Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A geospatial modeling for mapping of filariasis transmission risk in India , using remote sensing and GIS

The study was designed for mapping the filariasis transmission risk using geo-climatic variables. The application of remote sensing and GIS in the present study is mainly focused on profiling the areas at risk of filariasis transmission. The filariasis disease is caused by the Culex genus mosquito vector. The survival and longevity of infected filariasis vector mosquitoes are spatially determined by the geo-climatic variables. The geo-climatic variables are contiguous in nature, to relate the filariasis endemicity (mF and disease), a spatial interpolation or Kriging could provide the predicted surface of filariasis transmission in the areas where no information is available or areas at remote and difficult locality where to conduct a survey is not possible. Therefore, the geo-statistical analysis of GIS spatial interpolation or Kriging method was applied for obtaining the values for constructing the continuous surface of predicted filariasis surface for stratification of the areas for mapping of filariasis endemicity with accuracy of 93.4% statistically significant and sensitivity of 97.6% (95% confidence interval). The geo-statistical predictive model shows that the observed value of the filariasis prevalence and the predicted value of filariasis surface were correctly classified with statistically significant and perfectly fit on the predicted surface of the filariasis risk zones. The geostatistical analysis was applied for establishing the spatial autocorrelation between the geo-climatic variables and the surface map of predicted filariasis risk zone which is statistically significant with 72.3% accuracy. The predicted map of filariasis transmission risk zone is useful for decision making and choosing the appropriate control strategy for implementing the filariasis control program in India where the filariasis transmission risk is high and moderate.
Bacterial Multidrug Efflux Pumps: Much More Than Antibiotic Resistance Determinants

Bacterial multidrug efflux pumps are antibiotic resistance determinants present in all microorganisms. With few exceptions, they are chromosomally encoded and present a conserved organization both at the genetic and at the protein levels. In addition, most, if not all, strains of a given bacterial species present the same chromosomally-encoded efflux pumps. Altogether this indicates that multidrug efflux pumps are ancient elements encoded in bacterial genomes long before the recent use of antibiotics for human and animal therapy. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that efflux pumps can extrude a wide range of substrates that include, besides antibiotics, heavy metals, organic pollutants, plant-produced compounds, quorum sensing signals or bacterial metabolites, among others. In the current review, we present information on the different functions that multidrug efflux pumps may have for the bacterial behaviour in different habitats as well as on their regulation by specific signals. Since, in addition to their function in non-clinical ecosystems, multidrug efflux pumps contribute to intrinsic, acquired, and phenotypic resistance of bacterial pathogens, the review also presents information on the search for inhibitors of multidrug efflux pumps, which are currently under development, in the aim of increasing the susceptibility of bacterial pathogens to antibiotics.
Calcium Channel Expression and Applicability as Targeted Therapies in Melanoma

The remodeling of Ca2+ signaling is a common finding in cancer pathophysiology serving the purpose of facilitating proliferation, migration, or survival of cancer cells subjected to stressful conditions. One particular facet of these adaptive changes is the alteration of Ca2+ fluxes through the plasma membrane, as described in several studies. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge about the expression of different Ca2+ channels in the plasma membrane of melanoma cells and its impact on oncogenic Ca2+ signaling. In the last few years, new molecular components of Ca2+ influx pathways have been identified in melanoma cells. In addition, new links between Ca2+ homeostasis and specific cell processes important in melanoma tumor progression have been unveiled. Thus, not only do Ca2+ channels appear to have a potential as prognostic markers, but their pharmacological blockade or gene silencing is hinted as interesting therapeutic approaches.
Valuation Compressions in VCG-Based Combinatorial Auctions

