Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perinatal mental health: Fathers – the (mostly) forgotten parent

The importance of parental mental health as a determinant of infant and child outcomes is increasingly acknowledged. Yet, there is limited information regarding paternal mental health during the perinatal period. The aim of this review is to summarize existing clinical research regarding paternal mental health in the perinatal period in various contexts, and its possible impact on infant development.
Towards autonomic urban traffic control with collaborative multi-policy reinforcement learning

Various multi-agent decentralized approaches based on reinforcement learning (RL) have been proposed to increase scalability and real-time adaptiveness of urban traffic control (UTC) systems. In such approaches, traffic light control parameters are not pre-defined, but intelligent agents controlling the junctions learn the suitable traffic signal settings. In order to consider applications of RL in commercial UTC products, they need to enable fine-grained optimization of multiple traffic objectives and be validated in realistic UTC simulations. This paper presents REALT, a UTC system based on Distributed W-Learning (DWL), a multi-policy multi-agent RL-based optimization technique, which enables it to address multiple traffic optimization goals simultaneously. We introduce an extension of DWL with fine-grained traffic observation to enable adaptation of phase duration rather than just phase selection. We also evaluate the impact of action set selection in RL applications to UTC, by introducing a phase generation module which enables REALT to use different phase sets. We simulate REALT performance in VISSIM, on a detailed model of the road network representing Western Road, the main traffic artery in Cork, Ireland. We use precise historic traffic counts as input and present results of the comparison of REALT performance to that of SCOOT signals deployed in Cork.
A Cooperative Small‐Group Methodology in the Language Classroom

The study reported in this article assessed the effects of two small-group cooperative techniques (Discussion Group; Student Teams and Achievement Divisions) and the whole-class method on academic achievement in EFL for 665 pupils in 33 seventhgrade classes. The students were taught by 18 teachers (assigned at random to one of the three methods), who participated in training workshops followed up by in-class coaching. Evaluation of pupils' achievement was conducted by observation and by special achievement tests administered before and after the experiment. Particularly noteworthy are the findings revealing that both group methods registered significantly greater improvement than the whole-class method on the total score of the test and on the listening comprehension scale. These findings support the link between the communicative approach to foreign language instruction and cooperative learning in small groups. The study demonstrates how to forge a link between the content and the process of instruction.
Advanced driver assistance system

In recent years, pedestrian detection (PD) plays a vital role in a variety of applications such as security cameras, automotive control and so forth. These applications require two essential features, i.e. high speed performance and high accuracy. Firstly, the accuracy is determined by how the image features are described. The image feature description must be robust against occlusion, rotation, and the change in object shapes and illumination conditions. A number of feature descriptors have been proposed. Previously histogram of oriented gradients(HOG) features were extensively used along with support vector machine (SVM) classifier for PD. HOG features and SVM classifier can achieve good performance for PD, but they are time consuming. To achieve high detection speed with good detection performance, a Two-step framework method was proposed. The Two-step framework consists of a full-body detection (FBD) step and a head-shoulder detection (HSD) step. Zhen Li proposed the fusion of Haar-like and HOG features to get better performance, and the HSD step utilizes edgelet features for classification and detection. This paper has limitations as low detection rate and less computation speed. In order to alleviate these limitations we propose here a new methodology for improving the detection rate and speed. Hence, the performance and accuracy of the detection can be improved by the combination of Haar-like and Triangular features for FBD and Edgelet/Shapelet for HSD. We expect an average 95% detection rate and 60% faster speed for the proposed method.
Noncommutative Finsler Geometry, Gauge Fields and Gravity

AbstractThe work extends the A. Connes’ noncommutative geometry to spaces withgeneric local anisotropy. We apply the E. Cartan’s anholonomic frame approachto geometry models and physical theories and develop the nonlinear connectionformalism for projective modulespaces. Examples of noncommutative generationof anholonomic Riemann, Finsler and Lagrange spaces are analyzed. We alsopresent a research on noncommutative Finsler–gauge theories, generalized Finslergravity and anholonomic (pseudo) Riemann geometry which appear naturally ifanholonomic frames (vierbeins) are deﬁned in the context of string/M–theoryand extra dimension Riemann gravity.Pacs: 02.40. Gh, 02.40. -k, 04.50. +hMSC numbers: 83D05, 46L87, 58B34, 58B20, 53B40, 53C07 Contents 1 Introduction 22 Commutative and Noncommutative Spaces 42.1 Algebras of functions and (non) commutative spaces . 52.2 Commutative spaces . 82.3 Noncommutative spaces . 93 Nonlinear Connections in Noncommutative Spaces 103.1 Modules as bundles . 103.2 The commutative nonlinear connection geometry . 123.2. 1 Vector bundles, Riemannian spaces and nonlinear connections . 123.2. 2 D–torsions and d–curvatures: . 16
A Selective Harmonic Amplification Method for Reduction of kVA Rating of Current Source Converters in Shunt Active Power Filters

