Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Migraine as a risk factor for subclinical brain lesions.

CONTEXT Clinical series have suggested an increased prevalence of cerebral infarction and white matter lesions (WMLs) in migraine patients. It is not known whether these lesions are prevalent in the general migraine population. OBJECTIVES To compare the prevalence of brain infarcts and WMLs in migraine cases and controls from the general population and to identify migraine characteristics associated with these lesions. DESIGN Cross-sectional, prevalence study of population-based sample of Dutch adults aged 30 to 60 years. PARTICIPANTS Randomly selected patients with migraine with aura (n = 161), patients with migraine without aura (n = 134), and controls (n = 140), who were frequency matched to cases for age, sex, and place of residence. Nearly 50% of the cases had not been previously diagnosed by a physician. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Brain magnetic resonance images were evaluated for infarcts, by location and vascular supply territory, and for periventricular WMLs (PVWMLs) and deep WMLs (DWMLs). The odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of these brain lesions compared with controls were examined by migraine subtype (with or without aura) and monthly attack frequency (<1 attack, > or =1 attack), controlling for cardiovascular risk factors and use of vasoconstrictor migraine agents. All participants underwent a standard neurological examination. RESULTS No participants reported a history of stroke or transient ischemic attack or had relevant abnormalities at standard neurological examination. We found no significant difference between patients with migraine and controls in overall infarct prevalence (8.1% vs 5.0%). However, in the cerebellar region of the posterior circulation territory, patients with migraine had a higher prevalence of infarct than controls (5.4% vs 0.7%; P =.02; adjusted OR, 7.1; 95% CI, 0.9-55). The adjusted OR for posterior infarct varied by migraine subtype and attack frequency. The adjusted OR was 13.7 (95% CI, 1.7-112) for patients with migraine with aura compared with controls. In patients with migraine with a frequency of attacks of 1 or more per month, the adjusted OR was 9.3 (95% CI, 1.1-76). The highest risk was in patients with migraine with aura with 1 attack or more per month (OR, 15.8; 95% CI, 1.8-140). Among women, the risk for high DWML load (top 20th percentile of the distribution of DWML load vs lower 80th percentile) was increased in patients with migraine compared with controls (OR, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.0-4.1); this risk increased with attack frequency (highest in those with > or =1 attack per month: OR, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.2-5.7) but was similar in patients with migraine with or without aura. In men, controls and patients with migraine did not differ in the prevalence of DWMLs. There was no association between severity of PVWMLs and migraine, irrespective of sex or migraine frequency or subtype. CONCLUSIONS These population-based findings suggest that some patients with migraine with and without aura are at increased risk for subclinical lesions in certain brain areas.
PLANT RESISTANCE RESPONSES TO VIRUSES

Plants have developed numerous approaches to resist infection by viruses. On the other hand, in many instances viruses have evolved to overcome these various resistance responses and barriers. The extent to which viruses can overcome some or all of these responses and barriers determines the extent to which they are able to colonize plants of a given genotype or species. Resistance against plant viruses occurs at different levels and by various mechanisms, most of which largely remain uncharacterized. Here, we will consider these various levels of resistance, as well as the types of resistance responses, the isolated genes involved in resistance, the signalling pathways that have been described, and the various resistance factors that have been implicated in resistance to specific viruses.
Development of a usar robot considering camera view angle and grouser shape of crawler

The development of a teleoperated robot for USAR(Urban Search And Rescue) activities has been discussed in the paper. Suitable camera view angle of the USAR robot has been examined by using simulation and it has been shown that wider angle than common usual camera is better for the robot. Isotropic Bumping and Touching Object(IBO) has been proposed for the grouser of the robot crawler in order to have better traveling performance on complex terrain. The performance has been measured through the climbing on a spiral stair. The effectiveness has been evaluated through Robocup Rescue Robot League(RRRL), and the developed robot had won 1st place in RRRL Japan Open 2007 and 2008, and 4th place in RRRL World Championship in 2008.
Web Page Segmentation for Small Screen Devices Using Tag Path Clustering Approach

—The web pages breathing these days are developed to be displayed on a Desktop PCs and so viewing them on mobile web browsers is extremely tough. Since mobile devices have restricted resources, small screen device users need to scroll down and across the complicated sites persistently. To address the problem of resource limitation of small screen devices, a unique methodology of web page segmentation with tag path clustering is proposed, that reduces the memory space demand of the small hand-held devices. For segmenting web pages, both reappearance key patterns detection technique and page layout information are used to provide better segmentation accuracy.
Behaviorally Gated Reduction of Spontaneous Discharge Can Improve Detection Thresholds in Auditory Cortex