The focus of classic mechanism design has been on truthful direct-revelation mechanisms. In the context of combinatorial auctions, the truthful direct-revelation mechanism that maximizes social welfare is the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism. For many valuation spaces, computing the allocation and payments of the VCG mechanism, however, is a computationally hard problem. We thus study the performance of the VCG mechanism when bidders are forced to choose bids from a subspace of the valuation space for which the VCG outcome can be computed efficiently. We prove improved upper bounds on the welfare loss for restrictions to additive bids and upper and lower bounds for restrictions to non-additive bids. These bounds show that increased expressiveness can give rise to additional equilibria of poorer efficiency.
Key factors influencing the incidence of hemolysis: A critical appraisal of current evidence

Abstract Hemolysis is a leading cause of pre-analytical laboratory errors. The identification of contributing factors is an important step towards the development of effective practices to reduce and prevent hemolysis. We performed a review of PUBMED, Embase, Medline and CINAHL to identify articles published between January 2000 and August 2016 that identified factors influencing in vitro hemolysis rates. The 40 studies included in this review provide excellent evidence that hemolysis rates are higher in Emergency Departments (EDs), for non-antecubital draws, for specimens drawn using an intravenous catheter compared to venipuncture and for samples transported by pneumatic tube compared to by hand. There is also good evidence that hemolysis rates are higher when specimens are not collected by professional phlebotomists, larger volume specimen tubes are used, specimen tubes are filled less than halfway and tourniquet time is greater than one minute. The results of this review suggest that hospitals and clinical laboratories should consider deploying phlebotomists in EDs, drawing all blood through a venipuncture, using the antecubital region as the optimum blood collection site and transporting specimens by laboratory assistant/other personnel, or if this in not practical, ensuring that pneumatic transport systems are validated, maintained and monitored. Studies also recommend making hemolysis a hospital-wide issue and ensuring high-quality staff training and adherence to standard operating procedures to reduce hemolysis rates. Awareness of the factors that influence hemolysis rates, and adoption of strategies to mitigate these risk factors, is an important step towards creating quality practices to reduce hemolysis rates and improve the quality of patient care.
CAO: A Fully Automatic Emoticon Analysis System Based on Theory of Kinesics

This paper presents CAO, a system for affect analysis of emoticons in Japanese online communication. Emoticons are strings of symbols widely used in text-based online communication to convey user emotions. The presented system extracts emoticons from input and determines the specific emotion types they express with a three-step procedure. First, it matches the extracted emoticons to a predetermined raw emoticon database. The database contains over 10,000 emoticon samples extracted from the Web and annotated automatically. The emoticons for which emotion types could not be determined using only this database, are automatically divided into semantic areas representing “mouths” or “eyes,” based on the idea of kinemes from the theory of kinesics. The areas are automatically annotated according to their co-occurrence in the database. The annotation is first based on the eye-mouth-eye triplet, and if no such triplet is found, all semantic areas are estimated separately. This provides hints about potential groups of expressed emotions, giving the system coverage exceeding 3 million possibilities. The evaluation, performed on both training and test sets, confirmed the system's capability to sufficiently detect and extract any emoticon, analyze its semantic structure, and estimate the potential emotion types expressed. The system achieved nearly ideal scores, outperforming existing emoticon analysis systems.
Left ventricular clot in a patient with stroke

A 61-year-old man presented with sudden onset of left-sided weakness and slurred speech that had started 1 h prior to presentation. He was a non-smoker and his medical history included hypertension and ischaemic heart disease for which he was receiving treatment. On examination he had dysarthria, dense left-sided hemiplegia and upper motor neurone lesion of the facial nerve. His initial brain CT was reported as …
The in vitro pharmacology of ZM 241385, a potent, non‐xanthine, A2a selective adenosine receptor antagonist

