Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Ice-Ocean Interactions in the Variability of the North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation

The simulated influence of Arctic sea ice on the variability of the North Atlantic climate is discussed in the context of a global coupled ice‐ocean‐atmosphere model. This coupled system incorporates a general circulation ocean model, an atmospheric energy moisture balance model, and a dynamic‐thermodynamic sea ice model. Under steady seasonal forcing, an equilibrium solution is obtained with very little variability. To induce variability in the model, daily varying stochastic anomalies are applied to the wind forcing of the Northern Hemisphere sea ice cover. These stochastic anomalies have observed spatial patterns but are random in time. Model simulations are run for 1000 yr from an equilibrium state and the variability in the system is analyzed. The sensitivity of the system to the ice‐ocean coupling of both heat and freshwater is also examined. Under the stochastic forcing conditions, the thermohaline circulation (THC) responds with variability that is approximately 10% of the mean. This variability has enhanced spectral power at interdecadal timescales that is concentrated at approximately 20 yr. It is forced by fluctuations in the export of ice from the Arctic into the North Atlantic. Substantial changes in sea surface temperature and salinity are related to changes in the overturning circulation and the sea ice coverage in the northern North Atlantic. Additionally, the THC variability influences the Arctic Basin through heat transport under the ice pack. Results from sensitivity studies suggest that the freshwater exchange from the variable ice cover is the dominant process for forcing variability in the overturning. The simulated Arctic ice export appears to provide stochastic forcing to the northern North Atlantic that excites a damped oscillatory ocean-only mode. The insulating capacity of the variable sea ice has a negligible effect on the THC. Ice‐ocean thermal coupling acts to damp THC variability, causing an approximately 25% reduction in the THC standard deviation.
L2Plan2: Learning Generalised Policies via Evolutionary Computation

L2Plan2 is an evolution-inspired system for inducing generalised planning policies from training data. A policy is here defined as a list of rules that specify which actions to be performed under which conditions. A policy is domain-specific and is used in conjunction with an inference mechanism that stipulates which rule to apply and which variable bindings to implement in order to formulate plans for problems within that domain.
Compositional domain dynamics in two-coupled lipid monolayer : A mean field approximation approach

1 R&D Group of Biological and Environmental Physics, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand. 2 School of Science, University of Phayao, Mueang Phayao, Phayao 56000, Thailand. 3 Department of Chemistry, Center of Excellence for Innovation in Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand. 4 ThEP Center, CHE, 328 Si Ayutthaya Road, Bangkok 10400, Thailand. 5 Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol University, 999, Phuttamonthon 4 Road, Salaya, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand.
A robust ℋ∞ observer design for unknown input nonlinear systems: Application to fault diagnosis of a wind turbine

The paper is devoted to the problem of designing robust unknown input observer (UIO) for fault estimation purpose. The proposed approach is based on the Takagi-Sugeno models which can be effectively applied for modelling of the wide class of non-linear systems. It also revisits the recent results proposed in the literature and provides a less restrictive design procedure of a robust UIO. In particular, the general UIO strategy and the ℋ∞ framework are provided to design a robust fault estimation methodology. The resulting design procedure guarantees that a prescribed disturbance attenuation level is achieved with respect to the state estimation error. The main advantage of the proposed approach boils down to its simplicity because it reduces to solving a set of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). The final part of the paper presents an illustrative example devoted to the fault estimation of a three blade 1 MW variable-speed, variable-pitch wind turbine.
Nutritional status in patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis and a study of the effects of zinc supplementation together with antimony treatment

Background The role of micronutrient status for the incidence and clinical course of cutaneous leishmaniasis is not much studied. Still zinc supplementation in leishmaniasis has shown some effect on the clinical recovery, but the evidence in humans is limited. Objective To compare biochemical nutritional status in cutaneous leishmaniasis patients with that in controls and to study the effects of zinc supplementation for 60 days. Design Twenty-nine patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis were treated with antimony for 20 days. Fourteen of them got 45 mg zinc daily and 15 of them got placebo. Biomarkers of nutritional and inflammatory status and changes in size and characteristics of skin lesions were measured. Results The level of transferrin receptor was higher in patients than in controls but otherwise no differences in nutritional status were found between patients and controls. No significant effects of zinc supplementation on the clinical recovery were observed as assessed by lesion area reduction and characteristics or on biochemical parameters. Conclusions It is concluded that nutritional status was essentially unaffected in cutaneous leishmaniasis and that oral zinc supplementation administered together with intramuscular injection of antimony had no additional clinical benefit.
Visual composition of data sources by end users

