Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Progenitor Cell Diversity and Function in the Developing Cerebral Cortex

The human cerebral cortex, the largest structure of our brain, is the seat of our most highly developed cognitive functions. Its normal development, proper function, and ultimate size depend on a precisely controlled balance between self-renewal and differentiation of neural progenitor cells that reside in distinct germinal zones during development. Compared to other species, human cortical progenitor cells are exceptionally diverse in both cellular morphology and gene expression profile. In particular, previous work has identified specialized progenitors, called outer radial glia (ORG), that are especially common in humans yet virtually absent in rodents and other species with relatively smaller brains. This has led to the suggestion that ORG may represent targets of developmental mechanisms underlying the rapid evolutionary expansion of the human cortex. However, these cells have not been sufficiently profiled at the transcriptional level. To address this question, we combined cell type-specific sorting of cortical progenitor cells with transcriptome-wide RNAsequencing (RNA-seq) to identify genes enriched in human ORG, which included several targets of the transcription factor Neurogenin as well as a surprising number of previously unknown, evolutionarily dynamic long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). We showed that activating the Neurogenin pathway in cortical progenitors of the ferret, a
Treatment of intraosseous defects with bioabsorbable barriers alone or in combination with decalcified freeze-dried bone allograft: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND This study clinically compares the outcomes obtained from the use of a bioabsorbable barrier device in combination with demineralized freeze-dried bone allograft (DFDBA) to the results obtained from the barrier device used alone in the treatment of human intraosseous defects. METHODS The study consisted of 30 patients with one intraosseous periodontal defect each. The trial included defects with loss of attachment of > or = 6 mm, with a radiographically detectable defect of at least 4 mm and with at least 2 remaining osseous walls. After the hygienic phase, at baseline, probing depth (PD), clinical attachment level (CAL), and recession (REC) were measured. During open flap debridement, the defects were randomly assigned to receive either a polylactic acid (PLA) barrier in combination with DFDBA (test) or a PLA barrier alone (control). Additionally, baseline osseous intrasurgical measurements of the periodontal defect were obtained to evaluate the amount of bone regeneration. PD, CAL, and REC were remeasured at 6 and 12 months postsurgery and osseous measurements repeated at 12 months during a re-entry procedure. RESULTS Two-sample t-test comparisons of mean PD, CAL, and REC measurements (mm) between test (PLA+DFDBA) and control (PLA alone) groups at baseline, PLA+DFDBA: PD = 7.3, CAL = 8.1, REC = -0.7; PLA-alone: PD = 7.9, CAL = 8.4, REC = -0.5, were not statistically different (P>0.05). The following mean changes (delta) at 6 months for the test and the control groups were: decreased PD = 3.6 and 4.0 mm; gain CAL = 2.7 and 3.1 mm; and increased REC = -0.8 and -0.8 mm, respectively. At 12 months the changes for the test and control groups were: decreased PD = 3.3 and 4.1 mm; gain CAL = 2.3 and 3.2 mm; and increased REC = -0.8 and -1.0 mm, respectively. Two-sample t-test comparisons between PD, CAL, and REC changes yielded no significant differences between treatments (P > 0.05), except for the change in CAL at 12 months in favor of the control group, P = 0.008. Comparisons of osseous measurements resulted in no significant differences between groups at baseline and at 12 months (P > 0.05). The intrabony defect filled on the average 3.72 mm for the test and 4.85 mm for the control group. The experimental defects showed a 4.73 mm defect depth reduction, while the control defects reduced 5.35 mm. Re-entry measurements of osseous crest resorption were 1.1 mm for the test and 0.61 mm for the control. CONCLUSIONS In the intraosseous defects treated in this study, the addition of DFDBA to the GTR procedure did not significantly enhance the clinical results obtained with the GTR procedure alone.
Prediction of Graduate Performance in Economics.

