Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationships between nasal potential difference and respiratory function in adults with cystic fibrosis.

This study investigated the relations between nasal transepithelial electric potential difference (PD) and the phenotype and genotype of cystic fibrosis (CF) adult patients. Basal nasal PD was measured in 95 adult CF patients who were classified into three groups of nasal PD (expressed as absolute values) according to the 10th and the 90th percentiles (28.3 and 49.2 mV, respectively), which defined group 1 (nasal PD < or =28.3 mV), group 2 (nasal PD 28.3-49.2 mV) and group 3 (nasal PD > or =49.2 mV). Patients from group 1 had a higher forced vital capacity (FVC) than patients from groups 2 and 3 (76.5+/-22.4 versus 57.4+/-21.2 and 55.7+/-21.1% predicted, respectively, p<0.05) and a higher forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) (69.3+/-24.0 versus 42.5+/-22.4 and 42.2+/-21.4% pred, respectively, p<0.01). Among patients with severe mutations (deltaF508 homozygotes, or one deltaF508 mutation plus another "severe" mutation, or two "severe" mutations), patients from group 1 had a higher FVC, FEV1 and arterial oxygen tension than patients from groups 2 and 3 (p<0.05 for each comparison). The results show that in adult cystic fibrosis patients a normal basal nasal potential difference is related to milder respiratory disease, irrespective of the severity of the genotype.
Pharmacological therapy for patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a rare but life-threatening disease resulting from unresolved thromboembolic obstructions. Pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) surgery is the gold-standard treatment as it is potentially curative; however, not all patients are deemed operable and up to one-third have persistent or recurrent CTEPH after the procedure. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and CTEPH have similar clinical presentations and histopathological features, so agents shown to be effective in PAH have often been prescribed to patients with CTEPH in the absence of proven therapies. However, clinical evidence for this strategy is not compelling. A number of small uncontrolled trials have investigated endothelin receptor antagonists, prostacyclin analogues and phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors in CTEPH with mixed results, and a phase III study of the endothelin receptor antagonist bosentan met only one of its two co-primary end-points. Recently, however, the soluble guanylate cyclase stimulator, riociguat, was approved in the USA and Europe for the treatment of inoperable or persistent/recurrent CTEPH following positive results from the phase III CHEST study (Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension Soluble Guanylate Cyclase–Stimulator Trial). This article reviews the current evidence for the use of pharmacological therapies in CTEPH. A review of pharmacological treatment of inoperable or persistent/recurrent CTEPH and the future standard of care http://ow.ly/KMUQV
Dynamic reconfiguration in sensor middleware

Middleware solutions for sensor networks have so far mainly focused on communication abstractions, ad-hoc message routing protocols, and power conservation techniques. We argue that customisation and dynamic reconfiguration of sensor network middleware are additional important dimensions to consider. This paper describes a sensor middleware that can be customised to suit different sensor application types, and provides a reflective approach for co-ordinated network-wide dynamic reconfiguration of sensor behaviour. To evaluate our approach we illustrate customisation and dynamic reconfiguration of the Gridkit sensor middleware in a flood-monitoring scenario.
A Framework for Cyber Security in Africa

This paper deals with at least four major cyber safety concerns in Africa discussed in recent literature. These cyber concerns include aspects such as policies, procedure, awareness, research and the provision of technical security measures. Each concern is examined, the main focus areas are highlighted and a solution is proposed. This paper concludes by combining all relevant solutions into a proposed cyber security framework to assist Africa in decreasing its cybercrime rate especially among home users with no or limited cyber safety knowledge.
On objective assessment of audio quality — A review

Measurement of audio quality is of fundamental importance for numerous speech and audio processing applications, where the goal of quality assessment algorithms is to evaluate the quality in agreement with human's subjective feelings of audio quality. This paper includes a brief summary of the development of intrusive and non-intrusive audio quality assessment algorithms and outlines recent advancements, especially some new topics to be investigated presently. Moreover, according to the existing problems in this field, discussion of the future trend and challenges is also given.
INCREASING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CORRECTIONAL PROGRAMMING THROUGH THE RISK PRINCIPLE: IDENTIFYING OFFENDERS FOR RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT*