This paper describes a new approach to the design of current-source converter (CSC)-based shunt active power filters (APFs) to reduce the converter kilovolt-ampere rating considerably. This design approach is called the selective harmonic amplification method (SHAM), and is based on the amplification of some selected harmonic current components of CSC by the ac-side filter, and the CSC control system specifically designed for this purpose. The proposed SHAM has been implemented on a CSC-based APF for the elimination of 11th and 13th current harmonics of 12-pulse rectifier loads supplied from a medium-voltage underground cable. Simulation and field test results have shown that SHAM can successfully be applied to a CSC-based APF for reduction of the converter kilovolt-ampere rating, thus making it a cost-competitive alternative to voltage-source-converter-based APFs traditionally used in industry applications.
Predicting users’ task difficulty using Social Signals: a Preliminary Model

Humans communicate social intentions through patterns of nonverbal language, using posture, gestures and body motion. This social signalling is present in human to human interaction as well as in human-computer interaction. Our daily dependence on computers emphasizes the need and importance for good interaction quality. While humans have an innate ability to recognize and respond to social signalling, machines don’t. Our work aims to develop a Social Signal Processing model based on features extracted using simple video processing techniques, applied in a real context and running in real-time, to predict interaction’s difficulties and problems. In this study we report a preliminary model where features extracted from user motion within 60 seconds of video recordings can predict 46,6% of variance in task difficulty.
APC promoter 1B deletion in seven American families with familial adenomatous polyposis

Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) is a colorectal cancer predisposition syndrome caused by mutations in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene. Clinical genetic testing fails to identify disease causing mutations in up to 20% of clinically apparent FAP cases. Following the inclusion of multiplex ligation‐dependent probe amplification (MLPA) probes specific for APC promoter 1B, seven probands were identified with a deletion of promoter 1B. Using haplotype analysis spanning the APC locus, the seven families appear to be identical by descent from a common founder. The clinical phenotype of 19 mutation carriers is classical FAP with colectomy at an average age of 24. The majority of cases had a large number of duodenal and gastric polyps. Measurements of allele‐specific expression of APC mRNA using TaqMan assay confirmed that relative expression in the allele containing the promoter 1B deletion was reduced 42–98%, depending on tissue type. This study confirms the importance of APC promoter deletions as a cause of FAP and identifies a founder mutation in FAP patients from the United States.
Comparison of Fusarium graminearum Transcriptomes on Living or Dead Wheat Differentiates Substrate-Responsive and Defense-Responsive Genes

Fusarium graminearum is an opportunistic pathogen of cereals where it causes severe yield losses and concomitant mycotoxin contamination of the grains. The pathogen has mixed biotrophic and necrotrophic (saprophytic) growth phases during infection and the regulatory networks associated with these phases have so far always been analyzed together. In this study we compared the transcriptomes of fungal cells infecting a living, actively defending plant representing the mixed live style (pathogenic growth on living flowering wheat heads) to the response of the fungus infecting identical, but dead plant tissues (cold-killed flowering wheat heads) representing strictly saprophytic conditions. We found that the living plant actively suppressed fungal growth and promoted much higher toxin production in comparison to the identical plant tissue without metabolism suggesting that molecules signaling secondary metabolite induction are not pre-existing or not stable in the plant in sufficient amounts before infection. Differential gene expression analysis was used to define gene sets responding to the active or the passive plant as main impact factor and driver for gene expression. We correlated our results to the published F. graminearum transcriptomes, proteomes, and secretomes and found that only a limited number of in planta- expressed genes require the living plant for induction but the majority uses simply the plant tissue as signal. Many secondary metabolite (SM) gene clusters show a heterogeneous expression pattern within the cluster indicating that different genetic or epigenetic signals govern the expression of individual genes within a physically linked cluster. Our bioinformatic approach also identified fungal genes which were actively repressed by signals derived from the active plant and may thus represent direct targets of the plant defense against the invading pathogen.
A long-lasting, plasmin-activatable thrombin inhibitor aids clot lysis in vitro and does not promote bleeding in vivo