There is a huge and ever increasing amount of data sources available on the Web, which provide content through programmatic interfaces. Unfortunately, such data sources are accessible only through programming and therefore it is difficult for non-technical users to take advantage of such enormous data assets. The need therefore arises for paradigms to let laypeople, i.e., users without expertise in programming, explore and compose data sources. This paper discusses mechanisms for data source exploration and integration, which emerged from a study where laypeople were involved in discussions to gather their requirements about accessing and composing services. The paper also describes the prototypes that we defined to respond to the requirements highlighted by end users.
Analysis of sequential aliquots of hypertonic saline solution-induced sputum from clinically stable patients with cystic fibrosis.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Sputum induction (SI) is a noninvasive tool for sampling inflamed airways. The purpose of this study was to determine the optimal duration of collection in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). The hypothesis was that the duration of SI collection would quantitatively and qualitatively alter the content of the induced sputum. METHODS In 10 clinically stable patients with CF (mean +/- SD age, 28 +/- 7 years; mean FEV(1), 2.6 +/- 0.7 L), SI was performed with 3% hypertonic saline solution at five time points over 20 min. RESULTS SI was well tolerated, with an average maximum fall in FEV(1) of 7 +/- 7%. The sample volumes, urea concentrations, interleukin-8 concentrations, total cell counts, and nonsquamous cell counts remained constant (p > 0.05). The percentage of neutrophils decreased from 89 +/- 5% to 86 +/- 4% (p = 0.03), and the percentage of alveolar macrophages increased 5 +/- 2% to 8 +/- 4% (p < 0.01). The mean quantitative microbiological counts of nonmucoid Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus decreased over the 20-min time period each by half a log (p = 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively). Surfactant protein-A concentration increased from 1.6 +/- 0.3 to 2.4 +/- 0.4 ng/mL (log(10); p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS We conclude that aliquots of induced sputum are similar in clinically stable patients with CF during 4-min intervals, although there is more alveolar sampling after 20 min. When induced-sputum samples are fractionated for research monitoring of inflammatory or microbiologic indexes, power calculations accounting for these variations over time are required.
Interruption Point Detection of Spontaneous Speech Using Inter-Syllable Boundary-Based Prosodic Features

This article presents a probabilistic scheme for detecting the interruption point (IP) in spontaneous speech based on inter-syllable boundary-based prosodic features. Because of the high error rate in spontaneous speech recognition, a combined acoustic model considering both syllable and subsyllable recognition units, is firstly used to determine the inter-syllable boundaries and output the recognition confidence of the input speech. Based on the finding that IPs always occur at inter-syllable boundaries, a probability distribution of the prosodic features at the current potential IP is estimated. The Conditional Random Field (CRF) model, which employs the clustered prosodic features of the current potential IP and its preceding and succeeding inter-syllable boundaries, is employed to output the IP likelihood measure. Finally, the confidence of the recognized speech, the probability distribution of the prosodic features and the CRF-based IP likelihood measure are integrated to determine the optimal IP sequence of the input spontaneous speech. In addition, pitch reset and lengthening are also applied to improve the IP detection performance. The Mandarin Conversional Dialogue Corpus is adopted for evaluation. Experimental results show that the proposed IP detection approach obtains 10.56% and 6.5% more effective results than the hidden Markov model and the Maximum Entropy model respectively under the same experimental conditions. Besides, the IP detection error rate can be further reduced by 9.15% using pitch reset and lengthening information. The experimental results confirm that the proposed model based on inter-syllable boundary-based prosodic features can effectively detect the interruption point in spontaneous Mandarin speech.
Regulation of hepatitis B virus replication by epigenetic mechanisms and microRNAs

The hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome forms a covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) minichromosome that persists in the nucleus of virus-infected hepatocytes. HBV cccDNA serves as the template for viral mRNA synthesis and is subject to epigenetic regulation by several mechanisms, including DNA methylation and histone acetylation. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs, were also directly connected to the epigenetic machinery through a regulatory loop. Epigenetic modifications have been shown to affect miRNA expression, and a sub-group of miRNAs (defined as epi-miRNAs) can directly target effectors of the epigenetic machinery. In this review, we will summarize recent findings on the epigenetic mechanisms controlling HBV cccDNA function, primarily focusing on the epi-miRNA functions operating in HBV replication. Investigation of the epigenetic regulation of HBV replication may help to discover novel potential therapeutic targets for drug development with the goal to eradicate the HBV cccDNA pool in hepatocytes.
Leech Therapy in Nearly Total Amputation of Fingers Without Vascular Repair: A Case Report