Professor Hansen's paper describes an effort to predict the success of graduate students in economics at The University of Wisconsin. Undergraduate grade point average, GRE scores, and the quality of the undergraduate schools were used as independent variables in a linear multiple regression model. Graduate grade point average was the dependent variable. The value of the independent variables as predictors is analyzed both jointly and in isolation. Among the important conclusions reached by Hansen is that heavy reliance upon a single predictor such as the undergraduate grade point average is unwise, that the GRE quantitative score takes on greater significance as the graduate student advances into the second year of his program, and that school quality must be taken into account.
Reconstructing the Big Easy: racial heritage tourism in New Orleans

This paper identifies the dominant narratives, themes, and marketing strategies that local tourism organizations and groups have used to promote racial heritage tourism in New Orleans. Drawing on ethnographic methods and qualitative data,I argue racial heritage tourism is a form of cultural production in which people construct and draw on past memories and current perceptions of racial discrimination and segregation to contest marginalization and fashion a racial identity. African Americans use racial heritage tourism as a set of discourses and practices to position themselves as stewards of New Orleans culture and therefore central to the process of ‘reconstructing the Big Easy’ as a distinctive place of African American identity and racial consciousness. The analysis focuses on the linkages between identity construction processes and the growth of heritage tourism and examines the ways in which tourism discourses can mobilize people to create new collective identities. Examining racial heritage tourism .
Simultaneous Inhibition of Rhamnolipid and Polyhydroxyalkanoic Acid Synthesis and Biofilm Formation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa by 2-Bromoalkanoic Acids: Effect of Inhibitor Alkyl-Chain-Length

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic human pathogen is known to synthesize rhamnolipid and polyhydroxyalkanoic acid (PHA) of which the acyl-group precursors (e.g., (R)-3-hydroxydecanoic acid) are provided through RhlA and PhaG enzyme, respectively, which have 57% gene sequence homology. The inhibitory effect of three 2-bromo-fatty acids of 2-bromohexanoic acid (2-BrHA), 2-bromooctanoic acid (2-BrOA) and 2-bromodecanoic acid (2-BrDA) was compared to get an insight into the biochemical nature of their probable dual inhibition against the two enzymes. The 2-bromo-compounds were found to inhibit rhamnolipid and PHA synthesis simultaneously in alkyl-chain-length dependent manner at several millimolar concentrations. The separate and dual inhibition of the RhlA and PhaG pathway by the 2-bromo-compounds in the wild-type cells was verified by investigating their inhibitory effects on the rhamnolipid and PHA synthesis in P. aeruginosa ΔphaG and ΔrhlA mutants. Unexpectedly, the order of inhibition strength was found 2-BrHA (≥90% at 2 mM) > 2-BrOA > 2-BrDA, equally for all of the rhamnolipids and PHA synthesis, swarming motility and biofilm formation. We suggest that the novel strongest inhibitor 2-BrHA could be potentially exploited to control the rhamnolipid-associated group behaviors of this pathogen as well as for its utilization as a lead compound in screening for antimicrobial agents based on new antimicrobial targets.
Efficient evaluation of continuous signed distance to a polygonal mesh

An efficient representation of a polygonal mesh by a signed continuous distance field is the main focus of this work. We compare different approaches to implementing such a representation and choose the most efficient one. Several optimizations to the existing methods are presented including the new traversal technique for the BVH-based signed distance evaluation and packet queries. We also discuss details of the GPU implementation of the efficient signed distance evaluation. Several application examples are presented such as blending set operations, linear metamorphosis, space-time blending and microstructure generation for polygonal meshes.
Globally Consistent Space‐Time Reconstruction

