Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Handling Continuity in Seamless Learning via Opportunistic Recognition and Evaluation of Activity Cohesion

Handling the continuity of learning experience across different activities and contexts is a key challenge for seamless learning. Current context and activity recognition techniques work well in fixed environments where sensors deployment and data are known but are not adaptable to dynamic and changing situations when, for instance, a learner moves from dense to rare sensor environments. Moreover, even if we are able to recognize with more or less precision activities, it still remains the issue of understanding if there are useful and interesting educational concepts related to the activities. In this short paper we discuss our ideas and preliminary results on the definition of an opportunistic approach to recognize activities and contents that leverages on the characterization of the environments in terms of sensor richness and knowledge expressiveness. The basic idea is to recognize the kind of environment in which a learner is involved and then to adapt the most suitable techniques taking advantage of the specific features of the environment. Next, we discuss two measures allowing us to understand i) the cohesion degree of the set of (informal, not formal, formal) activities a learner is involved in, and ii) if the the learner is able and in a proper disposition to acquire new knowledge or develop a new competence from the execution of activities. We propose the adoption of the first measure in the fitness function of a swarm intelligence algorithm to optimise the search of cohesive activities.
Packaging of Endogenous Retroviral Sequences in Retroviral Vectors Produced by Murine and Human Packaging Cells

ABSTRACT Interaction of retrovirus vectors and endogenous retroviruses present in packaging cell lines and target cells may result in unwanted events, such as the formation of recombinant viruses and the mobilization of therapeutic vectors. Using sensitive reverse transcriptase PCR assays, we investigated human and murine gene therapy packaging cell lines for incorporation of endogenous retrovirus transcripts into murine leukemia virus (MLV) vector particles and, conversely, whether vector genomes are incorporated into human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) particles. VL30 endogenous retrovirus sequences were efficiently packaged in particles produced by the murine AM12 packaging system. For every seven MLV-derived β-galactosidase (β-Gal) vector genomes present in the particles, one copy of VL30 was also packaged. Although human FLY packaging cells expressed several classes of HERV transcripts (HERV-K, HuRT, type C, and RTVL-H), none was detectable in the MLV vector particles released from the cells. Nonspecific packaging of the MLV Gag-Pol expression vector transcripts was detected in the FLY virions at a low level (1 in 17,000 sequences). These findings indicate that human packaging cells produce retrovirus particles far less contaminated by endogenous viral sequences than murine packaging cells. Human teratocarcinoma cells (GH cells), which produce HERV-K particles, were transduced with an MLV-derived β-Gal vector. Although both HERV-K and RTVL-H sequences were found in association with the particles, β-Gal transcripts were not detected, indicating that HERV Gag proteins do not efficiently package MLV-based vectors.
Educating pediatricians on children's oral health: past, present, and future.

OBJECTIVE The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy Oral Health Risk Assessment Timing and Establishment of the Dental Home encourages pediatricians to play an important role in the oral health of children. The purpose of this study was to determine how well pediatricians are prepared to play the AAP suggested role in children's oral health by examining the oral health content of their educational process. METHODS This article reviews current medical education guidelines, programs, surveys, and pediatrician experiences in oral health training at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education levels. RESULTS Although some medical schools, residency programs, and continuing medical education efforts do include oral health in their curricula, the practice is not widespread. Professional and oversight organizations such as the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Council on Medical Student Education in Pediatrics, Association of Pediatric Program Directors, AAP, and the pediatric Residency Review Committee do not include oral health in key guidelines and surveys of the medical education continuum. When surveyed, pediatricians state that the time spent on oral health education at each level of training is inadequate. CONCLUSIONS Overall, the level of oral health training for pediatricians at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education levels is inadequate to provide pediatricians with the competencies required for the provision of quality oral health care to children. Despite this inadequacy, educational efforts are under way and various tools and guidelines are available in a few locations. In addition, numerous opportunities exist for the organizations responsible for pediatrician education to ensure that curricula are designed and adopted to achieve these competencies, faculty are trained to teach these competencies, and program accreditation and certification are closely linked to acquisition of these competencies. Ensuring the success of such efforts will require cooperation between many organizations and disciplines and a genuine commitment to improve pediatric education and medical care for children.
Cortical Oscillations in Health and Disease

This book first reviews the case that brain oscillations not only are important for cognition, as long suspected, but also play a part in the expression of signs and symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders. The cellular mechanisms of many of the clinically relevant oscillations have been studied by the authors and their colleagues, using in vitro slice methods as well as detailed computer simulations. A surprising insight is that gap junctions between principal neurons play an absolutely critical role in so many types of oscillation in neuronal populations; oscillations are not just the result of properties of individual neurons and their synaptic connections. Furthermore, the way in which gap junctions produce oscillations in the cortex is novel, involving as it does global properties of networks, rather than just the time constants of membrane currents. This insight has implications for therapeutics as well as for our understanding of normal brain functions.
Single and Double Knockouts of the Genes for Photosystem I Subunits G , K , and H of Arabidopsis . Effects on Photosystem I Composition , Photosynthetic Electron Flow , and State Transitions 1