Introduction: In the absence of microvascular replantation or in crash injury cases in which obtaining an acceptable function is not possible, amputation of the injured finger seems to be the best treatment modality. Some studies recommended leech therapy for this kind of injury after vascular repair to decrease venous congestion. Case Presentation: In this case report, the authors presented a case of leech therapy after near total amputation of the fingers. A 25-year-old patient was admitted following a sawing injury with crashed bundles of the third, fourth and fifth fingers. Microvascular surgery was not performed because of crush injury. Discussion: After a simple repair and pin fixation, the patient was treated using leech therapy. The result was satisfactory. The third and fourth fingers were salvaged. It seems that in cases where a small part of the skin is still attached to the amputated part, even with complete crash of both bundles, leech therapy can help salvage the amputated fingers.
Video games as a complementary therapy tool in mental disorders: PlayMancer, a European multicentre study

Background Previous review studies have suggested that computer games can serve as an alternative or additional form of treatment in several areas (schizophrenia, asthma or motor rehabilitation). Although several naturalistic studies have been conducted showing the usefulness of serious video games in the treatment of some abnormal behaviours, there is a lack of serious games specially designed for treating mental disorders. Aim The purpose of our project was to develop and evaluate a serious video game designed to remediate attitudinal, behavioural and emotional processes of patients with impulse-related disorders. Method and results The video game was created and developed within the European research project PlayMancer. It aims to prove potential capacity to change underlying attitudinal, behavioural and emotional processes of patients with impulse-related disorders. New interaction modes were provided by newly developed components, such as emotion recognition from speech, face and physiological reactions, while specific impulsive reactions were elicited. The video game uses biofeedback for helping patients to learn relaxation skills, acquire better self-control strategies and develop new emotional regulation strategies. In this article, we present a description of the video game used, rationale, user requirements, usability and preliminary data, in several mental disorders.
Epigenetic Modulation of Homer1a Transcription Regulation in Amygdala and Hippocampus with Pavlovian Fear Conditioning

The consolidation of conditioned fear involves upregulation of genes necessary for long-term memory formation. An important question remains as to whether this results in part from epigenetic regulation and chromatin modulation. We examined whether Homer1a, which is required for memory formation, is necessary for Pavlovian cued fear conditioning, whether it is downstream of BDNF-TrkB activation, and whether this pathway utilizes histone modifications for activity-dependent transcriptional regulation. We initially found that Homer1a knock-out mice exhibited deficits in cued fear conditioning (5 tone–shock presentations with 70 dB, 6 kHz tones and 0.5 s, 0.6 mA footshocks). We then demonstrated that: (1) Homer1a mRNA increases after fear conditioning in vivo within both amygdala and hippocampus of wild-type mice; (2) it increases after BDNF application to primary hippocampal and amygdala cultures in vitro; and (3) these increases are dependent on transcription and MAPK signaling. Furthermore, using chromatin immunoprecipitation we found that both in vitro and in vivo manipulations result in decreases in Homer1 promoter H3K9 methylation in amygdala cells but increases in Homer1 promoter H3 acetylation in hippocampal cells. However, no changes were observed in H4 acetylation or H3K27 dimethylation. Inhibition of histone deacetylation by sodium butyrate enhanced contextual but not cued fear conditioning and enhanced Homer1 H3 acetylation in the hippocampus. These data provide evidence for dynamic epigenetic regulation of Homer1a following BDNF-induced plasticity and during a BDNF-dependent learning process. Furthermore, upregulation of this gene may be regulated through distinct epigenetic modifications in the hippocampus and amygdala.
Submitted to the Ieee Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology Optimal Data Partitioning of Mpeg-2 Coded Video 1

We analyze the problem of optimal data partitioning of MPEG-2 coded video in an operational rate-distortion context. The optimal algorithm is characterized and shown to have high complexity and delay. A causally optimal algorithm based on Lagrangian optimization is proposed, that optimally solves the problem for intra (I) pictures, while it provides an optimal solution for predicted/interpolated (P/B) pictures when the additional constraints of causal operation and/or low-delay are imposed. A memoryless version of the algorithm, theoretically optimal for intra-pictures only, is shown to perform almost identically but with signi cantly less computational complexity. Finally, a fast, suboptimal algorithm using purely rate-based optimization is also proposed, and is shown to perform quite close (within 1 dB) to the causally optimal one. Experimental results are provided using actual MPEG-2 coded video bitstreams.
Dead‐end elimination with perturbations (DEEPer): A provable protein design algorithm with continuous sidechain and backbone flexibility

