Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel aspects of the ultrastructural organization of human corneal keratocytes.

PURPOSE Proper functioning of the endothelium and proper structural organization of the keratocytes and collagen bundles are of ultimate importance for transparency of the cornea. The role of the endothelium has been investigated extensively, whereas the role of the keratocytes is still unclear. Detailed knowledge on the ultrastructural organization of keratocytes and the relationship between keratocytes and collagen bundles is as essential for understanding corneal transparency as is knowledge of endothelial functioning. METHODS Thirty-five corneas (30 postmortem donor corneas and 5 fresh corneas from the operating theater; age range, 28 to 90 years) were used for light microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. Serial frontal sections of the central stroma reaching from epithelium to endothelium and cross-sections were studied. At three levels, reconstructions of the mutual arrangement of keratocytes were made using semithin sections. RESULTS Keratocytes have the appearance of highly active cells with an abundancy of organelles. Between the dendritic ramifications of these cells, large amounts of amorphous material is observed. One of the most remarkable observations is the presence of an extensive network of fenestrations along the surface of the keratocytes. Another important observation is the circular arrangement of keratocytes gradually turning clockwise like a corkscrew from epithelium to endothelium. CONCLUSIONS From the current study, the following conclusions can be drawn: Keratocytes are not quiescent but are highly active cells probably involved in turnover of the extracellular matrix; fenestrations may be of functional relevance with respect to facilitation of diffusion and mechanical attachment of the collagen fibers to the keratocytes; the corkscrew organization of keratocytes suggests that they form completely closed sheets of communicating cells throughout the depth of the cornea, creating equal chances for all light rays to pass one or more keratocytes and thus minimizing variation in light scattering over the entire cornea.
We love rock 'n' roll: analyzing and predicting friendship links in Last.fm

Music plays an important role in our everyday lives. Not surprisingly, shared musical taste is said to lead to social attraction. In this paper, we study in detail friendship links on the social music platform Last.fm, asking for similarities in taste as well as on demographic attributes and local network structure. On Last.fm, users connect to 'online' friends as usual, but also indicate strong 'real-life' friends by co-attending the same events. Thus, we can contrast these online ties with offline links of different strength. Complementing the analysis, we learn to predict both kinds of ties automatically, including public interaction data as additional relevant features. Our results emphasize the predictive power of the simple measure of mutual friends, while the indicative value of similarity on taste (though increasing with tie strength) is negligible.
Search for an annual modulation in a p-type Point Contact germanium dark matter detector.

Fifteen months of cumulative CoGeNT data are examined for indications of an annual modulation, a predicted signature of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) interactions. Presently available data support the presence of a modulated component of unknown origin, with parameters prima facie compatible with a galactic halo composed of light-mass WIMPs. Unoptimized estimators yield a statistical significance for a modulation of ∼2. 8σ, limited by the short exposure.
Three-dimensional VR interaction using the movement of a mobile display

In this study, we propose a VR system for allowing various types of interaction with virtual objects using an autostereoscopic mobile display and an accelerometer. The system obtains the orientation and motion information from the accelerometer attached to the mobile display and reflects them to the motion of virtual objects. It can present 3D images with motion parallax by estimating the position of the user's viewpoint and by displaying properly projected images. Furthermore, our method enables to connect the real space and the virtual space seamlessly through the mobile display by determining the coordinate system so that one of the horizontal surfaces in the virtual space coincides with the display surface. To show the effectiveness of this concept, we implemented an application to simulate food cooking by regarding the mobile display as a frying pan.
Two-Stage Deployment Strategy for Wireless Robotic Networks via a Class of Interaction Models

Suppose a disaster happens, and several groups of robots are dispatched from distant control stations. To enable rescue staff to make collective decisions, reliable and robust connections need to be established among stations. Motivated by this scenario, a two-stage robot deployment strategy is proposed for wireless robotic networks (WRNs). In the first stage, robots in distant groups are merged into one group that covers a desirable area. Since connectivity alone cannot guarantee a high communication quality, in the second stage, the flow between any two stations is further optimized in terms of expected number of transmissions per successfully delivered packet. In both stages, a distributed collision-free controller is proposed to regulate the interactive force among robots. The stability issues of WRNs, where the proposed controller together with a class of interaction models based on an acute angle test is implemented for robots, are analyzed under both fixed and switching topology. In order to efficiently switch the neighbor set for each robot, a new energy function is constructed taking finite-time consensus into account. To guarantee that energy agreement is achieved before the next topology change, a fixed-time consensus approach is further proposed and an upper bound of the settling time for the energy agreement is obtained. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the two-stage deployment strategy.
Habilidades sociales y marcos deícticos: su efecto en la cognición social de personas con esquizofrenia

