Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved spectral resolution and high reliability of in vivo 1H MRS at 7 T allow the characterization of the effect of acute exercise on carnosine in skeletal muscle

The aims of this study were to observe the behavior of carnosine peaks in human soleus (SOL) and gastrocnemius (GM) muscles following acute exercise, to determine the relaxation times and to assess the repeatability of carnosine quantification by 1H MRS at 7 T. Relaxation constants in GM and SOL were measured by a stimulated echo acquisition mode (STEAM) localization sequence. For T1 measurement, an inversion recovery sequence was used. The repeatability of the measurement and the absolute quantification of carnosine were determined in both muscles in five healthy volunteers. For absolute quantification, an internal water reference signal was used. The effect of acute exercise on carnosine levels and resonance lines was tested in eight recreational runners/cyclists. The defined carnosine measurement protocol was applied three times – before and twice after (approximately 20 and 40 min) a 1‐h submaximal street run and additional toe‐hopping. The measured T1 relaxation times for the C2‐H carnosine peak at 7 T were 2002 ± 94 and 1997 ± 259 ms for GM and SOL, respectively, and the T2 times were 95.8 ± 9.4 and 81.0 ± 21.8 ms for GM and SOL, respectively. The coefficient of variation of the carnosine quantification measurement was 9.1% for GM and 6.3% for SOL, showing high repeatability, and the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of 0.93 for GM and 0.98 for SOL indicate the high reliability of the measurement. Acute exercise did not change the concentration of carnosine in the muscle, but affected the shape of the resonance lines, in terms of the shifting and splitting into doublets. Carnosine measurement by 1H MRS at 7 T in skeletal muscle exhibits high repeatability and reliability. The observed effects of acute exercise were more prominent in GM, probably as a result of the larger portion of glycolytic fibers in this muscle and the more pronounced exercise‐induced change in pH. Our results support the application of the MRS‐based assessment of carnosine for pH measurement in muscle compartments. © 2015 The Authors. NMR in Biomedicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
NoCMsg: Scalable NoC-Based Message Passing

Current processor design with ever more cores may ensure that theoretical compute performance still follows past increases (resting from Moore's law), but they also increasingly present a challenge to hardware and software alike. As the core count increases, the network-on-chip(NoC) topology has changed from buses over rings and fully connected meshes to 2D meshes. The question is which programming paradigm provides the scalability needed to ensure performance is close to theoretical peak, where 2D meshes provide the most scalable design to date. This work contributes NoCMsg, a low-level message passing abstraction over NoCs. NoCMsg is specifically designed for large core counts in2D meshes. Its design ensures deadlock free messaging for wormhole Manhattan-path routing over the NoC. Experimental results on the Tile Pro hardware platform show that NoCMsg can significantly reduce communication times by up to 86% for single packet messages and up to40% for larger messages compared to other NoC-based message approaches. Results further demonstrate the potential of NoC messaging to outperform shared memory abstractions by up to 93% as core counts and inter-process communication increase, i.e., we observe that shared memory scales up to about 16 cores while message passing performs well beyond that threshold on this platform. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first head-on comparison of shared memory and advanced message passing specifically designed for NoCs on an actual hardware platform with larger core counts on a single socket.
Compiler-directed thermal management for VLIW functional units

As processors, memories, and other components of today's embedded systems are pushed to higher performance in more enclosed spaces, processor thermal management is quickly becoming a limiting design factor. While previous proposals mostly approached this thermal management problem from circuit and architecture angles, software can also play an important role in identifying and eliminating thermal hotspots as it is the main factor that shapes the order and frequency of accesses to different hardware components in the chip. This is particularly true for compiler-scheduled Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) datapath.In this paper, we focus on a compiler-based approach to make the thermal profile more balanced in the integer functional units of VLIW architectures. For balanced thermal behavior and peak temperature minimization, we propose techniques based on load balancing across the integer functional units with or without rotation of functional unit usage. As leakage power is exponentially dependent on temperature and temperature is dependent on total power (i.e., switching and leakage), in our techniques, we also consider leakage power optimization by IPC tuning (instructions issued per cycle). By taking a code that is already scheduled for maximum performance as input, our scheduling strategies modify this performance-oriented schedule for balanced thermal behavior with negligible performance degradation. We simulate our scheduling strategies using a framework that consists of the Trimaran infrastructure, a power model, and the HotSpot. Our experimental results using several benchmark programs reveal that the peak temperature can be reduced through compiler scheduling.
Mitochondrial fatty acid synthesis is required for normal mitochondrial morphology and function in Trypanosoma brucei

