Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multimodality Molecular Imaging Identifies Proteolytic and Osteogenic Activities in Early Aortic Valve Disease

Background— Visualizing early changes in valvular cell functions in vivo may predict the future risk and identify therapeutic targets for prevention of aortic valve stenosis. Methods and Results— To test the hypotheses that (1) aortic stenosis shares a similar pathogenesis to atherosclerosis and (2) molecular imaging can detect early changes in aortic valve disease, we used in vivo a panel of near-infrared fluorescence imaging agents to map endothelial cells, macrophages, proteolysis, and osteogenesis in aortic valves of hypercholesterolemic apolipoprotein E–deficient mice (30 weeks old, n=30). Apolipoprotein E–deficient mice with no probe injection (n=10) and wild-type mice (n=10) served as controls. Valves of apolipoprotein E–deficient mice contained macrophages, were thicker than wild-type mice (P<0.001), and showed early dysfunction detected by MRI in vivo. Fluorescence imaging detected uptake of macrophage-targeted magnetofluorescent nanoparticles (24 hours after injection) in apolipoprotein E–deficient valves, which was negligible in controls (P<0.01). Valvular macrophages showed proteolytic activity visualized by protease-activatable near-infrared fluorescence probes. Ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging enhanced with vascular cell adhesion molecule-1–targeted nanoparticles detected endothelial activation in valve commissures, the regions of highest mechanical stress. Osteogenic near-infrared fluorescence signals colocalized with alkaline phosphatase activity and expression of osteopontin, osteocalcin, Runx2/Cbfa1, Osterix, and Notch1 despite no evidence of calcium deposits, which suggests ongoing active processes of osteogenesis in inflamed valves. Notably, the aortic wall contained advanced calcification. Quantitative image analysis correlated near-infrared fluorescence signals with immunoreactive vascular cell adhesion molecule-1, macrophages, and cathepsin-B (P<0.001). Conclusions— Molecular imaging can detect in vivo the key cellular events in early aortic valve disease, including endothelial cell and macrophage activation, proteolytic activity, and osteogenesis.
Learning under Concept Drift: an Overview

Concept drift refers to a non stationary learning problem over time. The training and the application data often mismatch in real life problems. In this report we present a context of concept drift problem 1. We focus on the issues relevant to adaptive training set formation. We present the framework and terminology, and formulate a global picture of concept drift learners design. We start with formalizing the framework for the concept drifting data in Section 1. In Section 2 we discuss the adaptivity mechanisms of the concept drift learners. In Section 3 we overview the principle mechanisms of concept drift learners. In this chapter we give a general picture of the available algorithms and categorize them based on their properties. Section 5 discusses the related research fields and Section 5 groups and presents major concept drift applications. This report is intended to give a bird's view of concept drift research field, provide a context of the research and position it within broad spectrum of research fields and applications.
Risk Factors for Reoperation and Performance-Based Outcomes After Operative Fixation of Foot Fractures in the Professional Athlete: A Cross-Sport Analysis

Background: Professional athletes are predisposed to fractures of the foot due to large stresses placed on the lower extremity. These players are concerned with efficiently returning to play at a high level. Return-to-play rates after operative treatment have been previously reported, yet performance outcomes after such treatment are generally unknown in this population. Hypothesis: Overall, professional athletes sustaining a foot fracture would return to play at high rates with little impact on postoperative performance or league participation. However, National Football League (NFL) athletes would have a significantly greater decline in performance due to the high-impact nature of the sport. Study Design: Case series. Level of Evidence: Level 4. Methods: Athletes in the National Basketball League (NBA), NFL, Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Hockey League (NHL) undergoing operative fixation of a foot fracture were identified through a well-established protocol confirmed by multiple sources of the public record. Return-to-play rate and time to return were collected for each sport. League participation and game performance data were collected before and after surgery. Statistical analysis was performed, with significance accepted as P ≤ 0.05. Results: A total of 77 players undergoing 84 procedures met the inclusion criteria. Overall, 98.7% (76/77) of players were able to return to play, with a median time to return across all sports of 137 days. Players returned to preoperative performance levels within 1 season of surgery. Six players (7.8%) sustained refracture requiring reoperation, all of whom were in the NBA. Percentage of games started during the season after primary operative treatment was a predictive factor for reinjury (99% vs 40%, P = 0.001). Conclusion: Athletes returned to play at a high rate after foot fracture fixation, with excellent postoperative performance levels, regardless of sport and fracture location. NBA athletes sustaining fifth metatarsal and navicular fractures are at greater risk of reinjury compared with other athletes. Returning to high levels of athletic participation soon after surgery may predispose athletes to refracture and subsequent reoperation. Clinical Relevance: Players, coaches, and team physicians should be aware of the impact of foot fractures on career performance and longevity to best guide therapy.
Probiotics in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and Associated Conditions