1 This paper describes the in vitro pharmacology of ZM 241385 (4‐(2‐[7‐amino‐2‐(2‐furyl) [1,2,4]‐triazolo[2,3‐a][1,3,5]triazin‐5‐yl amino]ethyl) phenol), a novel non‐xanthine adenosine receptor antagonist with selectivity for the A2a receptor subtype. 2 ZM 241385 had high affinity for A2a receptors. In rat phaeochromocytoma cell membranes, ZM 241385 displaced binding of tritiated 5′‐N‐ethylcarboxamidoadenosine (NECA) with a pIC50 of 9.52, (95% confidence limits, c.l., 9.02–10.02). In guinea‐pig isolated Langendorff hearts, ZM 241385 antagonized vasodilatation of the coronary bed produced by 2‐chloroadenosine (2‐CADO) and 2‐[p‐(2‐carboxyethyl) phenethylamino]‐5′‐N‐ethylcarboxamidoadenosine (CGS21680) with pA2 values of 8.57 (c.l., 8.45‐8.68) and 9.02 (c.l., 8.79‐9.24) respectively 3 ZM 241385 had low potency at A2b receptors and antagonized the relaxant effects of adenosine in the guinea‐pig aorta with a pA2 of 7.06, (c.l., 6.92‐7.19). 4 ZM 241385 had a low affinity at A1 receptors. In rat cerebral cortex membranes it displaced tritiated R‐phenylisopropyladenosine (R‐PIA) with a pIC50 of 5.69 (c.l., 5.57‐5.81). ZM 241385 antagonized the bradycardie action of 2‐CADO in guinea‐pig atria with a pA2 of 5.95 (c.l., 5.72‐6.18). 5 ZM 241385 had low affinity for A3 receptors. At cloned rat A3 receptors expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells, it displaced iodinated aminobenzyl‐5′‐N‐methylcarboxamido adenosine (AB‐MECA) with a pIC50 of 3.82 (c.l., 3.67‐4.06). 6 ZM 241385 had no significant additional pharmacological effects on the isolated tissues used in these studies at concentrations three orders of magnitude greater than those which block A2a receptors. At 10 μm it displayed only minor inhibition of the bradycardic effects in guinea‐pig atria to some concentrations of carbachol. At 10 μm, ZM 241385 had a small inhibitory effect on relaxant effects of isoprenaline in guinea‐pig aortae but no effect on sodium nitrite‐induced relaxation. ZM 241385 (100 μm) was without effect on phenylephrine‐induced tone in guinea‐pig aortae. 7 ZM 241385 (10 μm) had no inhibitory effect on rat hepatocyte phosphodiesterase types I, II, III and IV but caused a small inhibition of the calcium calmodulin‐activated type I enzyme. 8 ZM 241385 is the most selective adenosine A2a receptor antagonist yet described and is therefore a useful tool for characterization of responses mediated by A2 adenosine receptors.
Wearable haptics and hand tracking via an RGB-D camera for immersive tactile experiences

In 1997 Sony revolutionized the gaming industry by introducing a simple but effective vibrotactile feedback in its DualShock controller for PlayStation. By 2013, more than 400M units have been sold. Nowadays, the game interface Wii Remote motion controller provides a similar feature, but wirelessly, and can be considered the most popular portable haptic interface, with over 100M sales. However, its force feedback is still limited to vibrations, reducing the possibility of simulating any rich contact interaction with virtual and remote environments. Towards a more realistic feeling of interacting with virtual objects, researchers focused on glove-type haptic displays such as the Rutgers Master II and the CyberGrasp, which provide force sensations to all the fingers of the hand simultaneously. However, although they provide a compelling force feedback, these displays are complex and very expensive the CyberGrasp, for instance, costs more than 60,000 US dollars! Thus, it becomes crucial to find a trade-off between a realistic feeling of touch and cost/portability of the system. In this regard, we found tactile technologies very promising. Tactile devices are haptic interfaces able to provide tactile force feedback only (they do not provide any kind of kinesthetic force). This property makes possible to dramatically simplify their form factor and provide a compelling and realistic feeling of touching virtual objects [Pacchierotti et al. 2014].
Development of an imitation behavior in humanoid Kenta with reinforcement learning algorithm based on the attention during imitation