Trypanosoma brucei use microsomal elongases for de novo synthesis of most of its fatty acids. In addition, this parasite utilizes an essential mitochondrial type II synthase for production of octanoate (a lipoic acid precursor) as well as longer fatty acids such as palmitate. Evidence from other organisms suggests that mitochondrially synthesized fatty acids are required for efficient respiration but the exact relationship remains unclear. In procyclic form trypanosomes, we also found that RNAi depletion of the mitochondrial acyl carrier protein, an important component of the fatty acid synthesis machinery, significantly reduces cytochrome‐mediated respiration. This reduction was explained by RNAi‐mediated inhibition of respiratory complexes II, III and IV, but not complex I. Other effects of RNAi, such as changes in mitochondrial morphology and alterations in membrane potential, raised the possibility of a change in mitochondrial membrane composition. Using mass spectrometry, we observed a decrease in total and mitochondrial phosphatidylinositol and mitochondrial phosphatidylethanolamine. Thus, we conclude that the mitochondrial synthase produces fatty acids needed for maintaining local phospholipid levels that are required for activity of respiratory complexes and preservation of mitochondrial morphology and function.
Depression and insomnia among individuals with celiac disease or on a gluten-free diet in the USA: results from a national survey

Background There is uncertainty regarding the prevalence of psychiatric illnesses in patients with celiac disease (CD) and people who avoid gluten (PWAG) without a diagnosis of CD. Participants and methods We obtained data from 22 274 participants from the 2009–2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to compare the prevalence of depression, insomnia, quality-of-life variables, and psychotropic medication use in CD participants and PWAGs to controls. We used multivariable logistic regression to assess for independent associations between CD/PWAG status and the outcomes of these variables. Results Depression was present in 8.2% of controls compared with 3.9% of participants with CD (P=0.18) and 2.9% of PWAGs (P=0.002). After adjustment for age, sex, race, income, and access to healthcare, PWAGs maintained lower odds of depression compared with controls (odds ratio=0.25; 95% confidence interval: 0.12–0.51; P=0.0001). The prevalence estimates of sleep difficulty among controls (27.3%) compared to participants with CD or PWAGs were 37.7% (P=0.15) and 34.1% (P=0.11). Those with diagnosed CD had increased odds of sleep difficulty (odds ratio=2.41; 95% confidence interval 1.04–5.60), but this was no longer significant after multivariable adjustment (P=0.17). Conclusion Among a nationally representative US sample, participants with CD overall showed no increased odds of depression or sleep difficulty. PWAGs showed lower odds of depression compared with controls. Future research should investigate the relationship between a diagnosis of CD and the development of psychiatric conditions.
Learning Light Field Reconstruction from a Single Coded Image

Light field imaging is a rich way of representing the 3D world around us. However, due to limited sensor resolution capturing light field data inherently poses spatio-angular resolution trade-off. In this paper, we propose a deep learning based solution to tackle the resolution trade-off. Specifically, we reconstruct full sensor resolution light field from a single coded image. We propose to do this in three stages 1) reconstruction of center view from the coded image 2) estimating disparity map from the coded image and center view 3) warping center view using the disparity to generate light field. We propose three neural networks for these stages. Our disparity estimation network is trained in an unsupervised manner alleviating the need for ground truth disparity. Our results demonstrate better recovery of parallax from the coded image. Also, we get better results than dictionary learning approaches on simulated data.
Meaningful Conversation with a Mobile Robot

We describe an implementation integrating a spoken dialogue system with a mobile robot, which the user can direct to specific locations, ask for information about its status, and supply information about its environment. The robot uses an internal map for navigation, and communicates its current orientation and accessible locations to the dialogue system using a topological map as interface.
Media Bias Monitor: Quantifying Biases of Social Media News Outlets at Large-Scale

As Internet users increasingly rely on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to receive news, they are faced with a bewildering number of news media choices. For example, thousands of Facebook pages today are registered and categorized as some form of news media outlets. Inferring the bias (or slant) of these media pages poses a difficult challenge for media watchdog organizations that traditionally rely on content analysis. In this paper, we explore a novel scalable methodology to accurately infer the biases of thousands of news sources on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Our key idea is to utilize their advertiser interfaces, that offer detailed insights into the demographics of the news source’s audience on the social media site. We show that the ideological (liberal or conservative) leaning of a news source can be accurately estimated by the extent to which liberals or conservatives are over-/under-represented among its audience. Additionally, we show how biases in a news source’s audience demographics, along the lines of race, gender, age, national identity, and income, can be used to infer more fine-grained biases of the source, such as social vs. economic vs. nationalistic conservatism. Finally, we demonstrate the scalability of our approach by building and publicly deploying a system, called "Media Bias Monitor", which makes the biases in audience demographics for over 20,000 news outlets on Facebook transparent to any Internet user.
Evaluating Android Anti-malware against Transformation Attacks March 2013

