Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Digital Rebound - Why Digitalization Will not Redeem us our Environmental Sins

Digitalization as a technological phenomenon of the 21st century has the power to redeem most environmental sins of our 20th century technology. This seems to be a popular belief shining through many of the optimistic media reports on digitalization. We believe, however, that this mindset is far too simplistic and counterproductive. The many indirect economic and social effects of digitalization, which turn efficiency gains into increased resource consumption, are often ignored. We discuss these countereffects in general, as well as their digitalization-specific flavor (i.e., the digital rebound). We give examples of digital rebound, and also analyze several conditions that seem to lead to its eschewal. Altogether, we try to make the case for a faithful consideration of the rebound effects of digi-
Transient enhancement of proliferation of neural progenitors and impairment of their long-term survival in p25 transgenic mice

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (CDK5) regulates important neuronal functions via p35. p35 undergoes cleavage in response to neuronal activity and neurotoxic conditions to release its subunit p25. Although p25 has been implicated in various neurodegenerative diseases, the mechanisms by which p25 mediates neurodegenerative impairment have not been fully elucidated. We aimed to determine the role of p25-mediated neurodegeneration on neurogenesis in an inducible transgenic mouse line overexpressing p25 (p25 TG) in the forebrain. Adult neuronal progenitor cells (NPCs) were labeled with BrdU in vivo, which were significantly increased in numbers in the subventricular zone, the hippocampus, and the cortex of p25 TG mice. Consistently, more mitotic cells were observed in p25 TG mice than in controls, even in the cortex and the CA1, which are not neurogenic regions. BrdU-positive cells were negative for GFAP or γ-H2AX, suggesting that they are not astrocytes or dying cells. Neurospheres derived from the dentate gyrus and the cortex were significantly increased in p25 TG mice and can be differentiated into astrocytes and neurons. However, p25 TG decreased the long-term survival of proliferating NPCs and severely impaired adult neurogenesis. A Transwell co-culture system was used to assess the influence of p25-expressing primary neurons on adult NPCs. Co-culture with p25-expressing neurons downregulated Ki67 expression and upregulated cleaved caspase-3, indicating that the paracrine signaling in cell-cell communication is essential for NPC survival and proliferation. Moreover, increased CDK5 activity impairs Wnt activation. This study demonstrates that hyperactivation of p25 may temporarily enhance NPC proliferation, but impair their long-term survival.
Evaluation of the buccal component of systemic absorption with inhaled fluticasone propionate

BACKGROUND Inhaled corticosteroids have dose related systemic effects determined by oral (swallowed or oropharyngeal absorption) and lung bioavailability. A study was undertaken to evaluate the significance of oropharyngeal absorption for fluticasone propionate. METHODS Sixteen healthy volunteers of mean age 29.3 years were studied using an open randomised, placebo controlled, four way crossover design. Treatments were: (a) fluticasone metered dose inhaler (pMDI) 250 μg, 8 puffs; (b) fluticasone pMDI 250 μg, 8 puffs + mouth rinsing/gargling (water); (c) fluticasone pMDI 250 μg, 8 puffs + mouth rinsing/gargling (charcoal); and (d) placebo pMDI, 8 puffs + mouth rinsing/gargling (water). Overnight (ONUC) and early morning (EMUC) urinary cortisol/creatinine ratios and 8 am serum cortisol (SC) levels were measured. RESULTS Significant (p<0.05) suppression of ONUC, EMUC, and SC occurred with each active treatment compared with placebo. The mean values (95% CI for difference from placebo) were: (a) ONUC (nmol/mmol): fluticasone (2.8, 95% CI 3.6 to 7.9), fluticasone + water (3.1, 95% CI 3.3 to 7.7), fluticasone + charcoal (2.3, 95% CI 4.1 to 8.5); placebo (8.6); (b) EMUC (nmol/mmol): fluticasone (5.6, 95% CI 8.4 to 24.5), fluticasone + water (7.6, 95% CI 6.6 to 22.4); fluticasone + charcoal (5.6, 95% CI 8.7 to 24.5); placebo (22.1). There were no significant differences between active treatments. The numbers of subjects with an overnight urinary cortisol of <20 nmol/10 hours were 0 (placebo), 11 (fluticasone), 12 (fluticasone + water), and 13 (fluticasone + charcoal). CONCLUSIONS Oropharyngeal absorption of fluticasone does not significantly contribute to its overall systemic bioactivity as assessed by sensitive measures of adrenal suppression. In view of almost complete hepatic first pass inactivation with fluticasone, there is no rationale to employ mouth rinsing to reduce its systemic effects although it may be of value for reducing oral candidiasis.
Squibs: Does GIZA++ Make Search Errors?