Computational protein and drug design generally require accurate modeling of protein conformations. This modeling typically starts with an experimentally determined protein structure and considers possible conformational changes due to mutations or new ligands. The DEE/A* algorithm provably finds the global minimum‐energy conformation (GMEC) of a protein assuming that the backbone does not move and the sidechains take on conformations from a set of discrete, experimentally observed conformations called rotamers. DEE/A* can efficiently find the overall GMEC for exponentially many mutant sequences. Previous improvements to DEE/A* include modeling ensembles of sidechain conformations and either continuous sidechain or backbone flexibility. We present a new algorithm, DEEPer (Dead‐End Elimination with Perturbations), that combines these advantages and can also handle much more extensive backbone flexibility and backbone ensembles. DEEPer provably finds the GMEC or, if desired by the user, all conformations and sequences within a specified energy window of the GMEC. It includes the new abilities to handle arbitrarily large backbone perturbations and to generate ensembles of backbone conformations. It also incorporates the shear, an experimentally observed local backbone motion never before used in design. Additionally, we derive a new method to accelerate DEE/A*‐based calculations, indirect pruning, that is particularly useful for DEEPer. In 67 benchmark tests on 64 proteins, DEEPer consistently identified lower‐energy conformations than previous methods did, indicating more accurate modeling. Additional tests demonstrated its ability to incorporate larger, experimentally observed backbone conformational changes and to model realistic conformational ensembles. These capabilities provide significant advantages for modeling protein mutations and protein–ligand interactions. Proteins 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Are major canadian city-regions monocentric, polycentric, or dispersed?

ABSTRACT Relatively little research has explored spatial structure in modern major Canadian regions. Three common models are monocentricity, polycentricity, and dispersion, but these are not always mutually exclusive in the complex spatial structures of contemporary city-regions. Shifts between these models are discussed in the context of three explanations of economic growth and restructuring: accessibility, municipal competition, and globalization. All three explanations suggest a trend away from monocentricity. While this appears clearly in US cities, disagreement surrounds whether Canadian cities are following the same path. This study uses cross-sectional data from InfoGroup in 2011 to estimate the relative strengths of monocentricity, polycentricity, and dispersion for characterizing eight major regions. Results indicate that elements of each model are evident in all eight study regions, but each tends to dominate in different contexts. When focusing on Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, results imply that all three forces which guide spatial structure play a role and that job centers appear to play a particularly important structural role in larger regions.
Modelling human body motion using lagrange interpolation

This study presents research on modelling the movement of human limbs using dynamic movement primitives and recovering the motion from these models. The displacements data for the body joints were used to create minimum error Lagrange polynomials for the time input parameter. Considering the computational load when the complete dataset was used, interval and group parameters were required. These parameters were chosen as the values resulting in minimum mean square and mean absolute errors. Results show that positional information for a given time can be efficiently retrieved for a specific joint by choosing the polynomial group belonging to the joint.
FoodWorks: tackling fussy eating by digitally augmenting children's meals

Persuading children to eat healthily can be challenging. Parents and guardians commonly have trouble encouraging young children to eat their vegetables, who often prefer less wholesome alternatives. Parents regularly employ a range of methods that encourage or distract children to eat food they don't want to eat. Digital technologies, such as augmented reality and interactive animations offer new possibilities for enhancing this process. Our research is concerned with how such technology interventions can be used to change behavior in fussy children's eating habits by altering the context of 'playing' with food. FoodWorks was designed to digitally augment a plate of food and provide rewards for completion of the meal. An exploratory in the wild study was conducted using it with 7 families, for children aged between 3-9. The findings were encouraging, providing new insights on social interactions and the effects digital augmentation can have on eating behavior.
A primer on perfect simulation

Perfect simulations or exact sampling are labels for a recently developed set of techniques designed to produce output whose distribution is guaranteed to follow a given probability law. These techniques are particularly useful in relation with Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and their range of applicability is rapidly growing (see Green and Murdoch (1999), Section 1.3, and Mira, Møller and Roberts (1999) and Møller and Nicholls (1999) and references therein, or visit the site http://dimacs.rutgers. edu/~dbwilson/exact). Several techniques have been suggested recently in the literature. The outbreak of these subject come with Propp and Wilson (1996) paper where they suggest a practical method of achieving a perfect sample of a Markov chain with finite state space. Their Coupling from the Past (CFTP) algorithm have been applied for infinite (or huge) state spaces require a monotonicity property : there must exist a “maximal” and a “minimal” states and a coupling such that the coalescence of trajectories starting from these two states imply the coalescence of all other trajectories (“monotone coupling”). Examples of processes with this property include Glauber dynamics of spin systems with the FKG property (Propp and Wilson, 1996) and attractive point processes (Kendall, 1997; Kendall, 1998). In fact, through a minor modification the algorithm is also applicable to repulsive point processes (Kendall, 1998; Häggström and Nelander, 1998). One of the biggest problem with CFTP technique is that it has the so called impatient-user bias. Fill (1998) introduced a technique, free of the