Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study on the Factors Affecting the User Intention of Omnichannel Shopping Based on Information Technology

Technical advance and its spread brought diversification of distribution channels. It is not unusual that retailers deploy omnichannel shopping environment. Retailing companies are responding to markets with new strategies which are caused by appearance of omnichannel. From this point of view, this study investigated which factors can affect the user intention of omnichannel. We found that sales promotion is the most effective factor when consumers using omnichannel shopping. Also, information from word of mouth has marginal effects on consumers' use intention of omnichannel shopping. However, personalized information from providers does not have a significant effect on both consumers' perceived value and use intention of omnichannel shopping.
Replay attack detection with complementary high-resolution information using end-to-end DNN for the ASVspoof 2019 Challenge

In this study, we concentrate on replacing the process of extracting hand-crafted acoustic feature with end-to-end DNN using complementary high-resolution spectrograms. As a result of advance in audio devices, typical characteristics of a replayed speech based on conventional knowledge alter or diminish in unknown replay configurations. Thus, it has become increasingly difficult to detect spoofed speech with a conventional knowledge-based approach. To detect unrevealed characteristics that reside in a replayed speech, we directly input spectrograms into an end-to-end DNN without knowledge-based intervention. Explorations dealt in this study that differentiates from existing spectrogram-based systems are twofold: complementary information and high-resolution. Spectrograms with different information are explored, and it is shown that additional information such as the phase information can be complementary. High-resolution spectrograms are employed with the assumption that the difference between a bona-fide and a replayed speech exists in the details. Additionally, to verify whether other features are complementary to spectrograms, we also examine raw waveform and an i-vector based system. Experiments conducted on the ASVspoof 2019 physical access challenge show promising results, where t-DCF and equal error rates are 0.0570 and 2.45 % for the evaluation set, respectively.
Lipostatic Mechanisms Preserving Cerebellar Lipids in MPTP-Treated Mice: Focus on Membrane Microdomains and Lipid-Related Gene Expression

The cerebellum is an essential component in the control of motor patterns. Despite dramatic alteration of basal ganglia morpho-functionality in Parkinson’s disease (PD), cerebellar function appears to be unaffected by the disease. Only recently this brain structure has been proposed to play compensatory roles in PD-induced motor dysfunction, particularly during the initial asymptomatic stages of PD. In PD subjects and animal models of PD, such as MPTP-treated mice, brain structures other than basal ganglia are also affected by the disease, including cortical areas not involved in motor control. Thus, it is noteworthy that the cerebellum remains unaffected. In the present study, we have analyzed the lipid composition of membrane microdomains [lipid rafts (LR) and non-raft domains] and assessed the expression levels of genes encoding enzymes synthesizing membrane-related lipids. The outcomes revealed that membrane domain lipids in cerebellum are highly preserved both in control and MPTP-treated mice as compared to control animals. Likewise, only small, mostly not significant, changes were observed in the expression of lipid-related genes in the cerebellum. Indeed, most changes were related to aging rather than to the exposure to the neurotoxin. Conversely, in the same animals, lipid composition, and gene expression were dramatically altered in the occipital cortex (OC), a brain area unrelated to the control of motor function. PCR and immunohistochemical analyses of both brain areas revealed that dopamine transporter (DAT) mRNA and protein were expressed in OC but not in the cerebellum. As MPTP neurotoxicity requires the expression of DAT to access intracellular compartments, we hypothesized that the absence of DAT in cerebellum hampers MPTP-induced toxicity. We conclude that cerebellum is endowed with efficient mechanisms to preserve nerve cell lipid homeostasis, which greatly maintain the stability of membrane microdomains involved in synaptic transmission, signal transduction, and intercellular communication, which together may participate in the compensatory role of the cerebellum in PD symptomatology.
Prognostic significance of locally invaded sites and tissue types in patients with nasal extranodal natural-killer/T-cell lymphoma: a single-center retrospective analysis

