Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation of In Vivo and In Vitro Methods in Measuring Choroidal Vascularization Volumes Using a Subretinal Injection Induced Choroidal Neovascularization Model

Background:In vivo quantification of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) based on noninvasive optical coherence tomography (OCT) examination and in vitro choroidal flatmount immunohistochemistry stained of CNV currently were used to evaluate the process and severity of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) both in human and animal studies. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between these two methods in murine CNV models induced by subretinal injection. Methods:CNV was developed in 20 C57BL6/j mice by subretinal injection of adeno-associated viral delivery of a short hairpin RNA targeting sFLT-1 (AAV.shRNA.sFLT-1), as reported previously. After 4 weeks, CNV was imaged by OCT and fluorescence angiography. The scaling factors for each dimension, x, y, and z (&mgr;m/pixel) were recorded, and the corneal curvature standard was adjusted from human (7.7) to mice (1.4). The volume of each OCT image stack was calculated and then normalized by multiplying the number of voxels by the scaling factors for each dimension in Seg3D software (University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, available at http://www.sci.utah.edu/cibc-software/seg3d.html). Eighteen mice were prepared for choroidal flatmounts and stained by CD31. The CNV volumes were calculated using scanning laser confocal microscopy after immunohistochemistry staining. Two mice were stained by Hematoxylin and Eosin for observing the CNV morphology. Results:The CNV volume calculated using OCT was, on average, 2.6 times larger than the volume calculated using the laser confocal microscopy. The correlation statistical analysis showed OCT measuring of CNV correlated significantly with the in vitro method (R2 =0.448, P = 0.001, n = 18). The correlation coefficient for CNV quantification using OCT and confocal microscopy was 0.693 (n = 18, P = 0.001). Conclusions:There is a fair linear correlation on CNV volumes between in vivo and in vitro methods in CNV models induced by subretinal injection. The result might provide a useful evaluation of CNV both for the studies using CNV models induced by subretinal injection and human AMD studies.
The Empathy Machine Augmenting human perception of emotional expression through music

Empathy is a key component of interpersonal interactions that is often neglected by modern communication technologies. This paper presents the prototyping and initial testing of a device that enhances a person’s empathic sense. The system uses facial expression recognition to identify the emotional state of a user’s conversation partner. It algorithmically generates music in real-time to match the expressive state of the partner and plays the music to the user in a nondestructive manner. User testing indicates that the system can reliably generate music corresponding to the emotions of anger, happiness fear and sadness and that the presence of emotional music augments the emotional response generated by visual cues.
The Future of Motivated Deception and Its Detection

Highly publicized deceptions by spies, terrorists, foreign adversaries, politicians, and corporations occur daily amid fears that the ability to detect such duplicity is far outstripped by the ability to perpetrate it by motivated deceivers. Whether new technologies hold promise for aiding in their detection or instead pose greater risks of vulnerability is the issue addressed in this chapter. Answers to this question lie in considering, (a) humans’ general proclivities to detect deceit, (b) features of communication technologies that may abet or deter successful deceit, (c) the role of motivation in deceptive performances, and (d) the potential of information technologies to identify indicators of deceit. This chapter takes up these four issues within the context of a hypothesis called the motivation impairment effect (MIE), which holds that high motivation facilitates deceptive verbal performances but impairs deceptive nonverbal ones and motivation backfires. Examination of empirical evidence expressly testing or directly relevant to the motivation impairment effect reveals that, although modality and motivation frequently emerge as significant influences on deception detectability, effects are not uniform and the modality by motivation interaction needed to substantiate the MIE often fails to materialize or produces patterns incompatible with the hypothesis. Motivation effects sometimes support a choking-under-pressure interpretation and other times support a strategic repair interpretation, leading to the conclusion that the MIE per se may be more illusory than real. If so, the prospect of utilizing new technologies to detect high stakes deception from verbal and nonverbal behavior ironically may show promise.
Loss of acetylcholine receptor clusters induced by treatment of cultured rat myotubes with carbachol

Prolonged exposure to carbachol disrupts the acetylcholine receptor (AChR) clusters of cultured rat myotubes without causing myotube loss. The effect is reversible, and is dependent on temperature. Half-maximal cluster loss is achieved at 3 microM carbachol. Cluster loss is also caused by other agonists of the AChR and is blocked by receptor antagonists. QX314 (a lidocaine derivative), meproadifen, and fluphenazine also completely block cluster loss caused by carbachol. These results are consistent with the idea that cluster loss caused by carbachol and other receptor agonists results from their interaction with the AChR, and the consequent influx of cations into the myotubes. Several experiments suggest that extracellular Na+ and Ca2+ are required, and that at least Na+ must permeate the AChR ion channel for full cluster loss to occur in the presence of carbachol. Depolarization alone is not sufficient to cause cluster loss, however. Ca2+-activated proteases do not play a significant role in carbachol-induced cluster loss.
Spatial styles capturing using genetic algorithms in sketch understanding