Since an environment or body states of robots are very changeable, robotic imitation systems should have ability to develop their behaviors by themselves. For the development of the imitation behaviors, we assume that attention during imitation is the key information. In order to realize such imitation systems with evolving ability, the idea of reinforcement learning system based on the attention structure during imitation has been presented in this paper. First, for describing the attention during imitation behaviors, we define the term 'sensor-action attention pair' as the pair of the most important sensor information and the focused body parts during that behavior. Second, we introduce R-learning, the reinforcement learning method for continual tasks such as imitation behaviors. Third, the method to design the state-action space and the reward function based on the sensor-action attention pair is proposed. At last, for the confirmation of the function of the proposed imitation behavior system, we have done some experiments using actual humanoid Kenta. In those experiments, Kenta can develop imitation behavior that imitates the hand position of the human.
TCF7L2 is a master regulator of insulin production and processing

Although variants in the T-cell factor 7-like 2 gene (TCF7L2) confer the strongest risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) by presumed effects on islet function, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. We have identified TCF7L2-target genes and described the regulatory network downstream of TCF7L2 responsible for its effect on insulin secretion in rodents and human pancreatic islets. ISL1 is a direct target of TCF7L2 and regulates proinsulin production and processing via MAFA, PDX1, NKX6.1, PCSK1 and PCSK2 and possibly clearance of proinsulin via SLC30A8. Taken together, these results demonstrate that not only synthesis of proinsulin is regulated by TCF7L2, but also processing and possibly clearance of proinsulin and insulin in a genotype dependent manner. These multiple targets in key pathways may explain why TCF7L2 has emerged as the gene showing the strongest association with T2D.
Automatic Speech Recognition and Identification of African Portuguese

This document deals with speech recognition of different Portuguese varieties, it resumes results from the author’s diploma thesis [9]. The performance of a hybrid large vocabulary continuous speech recognizer, which combines multi-layer perceptrons and Hidden Markov Models, degrades heavily in the presence of African Portuguese varieties in broadcast news. Variety-specific acoustic and language models are shown to improve recognition significantly by up to 21.1%, from 30.1% WER to 23.7% WER. Further, this document discusses a novel and efficient approach to automatically distinguish African from European Portuguese, first presented in [8] [10]. The phonotactic variety identification system, based on phone recognition and language modeling, focuses on a single tokenizer that combines distinctive knowledge about differences between the target varieties. This knowledge is introduced into a multi-layer perceptron phone recognizer by training variety-dependent phone models for two varieties as contrasting classes. Significant improvements were achieved, lowering the computational cost and reducing the equal error rate by more than 60%, from 11.4% EER to 4.1% EER, compared to conventional single and fused phonotactic and acoustic systems. The approach is extended to cover Brazilian Portuguese, where it also shows high variety identification performance.
Detection and Exploration of Outlier Regions in Sensor Data Streams

Sensor networks play an important role in applications concerned with environmental monitoring, disaster management, and policy making. Effective and flexible techniques are needed to explore unusual environmental phenomena in sensor readings that are continuously streamed to applications. In this paper, we propose a framework that allows to detect outlier sensors and to efficiently construct outlier regions from respective outlier sensors. For this, we utilize the concept of degree-based outliers. Compared to the traditional binary outlier models (outlier versus non-outlier), this concept allows for a more fine-grained, context sensitive analysis of anomalous sensor readings and in particular the construction of heterogeneous outlier regions. The latter suitably reflect the heterogeneity among outlier sensors and sensor readings that determine the spatial extent of outlier regions. Such regions furthermore allow for useful data exploration tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness and utility of our approach using real world and synthetic sensor data streams.
Timing of preovulatory endocrine events, estrus and ovulation in Brahman x Hereford females synchronized with norgestomet and estradiol valerate.