Mobile malware threats (e.g., on Android) have recently become a real concern. In this paper, we evaluate the state-of-the-art commercial mobile anti-malware products for Android and test how resistant they are against various common obfuscation techniques (even with known malware). Such an evaluation is important for not only measuring the available defense against mobile malware threats but also proposing effective, next-generation solutions. We developed DroidChameleon, a systematic framework with various transformation techniques, and used it for our study. Our results on ten popular commercial anti-malware applications for Android are worrisome: none of these tools is resistant against common malware transformation techniques. Moreover, a majority of them can be trivially defeated by applying slight transformation over known malware with little effort for malware authors. Finally, in the light of our results, we propose possible remedies for improving the current state of malware detection on mobile devices.
Real-Time Tracking for Augmented reality

In real time applications of augmented reality, it is always matter of tracking; one of the most promising techniques in this sense is tracking based pattern. In this paper we describe a method based on the discrete Kalman filter for a real-time tracking of a 2D pattern for augmented reality. Objective being to make real-time tracking of a 2D pattern through a video stream on the simple personal computer; the process can be resumed as follow: in each frame we do an estimation by Kalman filter of predict corner location, after we proceed to correct this estimation by a measure around predict location, with Harris corner detection. the results obtains are very satisfactory, because all the process precede on real time and succeed to accurately track the pattern through video stream
A Sound Localization and Recognition System using Pulsed Neural Networks on FPGA

Pulsed neurons are suitable for processing time series data, like sound signals, and can be easily implemented in hardware. In this paper, we propose an aural information processing system based on the human auditory system using a pulsed neuron model and a correspondent implementation in an FPGA device. Experimental results show that an FPGA based implementation of the proposed system can successfully identify the results faster than a similar software implementation. Noise tolerance experimental results are also presented.
Abrogation of CD40–CD154 Signaling Impedes the Homeostasis of Thymic Resident Regulatory T Cells by Altering the Levels of IL-2, but Does Not Affect Regulatory T Cell Development

Identification of costimulatory signals required for murine regulatory T (Treg) cell development relies on measuring the frequency of total thymic Treg cells. However, the thymus contains both resident and newly developed Treg cells; whether such signals target both populations is unknown. In this study, we show that CD40–CD154 blockade specifically targeted thymic resident Treg cells, but not, as was previously believed, newly developed Treg cells. Unlike CD28–CD80/CD86 signals, CD40–CD154 signals were not required for Treg cell precursor development. Instead we demonstrate that homeostatic proliferation of thymic resident Treg cells was dependent on CD40–CD154 signals maintaining IL-2 levels. Furthermore, in newborn mice, where all Treg cells are newly developed, blockade of CD40–CD154 signals had no effect on thymic Treg numbers or their proliferation. Our studies highlight the complexity in the study of thymic Treg cell development due to the heterogeneity of thymic Treg cells.
Improved Executive Function and Callosal White Matter Microstructure after Rhythm Exercise in Huntington's Disease.

BACKGROUND Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosominal dominant neurodegenerative condition that leads to progressive loss of motor and cognitive functions. Early symptoms in HD include subtle executive dysfunction related to white and grey matter loss in cortico-striatal-thalamic loops. There is no cure for HD and hence a significant need for early intervention with the potential to delay the clinical onset of the disease. OBJECTIVE The objective of the present pilot study was to devise a novel behavioural intervention involving drumming and rhythm exercises that targets early dysexecutive problems, such as difficulties in sequence and reversal learning, response speed, timing, and dual tasking. METHOD One preclinical person and nine people with early to advanced stages of HD were recruited of whom five completed the two months intervention. The effects of rhythm exercise on executive function, basal ganglia volume, and white matter microstructure in the anterior corpus callosum, the anterior thalamic radiation, and the cortico-spinal tract were assessed post- relative to pre-training. RESULTS After two months training, improvements in executive function and changes in white matter microstructure, notably in the genu of the corpus callosum that connects prefrontal cortices of both hemispheres, were observed. No changes in basal ganglia volume were present. CONCLUSION This pilot study provides novel preliminary evidence that carefully targeted behavioural stimulation in HD can result in cognitive enhancement and improvements in callosal white matter microstructure.
Error-related potential recorded by EEG in the context of a p300 mind speller brain-computer interface

The Mind Speller® is a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) which enables subjects to spell text on a computer screen by detecting P300 Event-Related Potentials in their electroencephalograms (EEG). This BCI application is of particular interest for disabled patients who have lost all means of verbal and motor communication. Error-related Potentials (ErrP) in the EEG are generated by the subject's perception of an error. We report on the possibility of using this ErrP for improving the performance of our Mind Speller®. We tested 6 subjects and recorded several typing sessions for each of them. Responses to correct and incorrect performances of the BCI are recorded and compared. The shape of the received ErrP is compared to other studies. The detection of this ErrP and its integration in the Mind Speller® are discussed.
Methodological Variation in Economic Evaluations Conducted in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Information for Reference Case Development