A complex set of interactions between the human genes encoding innate protective functions and immune defenses and the environment of the intestinal mucosa with its microbiota is currently considered key to the pathogenesis of the chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Probiotics offer a method to potentially alter the intestinal microbiome exogenously or may provide an option to deliver microbial metabolic products to alter the chronicity of intestinal mucosal inflammation characterizing IBD. At present, there is little evidence for the benefit of currently used probiotic microbes in Crohn’s disease or associated conditions affecting extra-intestinal organs. However, clinical practice guidelines are now including a probiotic as an option for recurrent and relapsing antibiotic sensitive pouchitis and the use of probiotics in mild ulcerative colitis is provocative and suggests potential for benefit in select patients but concerns remain about proof from trials.
Caractérisation of GABAergic neurotransmission within basal ganglia circuit in R6/1 Huntington's disease mouse model

Nous avons etudie les recepteurs GABAA dans un modele de la maladie de Huntington. En combinant des approches biochimiques, moleculaires, electrophysiologiques et de l’imagerie haute resolution, nous avons montre une modification de la neurotransmission GABAergique chez des animaux a des stades pre- et post-symptomatiques. Nos etudes montrent une diminution de de la neurotransmission GABAergique dans le globus pallidus des souris Huntington qui pourrait conduire a une modification des noyaux de sortie des ganglions de la base et de l’activite motrice. L’ensemble de nos resultats permet de definir le role de differents types de recepteurs GABAA dans le cerveau dans des conditions physiologiques et pathologiques.
Draft Genome Sequence of the Xanthan Producer Xanthomonas campestris LMG 8031

ABSTRACT Here, we report the draft genome sequence of Xanthomonas campestris LMG 8031, for which nearly no genetic information is available, despite its good xanthan-producing properties. We performed an Illumina-based sequencing approach of LMG 8031. The genome revealed a 5.0-Mb chromosome having 4,434 coding sequences and a G+C content of 65%.
Heat Generation on Implant Surface During Abutment Preparation at Different Elapsed Time Intervals

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate heat generation at the implant surface caused by abutment preparation using a diamond bur in a high-speed dental turbine in vitro at 2 different water-coolant temperatures. Materials and Methods: Thirty-two titanium-alloy abutments were connected to a titanium-alloy implant embedded in an acrylic resin placed within a water bath at a controlled temperature of 37°C. The specimens were equally distributed into 2 groups (16 each). Group 1: the temperature was maintained at 20 ± 1°C; and group 2: the temperature was maintained at 32 ± 1°C. Each abutment was prepared in the axial plane for 1 minute and in the occlusal plane for 1 minute. The temperature of the heat generated from abutment preparation was recorded and measured at 3 distinct time intervals. Results: Water-coolant temperature (20°C vs 32°C) had a statistically significant effect on the implant's temperature change during preparation of the abutment (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: The use of water-coolant temperature of 20 ± 1°C during preparation of the implant abutment decreased the temperature recorded at the implant surface to 34.46°C, whereas the coolant temperature of 32 ± 1°C increased the implant surface temperature to 40.94°C.
RESEARCH OUTPUTS / RÉSULTATS DE RECHERCHE

Link to publication Citation for pulished version (HARVARD): Meurant, L, Gobert, M & Cleve, A 2016, Modelling a parallel corpus of French and French Belgian Sign L guage (LSFB). in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2016. European Language Resources Association (ELRA), pp. 4236-4240, LREC 2016 (10th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference), Portoroz, Slovenia, 23/05/16.
REFRAMING WITHIN PROVERBS

For Condor web site. Many proverbs seem to convey wisdom because they help people reframe and adjust to life’s predicaments. Positive reframes, such as Every cloud has a silver lining, often draw positive implications from adverse circumstances (cf., “gain frames,” “positive reappraisals,” “emotion-focused coping”, “dispositional optimism”). In contrast, negative reframes, such as All that glitters is not gold, provide helpful warnings about difficult situations, and therefore encourage proactive coping (cf. “problem-focused coping,” “defensive pessimism”). Six judges evaluated 199 proverbs and categorized most of them as positive or negative reframes. (For some proverbs judges disagreed on the reframe category because they interpreted the proverb as relevant to different situations). Results showed that those proverbs categorized as positive versus negative reframes were rated by college students as more pleasant, conceptually simpler, and more familiar. Other results showed that positive and negative reframes occurred similarly often among the proverbs, and that positive and negative reframes did not differ consistently in rated truth, imagery arousal, or reading grade level. A later version of this paper appears in: Tracy, R. J., Greco, N. , Felix, E. , & Kilburg, D. F. , III. (2003). Reframing and wisdom within proverbs. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 22(2), pp. 117-162. Proverbs, such as, Every cloud has a silver lining, are brief pithy sayings in frequent and widespread use that express a basic truth or practical precept (American Heritage Dictionary, 2000) ! In this paper we argue that many proverbs convey wisdom because they help people to reframe important life experiences and elegantly express those reframes to others.
Dynamic SLA based elastic cloud service management: A SaaS perspective