Summary The leech protein hirudin is a potent inhibitor of thrombin, but clinical use of recombinant hirudin is restricted by haemorrhagic risks, and complicated by hirudin’s rapid clearance from the circulation. We previously employed albumin fusion to slow hirudin variant 3 (HV3) clearance. In this study, we hypothesized that reconfiguration of the chimera, appending human serum albumin (HSA) to the N-terminus of HV3, with an intervening plasmin cleavage site, would create a slowly cleared, plasmin-activatable HV3. Potential plasmin cleavage sites were screened by expression in Escherichia coli, interposed between glutathione sulfotransferase and HV3 domains. The most reactive sequence (GSGIYR-ITY) was recreated in C-terminally His-tagged albumin fusion protein HSACHV3, expressed in Pichia pastoris yeast and purified by nickel-chelate affinity chromatography. HSACHV3 showed no thrombin inhibitory activity in the absence of plasmin, but liberated active HV3 in a time- and concentration-dependent manner in its presence. In a discontinuous clot assay involving clot-bound thrombin, HSACHV3 assisted clot lysis by limiting clot extension in a tPA- and concentration-dependent manner. Similar results were obtained in plasma at higher concentrations of HSACHV3. The chimeric protein exhibited much slower clearance in mice than unfused HV3, and indistinguishable pharmacokinetics from unfused recombinant HSA. In a mouse tail transection bleeding model, doses of HSACHV3 identical to those of HV3 that elicited a four-fold increase in the volume of shed blood were without effect. Our results suggest that HSACHV3 is a fully latent, plasmin activatable, long-lasting hirudin, of potential benefit in thrombotic disorders resistant to natural or pharmacological clot lysis.
Gamma heavy chain disease in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis – a laboratory evaluation

Introduction: Heavy chain diseases (HCD) are neoplastic proliferations of B cells which secrete truncated immunoglobulin heavy chains without associated light chains. Being rare and probably underdiagnosed diseases the aim of this report is to show an additional case of gamma heavy chain disease in a 48 year old female patient with rheumatoid arthritis focusing on the laboratory presentation. Materials and methods: Laboratory work-up included agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE), capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), immunofixation and nephelometrically determined immunoglobulin and immunoglobulin subclasses of the patient’s serum. Urine samples were also subjected to immunofixation and to a SDS-PAGE with consecutive immunoblot. Results: Nephelometrically measured elevated IgG concentrations were noted in combination with a decreased gamma globulin region and an increased beta globulin region on AGE. A definite monoclonal spike was not identified on AGE but at least suspected on CZE; finally serum and urine immunofixation demonstrated a monoclonal gamma heavy chain devoid of any corresponding light chains confirming the diagnosis of HCD. Analysis of the gamma heavy chain (HC) with means of SDS-PAGE revealed proteins of 40 kD and 80 kD most likely presenting a truncated HC in its monomeric and dimeric form and possibly leading to the failure of IgG-subclass typing with the applied IgG subclass antisera. Conclusion: This case report illustrates a new case of gamma HCD demonstrating variable laboratory manifestations and therefore the need for heightened awareness concerning this disease when confronted with abnormal and discrepant protein profiles in routinely applied laboratory tests.
Long-term observation of subcutaneous tissue reaction to synthetic auditory ossicle (Apaceram®) in rats

Abstract The present study evaluates histological characteristics of the soft tissue response to long-term implantation of Apaceram™ discs composed of dense hydroxyapatite in rats. Discs were implanted into the subcutaneous tissue of 76 rats for six to 20 months. Decalcified histological sections stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H & E) and Mallory's azan were examined. Different cell types surrounding implants were counted. The greatest proportion of macrophages was found at six months (13.5 per cent). This proportion gradually decreased to four per cent at 20 months. Small numbers of lymphocytes and foreign body giant cells were observed in every group, but neither neutrophils nor osteogenesis were observed in any specimens. Results of the present study and previous related studies indicate that despite reappearance of a small number of macrophages six months after implantation, Apaceram™ is useful for reconstructive surgery.
SERF: Efficient Scheduling for Fast Deep Neural Network Serving via Judicious Parallelism

Deep neural networks (DNNs) has enabled a variety of artificial intelligence applications. These applications are backed by large DNN models running in serving mode on a cloud computing infrastructure. Given the compute-intensive nature of large DNN models, a key challenge for DNN serving systems is to minimize the request response latencies. This paper characterizes the behavior of different parallelism techniques for supporting scalable and responsive serving systems for large DNNs. We identify and model two important properties of DNN workloads: homogeneous request service demand, and interference among requests running concurrently due to cache/memory contention. These properties motivate the design of SERF, a dynamic scheduling framework that is powered by an interference-aware queueing-based analytical model. We evaluate SERF in the context of an image classification service using several well known benchmarks. The results demonstrate its accurate latency prediction and its ability to adapt to changing load conditions.
THE QUEST FOR THE FUTURES : A METHODOLOGY SEMINAR IN FUTURES STUDIES Finland , June 2000 The implementation of foresight in organisations , a structural issue ?