Zentrum zur Identifikation von Genfunktionen durch Insertionsmutagenese bei Arabidopsis thaliana (C.V., P.P., A.L., D.L.), and Abteilung für Pflanzenzüchtung und Ertragsphysiologie, Max-Planck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung, Carl-von-Linné Weg 10, 50829 Köln, Germany (M.T., F.Sc., F.Sa., D.L.); and Institut für Biochemie der Pflanzen, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstra e 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany (P.J.)
Managing Open Source Software Development Projects With Semantic Web Technology

In open source software (OSS) project development typically tools and models originating from heterogeneous background are used. Project managers want to analyze the state of project across these artifacts but often face the challenge of linking semi-structured information across artifacts, e.g., source code versions, mailing list entries, and bug reports. Manual analysis based on finding related information between data sources is costly, errorprone, and often brings results too late for decision making. In this paper we propose linking OSS artifacts with a semantic web technology approach: the engineering knowledge base (EKB). The EKB consists of two types of ontology layers: 1. the common domain knowledge layer and 2. local tool knowledge layer. Mappings between local and domain ontology layers allow querying the local knowledge using the more stable domain ontology syntax. This EKB foundation enables the design of applications, such as a project monitoring system. We empirically evaluate the feasibility, effort, and complexity of an EKB-based project monitoring system based on real-world data.
Urinary tract infection in children associated with idiopathic hypercalciuria.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of symptomatic non-calculous idiopathic hypercalciuria (IH) with urinary tract infection (UTI) in children. MATERIAL AND METHODS This was a retrospective case review of children who had urinary calcium excretion greater than 2 mg/kg/day or random urine calcium-creatinine ratio (UCa/UCr) greater than 0.18 mg/mg. RESULTS One hundred and twenty-four consecutive children with clinical complaints and elevated urine calcium excretion were reviewed. Fifty children (40%) had UTI of which 39 (78%) had recurrent UTI. There was no difference in age between children with UTI and those without UTI. Twenty-four-hour urine calcium and random UCa/UCr were also not different. Only 4 children (8%) had renal stones whereas hematuria, abdominal pain and urine incontinence were frequent associated findings. Six of the children with recurrent UTI (15%) had an anatomical urinary tract abnormality. Therapy in all children consisted of increased fluid intake and reduction in diet sodium and oxalate; however, 14 of the 39 children with recurrent UTI (36%) required therapy with a thiazide diuretic. Recurrent UTI was abolished in 24 children, one child had a single recurrence and 4 children had no response to treatment. CONCLUSIONS We propose that non-calculous IH may be an important contributing factor to recurrent UTI in children.
Field Evaluation of Text-Dependent Speaker Recognition in an Access Control Application

Vector quantization (VQ) is a widely used matching algorithm for text-independent speaker recognition. In this paper we study the use of text-dependent speaker recognition in practical access control application. We compared dynamic time warping (DTW) to VQ-based matching using textdependent pass phrases. Our goal was to find out, how fixed phrase affects speaker recognition performance. We collected corpus of 21 speakers at the location of access control system and experimented with two different text-dependent scenarios: with speaker dependent phrases and with speaker independent phrases. In both cases, DTW outperforms VQ matching, or works similar. Also text-independent test were carried out.
Utility Driven Adaptive Work?ow Execution

Workflows are widely used in applications that require coordinated use of computational resources. Workflow definition languages typically abstract over some aspects of the way in which a workflow is to be executed, such as the level of parallelism to be used or the physical resources to be deployed. As a result, a workflow management system has responsibility for establishing how best to map tasks within a workflow to the available resources. As workflows are typically run over shared resources, and thus face unpredictable and changing resource capabilties, there may be benefit to be derived from adapting the task-to-resource mapping while a workflow is executing. This paper describes the use of utility functions to express the relative merits of alternative mappings; in essence, a utility function can be used to give a score to a candidate mapping, and the exploration of alternative mappings can be cast as an optimization problem. In this approach, changing the utility function allows adaptations to be carried out with a view to meeting different objectives. The contributions of this paper include: (i) a description of how adaptive workflow execution can be expressed as an optimization problem where the objective of the adaptation is to maximize some property expressed as a utility function; (ii) a description of how the approach has been applied to support adaptive workflow execution in grids; and (iii) an experimental evaluation of the resulting approach for alternative utility measures based on response time and profit.
2C-1 Contrast Resonance Imaging with Embedded Ultrasound Imaging Pulses

