Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural brain changes in schizophrenia at different stages of the illness: A selective review of longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging studies

Objective: Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disorder accompanied by aberrant structural brain connectivity. The question whether schizophrenia is a progressive brain disorder is yet to be resolved. Thus, it is not clear when these structural alterations occur and how they develop over time. Methods: In our selective review, we summarized recent findings from longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging studies investigating structural brain alterations and its impact on clinical outcome at different stages of the illness: (1) subjects at ultra-high risk of developing psychosis, (2) patients with a first episode psychosis, and (3) chronically ill patients. Moreover, we reviewed studies examining the longitudinal effects of medication on brain structure in patients with schizophrenia. Results: (1) Studies from pre-clinical stages to conversion showed a more pronounced cortical gray matter loss (i.e. superior temporal and inferior frontal regions) in those individuals who later made transition to psychosis. (2) Studies investigating patients with a first episode psychosis revealed a decline in multiple gray matter regions (i.e. frontal regions and thalamus) over time as well as progressive cortical thinning in the superior and inferior frontal cortex. (3) Studies focusing on patients with chronic schizophrenia showed that gray matter decreased to a greater extent (i.e. frontal and temporal areas, thalamus, and cingulate cortices)—especially in poor-outcome patients. Very few studies reported effects on white matter microstructure in the longitudinal course of the illness. Conclusion: There is adequate evidence to suggest that schizophrenia is associated with progressive gray matter abnormalities particularly during the initial stages of illness. However, causal relationships between structural changes and illness course—especially in chronically ill patients—should be interpreted with caution. Findings might be confounded by longer periods of treatment and higher doses of antipsychotics or epiphenomena related to the illness.
Depth Cues in VR Head Mounted Displays with Focus Tunable Lenses

With the advent of new VR and AR technologies, it has become increasingly important to implement natural focus cues as the technology reaches more and more people. All 3D VR systems are limited by how well they handle the vergenceaccommodation conflict. This project aimed to solve the vergenceaccommodation conflict by using defocus blur and focus cues to simulate the perception of depth. The novelty of this project is the use of focus-tunable lenses, which until recently have been too small to have a usable field-of-view. The defocus blur will be implemented in OpenGL and a full integration of the hardware and software will be ported to the Oculus Rift. The long term goal of this project will be to incorporate an eye tracking module to automate the refocusing of the lenses.
Online Arabic Character Recognition for Handheld Devices

In this paper, a new system for classification of online isolated handwritten Arabic characters on a handheld device (Palm Pilot) is introduced. Unlike other languages, Arabic has many characters that cannot be written in one stroke. The first stroke of most of these characters is identical. That led us to design a new Arabic graffiti. A neural network was used for classification. It achieved acceptable performance in terms of error rates, and recognition speed.
Emotions States Recognition Based on Physiological Parameters by Employing of Fuzzy-Adaptive Resonance Theory

This paper is an investigation on negative emotions states recognition by employing of Fuzzy Adaptive Resonance Theory (Fuzzy-ART) considering the changes in activities of autonomic nervous system (ANS). Specific psychological experiments were designed to induce appropriate physiological responses on individuals in order to acquire a suitable database for training, validating and testing the proposed procedure. In this research, the three physiological applied signals are Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), Heart Rate (HR) and Respiration Rate (RR). The first experiment which is named Shock was designed to determine a criterion for the change of physiological signals of each individual. In the second one, a combination of two sets of questions has been asked from the subjects to induce their emotions. Finally, Physiological responses were analyzed by Fuzzy-ART to recognize which question excites the negative emotions. Detecting negative emotions from neutral is obtained with total accuracy of 94%.
Children's Causal Learning from Fiction: Assessing the Proximity Between Real and Fictional Worlds