Most objects deform gradually over time, without abrupt changes in geometry or topology, such as changes in genus. Correct space‐time reconstruction of such objects should satisfy this gradual change prior. This requirement necessitates a globally consistent interpretation of spatial adjacency. Consider the capture of a surface that comes in contact with itself during the deformation process, such as a hand with different fingers touching one another in parts of the sequence. Naive reconstruction would glue the contact regions together for the duration of each contact and keep them apart in other parts of the sequence. However such reconstruction violates the gradual change prior as it enforces a drastic intrinsic change in the object's geometry at the transition between the glued and unglued sub‐sequences. Instead consistent global reconstruction should keep the surfaces separate throughout the entire sequence. We introduce a new method for globally consistent space‐time geometry and motion reconstruction from video capture. We use the gradual change prior to resolve inconsistencies and faithfully reconstruct the geometry and motion of the scanned objects. In contrast to most previous methods our algorithm doesn't require a strong shape prior such as a template and provides better results than other template‐free approaches.
New Methods for Computing the Terminal Cost for Min-max Model Predictive Control

The aim of this paper is to provide new techniques for computing a terminal cost and a local state-feedback control law that satisfy recently developed min-max MPC input-to-state stabilization conditions. Min-max MPC algorithms based on both quadratic and 1-norms or infin-norms costs are considered. Compared to existing approaches, the proposed techniques can be applied to linear systems affected simultaneously by time-varying parametric uncertainties and additive disturbances. The resulting MPC cost function is continuous, convex and bounded, which is desirable from an optimization point of view. Regarding computational complexity aspects, the developed techniques employ linear matrix inequalities in the case of quadratic MPC cost functions and, norm inequalities in the case of MPC cost functions defined using 1-norms or infin-norms. The effectiveness of the developed methods is illustrated for an active suspension application example.
Differential activation of astrocytes by innate and adaptive immune stimuli

The immunologic privilege of the central nervous system (CNS) makes it crucial that CNS resident cells be capable of responding rapidly to infection. Astrocytes have been reported to express Toll‐like receptors (TLRs), hallmark pattern recognition receptors of the innate immune system, and respond to their ligation with cytokine production. Astrocytes have also been reported to respond to cytokines of the adaptive immune system with the induction of antigen presentation functions. Here we have compared the ability of TLR stimuli and the adaptive immune cytokines interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ) and tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) to induce a variety of immunologic functions of astrocytes. We show that innate signals LPS– and poly I:C lead to stronger upregulation of TLRs and production of the cytokines IL‐6 and TNF‐α as well as innate immune effector molecules IFN‐α4, IFN‐β, and iNOS compared with cytokine‐stimulated astrocytes. Both innate stimulation and adaptive stimulation induce similar expression of the chemokines CCL2, CCL3, and CCL5, as well as similar enhancement of adhesion molecule ICAM‐1 and VCAM‐1 expression by astrocytes. Stimulation with adaptive immune cytokines, however, was unique in its ability to induce upregulation of MHC II and the functional ability of astrocytes to activate CD4+ T cells. These results indicate potentially important and changing roles for astrocytes during the progression of CNS infection. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Computational Templates, Neural Network Dynamics, and Symbolic Logic

This paper looks at the relationship between subsymbolic neural networks and symbolic logical systems from a philosophy of science perspective. More specifically, the point of view is that of Paul Humphreys' philosophical account of the organization of scientific knowledge [Humphreys, Paul. Extending Ourselves -Computational Science, Empiricism and the Scientific Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ] Humphreys considers the units of analysis constituting scientific knowledge (in computational science) to be computational models, and computational templates. Computational templates are abstract syntactic schemata underlying domain specific models. Humphreys' own examples are mainly from computational research in physics, biology and statistics. Neural networks research in cognitive science can also be fruitfully considered from this computational models/templates perspective, illustrated here by two examples from recent neural networks research.
A WORD FROM THE RECTOR

Criticism, as a precept, has alluded to permanently seeking for quality, pursuing excellence not as an end in itself, but as means for performing its activities, looking into free education as the basis for an egalitarian society. The practice of criticism has also ensured the university ́s autonomy and its democratic posture, and in continuum, has submitted the individual to the natural universe and respect to the environment.
Wrapping up LinguaBytes, for now

