Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship of Neuropsychological Functioning with Demographic Characteristics, Brain Imaging Findings, and Health in Elderly Individuals

Identification of cognitive manifestations of neurological diseases in aged patients depends on our understanding of cognitive changes and their relationship with possible silent brain lesions, characteristic of normal elderly. The aim of present studies was to provide information on demographic factors, brain-behavior relationships, and healthrelated aspects in neurologically healthy elderly individuals in order to provide background information for clinical diagnostic decision making. For the neurological investigation a random sample of persons living at home were invited. From the sample of 338 individuals, aged 55 to 85 years, 120 subjects underwent both magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and neuropsychological testing. A group of 37 individuals were invited to a five-year follow-up study. Significant age-related decline was found in tests that measured speed of performance together with constructional, attentional or psychomotor functions, and visual memory. Most of the neuropsychological test performances were associated with education, especially verbal intellectual functions. Test performances of older subjects were heterogeneous. Besides a group performing on average level, we found a cognitively well-performing group and a group with cognitive impairment. In the follow-up study, memory decline was not related to mild hippocampal atrophy. Instead, white matter hyperintensities of the brain were associated with attention and speed of performance. White matter changes related to hypertension correlated with attention and flexibility. Subjects with white matter changes and cardiac failure were impaired in visual functions, attention and flexibility. The determination of cognitive impairment relies on norms corrected for age and education. However, the results of well educated, and high performing subjects was comparable with performance of younger people. One should study further whether hippocampal atrophy is related to normal age-related memory decline. White matter changes, possibly related to hypertension and cardiac diseases, should be taken into account when differentiating acute cognitive impairment.
Bootstrapping Trust with Partial and Subjective Observability

Assessment of trust and reputation typically relies on prior experiences of a trustee agent, which may not exist, e.g. especially in highly dynamic environments. In these cases stereotypes can be used, where traits of trustees can be used as an indicator of their behaviour during interactions. Communicating observations of traits to witnesses who are unable to observe them is difficult, however, when the traits are interpreted subjectively. In this paper we propose a mechanism for learning translations between such subjective observations, evaluating it in a simulated marketplace.
Single Magnet Ingestion- Individualizing the Algorithm.

We present a case that encouraged us to revisit the management algorithm in single magnet ingestion [1]. A child had undergone a double-barrel sigmoid colostomy for anorectal malformation during neonatal period, with a plan for staged surgical repair. At four years of age he presented to the surgeon after ingestion of a single small magnet. The magnet was visible in the epigastrium on radiography. Being asymptomatic, serial radiological follow-up was advised, but the parents did not report for follow-up. Five months later, the child presented with frequent colicky abdominal pain and bloating which used to subside with passage of stools. On examination, the abdomen was soft, and stoma was extremely tight allowing only the tip of the little finger resulting in oozing of blood. Anteroposterior radiograph revealed a magnet on the left side of the abdomen. A 9.2 mm esophagogastroduodenoscope was inserted through the stoma into the proximal loop with difficulty, and a 1.5 cm magnet was visualized proximal to the stoma. Attempts to remove it with rat-tooth forceps led to repeated slipping as the stoma was narrow. A net retrieval device was used, and the magnet could be removed only with significant force that damaged the net. There was selflimited oozing from the stoma. The child became asymptomatic after removal of the foreign body.
The African American Adolescent Respect Scale: A Measure of a Prosocial Attitude

Objectives: The respect that African American youth feel promotes psychological wellness and social identity; conversely, a lack of respect compromises their identities and is viewed as a threat to safety. This article describes the development, psychometric analysis, and validation of the African American Respect Scale, a 20-item instrument measuring prosocial attitudes held by male adolescents. Method: The scale was administered to 200 African American male youth age 14 to 18 years; 100 were incarcerated in juvenile corrections facilities, 100 resided in the community. Results: After acceptable reliability was established, factor analysis revealed three principal components labeled societal, family, and peer subscales. The subscales correlated with racial socialization and predicted the use of violence. Nonincarcerated youth scored significantly higher on all three subscales than incarcerated youth. Conclusions: Suggestions for social work practice with African American youth include assessing their attitudes toward respect, and assisting them to handle disrespect without resorting to violence.
Music Homogeneity Analysis through Instantaneous Frequencies