Schizophrenia is defined as a severe chronic mental disorder. One of his distinctive features is the deficit in the social and interpersonal functioning, affecting more than 6 million people in Latin America. Today, the treatment of schizophrenia is based on the combined use of antipsychotic medications and psychosocial therapies, such as psychoeducational family interventions, social skills training and cognitive-behavioral treatments. However, if these rehabilitation therapies have positive effects, we don’t know yet "how" they. Besides, few studies have been published that validate empirically these programs in the Latin American context. The challenge lies in identifying the essential components of social cognition. Recently, a new theoretical approach, the Relational Frame Theory has proposed a functional analytic conceptualization of both verbal behavior and social cognition. This approach suggests that the deficits in terms of social cognition are at the level of basic verbal processes (relational responses) and not in the knowledge of the social rules. This research evaluate and compare the effect of two types of therapeutic interventions on social cognition in people with schizophrenia; the first intervention is a classical social skills training while the second aimed at developing derived relational responding based on deictic frames, with a cross-sectional multiple treatments group design, pre and post-test, and follow-up at 1 month. The results show a significant effect of these two therapeutic approaches on the Hinting Task scores, and positive but not significant on social anhedonia and social functioning scales.
Integrating geometrical and linguistic analysis for email signature block parsing

The signature block is a common structured component found in email messages. Accurate identification and analysis of signature blocks is important in many multimedia messaging and information retrieval applications such as email text-to-speech rendering, automatic construction of personal address databases, and interactive message retrieval. It is also a very challenging task, because signature blocks often appear in complex two-dimensional layouts which are guided only by loose conventions. Traditional text analysis methods designed to deal with sequential text cannot handle two-dimensional structures, while the highly unconstrained nature of signature blocks makes the application of two-dimensional grammars very difficult. In this article, we describe an algorithm for signature block analysis which combines two-dimensional structural segmentation with one-dimensional grammatical constraints. The information obtained from both layout and linguistic analysis is integrated in the form of weighted finite-state transducers. The algorithm is currently implemented as a component in a preprocessing system for email text-to-speech rendering.
Analogy and Abduction in Automated Deduction

A method is presented for analogical reasoning in Automated Deduction. We focus on the abductive aspects of analogy and give a unified treatment for theorems and non-theorems. Abduction allows to deal with partial analogies thus strongly increasing the application field of the method. It also allows to detect "bad analogies" in several cases. Explanatory examples as well as more realistic examples quantifying the effects of using analogy (for theorem-proving and for counter-example building) are given.
CARTOON PLANET: MICRO-REFLECTION THROUGH DIGITAL CARTOONS -A CASE STUDY ON TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

Young learners of today tend to show little enthusiasm for formal schooling. This does not necessarily mean pupils are not interested in learning or developing new skills and competences. In fact, the opposite often happens in the informal settings they belong to. Finding ways of transferring pupil’s informal learning into the school setting is therefore important. This paper gives a brief overview on the development of informal learning activities to encourage young people’s active reflection on their informally acquired competencies through the use of web technologies. The researchers also explore the role of the teacher, and the need of a participatory learning environment in a less formal classroom. Reflections on the experiences and recommendations are also provided.
Eact, a small molecule activator of TMEM16A, activates TRPV1 and elicits pain‐ and itch‐related behaviours

TMEM16A, also known as anoctamin 1 channel, is a member of the Ca2+‐activated chloride channels family and serves as a heat sensor in the primary nociceptors. Eact is a recently discovered small molecule activator of the TMEM16A channel. Here, we asked if Eact produces pain‐ and itch‐related responses in vivo and investigated the cellular and molecular basis of Eact‐elicited responses in dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons.
Role of Cannabinoid Receptor Type 1 Desensitization in Greater Tetrahydrocannabinol Impairment of Memory in Adolescent Rats

Adolescence is a well defined developmental period during which marijuana use is common. However, little is known about the response to marijuana in adolescents compared with adults. We have shown previously that adolescent rats are more impaired than adults by Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, in a spatial learning task, but the mechanism responsible for this differential impairment is not understood. We determined the role of THC tolerance and cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1) regulation in THC-induced spatial learning impairment in adolescent and adult rats. We measured the development of tolerance to THC-induced learning impairment in adolescent (postnatal days 30–35) and adult (postnatal days 70–75) rats. We pretreated them for 5 days with 10 mg/kg THC, and then evaluated the effects of vehicle or THC treatment on learning during training in the Morris water maze. We also determined CB1 number and functional coupling in the hippocampus of adolescents and adults. Finally, we measured the time course of hippocampal CB1 desensitization in adolescents and adults during treatment with 10 mg/kg THC or vehicle. Our results indicate that adults, but not adolescents, become tolerant to the effects of THC during water maze training after 5 days of pretreatment. CB1s in adolescent hippocampus are less functionally coupled to G proteins and desensitize more slowly in response to THC treatment than those of adults. THC may impair learning in adolescents more than in adults because of delayed activation of cellular homeostatic adaptive mechanisms underlying cannabinoid tolerance in the hippocampus.
Routage pair-à-pair pour la fiabilité des communications