Research Summary: This study analyzed data on 7,306 offenders placed in 1 of 53 community-based residential programs as part of their parole, post-release control, or probation. Offenders who successfully completed residential programming were compared with a group of offenders (n = 5801) under parole/post-release control who were not placed in residential programming. Analyses of program effectiveness were conducted, controlling for risk and a risk-by-group (treatment versus comparison) interaction term. Policy Implications: Significant and substantial differences in the effectiveness of programming were found on the basis of various risk levels. This research challenges the referral and acceptance policies and procedures of many states’ departments of corrections, local probation departments and courts, and social service agencies that provide offender services.
Control of autonomous mobile robots with automated planning

In this paper we present an approach for the control of autonomous robots, based on Automated Planning (AP) techniques, where a control architecture was developed (ROPEM: RObot Plan Execution with Monitoring). The proposed architecture is composed of a set of modules that integrates deliberation with a standard planner, execution, monitoring and replanning. We avoid robotic-device and platform dependency by using a low level control layer, implemented in the Player framework, separated from the high level task execution that depends on the domain we are working on; that way we also ensure reusability of the high and low level layers. As robot task execution is non-deterministic, we can not predict the result of performing a given action and for that reason we also use a module that supervises the execution and detects when we have reached the goals or an unexpected state. Separated from the execution, we included a planning module in charge of determining the actions that will let the robot achieve its high level goals. In order to test the performance of our contribution we conducted a set of experiments on the International Planning Competition (IPC) domain Rovers, with a real robot (Pioneer P3DX). We tested the planning/replanning capabilities of the ROPEM architecture with different controlled sources of uncertainty.
Joint Beamforming Design for Multi-User Wireless Information and Power Transfer

In this paper, we propose a joint beamforming algorithm for a multiuser wireless information and power transfer (MU-WIPT) system that is compatible with the conventional multiuser multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) system. The proposed joint beamforming vectors are initialized using the well established MU-MIMO zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) and are further updated to maximize the total harvested energy of energy harvesting (EH) users and guarantee the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) constraints of the co-scheduled information decoding (ID) users. When ID and EH users are simultaneously served by joint beamforming vectors, the harvested energy can be increased at the cost of an SINR loss for ID users. To characterize the SINR loss, the target SINR ratio μ is introduced as the target SINR (i.e., SINR constraint) normalized by the received SINR achievable with ZFBF. Based on that ratio, the sum rate and harvested energy obtained from the proposed algorithm are analyzed under perfect/imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). Through simulations and numerical results, we validate the derived analyses and demonstrate the EH and ID performance compared to both state of the art and conventional schemes.
APP Function and Lipids: A Bidirectional Link

Extracellular neuritic plaques, composed of aggregated amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides, are one of the major histopathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a progressive, irreversible neurodegenerative disorder and the most common cause of dementia in the elderly. One of the most prominent risk factor for sporadic AD, carrying one or two aberrant copies of the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) ε4 alleles, closely links AD to lipids. Further, several lipid classes and fatty acids have been reported to be changed in the brain of AD-affected individuals. Interestingly, the observed lipid changes in the brain seem not only to be a consequence of the disease but also modulate Aβ generation. In line with these observations, protective lipids being able to decrease Aβ generation and also potential negative lipids in respect to AD were identified. Mechanistically, Aβ peptides are generated by sequential proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) by β- and γ-secretase. The α-secretase appears to compete with β-secretase for the initial cleavage of APP, preventing Aβ production. All APP-cleaving secretases as well as APP are transmembrane proteins, further illustrating the impact of lipids on Aβ generation. Beside the pathological impact of Aβ, accumulating evidence suggests that Aβ and the APP intracellular domain (AICD) play an important role in regulating lipid homeostasis, either by direct effects or by affecting gene expression or protein stability of enzymes involved in the de novo synthesis of different lipid classes. This review summarizes the current literature addressing the complex bidirectional link between lipids and AD and APP processing including lipid alterations found in AD post mortem brains, lipids that alter APP processing and the physiological functions of Aβ and AICD in the regulation of several lipid metabolism pathways.
Modeling Watercolor by Simulating Diffusion, Pigment, and Paper Fibers