Fictional information presents a unique challenge to the developing child. Children must learn when it is appropriate to transfer information from the fictional space to the real world and what contextual cues should be considered in this decision. The current research explores children’s causal inferences between fictional representations and reality by examining their developing sensitivity to the proximity of the fictional world to the real world, and the effect of this judgment on their subsequent generalization of novel causal properties. By 3-years of age, children are able to evaluate the data that they receive from fictional stories in order to inform their generalization of novel story content to the real world. Additionally, as children develop, they become better able to discriminate between close (realistic) and far (fantastical) fictional worlds when assessing which stories are likely to provide relevant causal knowledge.
A high-performance CABAC encoder architecture for HEVC and H.264/AVC

This paper presents a high-performance context adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) architecture for the next-generation UHDTV applications. Its maximum throughput has been enhanced by 31%~34% with the proposed pre-normalization (prenorm.), hybrid path coverage (HPC), bypass bin splitting (BPBS) and state dual-transition (SDT) schemes. Both the HEVC and H.264/AVC formats can be supported with our architecture by applying a dualstandard binarization design. The proposed CABAC architecture has been silicon proven in a 65nm video encoder chip. It delivers 4.27~4.40 bins/cycle with synthesized and measured clock rates of 401.5MHz and 330MHz, respectively. Therefore a high performance of 1.452Gbin/s is achieved for real-time UHDTV encoding.
Variation in Growth Rate between Arabidopsis Ecotypes Is Correlated with Cell Division and A-Type Cyclin-Dependent Kinase Activity1

We used a kinematic analysis to investigate the growth processes responsible for variation in primary root growth between 18 ecotypes of Arabidopsis. Root elongation rate differed 4-fold between the slowest (Landsberg erecta, 71 μm h−1) and fastest growing line (Wassilewskija [Ws]; 338 μm h−1). This difference was contributed almost equally by variations in mature cortical cell length (84 μm [Landsbergerecta] to 237 μm [Ws]) and rate of cell production (0.63 cell h−1 [NW108] to 1.83 cell h−1[Ws]). Cell production, in turn, was determined by variation in cell cycle duration (19 h [Tsu] to 48 h [NW108]) and, to a lesser extent, by differences in the number of dividing cells (32 [Weiningen] to 61 [Ws]). We found no correlation between mature cell size and endoreduplication, refuting the hypothesis that the two are linked. However, there was a strong correlation between cell production rates and the activity of the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDKA). The level of the protein could explain 32% of the variation in CDKA. Therefore, it is likely that regulators of CDKA, such as cyclins and inhibitors, are also involved. These data provide a functional link between cell cycle regulation and whole-plant growth rate as affected by genetic differences.
Near stereoacuity: development in preschool children; normative values and screening for binocular vision abnormalities; a study of 115 children.

PURPOSE Because of controversial results in previous reports, we wished to further evaluate stereoacuity development in children with normal binocular vision, and to investigate the reliability of stereoscopic tests for screening for abnormal binocular vision and amblyopia. MATERIALS AND METHODS In a prospective study, 115 children, age 3 to 6 1/2 years, were first tested on the TNO and Titmus Stereotests, after which they received a more complete eye examination to determine the presence of ocular and vision abnormalities. Only specific quantitative stereotest results were tabulated for the development study. RESULTS Binocular vision anomalies were detected by stereotesting in 3 of the 115 children. Testability was better on the TNO than the Titmus Stereotest. Using only the quantitative stereotest results, when segregated by age groups, there was a "statistically significant" change (improvement with age) on the TNO Test (p=.0001)(x2); whereas there was no such improvement found on the Titmus Stereotest Circles, p=. 045, 0.72. CONCLUSIONS The TNO Test is reliable for screening for binocular vision anomalies and amblyopia. Also, normal stereopsis and stereoacuity acuity improves "significantly" between age 4 and 5 1/2 years, and reaches adult-like level at 5 1/2 years on this test.
The xylem as battleground for plant hosts and vascular wilt pathogens

