Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Animal Behaviour Understanding using Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents research that is being conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with the aim of investigating the use of wireless sensor networks for automated livestock monitoring and control. It is difficult to achieve practical and reliable cattle monitoring with current conventional technologies due to challenges such as large grazing areas of cattle, long time periods of data sampling, and constantly varying physical environments. Wireless sensor networks bring a new level of possibilities into this area with the potential for greatly increased spatial and temporal resolution of measurement data. CSIRO has created a wireless sensor platform for animal behaviour monitoring where we are able to observe and collect information of animals without significantly interfering with them. Based on such monitoring information, we can identify each animal's behaviour and activities successfully
Munc13-1 Deficiency Reduces Insulin Secretion and Causes Abnormal Glucose Tolerance

Munc13-1 is a diacylglycerol (DAG) receptor that is essential for synaptic vesicle priming. We recently showed that Munc13-1 is expressed in rodent and human islet β-cells and that its levels are reduced in islets of type 2 diabetic humans and rat models, suggesting that Munc13-1 deficiency contributes to the abnormal insulin secretion in diabetes. To unequivocally demonstrate the role of Munc13-1 in insulin secretion, we studied heterozygous Munc13-1 knockout mice (+/−), which exhibited elevated glucose levels during intraperitoneal glucose tolerance tests with corresponding lower serum insulin levels. Munc13-1+/− mice exhibited normal insulin tolerance, indicating that a primary islet β-cell secretory defect is the major cause of their hyperglycemia. Consistently, glucose-stimulated insulin secretion was reduced 50% in isolated Munc13-1+/− islets and was only partially rescued by phorbol ester potentiation. The corresponding alterations were minor in mice expressing one allele of a Munc13-1 mutant variant, which does not bind DAG (H567K/+). Capacitance measurements of Munc13-1+/− and Munc13-1H567k/+ islet β-cells revealed defects in granule priming, including the initial size and refilling of the releasable pools, which become accentuated by phorbol ester potentiation. We conclude that Munc13-1 plays an important role in glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and that Munc13-1 deficiency in the pancreatic islets as occurs in diabetes can reduce insulin secretion sufficient to cause abnormal glucose homeostasis.
Global features for offline recognition of handwritten Arabic literal amounts

The domain of automatic handwriting recognition has a variety of applications in real world problems such as cheque processing, office automation and data entry applications. In this paper an approach for describing the role of holistic structural features in the recognition of offline handwritten Arabic literal amounts has been presented. Our proposed system attempts to recognize words from their overall shape. The extracted features are presented to several classifiers. The system is trained and tested using an Arabic handwritten database.
Bottom-up regulation of a pole-ward migratory predator population

As the effects of regional climate change are most pronounced at polar latitudes, we might expect polar-ward migratory populations to respond as habitat suitability changes. The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina L.) is a pole-ward migratory species whose populations have mostly stabilized or increased in the past decade, the one exception being the Macquarie Island population which has decreased continuously over the past 50 years. To explore probable causes of this anomalous trend, we counted breeding female seals annually between 1988 and 2011 in order to relate annual rates of population change (r) to foraging habitat changes that have known connections with atmospheric variability. We found r (i) varied annually from −0.016 to 0.021 over the study period, (ii) was most effected by anomalous atmospheric variability after a 3 year time lag was introduced (R = 0.51) and (iii) was associated with sea-ice duration (SID) within the seals’ foraging range at the same temporal lag. Negative r years may be extrapolated to explain, at least partially, the overall trend in seal abundance at Macquarie Island; specifically, increasing SID within the seals foraging range has a negative influence on their abundance at the island. Evidence is accruing that suggests southern elephant seal populations may respond positively to a reduced sea-ice field.
Adaptive multichannel combining and equalization for underwater acoustic communications

A theoretically optimal multichannel receiver for intersymbol interference communication channels is derived, and its suboptimal versions with linear and decision feedback equalizer are presented. A practical receiver based on any of these structures encounters difficulties in the underwater acoustic channels in which the extended time‐varying multipath is accompanied by phase instabilities. A receiver that overcomes these problems by jointly performing adaptive mean‐squared error diversity combining, multichannel carrier‐phase synchronization and decision feedback equalization is proposed. Its performance is demonstrated on the experimental telemetry data from deep and shallow water long‐range acoustic channels. Presented results indicate superior quality of coherent PSK and QAM reception obtained through joint equalization of very few channels.
The Use of Anthracyclines for Therapy of CNS Tumors