In this paper we present the final research prototype of LinguaBytes, a tangible interface aimed at stimulating the language development of non- or hardly speaking children between 1 and 4 years old. LinguaBytes was developed in a three-year Research through Design process in which five incremental prototypes were designed, built and evaluated in real-life settings. In this paper we present the original starting points of the project, describe our method and illustrate the resulting end-design using example scenarios of use. We give an overview of the most significant findings at the ten-month evaluation moment, after which we reflect on the original starting points and assess whether they hold up.
iShuffle: Improving Hadoop Performance with Shuffle-on-Write

Hadoop is a popular implementation of the MapReduce framework for running data-intensive jobs on clusters of commodity servers. Shuffle, the all-to-all input data fetching phase between the map and reduce phase can significantly affect job performance. However, the shuffle phase and reduce phase are coupled together in Hadoop and the shuffle can only be performed by running the reduce tasks. This leaves the potential parallelism between multiple waves of map and reduce unexploited and resource wastage in multi-tenant Hadoop clusters, which significantly delays the completion of jobs in a multi-tenant Hadoop cluster. More importantly, Hadoop lacks the ability to schedule task efficiently and mitigate the data distribution skew among reduce tasks, which leads to further degradation of job performance. In this work, we propose to decouple shuffle from reduce tasks and convert it into a platform service provided by Hadoop. We present iShuffle, a user-transparent shuffle service that pro-actively pushes map output data to nodes via a novel shuffle-on-write operation and flexibly schedules reduce tasks considering workload balance. Experimental results with representative workloads and Facebook workload trace show that iShuffle reduces job completion time by as much as 29.6 and 34 percent in single-user and multi-user clusters, respectively.
'When I say a naughty word'. A longitudinal study of young children's accounts of anger and sadness in themselves and close others

Understanding negative emotion is important for young children's social relationships, yet there is very little research on children's perceptions of emotions in people with whom they share a close relationship. In one exception, Dunn and Hughes (1998) reported: (I) qualitative contrasts in 4-year-olds' accounts of the causes of emotions in self, mother and best friend (e.g. maternal anger was better understood than was friends' anger, but accbunts of sadness showed the opposite pattern) and (2) significant correlations between overall response quality and both language and theory of mind performance. This study applied the same methods to a larger (N = 87) and more diverse sample of 4-year-olds, who were all interviewed again at age 7. Significant age-related increases in children's accounts of anger and sadness were found in (I) reference to specific agents, especially peers and siblings; (2) themes of loss (for sadness) and interpersonal control (for anger) ahd (3) frequency of mental-state reference. Seven-year-old girls referred more often than boys to agents and loss/ control themes; mental-state reference showed no gender difference at either time point. Our results highlight striking individual differences, a significant association between theory of mind performance and the diversity of children's emotion accounts, and the particular salience of mental states in children's accounts of sadness.
Early loss of HIV-infected patients on potent antiretroviral therapy programmes in lower-income countries.

OBJECTIVE To analyse the early loss of patients to antiretroviral therapy (ART) programmes in resource-limited settings. METHODS Using data on 5491 adult patients starting ART (median age 35 years, 46% female) in 15 treatment programmes in Africa, Asia and South America with (3) 12 months of follow-up, we investigated risk factors for no follow-up after treatment initiation, and loss to follow-up or death in the first 6 months. FINDINGS Overall, 211 patients (3.8%) had no follow-up, 880 (16.0%) were lost to follow-up and 141 (2.6%) were known to have died in the first 6 months. The probability of no follow-up was higher in 2003-2004 than in 2000 or earlier (odds ratio, OR: 5.06; 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.28-20.0), as was loss to follow-up (hazard ratio, HR: 7.62; 95% CI: 4.55-12.8) but not recorded death (HR: 1.02; 95% CI: 0.44-2.36). Compared with a baseline CD4-cell count (3) 50 cells/microl, a count < 25 cells/microl was associated with a higher probability of no follow-up (OR: 2.49; 95% CI: 1.43-4.33), loss to follow-up (HR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.23-1.77) and death (HR: 3.34; 95% CI: 2.10-5.30). Compared to free treatment, fee-for-service programmes were associated with a higher probability of no follow-up (OR: 3.71; 95% CI: 0.97-16.05) and higher mortality (HR: 4.64; 95% CI: 1.11-19.41). CONCLUSION Early patient losses were increasingly common when programmes were scaled up and were associated with a fee for service and advanced immunodeficiency at baseline. Measures to maximize ART programme retention are required in resource-poor countries.
Synthesizing contention