Word alignment is a critical procedure within statistical machine translation (SMT). Brown et al. (1993) have provided the most popular word alignment algorithm to date, one that has been implemented in the GIZA (Al-Onaizan et al., 1999) and GIZA++ (Och and Ney 2003) software and adopted by nearly every SMT project. In this article, we investigate whether this algorithm makes search errors when it computes Viterbi alignments, that is, whether it returns alignments that are sub-optimal according to a trained model.
Locally consistent transformations and query answering in data exchange

Data exchange is the problem of taking data structured under a source schema and creating an instance of a target schema. Given a source instance, there may be many solutions - target instances that satisfy the constraints of the data exchange problem. Previous work has identified two classes of desirable solutions: canonical universal solutions, and their cores. Query answering in data exchange amounts to rewriting a query over the target schema to another query that, over a materialized target instance, gives the result that is semantically consistent with the source. A basic question is then whether there exists a transformation sending a source instance into a solution over which target queries can be answered.We show that the answer is negative for many data exchange transformations that have structural properties similar to canonical universal solutions and cores. Namely, we prove that many such transformations preserve the local structure of the data. Using this notion, we further show that every target query rewritable over such a transformation cannot distinguish tuples whose neighborhoods in the source are similar. This gives us a first tool that helps check whether a query is rewritable, We also show that these results are robust: they hold for an extension of relational calculus with grouping and aggregates, and for two different semantics of query answering.
The functions of the cytoskeleton and associated proteins during mitosis and cytokinesis in plant cells

In higher plants, microtubule (MT)-based, and actin filament (AF)-based structures play important roles in mitosis and cytokinesis. Besides the mitotic spindle, the evolution of a band comprising cortical MTs and AFs, namely, the preprophase band (PPB), is evident in plant cells. This band forecasts a specific division plane before the initiation of mitosis. During cytokinesis, another plant-specific cytoskeletal structure called the phragmoplast guides vesicles in the creation of a new cell wall. In addition, a number of cytoskeleton-associated proteins are reportedly involved in the formation and function of the PPB, mitotic spindle, and phragmoplast. This review summarizes current knowledge on the cytoskeleton-associated proteins that mediate the cytoskeletal arrays during mitosis and cytokinesis in plant cells and discusses the interaction between MTs and AFs involved in mitosis and cytokinesis.
Rendering Caustics on Non‐Lambertian Surfaces

This paper presents a new technique for rendering caustics on non‐Lambertian surfaces. The method is based on an extension of the photon map which removes previous restrictions limiting the usage to Lambertian surfaces. We add information about the incoming direction to the photons and this allows us to combine the photon map with arbitrary reflectance functions. By using a cone‐filter we improve the quality of the radiance estimate in particular at discontinuities. Furthermore we introduce balancing of the photon map which not only reduces the memory requirements but also significantly reduces the rendering time. We have used the method to render caustics on surfaces with reflectance functions varying from Lambertian to glossy specular.
Resistance of activated human Th 2 cells to NO-induced apoptosis is mediated by γ-glutamyltranspeptidase