Information generated from economic evaluation is increasingly being used to inform health resource allocation decisions globally, including in low- and middle- income countries. However, a crucial consideration for users of the information at a policy level, e.g. funding agencies, is whether the studies are comparable, provide sufficient detail to inform policy decision making, and incorporate inputs from data sources that are reliable and relevant to the context. This review was conducted to inform a methodological standardisation workstream at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and assesses BMGF-funded cost-per-DALY economic evaluations in four programme areas (malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and vaccines) in terms of variation in methodology, use of evidence, and quality of reporting. The findings suggest that there is room for improvement in the three areas of assessment, and support the case for the introduction of a standardised methodology or reference case by the BMGF. The findings are also instructive for all institutions that fund economic evaluations in LMICs and who have a desire to improve the ability of economic evaluations to inform resource allocation decisions.
Net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide and water of far eastern Siberian Larch (Larix cajanderii) on permafrost

Abstract. Observations of the net ecosystem exchange of water and CO2 were made during two seasons in 2000 and 2001 above a Larch forest in Far East Siberia (Yakutsk). The measurements were obtained by eddy correlation. There is a very sharply pronounced growing season of 100 days when the forest is leaved. Maximum half hourly uptake rates are 18 µmol m-2 s-1; maximum respiration rates are 5 µmol m-2 s-1. Net annual sequestration of carbon was estimated at 160 gCm-2 in 2001. Applying no correction for low friction velocities added 60 g C m-2. The net carbon exchange of the forest was extremely sensitive to small changes in weather that may switch the forest easily from a sink to a source, even in summer. June was the month with highest uptake in 2001. The average evaporation rate of the forest approached 1.46 mm day-1 during the growing season, with peak values of 3 mm day-1 with an estimated annual evaporation of 213 mm, closely approaching the average annual rainfall amount. 2001 was a drier year than 2000 and this is reflected in lower evaporation rates in 2001 than in 2000. The surface conductance of the forest shows a marked response to increasing atmospheric humidity deficits. This affects the CO2 uptake and evaporation in a different manner, with the CO2 uptake being more affected. There appears to be no change in the relation between surface conductance and net ecosystem uptake normalized by the atmospheric humidity deficit at the monthly time scale. The response to atmospheric humidity deficit is an efficient mechanism to prevent severe water loss during the short intense growing season. The associated cost to the sequestration of carbon may be another explanation for the slow growth of these forests in this environment.
The Modes of Evolutionary Emergence of Primal and Late Pandemic Influenza Virus Strains from Viral Reservoir in Animals: An Interdisciplinary Analysis

Based on a wealth of recent findings, in conjunction with earliest chronologies pertaining to evolutionary emergences of ancestral RNA viruses, ducks, Influenzavirus A (assumingly within ducks), and hominids, as well as to the initial domestication of mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos), jungle fowl (Gallus gallus), wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), wild boar (Sus scrofa), and wild horse (Equus ferus), presumed genesis modes of primordial pandemic influenza strains have multidisciplinarily been configured. The virological fundamentality of domestication and farming of those various avian and mammalian species has thereby been demonstrated and broadly elucidated, within distinctive coevolutionary paradigms. The mentioned viral genesis modes were then analyzed, compatibly with common denominators and flexibility that mark the geographic profile of the last 18 pandemic strains, which reputedly emerged since 1510, the antigenic profile of the last 10 pandemic strains since 1847, and the genomic profile of the last 5 pandemic strains since 1918, until present. Related ecophylogenetic and biogeographic aspects have been enlightened, alongside with the crucial role of spatial virus gene dissemination by avian hosts. A fairly coherent picture of primary and late evolutionary and genomic courses of pandemic strains has thus been attained, tentatively. Specific patterns underlying complexes prone to generate past and future pandemic strains from viral reservoir in animals are consequentially derived.
Scalar perturbations in two-temperature cosmological plasmas

We study the properties of density perturbations of a two-component plasma with a temperature difference on a homogeneous and isotropic background. For this purpose, we extend the general relativistic gauge-invariant and covariant (GIC) perturbation theory to include a multifluid with a particular equation of state (ideal gas) and imperfect fluid terms due to the relative energy flux between the two species. We derive closed sets of GIC vector and subsequently scalar evolution equations. We then investigate solutions in different regimes of interest. In particular, we study long-wavelength and arbitrary-wavelength Langmuir and ion-acoustic perturbations. The harmonic oscillations are superposed on a Jeans-type instability. We find a generalized Jeans criterion for collapse in a two-temperature plasma, which states that the species with the largest sound velocity determines the Jeans wavelength. Furthermore, we find that within the limit for gravitational collapse, initial perturbations in either the total density or charge density lead to a growth in the initial temperature difference. These results are relevant for the basic understanding of the evolution of inhomogeneities in cosmological models.