Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reservation Dynamic Frame Slotted-ALOHA for wireless M2M networks with energy harvesting

We consider a wireless Machine-to-Machine (M2M) area network where a gateway periodically collects data from a group of end-devices equipped with energy harvesters. While the use of energy harvesters ideally provides infinite lifetime, the unpredictable amount of harvested energy may not guarantee that all data transmissions can be done in due time because of temporary energy shortages. We propose in this paper the Energy Harvesting-aware Reservation Dynamic Frame Slotted-ALOHA (EH-RDFSA) protocol as a solution suitable for managing the access of end-devices that transmit bursts of data packets while taking into account the energy availability. We derive a model based on a discrete-time Markov chain to analyze the evolution of the energy available in an end-device and to evaluate the performance of the network. In particular, we compute the data delivery ratio, which measures the ability of the protocol to successfully transmit data to the gateway without depleting the energy reserves of the end-devices, and the time efficiency, which measures the amount of data that can be transmitted in a given period of time. We have validated the accuracy of the analysis by means of computer-based simulations. Results show that the overall performance is influenced by the energy harvesting rate and the amount of data to transmit from each end-device. Finally, we have compared the performance of EH-RDFSA with that of DFSA and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocols.
Reconstructing 3D Pose and Motion from a Single Camera View

This paper presents a model based approach to human body tracking in which the 2D silhouette of a moving human and the corresponding 3D skeletal structure are encapsulated within a non-linear Point Distribution Model. This statistical model allows a direct mapping to be achieved between the external boundary of a human and the anatomical position. It is shown how this information, along with the position of landmark features such as the hands and head can be used to reconstruct information about the pose and structure of the human body from a monoscopic view of a scene.
Analgesic, Anxiolytic and Anaesthetic Effects of Melatonin: New Potential Uses in Pediatrics

Exogenous melatonin is used in a number of situations, first and foremost in the treatment of sleep disorders and jet leg. However, the hypnotic, antinociceptive, and anticonvulsant properties of melatonin endow this neurohormone with the profile of a drug that modulates effects of anesthetic agents, supporting its potential use at different stages during anesthetic procedures, in both adults and children. In light of these properties, melatonin has been administered to children undergoing diagnostic procedures requiring sedation or general anesthesia, such as magnetic resonance imaging, auditory brainstem response tests and electroencephalogram. Controversial data support the use of melatonin as anxiolytic and antinociceptive agents in pediatric patients undergoing surgery. The aim of this review was to evaluate available evidence relating to efficacy and safety of melatonin as an analgesic and as a sedative agent in children. Melatonin and its analogs may have a role in antinociceptive therapies and as an alternative to midazolam in premedication of adults and children, although its effectiveness is still controversial and available data are clearly incomplete.
And Yet They Act Together: Interpersonal Perception Modulates Visuo-Motor Interference and Mutual Adjustments during a Joint-Grasping Task

Prediction of “when” a partner will act and “what” he is going to do is crucial in joint-action contexts. However, studies on face-to-face interactions in which two people have to mutually adjust their movements in time and space are lacking. Moreover, while studies on passive observation have shown that somato-motor simulative processes are disrupted when the observed actor is perceived as an out-group or unfair individual, the impact of interpersonal perception on joint-actions has never been directly addressed. Here we explored this issue by comparing the ability of pairs of participants who did or did not undergo an interpersonal perception manipulation procedure to synchronise their reach-to-grasp movements during: i) a guided interaction, requiring pure temporal reciprocal coordination, and ii) a free interaction, requiring both time and space adjustments. Behavioural results demonstrate that while in neutral situations free and guided interactions are equally challenging for participants, a negative interpersonal relationship improves performance in guided interactions at the expense of the free interactive ones. This was paralleled at the kinematic level by the absence of movement corrections and by low movement variability in these participants, indicating that partners cooperating within a negative interpersonal bond executed the cooperative task on their own, without reciprocally adapting to the partner's motor behaviour. Crucially, participants' performance in the free interaction improved in the manipulated group during the second experimental session while partners became interdependent as suggested by higher movement variability and by the appearance of interference between the self-executed actions and those observed in the partner. Our study expands current knowledge about on-line motor interactions by showing that visuo-motor interference effects, mutual motor adjustments and motor-learning mechanisms are influenced by social perception.
Acyl Enzyme Intermediates in Sortase-Catalyzed Pilus Morphogenesis in Gram-Positive Bacteria

