Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human Rights and US Foreign Aid Revisited: The Latin American Region

Les AA. reprennent une etude qu'ils ont realisee en 1990 sur l'impact qu'ont les questions des droits de l'homme sur les aides accordees par les Etats-Unis aux pays d'Amerique latine. Les donnees ne permettaient pas de conclure definitivement sur un lien potentiel entre ces deux elements. Depuis, les preuves que les decideurs prennent en consideration la situation des droits de l'homme dans leur attribution d'aides militaire et economique se sont accumulees. Cela pose la question de l'evaluation des violations des droits de l'homme et du calcul des aides attribuees. Les AA. justifient egalement la nature de leurs recherches par deux arguments : l'un pratique, qui veut repondre a l'interrogation des citoyens americains concernant l'utilisation de leurs taxes, et l'autre theorique, qui s'occupe de l'evaluation des motivations reelles d'un gouvernement quant a l'attribution d'aides internationales a travers l'etude des mesures prises en politique etrangere. S'agit-il de mesures « humanistes » ou realistes qui sous-entendent qu'il est de l'interet du Prince d'agir moralement ? Il est en fait peu probable qu'un pays agira sur les droits de l'homme autrement qu'en termes symboliques, car le prime enjeu pour ce pays reste celui de la securite nationale
Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is a novel extracellular regulator of cortical neuroblast morphology.

During cerebral cortical neurogenesis, neuroblasts in the ventricular zone (VZ) undergo a shape change termed "interkinetic nuclear migration" whereby cells alternate between fusiform and rounded morphologies. We previously identified lp(A1), the first receptor gene for a signaling phospholipid called lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) and showed its enriched expression in the VZ. Here we report that LPA induces changes in neuroblast morphology from fusiform to round in primary culture, accompanied by nuclear movements, and formation of f-actin retraction fibers. These changes are mediated by the activation of the small GTPase, Rho. In explant cultures, where the cerebral cortical architecture remains intact, LPA not only induces cellular and nuclear rounding in the VZ, but also produces an accumulation of rounded nuclei at the ventricular surface. Consistent with a biological role for these responses, utilization of a sensitive and specific bioassay indicates that postmitotic neurons can produce extracellular LPA. These results implicate LPA as a novel factor in cortical neurogenesis and further implicate LPA as an extracellular signal from postmitotic neurons to proliferating neuroblasts.
Player modeling: Towards a common taxonomy

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gradually receiving more attention as a fundamental feature to increase the immersion in digital games. Among the several AI approaches, Player Modeling is becoming an important one. The main idea is to try to understand and model the player characteristics and behaviors in order to develop a better AI. This paper presents a survey of the field, discussing the main concepts and proposing a taxonomy to better organize them. We also present several game platforms that can be used by player modeling and AI researchers. We believe that compiling this information can be important to the field, specially to new researchers.
Implementation of an Electronic Checklist to Improve Patient Handover From Ward to Operating Room

Objective Research has identified numerous safety risks in perioperative patient handover. In handover from ward to operating room (OR), patients are often transferred by a third person. This adds to the risk of loss of important information and of caregivers in the OR not identifying possible risk factors. The aim of this study was to describe the implementation process and completion rate of a new preoperative, ward-to-OR checklist. Our goal was a 90% fulfillment. Method This study is a prospective, observational study in a Danish University Hospital including all patients undergoing surgery in 2013. The checklist was a screen page with 27 checkboxes of information relevant for a safe handover. The checklist should be completed in the ward before handover to the OR and should be checked in the OR before receiving the patient. The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle method was used in the implementation process of the checklist. Results A total of 17.361 patients were included. In wards with only elective surgery (plastic and breast surgery), the checklist was used in 1.419 of 2.286 patients (62.1%). In wards with both elective and emergency surgery (abdominal, orthopedic, urology, gynecology and obstetrics), the checklist was used in 1.963 of 7.460 elective patients (26.3%) and in 812 of 7.615 emergency patients (10.7 %). Conclusion Our goal of a 90% fulfillment was not reached. The electronic checklist seemed to be used most frequently in wards with only elective surgery.
INFORMED BY DIFFUSION-WEIGHTED IMAGING