Elasticity is one of the most attractive features of cloud computing. While elastic resource requirements of a cloud service user often exhibit periodic patterns, the absence of a mechanism to specify precisely the elastic resource requirements forces the cloud service provider to either provision unbounded resources or offer services with rigid and static resources, none of which is an efficient or economic proposition to the tenant. We propose, in this paper, a novel model of dynamic service level agreement (SLA) for the tenants to specify their elastic resource requirements so that the cloud service provider can take an informed decision for resource management, thereby optimizing on resource utilization, user expenses and generated revenue. We study the problem from a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) perspective. We propose an intuitive model of dynamic SLA that can capture the anticipated license requirement variation of an SaaS user. We also propose ILP and greedy-heuristic based optimization approaches for the service provider to solve the tenant on-boarding problem with dynamic SLA constraints. Experimental results show that our solution produces optimal or near-optimal (for heuristic based approach) performance in terms of overall resource utilization and the economy for both the service provider and the tenants.
Coordinated Membrane Ballooning and Procoagulant Spreading in Human Platelets

Background— Platelets are central to the process of hemostasis, rapidly aggregating at sites of blood vessel injury and acting as coagulation nidus sites. On interaction with the subendothelial matrix, platelets are transformed into balloonlike structures as part of the hemostatic response. It remains unclear, however, how and why platelets generate these structures. We set out to determine the physiological relevance and cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying platelet membrane ballooning. Methods and Results— Using 4‐dimensional live‐cell imaging and electron microscopy, we show that human platelets adherent to collagen are transformed into phosphatidylserine‐exposing balloonlike structures with expansive macro/microvesiculate contact surfaces, by a process that we termed procoagulant spreading. We reveal that ballooning is mechanistically and structurally distinct from membrane blebbing and involves disruption to the platelet microtubule cytoskeleton and inflation through fluid entry. Unlike blebbing, procoagulant ballooning is irreversible and a consequence of Na+, Cl‐, and water entry. Furthermore, membrane ballooning correlated with microparticle generation. Inhibition of Na+, Cl‐, or water entry impaired ballooning, procoagulant spreading, and microparticle generation, and it also diminished local thrombin generation. Human Scott syndrome platelets, which lack expression of Ano‐6, also showed a marked reduction in membrane ballooning, consistent with a role for chloride entry in the process. Finally, the blockade of water entry by acetazolamide attenuated ballooning in vitro and markedly suppressed thrombus formation in vivo in a mouse model of thrombosis. Conclusions— Ballooning and procoagulant spreading of platelets are driven by fluid entry into the cells, and are important for the amplification of localized coagulation in thrombosis.
Distance metric learning from uncertain side information for automated photo tagging

Automated photo tagging is an important technique for many intelligent multimedia information systems, for example, smart photo management system and intelligent digital media library. To attack the challenge, several machine learning techniques have been developed and applied for automated photo tagging. For example, supervised learning techniques have been applied to automated photo tagging by training statistical classifiers from a collection of manually labeled examples. Although the existing approaches work well for small testbeds with relatively small number of annotation words, due to the long-standing challenge of object recognition, they often perform poorly in large-scale problems. Another limitation of the existing approaches is that they require a set of high-quality labeled data, which is not only expensive to collect but also time consuming. In this article, we investigate a social image based annotation scheme by exploiting implicit side information that is available for a large number of social photos from the social web sites. The key challenge of our intelligent annotation scheme is how to learn an effective distance metric based on implicit side information (visual or textual) of social photos. To this end, we present a novel “Probabilistic Distance Metric Learning” (PDML) framework, which can learn optimized metrics by effectively exploiting the implicit side information vastly available on the social web. We apply the proposed technique to photo annotation tasks based on a large social image testbed with over 1 million tagged photos crawled from a social photo sharing portal. Encouraging results show that the proposed technique is effective and promising for social photo based annotation tasks.
Hormonal Treatments for Bipolar Disorder: A Review of the Literature