Animals often listen selectively for particular sounds, a strategy that could alter neural encoding mechanisms to maximize the ability to detect the target. Here, we recorded auditory cortex neuron responses in well trained, freely moving gerbils as they performed a tone detection task. Each trial was initiated by the animal, providing a predictable time window during which to listen. No sound was presented on nogo trials, permitting us to assess spontaneous activity on trials in which a signal could have been expected, but was not delivered. Immediately after animals initiated a trial, auditory cortex neurons displayed a 26% reduction in spontaneous activity. Moreover, when stimulus-driven discharge rate was referenced to this reduced baseline, a larger fraction of auditory cortex neurons displayed a detection threshold within 10 dB of the behavioral threshold. These findings suggest that auditory cortex spontaneous discharge rate can be modulated transiently during task performance, thereby increasing the signal-to-noise ratio and enhancing signal detection.
Team Integration

We leverage theoretical advances and the multi-user nature of argumentation. The overall contributions of our work are as follows. We model the schema matching network and the reconciliation process, where we relate the experts’ assertions and the constraints of the matching network to an argumentation framework. Our representation not only captures the experts’ belief and their explanations, but also enables to reason about these captured inputs. On top of this representation, we develop support techniques for experts to detect conflicts in a set of their assertions. Then we guide the conflict resolution by offering two primitives: conflict-structure interpretation and what-if analysis. While the former presents meaningful interpretations for the conflicts and various heuristic metrics, the latter can greatly help the experts to understand the consequences of their own decisions as well as those of others. Last but not least, we implement an argumentation-based negotiation support tool for schema matching (ArgSM), which realizes our methods to help the experts in the collaborative task.
Rhizoremediation: A Promising Rhizosphere Technology

Interactions between microorganisms and plants have undoubtedly had major effects on the development of civilization since humans began to rely extensively on cultivated crops for food. Positive and negative interactions take place not only between microbes but also between microbes and plants. The rhizosphere is a zone of predominantly commensal and mutualistic interactions between plants and microbes. Rhizospheric microbes can degrade the majority of environmental pollutants and degradation process stops when the microbe is deprived of food. These microbes have access to the best food source available in soil, namely root exudates. Microbial degradation of contaminants in the rhizosphere provides a positive effect for the plant; the pollutant concentration is decreased in the area near the roots and the plant can grow better than those in contaminated areas. Worldwide, contamination of soil and ground water is a severe problem. The negative effects of pollutants on the environment and on human health are diverse and depend on the nature of the pollution. Awareness about harms of pollution in the scientific world has aroused in 1990s but now even general public is highly concerned about this issue. The search for alternative methods for excavation and incineration to clean polluted sites resulted in the application of bioremediation techniques. A cost effective and highly ethical method Rhizoremediation which involves the breakdown of contaminants in soil resulting from microbial activity that is enhanced in rhizosphere. So, an effort is made to review the recent advancements on rhizoremediation-based abolition of heavy metals.
Effect of user-generated content on website stickiness: the case of social shopping communities

Website stickiness, that is visit duration, is a key performance metric for website managers. Longer visit durations can enhance user involvement and give users more time to complete purchase transactions. Furthermore, exposure to advertising is more likely with longer visit durations. By analyzing clickstream data, we investigate which factors, especially user-generated social-shopping features, are significant for predicting visit duration within social shopping communities (SSCs). SSCs evolve from an integration of social networking and online shopping. Both are currently experiencing high growth-rates in consumer popularity. For example, polyvore.com presently attracts more than 13 million unique visitors per month. Apart from direct-shopping features in shopbots, e.g., search field and search filters, SSCs additionally offer user-generated social-shopping features. These include recommendation lists, ratings, styles (i.e., assortments arranged by users), tags, and user profiles. Purchases can be made by following a link to a participating online shop ('click-out'). Our regression model includes 2.91 million visiting sessions and shows that user-generated social-shopping features exert a significant impact on visit duration. The more lists, styles, tags, and user profiles used, the longer the duration. Thus, these features seem to enhance site stickiness and browsing. As assumed, direct-shopping features, and click-outs also exert a positive impact. We also found that community members stay more briefly on the SSC than ordinary users. This implies that community members could benefit from learning effects. If a visit occurs on the weekend, the duration is greater than during the week. Both the academic and managerial implications are considered.
Techniques for Overlay Design of Content-based Publish/Subscribe Systems