The purpose of these studies was to investigate the pattern and timing of preovulatory endocrine events, estrus and ovulation in Brahman X Hereford (F1) heifers synchronized with norgestomet and estradiol valerate. In Exp. 1, 66 nulliparous and 191 primiparous Brahman X Hereford (F1) heifers were used to estimate the interval from norgestomet implant removal to onset of estrus. The mean interval from implant removal to onset of estrus was 29.8 +/- . 5 h, with 80.9% exhibiting estrus within 48 h. Endocrine and reproductive characteristics were examined in detail during Exp. 2 with 37 primiparous heifers. Continuous observation for estrus, 6-h or 2-h blood sampling and ovarian palpation per rectum were employed. All animals were artificially inseminated 48 h after implant removal. Mean interval from implant removal to onset of estrus and to onset of the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge were closely related (r = .91; P less than .0001). Mean intervals from implant removal to ovulation, onset of estrus to ovulation and onset of LH surge to ovulation were 59.1 +/- 2.5 h, 23.3 +/- 1.4 h and 23.1 +/- 1.6 h, respectively. Approximately 73% of heifers exhibited estrus within 54 h after implant removal (optimal timing); conception rate was 59.3% in this subgroup. Conception rate of heifers that did not exhibit estrus within 54 h after implant removal or exhibited an LH surge later than 12 h after estrus (delayed timing) was 10%. Assessment of plasma estradiol-17 beta concentrations suggested that retarded selection and(or) maturation of the preovulatory follicle following implant removal delayed estrus and lowered conception in up to 28% of females timed-inseminated at 48 h.
Application Specific Linux ( ASL ) ∗

In this abstract, we are presenting our Application Specific Linux (ASL), a customized Linux image that enhances the performan ce of the scientific applications. Our Research end-goal is a soft ware system that automatically enables high performance scientific computing on commodity systems through application-specific cust omization and dynamic adaptation of the Linux OS. Our research is n ovel in that it combines the research done in OS specialization, e xtensibility and minimization as well as virtual machine mon it rs (VMMs) into a system that automatically customizes the kern el image for a single application run and is specifically focused o n the application domain of scientific computing using high-perf ormance clusters.
Pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyl residues in human breast lipids and their relation to breast cancer.

The etiology of human breast cancer is unknown; accepted risk factors, e.g., menstrual, reproductive, and family histories, are implicated in less than half of all cases. Various halogenated hydrocarbons--acting as either co-carcinogens or promoting agents--which are derived from the environment and are concentrated in human fatty stores, may also play a role in breast cancer risk. A pilot study was undertaken to measure and compare levels of chemical residues in mammary adipose tissue from women with malignant and nonmalignant breast disease. Elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, bis (4-chlorophenyl)-1,1 dichloroethene, and bis(4-chlorophenyl)-1,1,1 trichloroethane were found in fat samples from women with cancer, compared with those who had benign breast disease. These results, although preliminary, suggest a role for environmentally derived suspect carcinogens in the genesis of mammary carcinoma.
A Non-Rigid 3D Multi-Modal Registration Algorithm Using Partial Volume Interpolation and the Sum of Conditional Variance

Multi-modal medical image registration provides complementary information from the fusion of various medical imaging modalities. This paper presents a volume based multi-modal affine registration algorithm to register images acquired using different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modes. In the proposed algorithm, the sum-of-conditional variance (SCV) similarity measure is used. The SCV is considered to be a state-of-the- art similarity measure for registering multi-modal images. However, the main drawback of the SCV is that it uses only quantized information to calculate a joint histogram. To overcome this limitation, we propose to use partial volume interpolation (PVI) in the joint histogram calculation to improve the performance of the existing registration algorithm. To evaluate the performance of the registration algorithm, different similarity measures were compared in conjunction with gradient-based Gauss-Newton (GN) optimization to optimize the spatial transformation parameters. The experimental evaluation shows that the proposed approach provides a higher success rate and comparable accuracy to other methods that have been recently proposed for multi-modal medical image registration.
A rat spermatocyte surface protein is involved in adhesion of pachytene spermatocytes to Sertoli cells in vitro

Immunochemical approaches were used in trying to identify rat spermatocyte molecules involved in the adhesion to Sertoli cells in coculture. The results show that a surface protein of 80,000 apparent molecular weight strongly inhibits spermatocyte adhesion, suggesting it to be the germ cell surface component involved in the recognition of Sertoli cells.