This paper explores a parallel approach to the problem of predicting the actions of pigment and water when applied to paper fibers. This work was done on the Connection Machine II, whose parallel architecture allows one to cast the problem as that of a complex cellular automata. One defines simple rules for the behavior of each cell based on the state of that cell and its immediate neighbors. By repeating the computation for each cell in the paper over many time steps, elaborate and realistic behaviors can be achieved. The simulation takes into account diffusion, surface tension, gravity, humidity, paper absorbency and the molecular weight of each pigment. At each time step a processor associated with each fiber in the paper computes water and pigment gradients, surface tension and gravitational forces, and decides if there should be any movement of material. Pigment and water can be applied and removed (blotting) with masks created from type or scanned images. Use of a parallel processor simplifies the creation and testing of software, and variables can be stored and manipulated at highprecision. The resulting simulation runs at approximately one-tenth real time.
Learning to Order Terms: Supervised Interestingness Measures in Terminology Extraction

� Abstract— Term Extraction, a key data preparation step in Text Mining, extracts the terms, i.e. relevant collocation of words, attached to specific concepts (e.g. genetic-algorithms and decision- trees are terms associated to the concept "Machine Learning" ). In this paper, the task of extracting interesting collocations is achieved through a supervised learning algorithm, exploiting a few collocations manually labelled as interesting/not interesting. From these examples, the ROGER algorithm learns a numerical function, inducing some ranking on the collocations. This ranking is optimized using genetic algorithms, maximizing the trade-off between the false positive and true positive rates (Area Under the ROC curve). This approach uses a particular representation for the word collocations, namely the vector of values corresponding to the standard statistical interestingness measures attached to this collocation. As this representation is general (over corpora and natural languages), generality tests were performed by experimenting the ranking function learned from an English corpus in Biology, onto a French corpus of Curriculum Vitae, and vice versa, showing a good robustness of the approaches compared to the state-of-the-art Support Vector Machine (SVM).
CityExplorer - A Geogame Extending the Magic Circle

Huizinga [Hui71] identifies several formal characteristics which games share with magic rituals that are bound to a ”magic circle”. He states that games are explicitly defined by the space within which they take place, the time a game or play lasts, and the rules that are active during the game/play. Participants of a game must freely agree to these changes in their ordinary life to be part of the game or play. Further he says that no material interest is connected to it, no profit can be gained, and that these are unproductive human activities.
Nonhyperbolic Reflection Moveout for Orthorhombic Media