Abstract Background: Extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (ENKTL), nasal type, is an aggressive entity within the World Health Organization classification of lymphoid tumors. The International Prognostic Index is reported to be prognostically meaningful for ENKTL, but lacks discriminatory power for stage I/II ENKTL with extensive local invasion. This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic effects of local invasion by site and tissue type in patients with ENKTL. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed data of 86 patients who were diagnosed with ENKTL by the Department of Pathology of Beijing Tongren Hospital from June 2002 to April 2016, and ascertained tumor infiltration of adjacent structures (AS), bone, and soft tissue for each patient, using physical findings and imaging scans. We used univariate and multivariate analysis to assess the association of each involved tissue or site with patients’ overall survival (OS). Results: Of the 86 patients, 71 (82.6%) experienced invasion of AS, 22 (25.6%) of soft tissue, and 26 (30.2%) had bone involvement. Overall, patients with AS involvement did not show significantly shorter survival than those without AS involvement (Log rank χ2 = 1.177, P = 0.278); however, patients who had involved eyeballs or brains showed significantly lower 2-year OS rates than those without eyeball involvement (Log rank χ2 = 4.105, P = 0.043) or brain involvement (Log rank χ2 = 7.126, P = 0.008). Patients with involved local soft tissue or bones, respectively, showed lower 2-year OS rates than those without involved local soft tissue (Log rank χ2 = 10.390, P = 0.001) or bones (Log rank χ2 = 8.993, P = 0.003). Multivariate analysis showed that involvement of the cheek or facial muscles (hazard ratio, HR = 5.471, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.466–20.416, P = 0.011) and the maxilla bone (HR = 6.120, 95% CI: 1.517–24.694, P = 0.011) were significantly independent predictors of lower 2-year OS rates. Conclusions: Imaging can accurately detect ENKTL invasion of AS, soft tissue, and bone. Involvement of local soft tissue or bone was significantly associated with lower 2-year OS rates. Involvements of the cheek or facial muscle, as well as maxilla bone, are independent predictors of lower 2-year OS rates in ENKTL patients.
Dilated Dense U-Net for Infant Hippocampus Subfield Segmentation

Accurate and automatic segmentation of infant hippocampal subfields from magnetic resonance (MR) images is an important step for studying memory related infant neurological diseases. However, existing hippocampal subfield segmentation methods were generally designed based on adult subjects, and would compromise performance when applied to infant subjects due to insufficient tissue contrast and fast changing structural patterns of early hippocampal development. In this paper, we propose a new fully convolutional network (FCN) for infant hippocampal subfield segmentation by embedding the dilated dense network in the U-net, namely DUnet. The embedded dilated dense network can generate multi-scale features while keeping high spatial resolution, which is useful in fusing the low-level features in the contracting path with the high-level features in the expanding path. To further improve the performance, we group every pair of convolutional layers with one residual connection in the DUnet, and obtain the Residual DUnet (ResDUnet). Experimental results show that our proposed DUnet and ResDUnet improve the average Dice coefficient by 2.1 and 2.5% for infant hippocampal subfield segmentation, respectively, when compared with the classic 3D U-net. The results also demonstrate that our methods outperform other state-of-the-art methods.
Event-Triggered Ephemeral Group Communication and Coordination over Sound for Smart Consumer Devices

Voice-based interfaces have become one of the most popular device capabilities, recently being regarded as one flagship user experience of smart consumer devices. However, the lack of common coordination mechanisms might often degrade the user experience, especially when interacting with multiple voice-enabled devices located closely. For example, a hotword or wake-up utterance such as “hi Bixby” or “ok Google” frequently triggers redundant responses by several nearby smartphones. Motivated by the problem of uncoordinated react of voice-enabled devices especially in a multiple device environment, in this paper, we discuss the notion of an ephemeral group of consumer devices in which the member devices and the transient lifetime are implicitly determined by an external event (e.g., hotword detection) without any provisioned group structure, and specifically we concentrate on the time-constrained leader election process in such an ephemeral group. To do so: (i) We first present the sound-based multiple device communication framework, namely tailtag, that leverages the isomorphic capability of consumer devices for the tasks of processing hotword events and transmitting data over sound, and thus renders both the tasks confined to the same room area and enables the spontaneous leader election process in a unstructured group upon a hotword event. (ii) To improve the success rate of the leader election with a given time constraint, we then develop the adaptive messaging scheme especially tailored for sound-based data communication that inherently has low data rate. Our adaptive scheme utilizes an application-specific score that is individually calculated by a member device for each event detection, and employs score-based scheduling by which messages of a high score are scheduled first and so unnecessary message transmission can be suppressed during the election process. (iii) Through experiments, we also demonstrate that, when a hotword is detected by multiple smartphones in a room, the framework with the adaptive messaging scheme enables them to successfully achieve a coordinated response under the given latency bound, yielding an insignificant non-consensus probability, no more than 2%.
Evaluating and Correcting Inherent Bias of microRNA Expression in Illumina Sequencing Analysis

microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles based on the highly powerful Illumina sequencing technology rely on the construction of cDNA libraries in which adaptor ligation is known to deeply favor some miRNAs over others. This introduces erroneous measurements of the miRNA abundances and relative miRNA quantities in biological samples. Here, by using the commercial miRXplore Universal Reference that contains an equimolar mixture of 963 animal miRNAs and TruSeq or bulged adaptors, we describe a method for correcting ligation biases in expression profiles obtained with standard protocols of cDNA library construction and provide data for quantifying the true miRNA abundances in biological samples. Ligation biases were evaluated at three ratios of miRNA to 3′-adaptor and four numbers of polymerase chain reaction amplification cycles by calculating efficiency captures/correcting factors for each miRNA. We show that ligation biases lead to over- or under-expression covering a 105 amplitude range. We also show that, at each miRNA:3′-adaptor ratio, coefficients of variation (CVs) of efficiency captures calculated over the four number of amplification cycles using sliding windows of 10 values ranged from 0.1 for the miRNAs of high expression to 0.6 for the miRNAs of low expression. Efficiency captures of miRNAs of high and low expression in profiles are therefore differently impacted by the number of amplification cycles. Importantly, we observed that at a given number of amplification cycles, CVs of efficiency captures calculated over the three miRNA:3′-adaptor ratios displayed a steady value of 0.3 +/− 0.05 STD for miRNAs of high and low expression. This allows, at a given number of amplification cycles, accurate comparison of miRNA expression between biological samples over a substantial expression range. Finally we provide tables of correcting factors that allow to measure the abundances of 963 miRNAs in biological samples from TruSeq-based expression profiles and, an example of their use by characterizing miRNAs of the let-7, miR-26, miR-29, and miR-30 families as the more abundant miRNAs of the rat adult cerebellum.
Optimizing the Scale of a Wavelet-Based Method for the Detection of Gait Events from a Waist-Mounted Accelerometer under Different Walking Speeds

The accurate and reliable extraction of specific gait events from a single inertial sensor at waist level has been shown to be challenging. Among several techniques, a wavelet-based method for initial contact (IC) and final contact (FC) estimation was shown to be the most accurate in healthy subjects. In this study, we evaluated the sensitivity of events detection to the wavelet scale of the algorithm, when walking at different speeds, in order to optimize its selection. A single inertial sensor recorded the lumbar vertical acceleration of 20 subjects walking at three different self-selected speeds (slow, normal, and fast) in a motion analysis lab. The scale of the wavelet method was varied. ICs were generally accurately detected in a wide range of wavelet scales under all the walking speeds. FCs detection proved highly sensitive to scale choice. Different gait speeds required the selection of a different scale for accurate detection and timing, with the optimal scale being strongly correlated with subjects’ step frequency. The best speed-dependent scales of the algorithm led to highly accurate timing in the detection of IC (RMSE < 22 ms) and FC (RMSE < 25 ms) across all speeds. Our results pave the way for the optimal adaptive selection of scales in future applications using this algorithm.
eIF4G2 balances its own mRNA translation via a PCBP2-based feedback loop

Poly(rC)-binding protein 2 (PCBP2, hnRNP E2) is one of the most abundant RNA-binding proteins in mammalian cells. In humans, it exists in seven isoforms, which are assumed to play similar roles in cells. The protein is shown to bind 3′-untranslated regions (3′-UTRs) of many mRNAs and regulate their translation and/or stability, but nothing is known about the functional consequences of PCBP2 binding to 5′-UTRs. Here we show that the PCBP2 isoform f interacts with the 5′-UTRs of mRNAs encoding eIF4G2 (a translation initiation factor with a yet unknown mechanism of action, also known as DAP5) and Cyclin I, and inhibits their translation in vitro and in cultured cells, while the PCBP2 isoform e only affects Cyclin I translation. Furthermore, eIF4G2 participates in a cap-dependent translation of the PCBP2 mRNA. Thus, PCBP2 and eIF4G2 seem to regulate one another's expression via a novel type of feedback loop formed by the translation initiation factor and the RNA-binding protein.
Semi-Cyclic Stochastic Gradient Descent

We consider convex SGD updates with a block-cyclic structure, i.e. where each cycle consists of a small number of blocks, each with many samples from a possibly different, block-specific, distribution. This situation arises, e.g., in Federated Learning where the mobile devices available for updates at different times during the day have different characteristics. We show that such block-cyclic structure can significantly deteriorate the performance of SGD, but propose a simple approach that allows prediction with the same performance guarantees as for i.i. d. , non-cyclic, sampling.
Séminaire Laurent Schwartz EDP et applications

In the present note, we review some recent results on the spectral statistics of random operators in the localized phase obtained in [12]. For a general class of random operators, we show that the family of the unfolded eigenvalues in the localization region considered jointly with the associated localization centers is asymptotically ergodic. This can be considered as a generalization of [10]. The beneﬁt of the present approach is that one can vary the scaling of the unfolded eigenvalues covariantly with that of the localization centers. The convergence result then holds for all the scales that are asymptotically larger than the localization scale. We also provide a similar result that is localized in energy. Full proofs of the results presented here will be published elsewhere ([12])
Statins Promote Interleukin-1β–Dependent Adipocyte Insulin Resistance Through Lower Prenylation, Not Cholesterol