Activation-induced death of inflammatory cells (AICD) has an important function in immune maintenance. Type 1 Th cells are known to be more susceptible to AICD than Th2 cells. In the current study we examined whether NO-induced apoptosis also preferentially eliminates Th1 cells over Th2 cells. Naive human Th lymphocytes (CD4 CD45RO–) were activated in vitro for 1 week in the presence of IL-12 plus anti-IL-4 or IL-4 plus anti-IL-12 to generate Th1and Th2-polarized cultures respectively. Cultures were exposed to the NO donors Spermine-nonoate (Sper) and DPTA-nonoate to study NO-induced apoptosis. We found that NO preferentially induced apoptosis in Th1-polarized cells as demonstrated by Annexin staining in the presence of 10 μM Sper (70 16 versus 23 4.4% in Th2 cells P 0.01) and by DioC6 staining (38 10 versus 11 5% in Th2 cells, P 0.01). The mechanism of NO-induced apoptosis in Th1/Th2-polarized cells was distinct from AICD and Fas-induced apoptosis. Differential sensitivity between Th1and Th2-polarized cultures originated at the level of intracellular glutathione (GSH) metabolism. GSH levels were higher in Th2 cells (1.6 0.2-fold Th1, P 0.01). High intracellular GSH in Th2-polarized cells did not account for reduced susceptibility to NO per se, since the inhibition of γ-glutamyltranspeptidase (γ-GT), which is involved in GSH import, sensitized Th2 cells to NO-induced apoptosis without GSH depletion. Therefore, higher activity of γ-GT in Th2 cells (2.1 0.4-fold Th1, P 0.001) specifically protects Th2 cells against NO-induced apoptosis. Preferential NO-induced elimination of human Th1 cells at sites of inflammation may thus select Th2 cells and contribute to immune deviation.
TeamRooms: network places for collaboration

Teams whose members are in close physical proximity often rely on team rooms to serve both as meeting places and repositories of the documents and artifacts that support their projects. TeamRooms is a groupware system that fills the role of a team room for groups whose members can work both co-located and at a distance. Facilities in TeamRooms allow team members to collaborate either in real-time or asynchronously, and to customize their shared electronic space with tools to suit their needs. Unlike many groupware systems, all TeamRooms documents and artifacts are fully persistent.
Limited CSI feedback based on an adaptive codebook for temporally correlated MISO fading channels

To increase the link capacity and reliability, the use of channel state information at the transmitter in multi-antenna systems is often discussed in current research. Such information is often obtained via a feedback link which is usually limited by rate constraints. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to quantize the channel direction vector by exploiting the temporal correlation for MISO fading channels. With the same amount of feedback bits, our proposed scheme achieves a significant capacity gain on the forward link compared to conventional quantization techniques. This gain increases with decreasing channel dynamics.
A LMI-Based Design of Dynamic Output Feedback Controller for T-S Fuzzy Systems

Abstract This paper presents a dynamic output feedback controller design for fuzzy dynamic systems based on the concept of dynamic parallel distributed compensation (DPDC). Three types of stabilizing controller design methods are proposed based on state feedback design methods. The controller design involves solving a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), and the control laws are numerically tractable via LMI techniques. Moreover, performance of the fuzzy controller in terms of decay rate and constraint on the control input is studied and LMI conditions for these performance criteria are obtained. An example is given to illustrate validity of the proposed methods, and to compare their performance.
Identification of Novel Small-Molecule Agonists for Human Formyl Peptide Receptors and Pharmacophore Models of Their Recognition