Many sketches convey information through the relationships between graphics, rather than the internal structure of the graphics themselves, and the spatial context of a sketch should help people to understand freehand sketches. We exploit a method of the spatial styles capturing based on genetic algorithms (GA) for sketch-based software conceptual modeling. Firstly, a structure of object relation graphs (ORG) is constructed based on the definition of the spatial styles in UML. Secondly, a computational model is employed to describe the interrelation of sketchy UML objects and capture frequently occurred spatial styles possibly with fixed semantics through genetic algorithms. Experiments have proved the proposed method both effective and efficient.
Strengthening key agreement using hard-core sets

Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank Ueli Maurer, my advisor. Not only did he propose an excellent topic for reasearch, he also guided me through my time as a PhD student. He always asks excellent questions, and answering them often leads to many new insights. Also, I want to thank Johan Håstad many times for co-refereeing this thesis. I also want to thank all the people which were part of the information security and cryptography research group or the quantum information group at ETH Z ¨ urich during my stay. Special thanks go to Renato Renner who was my officemate for most of my stay at ETH. Much of the research in this thesis originated from discussions with him or was done in collaboration with him. I would also like to thank my diploma students Johan Sjödin, Pierre Bajgrowicz, and Georges Baatz. Working with them was a source of new inspirations. Many thanks go to Beate Bernhard and Hans Dubach, who ensured that I needed almost no time for administrative tasks. Such help is always greatly welcome. Abstract Given an authentic communication channel, a key agreement protocol enables two parties to obtain a common bit string (the key), such that an eavesdropper does not have any information about it, even if he observes the whole communication. While no such protocol is secure in an information theoretic sense, it seems possible to give a key agreement protocol which is secure against eavesdroppers which do not have exceedingly large computational power. In fact, many protocols which promise to achieve such computational security are used in practice today. This holds even though no such protocol has been proven secure. Instead, the security of such a protocol is based on an unproven, but plausible assumption. The goal of this thesis is to construct a computationally secure key agreement protocol whose security is based on an assumption which is as weak as possible. The assumption we use is the existence of a " weak key agreement protocol ". Such a protocol works partially: in some executions the honest parties get the same key, but sometimes their respective keys differ. Furthermore, in some cases the resulting key is secret, while sometimes information about the key is leaked to an eavesdropper. We then strengthen such a protocol; i.e., we make it both secret and correct. In order to simplify the study, we restrict the given weak …
Recurrent Hypoglycemia Is Associated with Loss of Activation in Rat Brain Cingulate Cortex

A subset of people with diabetes fail to mount defensive counterregulatory responses (CRR) to hypoglycemia. Although the mechanisms by which this occurs remain unclear, recurrent exposure to hypoglycemia may be an important etiological factor. We hypothesized that loss of CRR to recurrent exposure to hypoglycemia represents a type of stress desensitization, in which limbic brain circuitry involved in modulating stress responses might be implicated. Here, we compared activation of limbic brain regions associated with stress desensitization during acute hypoglycemia (AH) and recurrent hypoglycemia (RH). Healthy Sprague Dawley rats were exposed to either acute or recurrent 3-d hypoglycemia. We also examined whether changes in neuronal activation were caused directly by the CRR itself by infusing epinephrine, glucagon, and corticosterone without hypoglycemia. AH increased neuronal activity as quantified by c-fos immunoreactivity (FOS-IR) in the cingulate cortex and associated ectorhinal and perirhinal cortices but not in an adjacent control area (primary somatosensory cortex). FOS-IR was not observed after hormone infusion, suggesting that AH-associated activation was caused by hypoglycemia rather than by CRR. Importantly, AH FOS-IR activation was significantly blunted in rats exposed to RH. In conclusion, analogous with other models of stress habituation, activation in the cingulate cortex and associated brain areas is lost with exposure to RH. Our data support the hypothesis that limbic brain areas may be associated with the loss of CRR to RH in diabetes.
INTERFEROMETRIC OBSERVATIONS OF THE HIERARCHICAL TRIPLE SYSTEM ALGOL

Algol is a triple stellar system consisting of a close semidetached binary orbited by a third object. Due to the disputed spatial orientation of the close pair, the third body perturbation of this pair is a subject of much research. In this study, we determine the spatial orientation of the close pair orbital plane using the CHARA Array, a six-element optical/IR interferometer located on Mount Wilson, and state-of-the-art e-EVN interferometric techniques. We find that the longitude of the line of nodes for the close pair is Ω1 = 48° ± 2° and the mutual inclination of the orbital planes of the close and the wide pairs is 95° ± 3°. This latter value differs by 5° from the formerly known 100°, which would imply a very fast inclination variation of the system, not borne out by the photometric observations. We also investigated the dynamics of the system with numerical integration of the equations of motions using our result as an initial condition. We found large variations in the inclination of the close pair (its amplitude ∼170°) with a period of about 20 millennia. This result is in good agreement with the photometrically observed change of amplitude in Algol's primary minimum.
Moving Up Out of Poverty: What Does Democracy Have to Do With It?