Hormonal therapies may play a role in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Preliminary evidence suggests that: 1) tamoxifen has anti-manic properties; 2) hormone replacement therapy represents a good augmentation strategy in treatment-resistant peri-menopausal depression; and 3) certain oral contraceptives could prevent menstrual exacerbations of affective symptoms. Potential neurobiological mechanisms of the anti-manic effects of tamoxifen include the inhibition of protein kinase C in addition its anti-estrogenic effects. Estrogen is a serotonergic and adrenergic agonist as well as an agent promoting neurogenesis in the hippocampus through glutamatergic synaptic formation, which may be the basis of its antidepressant activity. Progesterone appears to decrease serotonergic and adrenergic tone and activity, while increasing GABAA receptor activation through its active metabolite allopregnanolone, which may be the basis of its anxiolytic, sedative, and potentially anti-manic properties. Although there is consistency between the evidence for clinical efficacy and neurobiological mechanisms of hormonal treatments, the current state of knowledge relies on studies with several methodological limitations. On the other hand, benefits of hormonal treatment include protection from osteoporosis and several gynecological cancers, as well as safe contraception in a population at-risk for unplanned pregnancy. Nonetheless, hormonal treatments should be reserved for treatment-resistant bipolar depression or mania, or when contra-indications to other psychotropic medications are present. Institution of regular monitoring for medical complications and drug-drug interactions are essential to minimize risks and maximize benefits.
The political economy of brain drain at institutions of higher learning in conflict countries: Case of the university of liberia

According to endogenous growth theories, human capital is a major determinant of economic growth and development. Human capital refers to the educational qualifications, skills, and experience that individuals possess. ' Educational institutions, in general, and universities, in particular, are most instrumental in developing and enhancing the quality of human capital through capacity building involving training, research, information dissemination, and knowledge management. These institutions should be not only firmly established and maintained but also continuously empowered to meet the current and evolving needs of their countries. In many less-developed countries (LDCs), these institutions, especially universities, are primarily state sponsored. When the state becomes affected by conflict, the institutions are adversely affected. During the past two decades, many universities in Africa have faced this situation, which has contributed to a significant loss of their human capital. Although the flow of human capital is not necessarily a new phenomenon, its recent intensity renders universities increasingly incapable of maintaining their own human resource base or producing quality human capital. This loss of human capital is generally referred to as the brain drain. Reasons for the brain drain in African universities vary. In general, however, the major reasons are reported to be the pursuit of better working conditions, an enabling environment, and more lucrative and rewarding opportunities for professional growth. In countries experiencing civil wars or related conflicts, the brain drain is exacerbated by widespread death, disability, or dehumanizing socioeconomic dislocations. Reversing the brain drain situation is a complex endeavor involving an intricate web of political and socioeconomic factors. This article examines brain drain in the context of institu-
USING THE METHOD OF NEARBY MEASURES IN SUPERPOSITION CODING WITH A BERNOULLI DICTIONARY

The work discussed in this presentation is motivated by the problem of decoding superposition codes when using {−1,+1}-valued dictionary elements. Under this encoding scheme, the output, Y , is a linear combination of independent Bernoulli random variables and noise. Statistical decoding then requires the study of the conditional distribution of the Bernoulli random variables given the output, Y . We find this distribution analogous to that of summands given the sum of independent random variables as studied by Cover and Campenhout and Csiszár. Motivated by this work we wish to bound the Rényi relative entropy distance between the true conditional distribution and the product of tilted distributions in order to show that events that are exponentially rare under the tilted product distribution remain rare under the true distribution.
Treatment with an anti-IL-4 monoclonal antibody blocks suppression of collagen-induced arthritis in mice by oral administration of type II collagen.

Oral administration of type II collagen (CII) has been shown to suppress collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) in experimental animals. However, the exact mechanism by which CIA is suppressed following administration of CII remains to be investigated, although it was demonstrated that active suppression by regulatory T cells might be involved in the suppression. Therefore, we have examined whether the inhibitory cytokine IL-4 plays a role in the suppression of CIA, by using an anti-IL-4 mAb (11B11 mAb). Mice were fed daily with CII over a period of 10 days before immunization with CII. 11B11 mAb was i.p. injected 30 min before each oral administration of CII. The results showed that treatment with 11B11 mAb markedly blocked suppression of CIA by the oral Ag. The blockade of suppression of CIA by the anti-IL-4 mAb was associated with the blockade of augmentation of IL-4 secretion in CII-fed mice. The treatment with 11B11 mAb also resulted in the prevention of decreases in anti-CII IgG2a Ab production, DTH responses to CII, proliferation of lymphoid cells to CII, and IFN-gamma secretion in mice given CII orally. Thus, the neutralization of IL-4 by an anti-IL-4 Ab appears to be effective in blocking suppression of CIA by oral administration of CII, suggesting that IL-4 may be critically involved in its suppression.