ABSTRACT In gram-positive bacteria, covalently linked pilus polymers are assembled by a specific transpeptidase enzyme called pilus-specific sortase. This sortase is postulated to cleave the LPXTG motif of a pilin precursor between threonine and glycine and to form an acyl enzyme intermediate with the substrate. Pilus polymerization is believed to occur through the resolution of this intermediate upon specific nucleophilic attack by the conserved lysine located within the pilin motif of another pilin monomer, which joins two pilins with an isopeptide bond formed between threonine and lysine. Here, we present evidence for sortase reaction intermediates in Corynebacterium diphtheriae. We show that truncated SrtA mutants that are loosely bound to the cytoplasmic membrane form high-molecular-weight complexes with SpaA polymers secreted into the extracellular milieu. These complexes are not formed with SpaA pilin mutants that have alanine substitutions in place of threonine in the LPXTG motif or lysine in the pilin motif. The same phenotype is observed with alanine substitutions of either the conserved cysteine or histidine residue of SrtA known to be required for catalysis. Remarkably, the assembly of SpaA pili, or the formation of intermediates, is abolished with a SrtA mutant missing the membrane-anchoring domain. We infer that pilus polymerization involves the formation of covalent pilin-sortase intermediates, which occurs within a molecular platform on the exoplasmic face of the cytoplasmic membrane that brings together both sortase and its cognate substrates in close proximity to each other, likely surrounding a secretion apparatus. We present electron microscopic data in support of this picture.
Re: Crossed nonaphasia in a dextral with left hemispheric lesions: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of mirrored brain organization.

To the Editor: We read with great interest the article by Hund-Georgiadis et al,1 in which they presented a case report of a patient with crossed nonaphasia after left-hemispheric stroke. Functional MRI revealed “mirrored” brain organization not only for language but also for divided/selective attention, as assessed by the Stroop task. Both functions were lateralized to the right hemisphere. The authors did not assess traditional right-hemispheric cognitive functions by means of functional MRI, such as visuospatial attention.2 They mention in their case description, however, that “the patient complained of problems in the visuospatial domain. ” Neuropsychological testing revealed impaired processing of nonverbal material, whereas processing of verbal material was normal. Therefore, we suspect that visuospatial attention, which normally lateralizes …
News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance

Before news organizations began putting their content online, people got the news in print or on TV and almost always outside of the workplace. But nowadays, most of us keep an eye on the headlines from our desks at work, and we have become accustomed to instant access to a growing supply of constantly updated stories on the Web. This change in the amount of news available as well as how we consume it has been coupled with an unexpected development in editorial labor: rival news organizations can now keep tabs on the competition and imitate them, resulting in a decrease in the diversity of the news. Peeking inside the newsrooms where journalists create stories and the work settings where the public reads them, Pablo J. Boczkowski reveals why journalists contribute to the growing similarity of news - even though they dislike it - and why consumers acquiesce to a media system they find increasingly dissatisfying. Comparing and contrasting two newspapers in Buenos Aires with similar developments in the United States, "News at Work" offers an enlightening perspective on living in a world with more information but less news.
Novel Recombinant-Antigen Enzyme Immunoassay for Serological Diagnosis of Syphilis

ABSTRACT Enzyme immunoassay (EIA) is an ideal method for screening large numbers of patients for syphilis. We evaluated a novel immune-capture EIA (ICE Syphilis; Murex Diagnostics) that uses three recombinantTreponema pallidum antigens (TpN15, TpN17, and TpN47) and compared the results with those obtained by the native T. pallidum antigen EIA (Captia SelectSyph-G; Centocor) that we currently use for the serodiagnosis of syphilis. Specificity was evaluated by screening 1,184 unselected serum specimens in parallel by the ICE Syphilis and SelectSyph-G assays, while sensitivity was tested with a panel of 101 serum specimens containing antitreponemal antibodies (treated and untreated) from patients with various stages of infection. The specificity of the ICE Syphilis EIA (99.8%) on screening was significantly higher (P < 0.02) than that of the SelectSyph-G EIA (99.2%). The sensitivity of the ICE Syphilis EIA was significantly higher (P < 0.01) than that of the SelectSyph-G EIA on both initial (99 versus 91.4%) and repeat (100 versus 92.4%) testing. The ICE Syphilis EIA was also significantly more sensitive (P < 0.01) than the fluorescent treponemal antibody-abs (92.4%) but not the T. pallidum hemagglutination assay (97.1%). Sera containing antitreponemal antibodies gave a much higher antibody index (absorbance of test serum/kit cutoff) by the ICE Syphilis EIA than by the SelectSyph-G EIA. This combined with the overall high sensitivity makes the ICE Syphilis EIA an ideal test for excluding or detecting treponemal infection in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients. The ICE Syphilis EIA was positive with sera from all 15 HIV-infected patients in the study, whereas sera from 3 HIV-infected patients were negative by the SelectSyph-G EIA. We conclude that the high sensitivity and specificity of the ICE Syphilis EIA and its suitability for automation make it an ideal screening test.
Full-Duplex Wireless-Powered Relay With Self-Energy Recycling