L'utilisation generalisee des reseaux IP pour les telecommunications entraine de nouvelles preoccupations quant a leurs fiabilites. L'apparition d'incidents affectant le reseau et perturbant l'acheminement des communications aux utilisateurs ne peut pas toujours etre evitee. Des mecanismes de retablissement reseau sont alors utilises pour rediriger les communications vers une partie du reseau non affectee par l'incident. L'enjeu de cette operation est qu'elle soit realisee suffisamment rapidement pour maintenir la bonne delivrance des services reseau aux utilisateurs. Dans cette these, nous avons etudie un mecanisme de retablissement reseau base sur le routage pair-a-pair. Ce systeme a pour avantage de pouvoir etre utilise pour le retablissement de n'importe quel type de communication IP et de ne pas dependre de l'infrastructure du reseau. De plus, il permet la protection de bout en bout d'une communication. Enfin, ce mecanisme est deploye par les utilisateurs des reseaux, ce qui permet d'adapter son fonctionnement a leurs besoins de fiabilite specifiques a chacune de leurs communications. Nous montrons que notre systeme permet le retablissement rapide des communications si les besoins de l'utilisateur le justifient. De plus les ressources necessaires a son fonctionnement sont moderees et en rapport avec ces besoins. Nous pensons que notre systeme permet une amelioration significative de la fiabilite des communications lorsqu'un incident se declare dans le reseau, en particulier si les mecanismes de retablissement deployes par les reseaux des operateurs ne permettent pas d'apporter le niveau de fiabilite recherche
Learning of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps Using Density Estimate

Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) are convenient and widely used architectures for modeling dynamic systems, which are characterized by a great deal of flexibility and adaptability. Several recent works in this area concern strategies for the development of FCMs. Although a few fully automated algorithms to learn these models from data have been introduced, the resulting FCMs are structurally considerably different than those developed by human experts. In particular, maps that were learned from data are much denser (with the density over 90% versus about 40% density of maps developed by humans). The sparseness of the maps is associated with their interpretability: the smaller the number of connections is, the higher is the transparency of the map. To this end, a novel learning approach, sparse real-coded genetic algorithms (SRCGAs), to learn FCMs is proposed. The method utilizes a density parameter to guide the learning toward a formation of maps of a certain predefined density. Comparative tests carried out for both synthetic and real-world data demonstrate that, given a suitable density estimate, the SRCGA method significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art learning methods. When the density estimate is unknown, the new method can be used in an automated fashion using a default value, and it is still able to produce models whose performance exceeds or is equal to the performance of the models generated by other methods.
Contrôle exécutif et interprétation de stimuli ambigus visuels et langagiers : Le rôle du bilinguisme

Plusieurs auteurs ont observe une superiorite des enfants bilingues par rapport a des enfants monolingues dans des tâches faisant appel a un construit neuropsychologique nomme « controle executif » qui regroupe plusieurs fonctions executives. Certains de ces auteurs ont egalement fait le lien entre les competences en controle executif et la faculte d'acceder aux differentes representations de figures ambigues (Bialystok & Shapero, 2005). Notre etude vise a elargir ce lien au traitement de stimuli ambigus langagiers en postulant que le controle executif y est egalement lie. Vingt participants âges de 7 a 9 ans, dont la moitie etait monolingue et l'autre moitie bilingue, ont effectue a la fois une tâche d'acces aux differentes representations de figures ambigues inspiree de Bialystok & Shapero (2005) et une tâche d'acces aux differentes interpretations de phrases ambigues. Ces phrases etaient composees d'une negation et d'un quantificateur universel ou numeral, et etaient inspirees des travaux de Lidz et Musolino (2002, 2006). Nos resultats n'indiquent pas de differences significatives entre nos deux groupes de participants (monolingues et bilingues) quant a leurs performances aux deux tâches experimentales. Nous n'observons egalement pas de correlations significatives entre les scores de nos participants a ces deux tâches. Ces resultats ne permettent pas d'etayer notre hypothese, a savoir qu'une meme fonction cognitive (le controle executif) est impliquee dans le traitement de stimuli ambigus visuels et langagiers. Nous observons cependant une difference significative dans la facilite d'acces aux secondes interpretations des phrases ambigues en faveur des phrases contenant un quantificateur universel. Cette difference, ainsi que les biais qui ont pu conduire a nos resultats sont discutes a la fin de ce travail. Plusieurs suggestions sont egalement fournies dans la perspective d'une prochaine etude sur le sujet.
Getting Acquainted with Stigma: A Brief Introduction