Despite being long lived, anthracyclines remain the “evergreen” drugs in clinical practice of oncology, showing a potent effect in inhibiting cell growth in many types of tumors, including brain neoplasms. Unfortunately, they suffer from a poor penetration into the brain when intravenously administered due to multidrug resistance mechanism, which hampers their delivery across the blood brain barrier. In this paper, we summarize the current literature on the role of anthracyclines in cancer therapy and highlight recent efforts on 1) development of tumor cell resistance to anthracyclines and 2) the new approaches to brain drug delivery across the blood brain barrier.
Factor XIIa Inhibitor Recombinant Human Albumin Infestin-4 Abolishes Occlusive Arterial Thrombus Formation Without Affecting Bleeding

Background— Blood coagulation is a tightly regulated process of sequentially activated serine proteases culminating in fibrin formation, which is critical for limiting posttraumatic blood loss but also may contribute to acute thrombotic diseases, most notably myocardial infarction and stroke. Recent studies with factor XII–deficient mice revealed that the factor XII–induced intrinsic coagulation pathway is essential for pathological thrombus formation but dispensable for hemostasis. Consequently, these findings led to the hypothesis that factor XII could be a promising pharmacological target for safe antithrombotic therapy. Methods and Results— The complementary DNA of the previously described factor XIIa inhibitor Infestin-4, cloned from the midgut of Triatoma infestans, was fused to recombinant human albumin (rHA) and analyzed in vitro. The resulting protein rHA-Infestin-4 specifically inhibits factor XIIa and causes prolonged activated partial thromboplastin time in human, mouse, and rat plasma. To assess its inhibitory potency in vivo, mice and rats were injected with rHA-Infestin-4 and challenged in pathological thrombus formation models. In addition, bleeding assays were performed. rHA-Infestin-4 completely abolished occlusive arterial thrombus formation in mice and rats while leaving hemostasis fully intact. Furthermore, rHA-Infestin-4 was highly protective in a murine model of ischemic stroke. Conclusion— These results identify rHA-Infestin-4 as a promising agent to achieve powerful protection from ischemic cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events without affecting hemostasis.
HEART RATE ESTIMATION FROM PPG SIGNAL USING SOFT DECISION SUBMITTED TO 2015 IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING CUP Students: Oz Sharlin, Aviya Maimon and Tom Srugo. Supervisors: Rami Cohen and David Malah. Signal and Image Processing Lab (SIPL)

In this paper, we describe an algorithm for estimating heart rate from an optically measured PPG signal when physical exercises are performed. In this case, the PPG signal is contaminated by motion artifacts caused by hand movements, making it difficult to find its fundamental frequency that corresponds to the heart rate. To overcome the noise, a soft decision approach is taken, by which several candidates for the fundamental frequency of the PPG signal are extracted and assigned grades. By appropriate grade weighting, the candidate having the maximal grade is selected. The presented algorithm is of low complexity and shown to provide good results. As such, it can be used in low-power portable devices for real time heart rate estimation.
Local-Set-Based Graph Signal Reconstruction

Signal processing on graph is attracting more and more attentions. For a graph signal in the low-frequency subspace, the missing data associated with unsampled vertices can be reconstructed through the sampled data by exploiting the smoothness of the graph signal. In this paper, the concept of local set is introduced and two local-set-based iterative methods are proposed to reconstruct bandlimited graph signal from sampled data. In each iteration, one of the proposed methods reweights the sampled residuals for different vertices, while the other propagates the sampled residuals in their respective local sets. These algorithms are built on frame theory and the concept of local sets, based on which several frames and contraction operators are proposed. We then prove that the reconstruction methods converge to the original signal under certain conditions and demonstrate the new methods lead to a significantly faster convergence compared with the baseline method. Furthermore, the correspondence between graph signal sampling and time-domain irregular sampling is analyzed comprehensively, which may be helpful to future works on graph signals. Computer simulations are conducted. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the reconstruction methods in various sampling geometries, imprecise priori knowledge of cutoff frequency, and noisy scenarios.
Ontology-based digital photo annotation using multi-source information

The number of digital photos in the personal computer is exploding. In an effective photo management system, photo annotation is the most challenging task. The current photo annotation and management systems suffer from two crucial problems. One is the expression of semantic knowledge; the other is the way of photo annotation. Aiming at the former problem, this paper proposes to utilize ontology to organize the domain knowledge and provide formal, explicit and conceptual annotation. Meanwhile, a dual-level semi-automatic annotation approach is also proposed to resolve the latter problem. The rough annotation layer provides preliminary annotation by automatically extracting some semantic concepts from photo titles/texts, time concepts from EXIF metadata, and photo classification concepts from the result of face detection algorithms. The accurate annotation layer provides more detailed annotation by allowing users to modify, delete and add the annotation information freely. An ontology based photo management system OntoAlbum is implemented in this paper. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is very effective and promising.
Commentary on: Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research