This letter studies a wireless-powered amplify-and-forward relaying system, where an energy-constrained relay node assists the information transmission from the source to the destination using the energy harvested from the source. We propose a novel two-phase protocol for efficient energy transfer and information relaying, in which the relay operates in full-duplex mode with simultaneous energy harvesting and information transmission. Compared with the existing protocols, the proposed design possesses two main advantages: 1) it ensures uninterrupted information transmission since no time switching or power splitting is needed at the relay for energy harvesting; and 2) it enables the so-called self-energy recycling, i.e., part of the energy (loop energy) that is used for information transmission by the relay can be harvested and reused in addition to the dedicated energy sent by the source. Under the multiple-input single-output (MISO) channel setup, the optimal power allocation and beamforming design at the relay are derived. Numerical results show a significant throughput gain achieved by our proposed design over the existing time switching based relay protocol.
A generative framework for prediction and informative risk factor selection of bone diseases

With the rapid development of healthcare industry, the overwhelming amounts of electronic health records (EHRs) have been well documented and shared by healthcare institutions and practitioners. It is important to take advantage of EHR data to develop an effective disease risk management model that not only predicts the progression of the disease, but also provides a candidate list of informative risk factors (RFs) in order to prevent the disease. Although EHRs are valuable sources due to the comprehensive patient information, it is difficult to pinpoint the underlying causes of the disease in order to assess the risk of a patient in developing a target disease. Because of the entangled EHR data, it is also challenging to discriminate between patients suffering from the disease and without the disease for the purpose of selecting RFs that cause the disease. To tackle these challenges, we propose a disease memory (DM) framework which can extract the integrated features by modeling the relationships among RFs and more importantly between RFs and the target disease by establishing a deep graphical model with two types of labels. The variants of DM can model characteristics for patients with disease and without disease respectively via training deep networks with different samples. Experiments on a real bone disease data set show that the proposed framework can successfully predict the bone disease and select the informative RFs that are beneficial and useful to aid clinical decision support. Most of the selected RFs are validated by medical literature and some new RFs will attract interests in medical research. The stable and promising performance on evaluation metrics confirms the effectiveness of our model.
Optimization of Relational Expressions Using a Logical Analogon

An expression applying to a relational database is optimized by mapping the expression upon set expressions which, in turn, are transformed into logical expressions. These logical expressions then are optimized, taking into account the constraints that are inherent in relational expressions and the costs of those expressions. Subsequently a reverse transformation to relational expressions is applied. The method is developed for the traditional relational operators and is applicable to a variety of cost criteria. Common subexpressions as well as redundant expressions are optimized. A new relational operation "split" is proposed that may be used effectively in an optimized expression. Results obtained with a model for the optimization method are presented.
Observations of microscale internal gravity waves over an orchard canopy

Scanning atmospheric lidar and in situ observations of internal gravity waves with wavelengths ranging from 30 m to 100 m in the atmospheric roughness sublayer over a forest canopy will be presented. OCIS codes: 010.3640 (lidar), 010.3920 (meteorology), 010.1330 (atmospheric turbulence)
A effective clustering indexing based on EMD for Web image retrieval

In this paper, we develop an effective clustering indexing scheme based on Earth Moverspsila Distance (EMD) for Web image retrieval. By the proposed clustering method, the collected web images can be automatically classified into some image subclasses with the number of the elements less than a given threshold. Then the resulted clustering structure is hierarchical tree, which extremely facilitate to quickly locate the similar image subclass nodes. Additionally, a triple tree structure is presented to effectively represent hierarchical clustering tree, and a query scheme based on approximative EMD measure is developed to achieve fast image retrieval based on the sample image. The experimental results also demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed method.
Temporal Decomposition for Online Multisensor-Multitarget Tracking

In this work we develop a novel temporal decomposition scheme for solving data association in multisensormultitarget tracking problems. Given a set of noisy measurements from any number of sensors the data association problem is to determine which measurements originate from which targets. The problem is traditionally posed as an N -dimensional assignment problem, which is NP-hard for N ≥ 3 dimensions. Our approach limits the dimensionality of the assignment problem and scales well to all problem instances. The formulation is implemented as an online algorithm and results are compared to existing algorithms.
Protection of Saururus Chinensis Extract against Liver Oxidative Stress in Rats of Triton WR-1339-induced Hyperlipidemia