Vascular wilts are among the most destructive plant diseases that occur in annual crops as well as in woody perennials. These diseases are generally caused by soil-borne bacteria, fungi, and oomycetes that infect through the roots and enter the water-conducting xylem vessels where they proliferate and obstruct the transportation of water and minerals. As a consequence, leaves wilt and die, which may lead to impairment of the whole plant and eventually to death of the plant. Cultural, chemical, and biological measures to control this group of plant pathogens are generally ineffective, and the most effective control strategy is the use of genetic resistance. Owing to the fact that vascular wilt pathogens live deep in the interior of their host plants, studies into the biology of vascular pathogens are complicated. However, to design novel strategies to combat vascular wilt diseases, understanding the (molecular) biology of vascular pathogens and the molecular mechanisms underlying plant defense against these pathogens is crucial. In this review, we discuss the current knowledge on interactions of vascular wilt pathogens with their host plants, with emphasis on host defense responses against this group of pathogens.
Earning Quality after Privatization &amp; Its Drivers: A Comparison between Private-owned and State-owned Public Companies

Since mid-90s scale privatization have brought about positive benefits such as higher productivity, unemployment avoidance, and efficient governance structure. However, the paper finds earning quality decreases after privatization. The drivers are both operating environment and manager's opportunism. But different environment factor and discretionary factor contribute difference. Based on both private owned public company and its pair sample and only private owned public company sample, environmental factors show different effects while size, operating cycle and negative profit ratio indicates insignificant effect, and discretionary accrual presents significant effect on earning quality decreases. The result suggests manager's opportunism is an important driver.
Vector quantization for license-plate location and image coding

License-plate location in sensor images plays an important role in vehicle identification for automated transport systems (ATS). This paper presents a novel method based on vector quantization (VQ) to process vehicle images. The proposed method makes it possible to perform superior picture compression for archival purposes and to support effective location at the same time. As compared with classical approaches, VQ encoding can give some hints about the contents of image regions; such additional information can be exploited to boost location performance. The VQ system can be trained by way of examples; this gives the advantages of adaptiveness and on-field tuning. The approach has been tested in a real industrial application and included satisfactorily in a complete ATS for vehicle identification.
Inhibition of TRIP1/S8/hSug1, a component of the human 19S proteasome, enhances mitotic apoptosis induced by spindle poisons

Mitotic spindle poisons (e.g., Taxol and vinblastine), used as chemotherapy drugs, inhibit mitotic spindle function, activate the mitotic spindle checkpoint, arrest cells in mitosis, and then cause cell death by mechanisms that are poorly understood. By expression cloning, we identified a truncated version of human TRIP1 (also known as S8, hSug1), an AAA (ATPases associated with diverse cellular activities) family ATPase subunit of the 19S proteasome regulatory complex, as an enhancer of spindle poison–mediated apoptosis. Stable expression of the truncated TRIP1/S8/hSug1 in HeLa cells [OP-TRIP1(88-406)] resulted in a decrease of measurable cellular proteasome activity, indicating that OP-TRIP1(88-406) had a dominant-negative effect on proteasome function. OP-TRIP1(88-406) revealed an increased apoptotic response after treatment with spindle poisons or with proteasome inhibitors. The increased apoptosis coincided with a significant decrease in expression of BubR1, a kinase required for activation and maintenance of the mitotic spindle checkpoint in response to treatment with spindle poisons. Small interfering RNA (siRNA)–mediated knockdown of TRIP1/S8/hSug1 resulted in a reduction of general proteasome activity and an increase in mitotic index. The siRNA treatment also caused increased cell death after spindle poison treatment. These results indicate that inhibition of TRIP1/S8/hSug1 function by expression of a truncated version of the protein or by siRNA-mediated suppression enhances cell death in response to spindle poison treatment. Current proteasome inhibitor drugs in trial as anticancer agents target elements of the 20S catalytic subcomplex. Our results suggest that targeting the ATPase subunits in 19S regulatory complex in the proteasome may enhance the antitumor effects of spindle poisons. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(1):29–38]
LocDB: experimental annotations of localization for Homo sapiens and Arabidopsis thaliana