Multicore microarchitecture designs have become ubiquitous in today's computing environment enabling multiple processes to execute simultaneously on a single chip. With these new parallel processing capabilities comes a need to better understand how co-running applications impact and interfere with each other. The ability to characterize and better understand cross-core performance interference can prove critical for a number of application domains, such as performance debugging, compiler optimization, and application co-scheduling to name a few. We proposed a novel methodology for the characterization and profiling of cross-core interference on current multicore systems, which we call contention synthesis. Our profiling approach characterizes an applications cross-core interference sensitivity by manufacturing contention with the application and observing the impact of this synthesized contention on the application. Understanding how to synthesize contention on current chip microarchitectures is unclear as there are a number of potentially contentious data access behaviors. This is further complicated by the fact that current chip microprocessors are engineered and tuned to circumvent the contentious nature of certain data access behaviors. In this work we explore and evaluate five designs for a contention synthesis mechanism. We also investigate how these five contention synthesis engines impact the performance of 19 of the SPEC2006 benchmarks on two state of the art chip multiprocessors, namely Intel's Core i7 and AMD's Phenom X4 architectures. Finally we demonstrate how contention synthesis can be used to accurately characterize an application's cross-core interference sensitivity.
Dielectrophoretically tunable optofluidic devices

Tunable optofluidic devices exhibit some unique characteristics that are not achievable in conventional solid-state photonic devices. They provide exciting opportunities for emerging applications in imaging, information processing, sensing, optical communication, lab-on-a-chip and biomedical engineering. A dielectrophoresis effect is an important physical mechanism to realize tunable optofluidic devices. Via balancing the voltage-induced dielectric force and interfacial tension, the liquid interface can be dynamically manipulated and the optical output reconfigured or adaptively tuned in real time. Dielectrophoretically tunable optofluidic devices offer several attractive features, such as rapid prototyping, miniaturization, easy integration and low power consumption. In this review paper, we first explain the underlying operation principles and then review some recent progress in this field, covering the topics of adaptive lens, beam steering, iris, grating, optical switch/attenuator and single pixel display. Finally, the future perspectives are discussed.
Early Classification of Ongoing Observation

This work focuses on early classification of ongoing observation of the object, which is beneficial for a number of applications that require time-critical decision making. We propose an approach for discovering two key aspects of multivariate time series (m.t.s.) observation, (1) Temporal Dynamics and (2) Sequential Cues. The key idea is that m.t. s. Observation can be represented as an instantiation of a Multivariate Marked Point-Process (Multi-MPP). Each variable characterizes the temporal dynamics of a particular feature event of an object, where both timing and strength information of that feature event are preserved. To make this model computationally practical, we introduce the Multilevel-Discretized Marked Point-Process (MD-MPP) model which can ensure a good piece-wise stationary property both in the time-domain and mark-space while preserving dynamics as much as possible. Based on this model, another important temporal patterns of early classification, sequential cues among variables, becomes formalizable. We construct a probabilistic suffix tree to represent sequential patterns among features in terms of Variable order Markov Model (VMM). The effectiveness of our approach is evaluated on three experimental scenarios. Our method achieves superior performance for early classification of ongoing m.t. s. Observation data.