A new ultrasound contrast imaging modality called Contrast Resonance Imaging (CRI) is proposed, which is based on our finding that, for a short imaging pulse, the nonlinear scattering signal from resonant contrast microbubbles can be greatly enhanced if the imaging pulse is embedded at the end of a relatively long pulse. The new imaging technique is evaluated with in vitro laboratory A-line measurements, achieving a contrast-to-tissue ratio of approximate 40 dB. For a proof of the concept, the new imaging mode is implemented on an iE33 ultrasound scanner and images of a contrast flow phantom with robust contrast signals are obtained
Mixed dementia: emerging concepts and therapeutic implications.

CONTEXT The prevalence of mixed dementia, defined as the coexistence of Alzheimer disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD), is likely to increase as the population ages. OBJECTIVES To provide an overview of the diagnosis, pathophysiology, and interaction of AD and VaD in mixed dementia, and to provide a systematic literature review of the current evidence for the pharmacologic therapy of mixed dementia. DATA SOURCES, STUDY SELECTION, AND DATA EXTRACTION The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched using the keyword dementia. MEDLINE was searched for English-language articles published within the last 10 years using the keywords mixed dementia, the combination of keywords Alzheimer disease, cerebrovascular disorders, and drug therapy, and the combination of keywords vascular dementia and drug therapy. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS Dementia is more likely to be present when vascular and AD lesions coexist, a situation that is especially common with increasing age. The measured benefits in clinical trials for the treatment of mixed dementia are best described as statistically significant differences in cognitive test scores and clinician and caregiver impressions of change. In these studies, the control groups' scores typically decline while the treatment groups improve slightly or decline to a lesser degree over the study period. Nevertheless, even the patients who experience treatment benefits eventually decline. Cholinesterase inhibitor (ChI) therapy for mixed dementia shows modest clinical benefits that are similar to those found for ChI treatment of AD. The N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist memantine also shows modest clinical benefits for the treatment of moderate to severe AD and mild to moderate VaD, but it has not been studied specifically in mixed dementia. The treatment of cardiovascular risk factors, especially hypertension, may be a more effective way to protect brain function as primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention for mixed dementia. CONCLUSIONS Currently available medications provide only modest clinical benefits once a patient has developed mixed dementia. Cardiovascular risk factor control, especially for hypertension and hyperlipidemia, as well as other interventions to prevent recurrent stroke, likely represent important strategies for preventing or slowing the progression of mixed dementia. Additional research is needed to define better what individuals and families hope to achieve from dementia treatment and to determine the most appropriate use of medication to achieve these goals.
A novel fusion-based method for expression-invariant gender classification

In this paper, we propose a novel fusion-based gender classification method that is able to compensate for facial expression even when training samples contain only neutral expression. We perform experimental investigation to evaluate the significance of different facial regions in the task of gender classification. Three most significant regions are used in our fusion-based method. The classification is performed by using support vector machines based on the features extracted using two-dimension principal component analysis. Experiments show that our fusion-based method is able to compensate for facial expressions and obtained the highest correct classification rate of 95.33%.
Determining Senses for Word Sense Disambiguation in Turkish

Word sense disambiguation is an important intermediate stage for many natural language processing applications. The senses of an ambiguous word are the classification of usages for that specific word. This paper deals with the methodologies of determining the senses for a given word if they can not be obtained from an already available resource like WordNet. We offer a method that helps us to determine the sense boundaries gradually. In this method, first we decide on some features that are thought to be effective on the senses and divide the instances first into two, then according to the results of evaluations we continue dividing instances gradually. In a second method we use the pseudo words. We devise artificial words depending on some criteria and evaluate classification algorithms on these previously classified words. Keywords—Word sense disambiguation, sense determination, pseudo words, sense granularity.
Change of lipoprotein(a) and coagulative or fibrinolytic parameters in diabetic patients with nephropathy.

Lipoprotein (a) (Lp(a)) is a plasma lipoprotein of high atherogenicity and competes with plasminogen at the site of plasminogen receptors. It is known that diabetic patients show a hypercoagulable state which might contribute to diabetic vascular complications. In the present study, mean levels of plasma Lp(a) and parameters of coagulation and fibrinolysis such as thrombin-antithrombin III complex (TAT) and alpha 2 plasmin inhibitor-plasmin complex (alpha 2PIC) were elevated in diabetic patients with nephropathy compared to healthy controls. A significant positive correlation was observed between the plasma levels of Lp(a) and alpha 2PIC (p < 0.05). Plasma levels of alpha 2PIC showed a significant positive correlation with those of TAT in the diabetic group, while there was no significant correlation observed in the non-diabetic group. The present results suggest that factors of Lp(a) and coagulation-fibrinolytic systems interacted, contributing to vascular complications in diabetic patients with nephropathy.
Hermansky-Pudlak Protein Complexes, AP-3 and BLOC-1, Differentially Regulate Presynaptic Composition in the Striatum and Hippocampus