LocDB is a manually curated database with experimental annotations for the subcellular localizations of proteins in Homo sapiens (HS, human) and Arabidopsis thaliana (AT, thale cress). Currently, it contains entries for 19 604 UniProt proteins (HS: 13 342; AT: 6262). Each database entry contains the experimentally derived localization in Gene Ontology (GO) terminology, the experimental annotation of localization, localization predictions by state-of-the-art methods and, where available, the type of experimental information. LocDB is searchable by keyword, protein name and subcellular compartment, as well as by identifiers from UniProt, Ensembl and TAIR resources. In comparison to other public databases, LocDB as a resource adds about 10 000 experimental localization annotations for HS proteins and ∼900 for AS proteins. Over 40% of the proteins in LocDB have multiple localization annotations providing a better platform for development of new multiple localization prediction methods with higher coverage and accuracy. Links to all referenced databases are provided. LocDB will be updated regularly by our group (available at: http://www.rostlab.org/services/locDB).
Agreement between Two Methods of Dietary Data Collection in Male Adolescent Academy-Level Soccer Players

Collecting accurate and reliable nutritional data from adolescent populations is challenging, with current methods providing significant under-reporting. Therefore, the aim of the study was to determine the accuracy of a combined dietary data collection method (self-reported weighed food diary, supplemented with a 24-h recall) when compared to researcher observed energy intake in male adolescent soccer players. Twelve Academy players from an English Football League club participated in the study. Players attended a 12 h period in the laboratory (08:00 h–20:00 h), during which food and drink items were available and were consumed ad libitum. Food was also provided to consume at home between 20:00 h and 08:00 h the following morning under free-living conditions. To calculate the participant reported energy intake, food and drink items were weighed and recorded in a food diary by each participant, which was supplemented with information provided through a 24-h recall interview the following morning. Linear regression, limits of agreement (LOA) and typical error (coefficient of variation; CV) were used to quantify agreement between observer and participant reported 24-h energy intake. Difference between methods was assessed using a paired samples t-test. Participants systematically under-reported energy intake in comparison to that observed (p < 0.01) but the magnitude of this bias was small and consistent (mean bias = −88 kcal·day−1, 95% CI for bias = −146 to −29 kcal·day−1). For random error, the 95% LOA between methods ranged between −1.11 to 0.37 MJ·day−1 (−256 to 88 kcal·day−1). The standard error of the estimate was low, with a typical error between measurements of 3.1%. These data suggest that the combined dietary data collection method could be used interchangeably with the gold standard observed food intake technique in the population studied providing that appropriate adjustment is made for the systematic under-reporting common to such methods.
Wavelet Domain Multifractal Analysis for Static and Dynamic Texture Classification

In this paper, we propose a new texture descriptor for both static and dynamic textures. The new descriptor is built on the wavelet-based spatial-frequency analysis of two complementary wavelet pyramids: standard multiscale and wavelet leader. These wavelet pyramids essentially capture the local texture responses in multiple high-pass channels in a multiscale and multiorientation fashion, in which there exists a strong power-law relationship for natural images. Such a power-law relationship is characterized by the so-called multifractal analysis. In addition, two more techniques, scale normalization and multiorientation image averaging, are introduced to further improve the robustness of the proposed descriptor. Combining these techniques, the proposed descriptor enjoys both high discriminative power and robustness against many environmental changes. We apply the descriptor for classifying both static and dynamic textures. Our method has demonstrated excellent performance in comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches in several public benchmark datasets.
’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Industry associations , health innovation systems and politics of development : the cases of India and South Africa