Reflection moveout in azimuthally anisotropic media is not only azimuthally dependent but it is also nonhyperbolic. As a result, the conventional hyperbolic normal moveout (NMO) equation parameterized by the exact NMO (stacking) velocity loses accuracy with increasing offset (i.e., spreadlength). This is true even for a single-homogeneous azimuthally anisotropic layer. The most common azimuthally anisotropic models used to describe fractured media are the horizontal transverse isotropy (HTI) and the orthorhombic (ORT). Here, we introduce an analytic representation for the quartic coefficient of the Taylor’s series expansion of the two-way traveltime for pure mode reflection (i.e., no conversion) in arbitrary anisotropic media with arbitrary strength of anisotropy. In addition, we present an analytic expression for the long-spread (large-offset) nonhyperbolic reflection moveout (NHMO). In this study, special attention is given to P wave propagation in orthorhombic media with horizontal interfaces. The quartic coefficient, in general, has a relatively simple form, especially for shear wave propagation. The reflection moveout for each shear-wave mode in a homogeneous orthorhombic medium is purely hyperbolic in the direction normal to the polarization. In addition, the nonhyperbolic portion of the moveout for shear-wave propagation reaches its maximum along the polarization direction, and it decreases rapidly away from the direction of polarization. Hence, the anisotropy-induced nonhyperbolic reflection moveout for shear-wave propagation is significant in the vicinity of the polarization directions. In multilayered azimuthally anisotropic media, the NMO (stacking) velocity and the quartic moveout coefficient can be calculated with good accuracy using Dix-type averaging (e.g., the known averaging equations for VTI media). The interval NMO velocities and the interval quartic coefficients, however, are azimuthally dependent. This allows us to extend the nonhyperbolic moveout (NHMO) equation, originally designed for VTI media, to more general horizontally stratified azimuthally anisotropic media. Numerical examples from reflection moveout in orthorhombic media, the focus of this paper, show that this NHMO equation accurately describes the azimuthally-dependent P -wave reflection traveltimes, even on spreadlengths twice as large as the reflector depth. This work provides analytic insight into the behavior of nonhyperbolic moveout, and it has important applications in modeling and inversion of reflection moveout in azimuthally anisotropic media.
Optimizing Training Population Size and Genotyping Strategy for Genomic Prediction Using Association Study Results and Pedigree Information. A Case of Study in Advanced Wheat Breeding Lines

Wheat breeding programs generate a large amount of variation which cannot be completely explored because of limited phenotyping throughput. Genomic prediction (GP) has been proposed as a new tool which provides breeding values estimations without the need of phenotyping all the material produced but only a subset of it named training population (TP). However, genotyping of all the accessions under analysis is needed and, therefore, optimizing TP dimension and genotyping strategy is pivotal to implement GP in commercial breeding schemes. Here, we explored the optimum TP size and we integrated pedigree records and genome wide association studies (GWAS) results to optimize the genotyping strategy. A total of 988 advanced wheat breeding lines were genotyped with the Illumina 15K SNPs wheat chip and phenotyped across several years and locations for yield, lodging, and starch content. Cross-validation using the largest possible TP size and all the SNPs available after editing (~11k), yielded predictive abilities (rGP) ranging between 0.5–0.6. In order to explore the Training population size, rGP were computed using progressively smaller TP. These exercises showed that TP of around 700 lines were enough to yield the highest observed rGP. Moreover, rGP were calculated by randomly reducing the SNPs number. This showed that around 1K markers were enough to reach the highest observed rGP. GWAS was used to identify markers associated with the traits analyzed. A GWAS-based selection of SNPs resulted in increased rGP when compared with random selection and few hundreds SNPs were sufficient to obtain the highest observed rGP. For each of these scenarios, advantages of adding the pedigree information were shown. Our results indicate that moderate TP sizes were enough to yield high rGP and that pedigree information and GWAS results can be used to greatly optimize the genotyping strategy.
Lack of Neurotrophin 3 Causes Losses of Both Classes of Spiral Ganglion Neurons in the Cochlea in a Region-Specific Fashion

Essential functions of neurotrophin 3 (NT-3) in regulating afferent and efferent innervation of the cochlea have been characterized by comparison of normal and NT-3 mutant mice. NT-3 deficiency has striking, region-specific effects, with complete loss of sensory neurons in the basal turn and dramatic but incomplete neuronal loss in the middle and apical turns. The sensory innervation of inner and outer hair cells was reorganized in mutant animals. Instead of a strictly radial pattern of innervation, the axons of remaining sensory neurons projected spirally along the row of inner hair cells to innervate even the most basal inner hair cells. Innervation of outer hair cells was strongly reduced overall and was not detected in the basal turn. The presence of fibers extending to both inner and outer hair cells suggests that subsets of types I and II sensory neurons survive in the absence of NT-3. Likewise, projections of the cochlea to auditory nuclei of the brainstem were attenuated but otherwise present. Equally striking changes in efferent innervation were observed in mutant animals that closely mimicked the abnormal sensory innervation pattern. Despite these impressive innervation deficiencies, the morphology of the organ of Corti and the development of inner and outer hair cells appeared comparatively normal.
Neurobiological determinants of depressive-like symptoms in rodents : A multifactorial approach