Multiple controversies exist currently in the field of behavioral addictions. The opinion article by Billieux, Schimmenti, Khazaal, Maurage and Heeren (2015) proposes an approach to considering which behaviors might be considered as foci for addictions. The article raises multiple important points that foster further dialog and highlight the need for additional research. Given that how specific behaviors are considered from diagnostic and classification perspectives holds significant public health implications, targeting and eliminating current knowledge gaps relating to behavioral addictions is an important undertaking.
Feeding By-Products High in Concentration of Fiber to Nonruminants 1

Fibrous feeds traditionally have not been used for nonruminants due to their documented depression of diet digestibility in pigs and poultry. However, some types of fiber and fiber sources do not exert such negative effects on nutrient digestibility in older growing pigs and sows. Dietary fiber can have positive effects on gut health, welfare, and reproductive performance of pigs. Hence, nutritionists are attempting to gain a more thorough understanding of dietary fiber in swine diets. In contrast, the potential for use of fibrous feedstuffs in poultry diets is more limited with two exceptions. First, high fiber diets have important value in welfarefriendly molting programs for laying hens. Secondly, the need for controlled growth of pullets and turkey breeder candidates makes fibrous feedstuffs useful in these phases of poultry production.
Direct measurement of TRPV4 and PIEZO1 activity reveals multiple mechanotransduction pathways in chondrocytes

The joints of mammals are lined with cartilage, comprised of individual chondrocytes embedded in a specialized extracellular matrix. Chondrocytes experience a complex mechanical environment and respond to changing mechanical loads in order to maintain cartilage homeostasis. It has been proposed that mechanically gated ion channels are of functional importance in chondrocyte mechanotransduction; however, direct evidence of mechanical current activation in these cells has been lacking. We have used high-speed pressure clamp and elastomeric pillar arrays to apply distinct mechanical stimuli to primary murine chondrocytes, stretch of the membrane and deflection of cell-substrate contacts points, respectively. Both TRPV4 and PIEZO1 channels contribute to currents activated by stimuli applied at cell-substrate contacts but only PIEZO1 mediates stretch-activated currents. These data demonstrate that there are separate, but overlapping, mechanoelectrical transduction pathways in chondrocytes. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.21074. 001
Treatment-resistant depression: therapeutic trends, challenges, and future directions

Background Patients with major depression respond to antidepressant treatment, but 10%–30% of them do not improve or show a partial response coupled with functional impairment, poor quality of life, suicide ideation and attempts, self-injurious behavior, and a high relapse rate. The aim of this paper is to review the therapeutic options for treating resistant major depressive disorder, as well as evaluating further therapeutic options. Methods In addition to Google Scholar and Quertle searches, a PubMed search using key words was conducted, and relevant articles published in English peer-reviewed journals (1990–2011) were retrieved. Only those papers that directly addressed treatment options for treatment-resistant depression were retained for extensive review. Results Treatment-resistant depression, a complex clinical problem caused by multiple risk factors, is targeted by integrated therapeutic strategies, which include optimization of medications, a combination of antidepressants, switching of antidepressants, and augmentation with non-antidepressants, psychosocial and cultural therapies, and somatic therapies including electroconvulsive therapy, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, magnetic seizure therapy, deep brain stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation, and vagus nerve stimulation. As a corollary, more than a third of patients with treatment-resistant depression tend to achieve remission and the rest continue to suffer from residual symptoms. The latter group of patients needs further study to identify the most effective therapeutic modalities. Newer biomarker-based antidepressants and other drugs, together with non-drug strategies, are on the horizon to address further the multiple complex issues of treatment-resistant depression. Conclusion Treatment-resistant depression continues to challenge mental health care providers, and further relevant research involving newer drugs is warranted to improve the quality of life of patients with the disorder.
The role of big metal clusters in nanoscience

The miniaturisation of a metal particle to the nanosize regime produces quantum size behavior, i.e. the quasi-delocalized metallic electrons begin to form discrete energy levels. This transition from bulk to molecule is frequently observed for ligandprotected clusters in the size range 1–4 nm. Tunneling spectroscopic (STS) experiments on single clusters not only prove the size dependence of the Coulomb gap, but also the temperature dependence. As the electrostatic energy e/2C must be large compared with the thermal energy kBT of the electron to induce Coulomb steps, very low temperatures are necessary to observe this event on larger particles. A 17 nm Pd cluster behaves like a piece of metal at room temperature, but shows a Coulomb barrier at 4.2 K. On the contrary, a ligand-stabilized 1.4 nm Au cluster shows a Coulomb step at room temperature (small C ), but a series of Coulomb steps (SET processes) at 90 K. The practical use of clusters in nanoelectronics is coupled to the ability to organize them three-, twoor one-dimensionally. A quasi 3-D organization of clusters can be reached by linking them with spacer molecules, chemically fixed to the cluster surfaces. A direct relation between spacer length and activation energy for electronic inter-cluster tunneling processes is observed. Twodimensional arrangements of different kinds of clusters have been reached by self-assembly processes on chemically modified surfaces or by using Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) films transferred onto a substrate. A deficiency of both methods is the lack of
Turbo-equalization of LDPC coded MIMO inner/outer scheduling

