to demographic variables. Correlations between neuropsychological tests and the following magnetic resonance imaging indices were considered: T1 hypointense lesion volume, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery hyperintense lesion volume, third ventricle width, bicaudate ratio, and brain parenchymal fraction. Regression models predicting neuropsychological performance controlled for the effects of age, premorbid intelligence, and depression. We included only those tests discriminating patients with MS from controls. RESULTS In each regression model, third ventricle width was the sole magnetic resonance imaging measure retained. When this variable was removed from consideration, brain parenchymal fraction was retained in all analyses. CONCLUSIONS Brain atrophy accounts for more variance than lesion burden in predicting cognitive impairment in MS, and central atrophy in particular is strongly associated with neuropsychological morbidity. This finding may be explained in part by atrophy of the thalamus, a deep gray matter structure that mediates cognitive function via cortical and subcortical pathways. Enthusiasm for the clinical utility of third ventricle width is tempered by modest intraobserver and interobserver reliability.
Scalable non-linear Support Vector Machine using hierarchical clustering

This paper discusses a method for scaling SVM with Gaussian kernel function to handle large data sets by using a selective sampling strategy for the training set. It employs a scalable hierarchical clustering algorithm to construct cluster indexing structures of the training data in the kernel induced feature space. These are then used for selective sampling of the training data for SVM to impart scalability to the training process. Empirical studies made on real world data sets show that the proposed strategy performs well on large data sets