This paper addresses Futures Studies methodology in the context of its implementation in organisational contexts. Today’s strategic landscape increasingly demands that organisations be flexible and prepared for change. But how do organisations prepare for change if the future is unpredictable? Foresight as a tool allows organisations to consider future options and the consequences of decisions in these future states. The rationale is even if organisations cannot plan for all contingencies, they will not be caught off-guard when change occurs, because they would have thought through the different options. Foresight activities now take place in a large number of medium to large private sector businesses and recently in government departments. These activities occur in the presence or absence of foresight units. The future of an organisation is the domain of its strategic planning, what then is the role of foresight units in organisations and are they needed? In attempting to answer this query, this enquiry explored the activities of foresight in ten British public and private sector organisations, with and without foresight units. It suggests that the main role of foresight units is to embed foresight in organisations by attention to the quality of thinking processes in the organisation, creating an enabling culture and facilitating learning. Structures for co-ordination of foresight activities differ in organisations with units and those without, but there is no evidence to suggest that one approach is better than the other. There is evidence for the need for free-standing units of foresight, for organisations with limiting capacity in-house, but within organisations, the need for foresight units is debatable. This enquiry has contributed empirical evidence on the state of foresight in British organisations and identified the immaturity of foresight practice in organisational settings.
Recall of unpleasant emotion using memory-enhancing principles

Abstract Two experiments are presented to examine the issue of memory for past emotions. Participants rated their emotional reactions on the occasion of watching a film, and in a subsequent session, they were asked to recall and rate the emotion as experienced when viewing it. In the first experiment, participants underestimated unpleasant emotion at recall, but their recall was improved with the presentation of a visual cue pertaining to the emotion-inducing film event. In the second experiment, participants were assisted in probing perceptual aspects of the event by means of memory-enhancing instructions underlying the Cognitive Interview. These participants consistently recalled emotional intensity, as compared to participants in the unassisted recall condition who underestimated prior emotion. This research suggests that ratings of prior emotion are easily influenced by features of the retrieval context, and that consistent recall may be achieved by memory-enhancing principles of the Cognitive Interview.
Observation of J/p resonances consistent with pentaquark states in 0b J/K-p decays

Observations of exotic structures in the J= ψ p channel, which we refer to as charmonium-pentaquark states, in Λ 0 b → J= ψ K − p decays are presented. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb − 1 acquired with the LHCb detector from 7 and 8 TeV pp collisions. An amplitude analysis of the three-body final state reproduces the two-body mass and angular distributions. To obtain a satisfactory fit of the structures seen in the J= ψ p mass spectrum, it is necessary to include two Breit-Wigner amplitudes that each describe a resonant state. The significance of each of these resonances is more than 9 standard deviations. One has a mass of 4380 (cid:1) 8 (cid:1) 29 MeV and a width of 205 (cid:1) 18 (cid:1) 86 MeV, while the second is narrower, with a mass of 4449 . 8 (cid:1) 1 . 7 (cid:1) 2 . 5 MeV and a width of 39 (cid:1) 5 (cid:1) 19 MeV. The preferred J P assignments are of opposite parity, with one state having spin 3 = 2 and the other 5 = 2 .
Program Analysis with Dynamic Change of Precision

We present and evaluate a framework and tool for combining multiple program analyses which allows the dynamic (on-line) adjustment of the precision of each analysis depending on the accumulated results. For example, the explicit tracking of the values of a variable may be switched off in favor of a predicate abstraction when and where the number of different variable values that have been encountered has exceeded a specified threshold. The method is evaluated on verifying the SSH client/server software and shows significant gains compared with predicate abstraction-based model checking.
A Scalable Algorithm to Explore the Gibbs Energy Landscape of Genome-Scale Metabolic Networks

The integration of various types of genomic data into predictive models of biological networks is one of the main challenges currently faced by computational biology. Constraint-based models in particular play a key role in the attempt to obtain a quantitative understanding of cellular metabolism at genome scale. In essence, their goal is to frame the metabolic capabilities of an organism based on minimal assumptions that describe the steady states of the underlying reaction network via suitable stoichiometric constraints, specifically mass balance and energy balance (i.e. thermodynamic feasibility). The implementation of these requirements to generate viable configurations of reaction fluxes and/or to test given flux profiles for thermodynamic feasibility can however prove to be computationally intensive. We propose here a fast and scalable stoichiometry-based method to explore the Gibbs energy landscape of a biochemical network at steady state. The method is applied to the problem of reconstructing the Gibbs energy landscape underlying metabolic activity in the human red blood cell, and to that of identifying and removing thermodynamically infeasible reaction cycles in the Escherichia coli metabolic network (iAF1260). In the former case, we produce consistent predictions for chemical potentials (or log-concentrations) of intracellular metabolites; in the latter, we identify a restricted set of loops (23 in total) in the periplasmic and cytoplasmic core as the origin of thermodynamic infeasibility in a large sample () of flux configurations generated randomly and compatibly with the prior information available on reaction reversibility.