This paper describes a new method of music data retrieval. Proposed method provides a way to determine tune's internal homogeneity, which means detecting which parts of the tune sound typical to whole tune and which do not. Such information can be used for various purposes such as tune thumbnail creation or tune cleaning from untypical parts for further automatic analysis. In our method, we slice music piece into frames and compare these frames with the whole tune by means of Instantaneous Frequency Spectrum, which gives a comprehensive approximation of frames homogeneity. This approximation is then iteratively refined. The final result shows homogeneity of short frames to the whole tune. By setting different thresholds we can get desired level of accuracy. However, proposed automatic threshold shows good results throughout all experiments. Visual presentation of tune homogeneity gives a good description of a piece's internal structure.
The Rebinding Properties of Bovine Serum Albumin Imprinted Calcium Phosphate/Polyacrylate/Alginate Hybrid Polymer Microspheres

Calcium phosphate/polyacrylate/alginate hybrid polymer microspheres with bovine serum albumin (BSA) embedded and coated on the surface were prepared with (NH4)2HPO4, sodium polyacrylate (SPA) and sodium alginate (SA) via Ca2+ crosslinking in inverse suspension. Rebinding behaviors of the microspheres were evaluated. The factors influencing the imprinting efficiency (IE) of imprinted microspheres were also studied, including the concentration of CaCl2, template content and pH values in rebinding solutions. Selectivity tests showed that the imprinted microspheres exhibited good recognition property for the template protein.
Mutational Analysis of the Varicella-Zoster Virus ORF62/63 Intergenic Region

ABSTRACT The varicella-zoster virus (VZV) ORF62/63 intergenic region was cloned between the Renilla and firefly luciferase genes, which acted as reporters of ORF62 and ORF63 transcription, and recombinant viruses were generated that carried these reporter cassettes along with the intact native sequences in the repeat regions of the VZV genome. In order to investigate the potential contributions of cellular transregulatory proteins to ORF62 and ORF63 transcription, recombinant reporter viruses with mutations of consensus binding sites for six proteins within the intergenic region were also created. The reporter viruses were used to evaluate ORF62 and ORF63 transcription during VZV replication in cultured fibroblasts and in skin xenografts in SCIDhu mice in vivo. Mutations in putative binding sites for heat shock factor 1 (HSF-1), nuclear factor 1 (NF-1), and one of two cyclic AMP-responsive elements (CRE) reduced ORF62 reporter transcription in fibroblasts, while mutations in binding sites for HSF-1, NF-1, and octamer binding proteins (Oct-1) increased ORF62 reporter transcription in skin. Mutations in one CRE and the NF-1 site altered ORF63 transcription in fibroblasts, while mutation of the Oct-1 binding site increased ORF63 reporter transcription in skin. The effect of each of these mutations implies that the intact binding site sequence regulates native ORF62 and ORF63 transcription. Mutation of the only NF-κB/Rel binding site had no effect on ORF62 or ORF63 transcription in vitro or in vivo. The segment of the ORF62/63 intergenic region proximal to ORF63 was most important for ORF63 transcription, but mutagenesis also altered ORF62 transcription, indicating that this region functions as a bidirectional promoter. This first analysis of the ORF62/63 intergenic region in the context of VZV replication indicates that it is a dual promoter and that cellular transregulatory factors affect the transcription of these key VZV regulatory genes.
Preemptive scheduling of parallel jobs on multiprocessors

We study the problem of processor scheduling for n parallel jobs applying the method of competitive analysis. We prove that for jobs with a single phase of parallelism, a preemptive scheduling algorithm without information about job execution time can achieve a mean completion time within 2 2 n+1 times the optimum. In other words, we prove a competitive ratio of 2 2 n+1 . The result is extended to jobs with multiple phases of parallelism (which can be used to model jobs with sublinear speedup) and to interactive jobs (with phases during which the job has no CPU requirements) to derive solutions guaranteed to be within 4 4 n+1 times the optimum. In comparison with previous work, our assumption that job execution times are unknown prior to their completion is more realistic, our multiphased job model is more general, and our approximation ratio (for jobs with a single phase of parallelism) is tighter and cannot be improved. While this work presents theoretical results obtained using competitive analysis, we believe that the results provide insight into the performance of practical multiprocessor scheduling algorithms that operate in the absence of complete information.
Accurate extension of multiple sequence alignments using a phylogeny-aware graph algorithm