Recent evidence indicates that neural adaptations related to changes in task performance occur in not only gray matter brain regions but also the white matter fiber tracts that connect the gray matter regions with one another. Here, we propose a framework for linking individual differences in global properties of the brain’s anatomical connectivity, or connectome, to individual differences in task performance. We argue that this analysis framework may be optimally used on groups of patients with particular cognitive impairments to increase the dynamic range of task performance and optimize our sensitivity to detect structure-function relationships. In particular, patients suffering from mild traumatic brain injury may be an ideal group based on evidence suggesting an underlying cause of diffuse axonal injury that is widespread throughout the brain yet not detectable on structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computer tomography (CT) brain scans. The data discussed here lays the foundation for research on individual differences in structure-function relationships by comparing two diffusion-weighted imaging techniques that can be used to examine white matter structure in vivo in order to determine if one technique provides more reliable estimates of structural variability between individuals. While both methods show reproducibility of a particular individual’s brain structure, Diffusion Tensor Imaging appears better able to reliably capture the variability between subjects. We conclude with a description of a physics-based modeling approach using diffusion-weighted imaging data that facilitates several avenues of Army-relevant research.
Simultaneous lactate editing and observation of other metabolites using a stimulated-echo-enhanced double-quantum filter.

Conventional double-quantum editing techniques recover only one metabolite at a time, and are thus inefficient for monitoring metabolic changes involving several metabolites. In this paper, a stimulated-echo-enhanced selective double-quantum coherence transfer (STE-SelDQC) sequence is described, which allows simultaneous observation of lactate and other metabolites in a single scan while leaving fat and water signals suppressed. A frequency selective double-quantum filter designed for lactate editing suppresses fat and water resonances and a stimulated-echo window of adjustable frequency and bandwidth is incorporated into the double-quantum filter for simultaneous observation of other metabolites. The performance of the sequence is demonstrated in phantoms and rat brain tissue.
The PyAALib Framework and The Profiler Interface : How to Develop and Debug a Massively Parallel Application based on Dynamic Plug-ins ?

This project concerns the development of a framework based on pure object oriented concepts to ensure asynchronous communication between threads (thread safety) and external processes, thus allowing the development of massive parallel applications mixing different programming languages and platforms for heterogeneous developers. A massive parallel application can be entirely designed and developed based on the dynamic multi-thread plug-in architecture implemented in the framework. Any code coming from different software sources can be adapted to the framework as a dynamic multi-threaded plug-in. It can be deployed in Java environments using the “Standalone Generic Application Skeleton” package without the need of installing Python or Jython. The Profiler GUI is a standard option available in the “ALApplication” module to plot a “timeline” of concurrent actions during the code execution. It features an interactive interface displaying asynchronous actions during the runtime of massively parallel applications. The interface shows dynamical hyperlinks to monitor the independent output of each component used during the execution of the application. In addition, it allows inspecting and assessing individually the performance of each plug-in to optimize and control the code as well as to verify the expected results. It can be used in association with other parameters like tag-debug and verbose options.
DNA flow cytometry of epithelioid sarcoma

DNA ploidy of paraffin‐embedded tissue from 11 patients with epithelioid sarcoma and 20 control specimens (granuloma annulare and sarcoid) was studied. DNA aneuploidy was found in 64% of the epithelioid sarcomas and in none of the control samples. Aneuploidy did not correlate with necrosis, vascular invasion, or mitotic rate. There was also no association of aneuploidy with adverse outcome.
Reducing LDPC soft sensing latency by lightweight data refresh for flash read performance improvement

In order to relieve reliability problem caused by technology scaling, LDPC codes have been widely applied in flash memories to provide high error correction capability. However, LDPC read performance slowdown along with data retention largely weakens the access speed advantage of flash memories. This paper considers to apply the concept of refresh, that were used for flash lifetime improvement, to optimize flash read performance. Exploiting data read characteristics, this paper proposes LDR, a lightweight data refresh method, that aggressively corrects errors in read-hot pages with long read latency and reprograms error-free data into new pages. Experimental results show that LDR can achieve 29% read performance improvement with only 0.2% extra P/E cycles on average, which causes negligible overhead on flash lifetime.
Community Question Answering Platforms vs. Twitter for Predicting Characteristics of Urban Neighbourhoods

In this paper, we investigate whether text from a Community Question Answering (QA) platform can be used to predict and describe real-world attributes. We experiment with predicting a wide range of 62 demographic attributes for neighbourhoods of London. We use the text from QA platform of Yahoo! Answers and compare our results to the ones obtained from Twitter microblogs. Outcomes show that the correlation between the predicted demographic attributes using text from Yahoo! Answers discussions and the observed demographic attributes can reach an average Pearson correlation coefficient of \r{ho} = 0.54, slightly higher than the predictions obtained using Twitter data. Our qualitative analysis indicates that there is semantic relatedness between the highest correlated terms extracted from both datasets and their relative demographic attributes. Furthermore, the correlations highlight the different natures of the information contained in Yahoo! Answers and Twitter. While the former seems to offer a more encyclopedic content, the latter provides information related to the current sociocultural aspects or phenomena.
Epidemiological aspects and origin of KSHV

Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV), taxonomical name human gammaherpesvirus 8, is a phylogenetically old human virus that co-evolved with human populations, but is now only common (seroprevalence greater than 10%) in sub-Saharan Africa, around the Mediterranean Sea, parts of South America and in a few ethnic communities. KSHV causes three human malignancies, Kaposi sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma, and many cases of the plasmablastic form of multicentric Castleman’s disease (MCD) as well as occasional cases of plasmablastic lymphoma arising from MCD; it has also been linked to rare cases of bone marrow failure and hepatitis. As it has colonized humans physiologically for many thousand years, cofactors are needed to allow it to unfold its pathogenic potential. In most cases, these include immune defects of genetic, iatrogenic or infectious origin, and inflammation appears to play an important role in disease development. Our much improved understanding of its life cycle and its role in pathogenesis should now allow us to develop new therapeutic strategies directed against key viral proteins or intracellular pathways that are crucial for virus replication or persistence. Likewise, its limited (for a herpesvirus) distribution and transmission should offer an opportunity for the development and use of a vaccine to prevent transmission. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Human oncogenic viruses’.
Neural networks of top-down and bott om-up att ention in early onset blindness

Recent functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that occipital or visual cortical areas in individuals blinded in o_r around birth are metabolically active during tactile, auditory and cognitive stimulation. These findings suggest that in the early blind (EB) the areas that are normally engaged by visual stimulation process non-visual information (a phenomenon referred to as cross-modal reorganization). However, the functional significance of occipital (Occ) activity in this population is not well understood. The aim of my dissertation was to determine whether different mechanisms of attention influence neural activity within Occ cortical regions in the EB. Identifying the functional domains that activate the Occ cortex in the EB will lead to a better understanding of the influences important for the establishment of cross-modal reorganization. In addition, EB results in superior performance on a number of auditory and tactile behavioral tasks relative to sighted counterparts (SC). A second goal was to determine whether EB relative to SC individuals show enhanced attentional abilities within auditory and tactile domains. This approach would allow me to determine whether an association exists between activity within the Occ cortex of the EB and alterations in attentional abilities. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (erfMRI) was combined with oddball, target detection tasks. Oddball tasks tap into various attentional mechanisms because they require the selection of a specific, infrequent target stimulus presented within a train of repeating and identical standard stimuli. Attention is generally considered a mechanism that resolves conflict between competing sensory signals such
Testing the concept of softness imperception: loudness near threshold for hearing-impaired ears.

Buus and Florentine [J. Assoc. Res. Otolaryngol. 3, 120-139 (2002)] have proposed that loudness recruitment in cases of cochlear hearing loss is caused partly by an abnormally large loudness at absolute threshold. This has been called "softness imperception. " To evaluate this idea, loudness-matching functions were obtained using tones at very low sensation levels. For subjects with asymmetrical hearing loss, matches were obtained for a single frequency across ears. For subjects with sloping hearing loss, matches were obtained between tones at two frequencies, one where the absolute threshold was nearly normal and one where there was a moderate hearing loss. Loudness matching was possible for sensation levels (SLs) as low as 2 dB. When the fixed tone was presented at a very low SL in an ear (or at a frequency) where there was hearing impairment, it was matched by a tone with approximately the same SL in an ear (or at a frequency) where hearing was normal (e.g., 2 dB SL matched 2 dB SL). This relationship held for SLs up to 4-10 dB, depending on the subject. These results are not consistent with the concept of softness imperception.
Effects of acetate, propionate, and butyrate on the thermophilic anaerobic degradation of propionate by methanogenic sludge and defined cultures

The effects of acetate, propionate, and butyrate on the anaerobic thermophilic conversion of propionate by methanogenic sludge and by enriched propionate-oxidizing bacteria in syntrophy with Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum delta H were studied. The methanogenic sludge was cultivated in an upflow anaerobic sludge bed (UASB) reactor fed with propionate (35 mM) as the sole substrate for a period of 80 days. Propionate degradation was shown to be severely inhibited by the addition of 50 mM acetate to the influent of the UASB reactor. The inhibitory effect remained even when the acetate concentration in the effluent was below the level of detection. Recovery of propionate oxidation occurred only when acetate was omitted from the influent medium. Propionate degradation by the methanogenic sludge in the UASB reactor was not affected by the addition of an equimolar concentration (35 mM) of butyrate to the influent. However, butyrate had a strong inhibitory effect on the growth of the propionate-oxidizing enrichment culture. In that case, the conversion of propionate was almost completely inhibited at a butyrate concentration of 10 mM. However, addition of a butyrate-oxidizing enrichment culture abolished the inhibitory effect, and propionate oxidation was even stimulated. All experiments were conducted at pH 7.0 to 7.7. The thermophilic syntrophic culture showed a sensitivity to acetate and propionate similar to that of mesophilic cultures described in the literature. Additions of butyrate or acetate to the propionate medium had no effect on the hydrogen partial pressure in the biogas of an UASB reactor, nor was the hydrogen partial pressure in propionate-degrading cultures affected by the two acids. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Organization of Ribosomal RNA Genes in Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato Isolated from Ixodes ovatus in Japan

Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato was obtained from adult ixodid ticks, Ixodes ovatus, collected in Nagano, Japan, and was named NT112. The genomic DNA was digested with enzymes, electrophoresed, blotted and hybridized with rRNA gene probes obtained from B. burgdorferi sensu stricto B31. The results showed that the borrelial chromosome contains a single rrs (16S rRNA gene) sequence and two copies of rrl/rrf (23S/5S rRNA genes) sequences. The rrl/rrf genes were tandemly repeated at intervals of 3.2 kb and were located separately from the rrs gene on the genome. Our findings indicate that the organization of rRNA genes in Borrelia from I. ovatus ticks is identical to that of B. burgdorferi sensu stricto.
Development of a respiratory rate monitoring device for mice anesthesia induction chamber

Piezoelectric sensors have played an important role both in medicine and medical research. In this application piezoelectric sensors are used to detect the respiratory patterns through the vibration caused by the expansion of the chest cavity. Currently available methods require placing the animal in direct contact with the sensor which is usually inconvenient. The main goal of this project is to develop and test an anesthetic chamber that can works as a respiratory rate monitoring device. This device intends to automate the anesthetic procedures by being able to record and analyze the respiratory rate in the computer, as well as other vital signals. During the lab tests, a volatile anesthetic - isoflurane - was introduced in the Plexiglas box specially designed for this study, to anesthetize the mouse. The signal acquisition was performed using a NI DAQ board and an application developed in LabVIEW 2009. The respiratory rate measured from the piezoelectric sensors was calculated in periods of 10 seconds and compared against the video image processing from webcam. Results from this study showed a good correlation of respiratory rate values between the video data and the piezoelectric signal.
Single-Mode Fiber Refractive Index Sensor Based on Core-Offset Attenuators

Mach-Zehnder and Michelson interferometers using core-offset attenuators were demonstrated. As the relative offset direction of the two attenuators in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer can significantly affect the extinction ratio of the interference pattern, single core-offset attenuator-based sensors appear more robust and repeatable. A novel fiber Michelson interferometer refractive index (RI) sensor was subsequently realized by a single core-offset attenuator and a layer of ~ 500-nm gold coating. The device had a minimum insertion loss of 0.01 dB and maximum extinction ratio over 9 dB. The sensitivity (0.333 nm) of the new sensor to its surrounding RI change (0.01) was found to be comparable to that (0.252 nm) of an identical long period gratings pair Mach-Zehnder interferometric sensor, and its ease of fabrication makes it a low-cost alternative to existing sensing applications.
Measurement of Brillouin Gain Spectrum Distribution along an Optical Fiber Using a Correlation-Based Technique : Proposal, Experiment and Simulation (Special Issue on Optical Fiber Sensors)

Brillouin scattering in optical fibers offers a means for distributed strain and/or temperature sensor [1], [2]. Strain or temperature applied to an optical fiber causes a shift in Brillouin gain spectrum. Telecommunicationgrade fibers can be used as sensing medium, and no special process is required to make sensors [1], [2]. Because of these merits, this technique is attractive for application to smart structures [3], [4]. Optical fibers are attached to or embedded in structures for monitoring them. However, the technique developed so far has a spatial resolution limit of the order of several meters. This limit would prohibit application to fine structures such as aircraft’s wing. The resolution limit of the conventional technique is relevant to its pulse-based nature. An optical pulse for generating Brillouin gain has to be longer than the damping time of the acoustic wave. Otherwise, Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS) broadens out making it difficult to determine the spectral center precisely [5]. If we assume the linewidth of the BGS to be 30MHz, the broadening occurs when the pulse width is 3.0 m∗. To circumvent the resolution limit, we have proposed and developed a new technique [6]. It is based on the correlation between the pump and probe lightwaves that excite Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS). SBS requires interference between the counterpropagating two lightwaves. In our technique we control their coherence so as to localize SBS at a specific position in