Stop for a moment and think about how much information you process daily to successfully navigate the world. The amount is enormous, right? So, how do we manage all of it? Stereotyping is one way. Stereotyping, a social cognitive structure, can help us categorize the constant stream of information we are tasked with processing in order to simplify our lives (Corrigan, 2004). When used for good, stereotyping can help us carry out daily activities quickly and efficiently, bypass awkward moments like walking into the wrong rest room, and help us identify professionals with specialized skills (e.g., firemen, doctors, lawyers) who can help manage problems that may benefit from additional support. However, stereotyping can also lead to the application of negative beliefs toward a group of people, including those with a mental illness, resulting in stigma and derailments in care (Corrigan, 2004).
A New Method for Reduction of PAPR Using CORDIC Algorithm in WiMAX System

Worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) technology based on 802.16 standard support data transmission and high frequency efficiency. The realization of WiMAX system is not very complicate and it will become one of the most competitive technologies in broadband wireless access systems. To counter the problem of too high PAPR in WiMAX system, this paper introduces a method of clipping and filtering to reduce the value of peak-to-average power ratio, which use CORDIC algorithm to calculate the magnitude of OFDM signal from the point of view of hardware realization. The test results indicated that this method of reducing value of PAPR has simple structure and good performance
Recognition of Vaccinia Virus-Infected Cells by Human Natural Killer Cells Depends on Natural Cytotoxicity Receptors

ABSTRACT Natural Killer (NK) cells are important in the immune response to a number of viruses; however, the mechanisms used by NK cells to discriminate between healthy and virus-infected cells are only beginning to be understood. Infection with vaccinia virus provokes a marked increase in the susceptibility of target cells to lysis by NK cells, and we show that recognition of the changes in the target cell induced by vaccinia virus infection depends on the natural cytotoxicity receptors NKp30, NKp44, and NKp46. Vaccinia virus infection does not induce expression of ligands for the activating NKG2D receptor, nor does downregulation of major histocompatibility complex class I molecules appear to be of critical importance for altered target cell susceptibility to NK cell lysis. The increased susceptibility to lysis by NK cells triggered upon poxvirus infection depends on a viral gene, or genes, transcribed early in the viral life cycle and present in multiple distinct orthopoxviruses. The more general implications of these data for the processes of innate immune recognition are discussed.
Acquired apraxia of speech in aphasic adults : theoretical and clinical issues/ edited by Paula Square-Storer

Want to get experience? Want to get any ideas to create new things in your life? Read acquired apraxia of speech in aphasic adults theoretical and clinical issues now! By reading this book as soon as possible, you can renew the situation to get the inspirations. Yeah, this way will lead you to always think more and more. In this case, this book will be always right for you. When you can observe more about the book, you will know why you need this.
Shot Detection Using Pixel wise Difference with Adaptive Threshold and Color Histogram Method in Compressed and Uncompressed Video

To elaborate a video in terms of its content, it needs to be partitioned into its smallest visual unit called shot. To segment a video into shots, shot boundary is needed. Here pixel wise difference is adapted for uncompressed and compressed video shot transition detection with adaptive threshold. Color histogram is also used for the cut and dissolve boundary. For cut boundary, traditional threshold technique works well but it fails in some cases like camera flash, fast zooming etc. To improve its performance 2nd derivative method is accepted for cut detection and for the dissolve boundary histogram difference with twin comparison method is used. Pixel intensity based approach is utilized for fade detection.
R&D strategy for building effective entry barrier

As Michael Porter described [4], entry barriers can be reduced due to the expiration of basic patent rights. Therefore, many companies try to build effective entry barriers by creating effective patent portfolios in order to deter new entrants from plunging into existing and/or emerging markets. The aim of this study is two-fold. First, we focus on the research framework by taking the perspective of the patent life cycle (PLC) model, which has been sophisticated by the “underlying specification” that is the evolution of “the dominant design” introduced by Abernathy and Utterback [1]. Second, we reveal the effective cooperation between R&D strategy and patent strategy in order to build a continuous entry barrier. The conclusions of our study are as follows: First, two or more derived products with similarities to an existing product structure were developed concurrently by the same company during the growth stage of the existing product, so as not to allow a time period without patent rights. The results of the development were used with the existing product. Second, it was necessary for an existing inventor and a new inventor to take part in the derivation product development simultaneously in order to utilize the results of new product development with the existing product. Third, according to the PLC analysis, the effective cooperation between R&D and patent division was crucial in both "the piezoelectric elements" and "the diesel particulate filter".