Motivation: Accurate alignment of large numbers of sequences is demanding and the computational burden is further increased by downstream analyses depending on these alignments. With the abundance of sequence data, an integrative approach of adding new sequences to existing alignments without their full re-computation and maintaining the relative matching of existing sequences is an attractive option. Another current challenge is the extension of reference alignments with fragmented sequences, as those coming from next-generation metagenomics, that contain relatively little information. Widely used methods for alignment extension are based on profile representation of reference sequences. These do not incorporate and use phylogenetic information and are affected by the composition of the reference alignment and the phylogenetic positions of query sequences. Results: We have developed a method for phylogeny-aware alignment of partial-order sequence graphs and apply it here to the extension of alignments with new data. Our new method, called PAGAN, infers ancestral sequences for the reference alignment and adds new sequences in their phylogenetic context, either to predefined positions or by finding the best placement for sequences of unknown origin. Unlike profile-based alternatives, PAGAN considers the phylogenetic relatedness of the sequences and is not affected by inclusion of more diverged sequences in the reference set. Our analyses show that PAGAN outperforms alternative methods for alignment extension and provides superior accuracy for both DNA and protein data, the improvement being especially large for fragmented sequences. Moreover, PAGAN-generated alignments of noisy next-generation sequencing (NGS) sequences are accurate enough for the use of RNA-seq data in evolutionary analyses. Availability: PAGAN is written in C++, licensed under the GPL and its source code is available at http://code.google. com/p/pagan-msa. Contact: ari.loytynoja@helsinki.fi Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Theoretical aspects of scanning transmission electron microscopy

This thesis explores the theory describing wavefunctions and images, both elastic and inelastic, formed in scanning transmission electron microscopy. A method is presented for calculating the elastic wavefunction based upon a new formulation of the boundary conditions which couples the probe to Bloch states within the crystal in a single step. Though this method is fundamentally equivalent to previous approaches based upon the superposition of wavefunctions corresponding to individual plane wave components in the incident probe, it provides new insight into the some of the dynamics, allows for efficient calculations, and proves useful for demonstrating well known results such as reciprocity relations. A formal inversion technique is also presented that uses a collection of diffraction plane data in scanning transmission electron microscopy to reconstruct the object potential, even in the presence of strong multiple scattering. The new form of the boundary conditions allows for a generalization of a crosssection expression for calculating inelastic images, making use of the theory of mixed dynamic form factors. This enables the simulation of images for a range of inelastic mechanisms, including thermal scattering, used to simulate high-angle annular dark field imaging, and inner-shell ionization, used to simulate electron energy loss spectroscopy images. A multislice form of this expression is given. Selection between the methods can thus be based on the sample of interest: the Bloch wave method is very efficient when the sample is crystalline; the multislice method is more appropriate if the sample lacks periodicity. The issue of cross-talk, where dynamical probe spreading may result in a signal containing contributions from several columns and therefore confound direct interpretation, is assessed for high-angle annular dark field imaging. Single atom images are simulated to provide an estimate of the localization of signal in electron energy loss spectroscopy, and confirm that the limitations of probe size generally outweigh
Needle‐punched nonwoven matrix from regenerated collagen fiber for cartilage tissue engineering

In this study, a new application of needle-punched three-dimensional (3D) fiber matrix from regenerated collagen fiber in articular cartilage tissue engineering (TE) was developed. Scanning electron microscopy images showed that the arrangement of fibers well mimicked the transitional part of the zonal articular cartilage. The 3D matrices exhibited a high porosity (93.5 ± 2.3%) and a large pore size range from about 20 μm in the inner part to 200–300 μm on the surface. The interconnected pore structure and hydrophilicity of the fibers led to the rapid and desired water uptake capacity of the matrices. Although the tensile and compressive properties of the scaffold were slightly lower than those of the natural articular cartilage, the anisotropic and nonlinear tension–compression were highly similar. In vitro human bone marrow stromal cells proliferation and cell morphology revealed the well cytocompatibility of the matrix, indicating its great potential in articular cartilage TE. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 40404.
Finding redundant and complementary communities in multidimensional networks

Community Discovery in networks is the problem of detecting, for each node, its membership to one of more groups of nodes, the communities, that are densely connected, or highly interactive. We define the community discovery problem in multidimensional networks, where more than one connection may reside between any two nodes. We also introduce two measures able to characterize the communities found. Our experiments on real world multidimensional networks support the methodology proposed in this paper, and open the way for a new class of algorithms, aimed at capturing the multifaceted complexity of connections among nodes in a network.
Anticipating Requests to Improve Performance and Reduce Costs in Cloud Storage

Clouds are a suitable place to store data with scalability and financial flexibility. However, it is difficult to ensure the reliability of the data stored in a cloud. Byzantine fault tolerance can improve reliability, but at a high cost. This paper presents a technique that anticipates requests in order to reduce that cost. We show that this technique improves the performance in comparison with related works and maintains the desired data reliability.
FAIL-MPI: How Fault-Tolerant Is Fault-Tolerant MPI?