Saururus chinensis has been reported to contain compounds such as lignans, alkaloids, diterpenes, flavonoids, tannins, steroids, and lipids. Fermentation is commonly used to break down certain undesirable compounds, to induce effective microbial conversion, and to improve the potential nutraceutical values. Previous studies have reported that the fermentation process could modify naturally occurring constituents, including isoflavons, saponins, phytosterols, and phenols, and could enhance biological activities, specifically antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. The probiotic strains used for fermentation exert beneficial effects and are safe. In this study, the antioxidative effects of the Bacillus subtilis fermentation of Saururus chinensis were investigated in a rat model with Triton WR-1339-induced hyperlipidemia by comparing the measured antioxidative biological parameters of fermented Saururus chinensis extract to those of nonfermented Saururus chinensis extract. Fermentation played a more excellent role than nonfermentation in ultimately protecting the body from oxidative stress in the liver of the experimental rats with Triton WR-1339-induced hyperlipidemia.
Aminosalicylate as prophylaxis for Crohn's disease

Editor,—We read with interest the recent clinical @lert commentary by Rutgreerts ( (2001) Gut 48:452–53; [OpenUrl][1][CrossRef][2][PubMed][3] ) analysing the recently published study by Lochs and colleagues.1 Lochs et al concluded that compared with placebo, 18 months of treatment with high dose Pentasa (mesalazine 4 g/day) made no difference to postoperative recurrence rates in patients with Crohn's disease involving the small intestine and colon or colon alone (26.3% v 25.6% for mesalazine and placebo, respectively). We feel that the study raises many new questions with regards to the role of 5-aminosalicylate (5-ASA) formulations in the prevention of postoperative Crohn's relapse. Furthermore, … [1]: {openurl}? query=rft.jtitle%253DGastroenterology%26rft.stitle%253DGastroenterology%26rft.aulast%253DLOCHS%26rft.auinit1%253DH. %26rft.volume%253D118%26rft.issue%253D2%26rft.spage%253D264%26rft.epage%253D273%26rft.atitle%253DProphylaxis%2Bof%2BPostoperative%2BRelapse%2Bin%2BCrohn%2527s%2BDisease%2BWith%2BMesalamine%253A%2BEuropean%2BCooperative%2BCrohn%2527s%2BDisease%2BStudy%2BVI%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1016%252FS0016-5085%252800%252970208-3%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Apmid%252F10648454%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [2]: /lookup/external-ref? access_num=10.1016/S0016-5085(00)70208-3&link_type=DOI [3]: /lookup/external-ref? access_num=10648454&link_type=MED&atom=%2Fgutjnl%2F49%2F6%2F873.1. atom
Many Parallel Losses of infA from Chloroplast DNA during Angiosperm Evolution with Multiple Independent Transfers to the Nucleus

We used DNA sequencing and gel blot surveys to assess the integrity of the chloroplast gene infA, which codes for translation initiation factor 1, in >300 diverse angiosperms. Whereas most angiosperms appear to contain an intact chloroplast infA gene, the gene has repeatedly become defunct in ∼24 separate lineages of angiosperms, including almost all rosid species. In four species in which chloroplast infA is defunct, transferred and expressed copies of the gene were found in the nucleus, complete with putative chloroplast transit peptide sequences. The transit peptide sequences of the nuclear infA genes from soybean and Arabidopsis were shown to be functional by their ability to target green fluorescent protein to chloroplasts in vivo. Phylogenetic analysis of infA sequences and assessment of transit peptide homology indicate that the four nuclear infA genes are probably derived from four independent gene transfers from chloroplast to nuclear DNA during angiosperm evolution. Considering this and the many separate losses of infA from chloroplast DNA, the gene has probably been transferred many more times, making infA by far the most mobile chloroplast gene known in plants.
Object Capabilities and Isolation of Untrusted Web Applications

A growing number of current web sites combine active content (applications) from untrusted sources, as in so-called mashups. The object-capability model provides an appealing approach for isolating untrusted content: if separate applications are provided disjoint capabilities, a sound object-capability framework should prevent untrusted applications from interfering with each other, without preventing interaction with the user or the hosting page. In developing language-based foundations for isolation proofs based on object-capability concepts, we identify a more general notion of authority safety that also implies resource isolation. After proving that capability safety implies authority safety, we show the applicability of our framework for a specific class of mashups. In addition to proving that a JavaScript subset based on Google Caja is capability safe, we prove that a more expressive subset of JavaScript is authority safe, even though it is not based on the object-capability model.
Improvement in Driving Reaction Time After Total Hip Arthroplasty

Decisions made regarding resumption of driving after total hip arthroplasty may be determined by a combination of factors including driving reaction time and when postsurgical precautions need no longer be adhered to. Ninety patients, ranging in age from 34 to 85 years old were recruited after total hip arthroplasty to measure driving reaction time preoperatively and from 1 to 52 weeks postoperatively. Driving reaction time worsened 1 week postoperatively for patients who had a right hip arthroplasty. The driving reaction time then improved up to 1 year postoperatively. Patients who had a left arthroplasty improved from 1 week postoperative. In general, patients reach their preoperative driving reaction time 4 to 6 weeks postoperatively and continue to improve.