Depressie is een van de meest voorkomende psychiatrische aandoeningen. Sinds de laatste decennia kan je zelfs spreken van een ware epidemie. Tijdens een depressie zie je de volgende symptomen: een depressieve stemming, verminderd genot, prikkelbaarheid, concentratieproblemen, sociale terugtrekking en afwijkingen in eetlust en slaap. Uit onderzoek is gebleken dat depressie ook kan voorkomen in combinatie met andere neuropsychiatrische aandoeningen zoals Schizofrenie, bipolaire stoornissen, de ziekte van Alzheimer, angststoornissen, autisme spectrum stoornissen en stress-gerelateerde stoornissen. Daarnaast komt depressie vaak voor voorafgaand aan de ziekte van Alzheimer, Schizofrenie en bipolaire stoornissen, voordat de symptomen van de aandoening zelf zich laten zien. In de laatste decennia lag de focus bij het diagnosticeren van psychiatrische aandoeningen op subjectieve symptomen en waarnemingen. Hoewel symptomen een belangrijk uitgangspunt zijn, moeten de genetica, omgevingsfactoren en neurobiologie die ten grondslag liggen aan deze symptomen grondig worden onderzocht. Om dit doel te bereiken, kunnen diermodellen erg nuttig zijn om gedragsveranderingen die lijken op menselijke symptomen langdurig te bestuderen. Hiermee is het mogelijk om uiteindelijk de onderliggende neurobiologie te onderzoeken om de ontwikkeling van de ziekte te ontrafelen. Daarom hebben we in dit proefschrift de nadruk gelegd op symptomen van depressie die voorkomen in verschillende neuropsychiatrische en neurodegeneratieve ziekten. Met behulp van verschillende diermodellen, probeerden we achter de neurobiologische determinanten van deze symptomen te komen.
Opponent Modeling in Scrabble

Computers have already eclipsed the level of human play in competitive Scrabble, but there remains room for improvement. In particular, there is much to be gained by incorporating information about the opponent's tiles into the decision-making process. In this work, we quantify the value of knowing what letters the opponent has. We use observations from previous plays to predict what tiles our opponent may hold and then use this information to guide our play. Our model of the oppoent, based on Bayes' theorem, sacrifices accuracy for simplicity and ease of computation. But even with this simplified model, we show significant improvement in play over an existing Scrabble program. These empirical results suggest that this simple approximation may serve as a suitable substitute for the intractable partially observable Markov decision process. Although this work focuses on computer-vs-computer Scrabble play, the tools developed can be of great use in training humans to play against other humans.
Dermatan sulfotransferase Chst14/D4st1, but not chondroitin sulfotransferase Chst11/C4st1, regulates proliferation and neurogenesis of neural progenitor cells

Chondroitin sulfates (CSs) and dermatan sulfates (DSs) are enriched in the microenvironment of neural stem cells (NSCs) during development and in the adult neurogenic niche, and have been implicated in mechanisms governing neural precursor migration, proliferation and differentiation. In contrast to previous studies, in which a chondroitinaseABC-dependent unselective deglycosylation of both CSs and DSs was performed, we used chondroitin 4-O-sulfotransferase-1 (Chst11/C4st1)- and dermatan 4-O-sulfotransferase-1 (Chst14/D4st1)-deficient NSCs specific for CSs and DSs, respectively, to investigate the involvement of specific sulfation profiles of CS and DS chains, and thus the potentially distinct roles of CSs and DSs in NSC biology. In comparison to wild-type controls, deficiency for Chst14 resulted in decreased neurogenesis and diminished proliferation of NSCs accompanied by increased expression of GLAST and decreased expression of Mash-1, and an upregulation of the expression of the receptors for fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) and epidermal growth factor (EGF). By contrast, deficiency in Chst11 did not influence NSC proliferation, migration or differentiation. These observations indicate for the first time that CSs and DSs play distinct roles in the self-renewal and differentiation of NSCs.