One of the topics of paramount importance in the development of cluster and grid middleware is the impact of faults since their occurrence in grid infrastructures and in large-scale distributed systems is common. MPI (message passing interface) is a popular abstraction for programming distributed and parallel applications. FAIL (FAult Injection Language) is an abstract language for fault occurrence description capable of expressing complex and realistic fault scenarios. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using FAIL to inject faults in a fault-tolerant MPI implementation. Our middleware, FAIL-MPI, is used to carry quantitative and qualitative faults and stress testing
Opportunity Cost and OCBA Selection Procedures in Ordinal Optimization for a Fixed Number of Alternative Systems

Ordinal optimization offers an efficient approach for simulation optimization by focusing on ranking and selecting a finite set of good alternatives. Because simulation replications only give estimates of the performance of each alternative, there is a potential for incorrect selection. Two measures of selection quality are the alignment probability or the probability of correct selection (P{CS}), and the expected opportunity cost E[OC], of a potentially incorrect selection. Traditional ordinal optimization approaches focus on the former case. This paper extends Chen's optimal computing budget allocation (OCBA) approach, which allocated replications to improve P{CS}, to provide the first OCBA-like procedure that optimizes E[OC] in some sense. The procedure performs efficiently in numerical experiments.
The Fight against Spam - A Machine Learning Approach

The paper presents a brief survey of the fight between spammers and antispam software developers, and also describes new approaches to spam filtering. In the first two sections we present a survey of the currently existing spam types. Some well-mapped spammer tricks are also described, although the imagination of spam distributors is endless, and therefore only the most common tricks are covered. We present some up-to-date spam blocking techniques currently integrated into today’s spam filters. In the Methodology and Results sections we describe our implementation of Itemsets-based, Naive Bayes and LSI classifiers for classifying email messages into spam and non-spam (ham) categories.
Structure of growing microtubule ends: two-dimensional sheets close into tubes at variable rates

Observation of microtubule growth at different rates by cryo-electron microscopy reveals that the ends range from blunt to long, gently curved sheets. The mean sheet length increases with the growth rate while the width of the distributions increases with the extent of assembly. The combination of a concentration dependent growth rate of the tubulin sheet with a variable closure rate of the microtubule cylinder, results in a model in which stochastic fluctuations in sheet length and tubulin conformation confine GTP-tubulins to microtubule ends. We propose that the variability of microtubule growth rate observed by video microscopy (Gildersleeve, R. F., A. R. Cross, K. E. Cullen, A. P. Fagen, and R. C. Williams. 1992. J. Biol. Chem. 267: 7995- 8006, and this study) is due to the variation in the rate of cylinder closure. The curvature of the sheets at the end of growing microtubules and the small oligomeric structures observed at the end of disassembling microtubules, indicate that tubulin molecules undergo conformational changes both during assembly and disassembly.
Modeling Data using Directional Distributions

Traditionally multi-variate normal distributions have been the staple of data modeling in most domains. For some domains, the model they provide is either inadequate or incorrect because of the disregard for the directional components of the data. We present a generative model for data that is suitable for modeling directional data (as can arise in text and gene expression clustering). We use mixtures of von Mises-Fisher distributions to model our data since the von Mises-Fisher distribution is the natural distribution for directional data. We derive an Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm to flnd the maximum likelihood estimates for the parameters of our mixture model, and provide various experimental results to evaluate the \correctness" of our formulation. In this paper we also provide some of the mathematical background necessary to carry out all the derivations and to gain insight for an implementation.
Learning to Efficiently Pursue Communication Goals on the Web with the GOSMR Architecture

We present GOSMR ("goal oriented scenario modeling robots"), a cognitive architecture designed to show coordinated, goal-directed behavior over the Internet, focusing on the web browser as a case study. The architecture combines a variety of artificial intelligence techniques, including planning, temporal difference learning, elementary reasoning over uncertainty, and natural language parsing, but is designed to be computationally lightweight. Its intended use is to be deployed on virtual machines in large-scale network experiments in which simulated users' adaptation in the face of resource denial should be intelligent but varied. The planning system performs temporal difference learning of action times, discounts goals according to hyperbolic discounting of time-to-completion and chance of success, takes into account the assertions of other agents, and separates abstract action from site-specific affordances. Our experiment, in which agents learn to prefer a social networking style site for sending and receiving messages, shows that utility-proportional goal selection is a reasonable alternative to Boltzmann goal selection for producing a rational mix of behavior.