Optimal reception in MIMO systems including channel coding, is achieved by jointly performing MIMO detection and channel decoding. Since joint processing is too costly (complexity wise), MIMO and channel decoding have to be performed separately on the expenses of performance. Using iterative reception, it is possible to approach capacity limits. LDPC codes have been used in many standards and seem to be an interesting solution for iterative receivers. The problem of LDPC design for iterative MIMO receivers have been adressed in the literature using Density Evolution and EXIT charts techniques. In this paper we consider LDPC coded iterative MIMO receiver and we show that MIMO LDPC iterative reception can be designed and scheduled in a complexity and energy efficient manner without significant loss of performance.
Inner brane: A D3-brane in Nappi-Witten space from an inner automorphism

Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) models are abstract conformal field theories with an infinite-dimensional symmetry which accounts for their integrability, and at the same time they have a sigma-model description of closed-string propagation on group manifolds which, in turn, endows the models with an intuitive geometric meaning. We exploit this dual algebraic and geometric property of WZW models to construct an explicit example of a field-dependent reflection matrix for open strings in the Nappi-Witten model. Demanding the momentum outflow at the boundary to be zero determines a certain combination of the left and right chiral currents at the boundary. This same reflection matrix is obtained algebraically from an inner automorphism, giving rise to a space-filling D-brane. Half of the infinite-dimensional affine Kac-Moody symmetry present in the closed-string theory is preserved by this unique combination of the left and the right chiral currents. The operator-product expansions of these boundary currents are computed explicitly and they are shown to obey the same current algebra as those of the closed-string chiral currents. Different choices of the inner automorphisms correspond to different background gauge field configurations. Only those B-field configurations, and the corresponding D-branes, that preserve the diagonal part of the infinite-dimensional chiral algebras are allowed. Inmore » this way the existence of the D-branes in curved spaces is further constrained by the underlying symmetry of the ambient spacetime. « less
Contrast-Enhanced Micro–Computed Tomography in Evaluation of Spontaneous Repair of Equine Cartilage

Objective: Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) has been introduced for the evaluation of cartilage integrity. Furthermore, CECT enables imaging of the structure and density of subchondral bone. In this laboratory study, we investigate the potential of microCECT to simultaneously image cartilage and subchondral bone for the evaluation of tissue healing. Design: Osteochondral lesions (Ø = 6 mm) were surgically created in equine intercarpal joints (n = 7). After spontaneous healing for 12 months, the horses were sacrificed and osteochondral plugs (Ø = 14 mm), including the repair cartilage and adjacent intact tissue, were harvested. The nonfibrillar and fibrillar moduli and the permeability of cartilage were determined using indentation testing. Contrast agent diffusion into the samples was imaged for 36 hours using high-resolution CT. Results from CECT, mechanical testing, and microscopic analyses were compared and correlated. Results: The contrast agent diffusion coefficient showed a significant (P < 0.05) difference between the repair and adjacent intact tissue. MicroCECT revealed altered (P < 0.05) bone volume fraction, mineral density, and microstructure of subchondral bone at the repair site. The contrast agent diffusion coefficient correlated with the moduli of the nonfibrillar matrix (R = −0.662, P = 0.010), collagen fibril parallelism index (R = −0.588, P = 0.035), and glycosaminoglycan content (R = −0.503, P = 0.067). The repair cartilage was mechanically and structurally different from adjacent intact tissue (P < 0.05). Conclusions: MicroCECT enabled simultaneous quantitative evaluation of subchondral bone and monitoring of cartilage repair, distinguishing quantitatively the repair site from the adjacent intact tissue. As the only technique able to simultaneously image cartilage and determine subchondral bone mineral density and microstructure, CECT has potential clinical value.
The social psychology of biodiversity conservation in agriculture

We investigate farmers’ intentions to apply biodiversity conservation practices from a psychological perspective, using an adapted version of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), including group norms and putting emphasis on moral norms and self-identity. The study is based on a quantitative survey (n = 99) in Belgium, analysed using confirmatory factor analyses and path analysis. Results suggest that the impact of attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioural control on intentions is almost fully mediated through moral norms and self-identity. To have a sustained impact, change actions should strive to embed biodiversity conservation into the social norms and into the good farmer identity of the farming community. While acknowledging the explanatory nature of this study, the findings could suggest another view on how to induce behavioural change.