Morally and analytically, there is no more vexing phenomenon than the persistence of mass poverty. Over the past half-century, remarkable gains have been made in reducing infant mortality, extending life expectancy, raising levels of income and education, reducing the incidence of severe diseases—and even effectively eliminating a few diseases (USAID, 2003). Huge investments of intellectual analysis, empirical research, and development assistance have been invested in the quest to eliminate, or at least dramatically reduce, absolute poverty, which leaves an individual left to survive on less than $2, or even $1, per day. Yet absolute poverty persists on a mass scale throughout much of what has been termed—unfortunately, rather “euphemistically”—the “developing” world. Why?
Systemic Representation: Democracy, Deliberation, and Nonelectoral Representatives

This article explores the relationship between non-electoral representatives and democratic legitimacy by combining the recent constructivist turn in political representation with systemic work in deliberative theory. Two core arguments are advanced. First, non-electoral representatives should be judged by their position in a wider democratic system. Second, deliberative democracy offers a productive toolkit by which to evaluate these agents. I develop a framework of systemic representation which depicts the elemental parts of a democratic system and assigns normative standards according to the space occupied. The framework gives priority of democratic analysis to the systemic level. This helps mitigate a central concern in the constructivist turn which suggests that representatives mobilize constituencies in ways that are susceptible to framing and manipulation. I engage in case-study analysis of the collapsed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to unpack the different spaces occupied by non-electoral representative and elucidate the varied democratic demands that hinge on this positioning.
Prospective Validation of the Computed Tomographic Angiography Spot Sign Score for Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Background and Purpose— Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) results in high mortality and morbidity for patients. Previous retrospective studies correlated the spot sign score (SSSc) with ICH expansion, mortality, and clinical outcome among ICH survivors. We performed a prospective study to validate the SSSc for the prediction of ICH expansion, mortality, and clinical outcome among survivors. Methods— We prospectively included consecutive patients with primary ICH presenting to a single institution for a 1.5-year period. All patients underwent baseline noncontrast computed tomography (CT) and multidetector CT angiography performed within 24 hours of admission and a follow-up noncontrast CT within 48 hours after the initial CT. The ICH volume was calculated on the noncontrast CT images using semiautomated software. The SSSc was calculated on the multidetector CT angiographic source images. We assessed in-hospital mortality and modified Rankin Scale at discharge and at 3 months among survivors. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to determine independent predictors of hematoma expansion, in-hospital mortality, and poor clinical outcome. Results— A total of 131 patients met the inclusion criteria. Of the 131 patients, a spot sign was detected in 31 patients (24%). In a multivariate analysis, the SSSc predicted significant hematoma expansion (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 1.77–5.39; P⩽0.0001), in-hospital mortality (odds ratio, 4.1; 95% confidence interval, 2.11–7.94; P⩽0.0001), and poor clinical outcome (odds ratio, 3; 95% confidence interval, 1.4–4.42; P=0.004). In addition, the SSSc was an accurate grading scale for ICH expansion, modified Rankin Scale at discharge, and in-hospital mortality. Conclusions— The SSSc demonstrated a strong stepwise correlation with hematoma expansion and clinical outcome in patients with primary ICH.
Effects of White Matter Injury on Resting State fMRI Measures in Prematurely Born Infants

The cerebral white matter is vulnerable to injury in very preterm infants (born prior to 30 weeks gestation), resulting in a spectrum of lesions. These range from severe forms, including cystic periventricular leukomalacia and periventricular hemorrhagic infarction, to minor focal punctate lesions. Moderate to severe white matter injury in preterm infants has been shown to predict later neurodevelopmental disability, although outcomes can vary widely in infants with qualitatively comparable lesions. Resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging has been increasingly utilized in neurodevelopmental investigations and may provide complementary information regarding the impact of white matter injury on the developing brain. We performed resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging at term equivalent postmenstrual age in fourteen preterm infants with moderate to severe white matter injury secondary to periventricular hemorrhagic infarction. In these subjects, resting state networks were identifiable throughout the brain. Patterns of aberrant functional connectivity were observed and depended upon injury severity. Comparisons were performed against data obtained from prematurely-born infants with mild white matter injury and healthy, term-born infants and demonstrated group differences. These results reveal structural-functional correlates of preterm white matter injury and carry implications for future investigations of neurodevelopmental disability.
Requirements for nuclear localization of the Lsm2-8p complex and competition between nuclear and cytoplasmic Lsm complexes