Endosomal sorting mechanisms mediated by AP-3 and BLOC-1 are perturbed in Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome, a human genetic condition characterized by albinism and prolonged bleeding (OMIM #203300). Additionally, mouse models defective in either one of these complexes possess defective synaptic vesicle biogenesis (Newell-Litwa et al., 2009). These synaptic vesicle phenotypes were presumed uniform throughout the brain. However, here we report that AP-3 and BLOC-1 differentially regulate the composition of presynaptic terminals in the striatum and dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. Quantitative immunoelectron microscopy demonstrated that the majority of AP-3 immunoreactivity in both wild-type striatum and hippocampus localizes to presynaptic axonal compartments, where it regulates synaptic vesicle size. In the striatum, loss of AP-3 (Ap3dmh/mh ) resulted in decreased synaptic vesicle size. In contrast, loss of AP-3 in the dentate gyrus increased synaptic vesicle size, thus suggesting anatomically specific AP-3-regulatory mechanisms. Loss-of-function alleles of BLOC-1, Pldnpa/pa , and Mutedmu/mu revealed that this complex acts as a brain-region-specific regulator of AP-3. In fact, BLOC-1 deficiencies selectively reduced AP-3 and AP-3 cargo immunoreactivity in presynaptic compartments within the dentate gyrus both at the light and/or electron microscopy level. However, the striatum did not exhibit these BLOC-1-null phenotypes. Our results demonstrate that distinct brain regions differentially regulate AP-3-dependent synaptic vesicle biogenesis. We propose that anatomically restricted mechanisms within the brain diversify the biogenesis and composition of synaptic vesicles.
Mouse models of myeloproliferative neoplasms: JAK of all grades

In 2005, several groups identified a single gain-of-function point mutation in the JAK2 kinase that was present in the majority of patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). Since this discovery, much effort has been dedicated to understanding the molecular consequences of the JAK2V617F mutation in the haematopoietic system. Three waves of mouse models have been produced recently (bone marrow transplantation, transgenic and targeted knock-in), which have facilitated the understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of JAK2V617F-positive MPNs, providing potential platforms for designing and validating novel therapies in humans. This Commentary briefly summarises the first two types of mouse models and then focuses on the more recently generated knock-in models.
Patient Outcomes after Reoperation on the Lumbar Spine*

A consecutive series of thirty-nine patients who had had a reoperation on the lumbar spine was followed for an average of forty-eight months (range, twenty-four to eighty-six months). The patients were evaluated with regard to pain, functional status, and work status. Twenty-eight patients (72 per cent) had a successful outcome, as determined by their ability to return to work, their lack of a need for narcotic analgesics, and their satisfaction with the operative result. Factors that were significantly associated with a successful outcome included a younger age (p < 0.02), working outside of the home (p < 0.05), an initial period of improvement after the previous (index) operation (p < 0.01), fewer spinal levels operated on previously (p < 0.05), and a revision procedure incorporating anterior interbody arthrodesis (p < 0.02).
Functional genomic characterization of neoblast-like stem cells in larval Schistosoma mansoni

Schistosomes infect hundreds of millions of people in the developing world. Transmission of these parasites relies on a stem cell-driven, clonal expansion of larvae inside a molluscan intermediate host. How this novel asexual reproductive strategy relates to current models of stem cell maintenance and germline specification is unclear. Here, we demonstrate that this proliferative larval cell population (germinal cells) shares some molecular signatures with stem cells from diverse organisms, in particular neoblasts of planarians (free-living relatives of schistosomes). We identify two distinct germinal cell lineages that differ in their proliferation kinetics and expression of a nanos ortholog. We show that a vasa/PL10 homolog is required for proliferation and maintenance of both populations, whereas argonaute2 and a fibroblast growth factor receptor-encoding gene are required only for nanos-negative cells. Our results suggest that an ancient stem cell-based developmental program may have enabled the evolution of the complex life cycle of parasitic flatworms. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.00768. 001
An Image-Moment Sensor with Variable-Length Pipeline Structure

A 128 x 128 pixel functional image sensor was implemented. The sensor was able to capture images at 1,000 frame/s and extract the sizes and positions of 10 objects/frame when clocked at 8 MHz. The size of each pixel was 18 μm x 18 μm and the fill factor was 28%. The chip, 3.24 mm x 3.48 mm in size, was implemented with a 0.35 μm CMOS sensor process; the power consumption was 29.7 mW at 8 MHz.