N-formyl peptide receptor (FPR1) and N-formyl peptide receptor-like 1 (FPRL1, now known as FPR2) are G protein-coupled receptors involved in host defense and sensing cellular dysfunction. Because of the potential for FPR1/FPR2 as a therapeutic target, our recent high-throughput screening efforts have focused on the identification of unique nonpeptide agonists of FPR1/FPR2. In the present studies, we screened a chemolibrary of drug-like molecules for their ability to induce intracellular calcium mobilization in RBL-2H3 cells transfected with human FPR1 or FPR2. Screening of these compounds resulted in the identification of novel and potent agonists that activated both FPR1 and FPR2, as well as compounds that were specific for either FPR1 or FPR2 with EC50 values in the low micromolar range. Specificity of the compounds was supported by analysis of calcium mobilization in HL-60 cells transfected with human FPR1 and FPR2. In addition, all but one agonist activated intracellular calcium flux and chemotaxis in human neutrophils, irrespective of agonist specificity for FPR1 or FPR2. Molecular modeling of the group of FPR1 and FPR2 agonists using field point methodology allowed us to create pharmacophore models for ligand binding sites and formulate requirements for these specific N-formyl peptide receptor agonists. These studies further demonstrate that agonists of FPR1/FPR2 include compounds with wide chemical diversity and that analysis of such compounds can enhance our understanding of their ligand/receptor interaction.
Detection for 5G-NOMA: An Online Adaptive Machine Learning Approach

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has emerged as a promising radio access technique for enabling the performance enhancements promised by the fifth-generation (5G) networks in terms of connectivity, latency, and spectrum efficiency. In the NOMA uplink, detection based on successive interference cancellation (SIC) with device clustering has been suggested. If the receivers are equipped with multiple antennas, SIC can be combined with minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) beamforming. However, there exists a tradeoff between the NOMA cluster size and the incurred SIC error. Larger clusters lead to larger errors but they are desirable from the spectrum efficiency and connectivity point of view. To enable the deployment of large clusters, we propose a novel online learning detection method for the NOMA uplink. We design an online adaptive filter in the sum space of linear and Gaussian reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs). Such a sum space design is robust against variations of a dynamic wireless network that can deteriorate the performance of a purely nonlinear adaptive filter. We demonstrate by simulations that the proposed method outperforms (symbol level) MMSE-SIC based detection for large cluster sizes.
Predicting Opinion Dependency Relations for Opinion Analysis

Syntactic structures have been good features for opinion analysis, but it is not easy to use them. To find these features by supervised learning methods, correct syntactic labels are indispensible. Two possible sources to acquire syntactic structures are parsing trees and dependency trees. For the annotation processing, parsing trees are more readable for annotators, while dependency trees are easier to use by programs. To use syntactic structures as features, this paper tried to annotate on human friendly materials and transform these annotations to the corresponding machine friendly materials. We annotated the gold answers of opinion syntactic structures on the parsing tree from Chinese Treebank, and then proposed methods to find their corresponding dependency relations on the dependency trees generated from the same sentence. With these relations, we could train a model to annotate opinion dependency relations automatically to provide an opinion dependency parser, which is language independent if language resources are incorporated. Experiment results show that the annotated syntactic structures and their corresponding dependency relations improve at least 8% of the performance of opinion analysis.
Endocrine Response Patterns to Acute Unilateral and Bilateral Resistance Exercise in Men

Migiano, MJ, Vingren, JL, Volek, JS, Maresh, CM, Fragala, MS, Ho, J-Y, Thomas, GA, Hatfield, DL, Häkkinen, K, Ahtiainen J, Earp, JE, and Kraemer WJ. Endocrine response patterns to acute unilateral and bilateral resistance exercise in men. J Strength Cond Res 24(1): 128-134, 2010-Rehabilitation programs and research experiments use single-arm protocols in which the contralateral arm is not functional or used as a control limb. This study was interested in determining the hormonal signal impacts of such one- versus two-arm exercise responses that might have an impact on adaptational changes with training. The purpose was to examine the acute hormonal responses to a unilateral and a bilateral upper-body resistance exercise (RE) protocol. A balanced randomized treatment intervention with series time frame for blood collections before and after exercise was used as the basic experimental design. Ten recreationally resistance trained men (18-25 years, 20.4 ± 1.2 years, 175.6 ± 4.5 cm, 81.7 ± 9.3 kg) gave informed consent to participate in the investigation. Each subject performed unilateral (dominant arm only) and bilateral upper-body RE protocol separated by 1 week in a balanced randomized fashion. The RE protocol consisted of 3 sets of 10 repetitions of 5 different dumbbell upper-body exercises at 80% of 1-repetition maximum, and blood samples were obtained before and 5, 15, and 30 minutes immediately postexercise (IP). Blood was obtained and analyzed for lactate, immunoreactive growth hormone (iGH), cortisol (C), total testosterone (T), and insulin concentrations. Total volume of work also was determined for the 2 exercise sessions. Total volume of work performed during the unilateral protocol was 52.1% of that for the bilateral protocol. Both RE protocols elicited a significant (p ≤ 0.05) increase in lactate and iGH, but the increase for the bilateral condition was significantly greater. Cortisol decreased significantly during recovery for the unilateral condition. Testosterone was not affected by either protocol. Insulin was significantly increased at IP and 5 minutes postexercise for both conditions. These results indicate that the hormonal responses to dominant-arm unilateral RE is blunted compared to that for bilateral RE. This differential endocrine response is likely a result of the difference in volume between the protocols. It is important to pay attention to the amount of muscle mass utilized in a resistance exercise protocol to optimize endocrine signaling.
Title Robust Feature-Preserving Mesh Denoising Based onConsistent