Statins lower cholesterol and adverse cardiovascular outcomes, but this drug class increases diabetes risk. Statins are generally anti-inflammatory. However, statins can promote inflammasome-mediated adipose tissue inflammation and insulin resistance through an unidentified immune effector. Statins lower mevalonate pathway intermediates beyond cholesterol, but it is unknown whether lower cholesterol underpins statin-mediated insulin resistance. We sought to define the mevalonate pathway metabolites and immune effectors that propagate statin-induced adipose insulin resistance. We found that LDL cholesterol lowering was dispensable, but statin-induced lowering of isoprenoids required for protein prenylation triggered NLRP3/caspase-1 inflammasome activation and interleukin-1β (IL-1β)–dependent insulin resistance in adipose tissue. Multiple statins impaired insulin action at the level of Akt/protein kinase B signaling in mouse adipose tissue. Providing geranylgeranyl isoprenoids or inhibiting caspase-1 prevented statin-induced defects in insulin signaling. Atorvastatin (Lipitor) impaired insulin signaling in adipose tissue from wild-type and IL-18−/− mice, but not IL-1β−/− mice. Atorvastatin decreased cell-autonomous insulin-stimulated lipogenesis but did not alter lipolysis or glucose uptake in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Our results show that statin lowering of prenylation isoprenoids activates caspase-1/IL-1β inflammasome responses that impair endocrine control of adipocyte lipogenesis. This may allow the targeting of cholesterol-independent statin side effects on adipose lipid handling without compromising the blood lipid/cholesterol-lowering effects of statins.
Intermittent Theta-Burst Stimulation Reverses the After-Effects of Contralateral Virtual Lesion on the Suprahyoid Muscle Cortex: Evidence From Dynamic Functional Connectivity Analysis

Contralateral intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) can potentially improve swallowing disorders with unilateral lesion of the swallowing cortex. However, the after-effects of iTBS on brain excitability remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated the alterations of temporal dynamics of inter-regional connectivity induced by iTBS following continuous TBS (cTBS) in the contralateral suprahyoid muscle cortex. A total of 20 right-handed healthy subjects underwent cTBS over the left suprahyoid muscle motor cortex and then immediately afterward, iTBS was applied to the contralateral homologous area. All of the subjects underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (Rs-fMRI) pre- and post-TBS implemented on a different day. We compared the static and dynamic functional connectivity (FC) between the post-TBS and the baseline. The whole-cortical time series and a sliding-window correlation approach were used to quantify the dynamic characteristics of FC. Compared with the baseline, for static FC measurement, increased FC was found in the precuneus (BA 19), left fusiform gyrus (BA 37), and right pre/post-central gyrus (BA 4/3), and decreased FC was observed in the posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC) (BA 29) and left inferior parietal lobule (BA 39). However, in the dynamic FC analysis, post-TBS showed reduced FC in the left angular and PCC in the early windows, and in the following windows, increased FC in multiple cortical areas including bilateral pre- and postcentral gyri and paracentral lobule and non-sensorimotor areas including the prefrontal, temporal and occipital gyrus, and brain stem. Our results indicate that iTBS reverses the aftereffects induced by cTBS on the contralateral suprahyoid muscle cortex. Dynamic FC analysis displayed a different pattern of alteration compared with the static FC approach in brain excitability induced by TBS. Our results provide novel evidence for us in understanding the topographical and temporal aftereffects linked to brain excitability induced by different TBS protocols and might be valuable information for their application in the rehabilitation of deglutition.
Translation affects mRNA stability in a codon-dependent manner in human cells

mRNA translation decodes nucleotide into amino acid sequences. However, translation has also been shown to affect mRNA stability depending on codon composition in model organisms, although universality of this mechanism remains unclear. Here, using three independent approaches to measure exogenous and endogenous mRNA decay, we define which codons are associated with stable or unstable mRNAs in human cells. We demonstrate that the regulatory information affecting mRNA stability is encoded in codons and not in nucleotides. Stabilizing codons tend to be associated with higher tRNA levels and higher charged/total tRNA ratios. While mRNAs enriched in destabilizing codons tend to possess shorter poly(A)-tails, the poly(A)-tail is not required for the codon-mediated mRNA stability. This mechanism depends on translation; however, the number of ribosome loads into a mRNA modulates the codon-mediated effects on gene expression. This work provides definitive evidence that translation strongly affects mRNA stability in a codon-dependent manner in human cells.