Over the last 20 years, developing countries have witnessed the increased role of non-governmental actors such as health industry associations and umbrella organizations in the diffusion and governance of health innovation. Utilizing extensive interviews with actors in the Indian and South African health industries, this paper argues that, in a context of emerging pluralism – i.e., a dynamic context of bargaining between competing (public and private) interests and values – these associations constitute public actors that play dual roles in the politics of innovation and development. Specifically, not only do they engage downstream by diffusing knowledge to their respective health innovation systems in order to achieve common objectives, they also engage upstream with their governments to co-develop policies and regulations. This dual role of health industry associations and umbrella organizations makes them less neutral politically but more effective institutionally, and their innovative and political role should be seriously taken into account in the healthcare sector. DOI 10.1515/bap-2014-0023 Previously published online March 24, 2015
Prevalence of Abnormal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Findings in Children with Persistent Symptoms after Pediatric Sports-Related Concussion.

A subset of patients experience persistent symptoms after pediatric concussion, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is commonly used to evaluate for pathology. The utility of this practice is unclear. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to describe the MRI findings in children with concussion. A registry of all patients seen at our institution from January 2010 through March 2016 with pediatric sports-related concussion was cross-referenced with a database of radiographical studies. Radiology reports were reviewed for abnormal findings. Patients with abnormal computed tomographies or MRI scans ordered for reasons other than concussion were excluded. Among 3338 children identified with concussion, 427 underwent MRI. Only 2 (0.5%) had findings compatible with traumatic injury, consisting in both of microhemorrhage. Sixty-one patients (14.3%) had abnormal findings unrelated to trauma, including 24 nonspecific T2 changes, 15 pineal cysts, eight Chiari I malformations, and five arachnoid cysts. One child underwent craniotomy for a cerebellar hemangioblastoma after presenting with ataxia; another had cortical dysplasia resected after seizure. The 2 patients with microhemorrhage each had three previous concussions, significantly more than patients whose scans were normal (median, 1) or abnormal without injury (median, 1.5; p = 0.048). MRI rarely revealed intracranial injuries in children post-concussion, and the clinical relevance of these uncommon findings remains unclear. Abnormalities unrelated to trauma are usually benign. However, MRI should be thoughtfully considered in children who present with concerning or atypical symptoms.
Penetration-free system for transmission of data and power through solid metal barriers

This paper presents a novel system capable of simultaneous high-power and high data-rate transmission through solid metal barriers using ultrasound. By co-axially aligning a pair of piezoelectric transducers on opposite sides of a metal wall and acoustically coupling them to the barrier, an acoustic-electric transmission channel is formed which prevents the need for physical penetrations. Independent data and power channels are utilized, but they are only separated by 25.4 mm (1 in) to reduce the system's form factor. Commercial off-the-shelf components and evaluation boards are used to create real-time prototype hardware and the full system is capable of transmitting data at 12.4 Mbps and delivering 50 W of power through a 63.5 mm (2.5 in) thick steel wall. A synchronous multi-carrier communication scheme (OFDM) is used to achieve a very high spectral efficiency and to ensure that there is only minor interference between the power and data channels. Also presented is a discussion of many potential enhancements that could be made to greatly improve the power and data-rate capabilities of the system. This system could have a tremendous impact on improving safety and preserving structural integrity in many military applications (submarines, surface ships, UUVs, armored vehicles, planes, etc.) as well as in a wide range of commercial, industrial, and nuclear systems.
Simultaneous stretching and static electric field poling of poly(vinylidene fluoride‐hexafluoropropylene) copolymer films

Poly(vinylideneflouride-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) copolymer films were simultaneously stretched and static electric poled (SSSEP) in seriate mode. The experimental results exhibited that SSSEP greatly enhanced the piezoelectric properties of the PVDF-HFP films and slightly increased the dielectric properties of the films. The maximum piezoelectric coefficient d33 24 pC/N higher than the reported was obtained in these films under optimum condition. Based on the wide angle X-ray diffraction results, the SSSEP films showed more organized crystalline structure than the only stretched films. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 47:1630–1633, 2007. © 2007 Society of Plastics Engineers