In this paper, we introduce a feature-preserving denoising algorithm. It is built on the premise that the underlying surface of a noisy mesh is piecewise smooth, and a sharp feature lies on the intersection of multiple smooth surface regions. A vertex close to a sharp feature is likely to have a neighborhood that includes distinct smooth segments. By defining the consistent subneighborhood as the segment whose geometry and normal orientation most consistent with those of the vertex, we can completely remove the influence from neighbors lying on other segments during denoising. Our method identifies piecewise smooth subneighborhoods using a robust density-based clustering algorithm based on shared nearest neighbors. In our method, we obtain an initial estimate of vertex normals and curvature tensors by robustly fitting a local quadric model. An anisotropic filter based on optimal estimation theory is further applied to smooth the normal field and the curvature tensor field. This is followed by second-order bilateral filtering, which better preserves curvature details and alleviates volume shrinkage during denoising. The support of these filters is defined by the consistent subneighborhood of a vertex. We have applied this algorithm to both generic and CAD models, and sharp features, such as edges and corners, are very well preserved.
Emotional Intelligence: The Key for Nursing Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition

Emotional intelligence skills and critical thinking are the main factors for success in life, education and nursing. The unique feature which distinguishes humans from other creatures is the ability to think. Aim of the study: to assess nursing students’ emotional intelligence, nursing students’ critical thinking disposition and investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and critical thinking dispositions. Design: A descriptive correctional design was used to achieve the aim of the study. Setting: This study was conducted at Faculty of Nursing, Benha University. Subjects: All fourth year nursing students who were enrolled in the fourth academic year in 2016 – 2017 at Benha Faculty of Nursing (n = 360 students). Tools for data collection: Three tools: Demographic data Questionnaire, Emotional Intelligence Assessment Scale, The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory Scale (CCTDI). The result showed that the nursing students had moderate level of emotional intelligence, ambivalence and positive disposition to critical thinking. There was a positive highly significant correlation between total score of emotional intelligence and total score of critical thinking disposition among nursing students . The study recommended that, The Conduction of intervention program for nursing students about emotional intelligence and critical thinking to enhance the development of their skills.
Body language of humanoid robots for mood expression

Bodily expression of affect is crucial to human robot interaction. Bodily emotion expression concerns explicit body actions that typically interrupt ongoing functional behaviors. Instead, we design bodily mood expression by integrating affective cues with functional behaviors without interrupting them. We propose a parameterized behavior model with specific parameters that control pose and motion dynamics of the behavior. Modulating those parameters results in different behavior appearance through which the robot mood is expressed. We applied the model to behaviors of the NAO robot, and conducted a user study to identify principles to be used for parameter modulation, experiments that evaluated whether the mood can be recognized by participants with or without a context, and experiments that address the effect of the mood expression on participants in human-robot interaction in a laboratory setting and a real life setting. Results showed that our approach for bodily mood expression of a humanoid robot is effective.