Sm-like (Lsm) proteins are ubiquitous, multifunctional proteins that are involved in the processing and/or turnover of many RNAs. In eukaryotes, a hetero-heptameric complex of seven Lsm proteins (Lsm2-8) affects the processing of small stable RNAs and pre-mRNAs in the nucleus, whereas a different hetero-heptameric complex of Lsm proteins (Lsm1-7) promotes mRNA decapping and decay in the cytoplasm. These two complexes have six constituent proteins in common, yet localize to separate cellular compartments and perform apparently disparate functions. Little is known about the biogenesis of the Lsm complexes, or how they are recruited to different cellular compartments. We show that, in yeast, the nuclear accumulation of Lsm proteins depends on complex formation and that the Lsm8p subunit plays a crucial role. The nuclear localization of Lsm8p is itself most strongly influenced by Lsm2p and Lsm4p, its presumed neighbours in the Lsm2-8p complex. Furthermore, overexpression and depletion experiments imply that Lsm1p and Lsm8p act competitively with respect to the localization of the two complexes, suggesting a potential mechanism for co-regulation of nuclear and cytoplasmic RNA processing. A shift of Lsm proteins from the nucleus to the cytoplasm under stress conditions indicates that this competition is biologically significant.
Liver transplantation: Rejection and tolerance

1. T cell–mediated rejection after liver transplantation is common, especially in the first 6 weeks and is easily treatable with minimal longterm consequences. 2. Growing evidence demonstrates that antibodymediated rejection of the liver, albeit rare, may lead to graft injury. 3. Chronic rejection is rare and is associated with multiple episodes of inadequately treated acute rejection. 4. Because of its inherent tolerogenic properties, up to 20% of highly select liver transplant recipients can be weaned off immunosuppression completely. 5. No reliable biomarker predicting tolerance exists.
Inadequate control of hypertension in US adults with cardiovascular disease comorbidities in 2003-2004.

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular risks associated with hypertension (HTN) and the importance of its control are well established; however, the prevalence and adequacy of its treatment and control in persons with cardiovascular comorbidities (CVCs) are uncertain. METHODS To examine the prevalence, treatment, and control of HTN among US adults with and without CVCs, we analyzed data from adults at least 18 years of age (n = 4646, N [projected sample size] = 192.4 million) in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2004, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of the noninstitutionalized civilian US population. Prevalence, treatment, and control rates of HTN in patients with CVCs vs those without, including coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, chronic kidney disease, peripheral artery disease, and diabetes mellitus, and distance to blood pressure goal in those whose HTN was not controlled were the main outcomes. RESULTS The overall prevalence rate of HTN was 31.4% (n = 1671, N = 60.5 million), ranging from 23.1% in those without CVCs to 51.8% to 81.8% in those with CVCs (P < .01). Despite HTN treatment rates for diabetes mellitus, stroke, heart failure, and coronary artery disease that are higher (83.4%-89.3%) than the rates of those without these conditions (66.5%) (P < .01), control rates for treatment remained poor (23.2%-49.3%) (P < .001 to P = .048). Isolated systolic HTN was the most common hypertensive subtype in those with CVCs (> or = 63.5%) with systolic blood pressure averaging at least 20 mm Hg from goal. CONCLUSIONS Nearly three-fourths of adults with CVCs have HTN. Poor control rates of systolic HTN remain a principal problem that further compromises their already high cardiovascular disease risk.
Activation of human eosinophils via P2 receptors: novel findings and future perspectives

A growing body of information indicates that release of intracellular nucleotides represents an important way to modulate several cell pathways in physiological or pathological conditions. Nucleotides released as a consequence of cell damage, cell stress, bacterial infection, or other noxious stimuli signal at a class of plasma membrane receptors—P2 receptors—activating diverse intracellular pathways in many tissues and organs. For example, nucleotides secreted in the airway system control chloride/liquid secretion, goblet cell degranulation, and ciliary beat frequency. Several studies indicate that nucleotides play a role in airway diseases through their action on multiple cell types, including mast cells, dendritic cells, neurons, and eosinophils. Recent work by us and other groups led to the identification and characterization of P2 receptors expressed by human eosinophils. In this review, we will summarize recent developments in this field and put forward a hypothesis about the role of P2 receptors in pathophysiological conditions where eosinophils are major players.