Techniques for Overlay Design of Content-Based Publish/Su bscribe Systems Naweed Tajuddin Master of Applied Science Graduate Department of Electrical and Computer Engineerin g University of Toronto 2010 Mission-critical distributed applications, such as Inter et advertising platforms, increasingly utilize distributed publish/subscribe systems as a m essaging substrate for information dissemination. These applications require low latency per formance from the substrate, as the timely delivery of messages can have a direct on impact reven ue. The cost of managing and operating publish/subscribe systems, however, can be proh ibitive due to system size and scale. It is, therefore, critical to derive low latency message del ivery from a minimal set of system resources. To this end, this thesis presents a solution for designing lo w latency, minimal-broker overlay networks for content-based publish/subscribe systems. Th e solution includes a framework for quantifying the similarity of clients and brokers, and a lgorithms for constructing overlay topologies where brokers sharing similar interests are ass igned a direct overlay connection. Additionally, a load model and algorithms are presented for designing overlays that utilize a minimal number of brokers in order to reduce system cost.
Remote sensing technology in measurement and analysis on the topography evolution of the radial sand ridges in South Yellow Sea

At present, Jiangsu coastal development has been raised to the level of national strategy, the priority among which is the radial sand ridges of South Yellow Sea. The development and utilization of such complicated variable radial sand ridge tidal flat lies on the comprehension of its current situation, variation characteristics and laws. The research proposed some new methods based on RS/GIS technology by which the quantitative measurement and analysis were taken on underwater topography, sand ridge and tidal creek. For example, the terrain RS images in 2006 and 1979 were overlaid to make an analysis. As regards with the sand ridges and tidal creek which are the main geomorphologic characters of the radial sand ridges, their swing positions and range were found out by the spectral measurement on the water content of tidal flat and the extraction of tidal creek medial axis respectively. Based on all of the results, the study made an analysis on the evolution process of sand ridges in 20 years. The new methods based on RS/GIS technology do not only analyze the radial sand ridges evolution laws in a more scientific and reasonable way, but also develop the application research of remote sensing technology on oceanography.
Automated Security Metrics in ISMSs to Discover the Level of Security of OSs and DBMSs

The information society is ever-increasingly dependent upon Information Security Management Systems (ISMSs), and the availability of these systems has come to be vital to the evolution of SMEs. However, this type of companies requires ISMSs which have been adapted to their particular characteristics, and which are optimised from the point of view of the resources that are necessary to install and maintain them. This paper concentrates on the development of a process for ISMSs that will allow the level of security of critical applications installed in these sytems, i.e., Operative Systems and Data Base Management Systems, to be measured. This process is currently being directly applied in real cases, thus leading to an improvement in its application.
Drosophila HP1c Is Regulated by an Auto-Regulatory Feedback Loop through Its Binding Partner Woc

HP1 is a major component of chromatin and regulates gene expression through its binding to methylated histone H3. Most eukaryotes express at least three isoforms of HP1 with similar domain architecture. However, despite the common specificity for methylated histone H3, the three HP1 isoforms bind to different regions of the genome. Most of the studies so far focused on the HP1a isoform and its role in transcriptional regulation. As HP1a requires additional factors to bind methylated chromatin in vitro, we wondered whether another isoform might also require additional targeting factors. Indeed, we found that HP1c interacts with the DNA binding factors Woc and Row and requires Woc to become targeted to chromatin in vivo. Moreover, we show that the interaction between HP1c and Woc constitutes a transcriptional feedback loop that operates to balance the concentration of HP1c within the cell. This regulation may prevent HP1c from binding to methylated heterochromatin.
Analysis of the finite‐source multiclass priority queue with an unreliable server and setup time

In this article, we study a queueing system serving multiple classes of customers. Each class has a finite‐calling population. The customers are served according to the preemptive‐resume priority policy. We assume general distributions for the service times. For each priority class, we derive the steady‐state system size distributions at departure/arrival and arbitrary time epochs. We introduce the residual augmented process completion times conditioned on the number of customers in the system to obtain the system time distribution. We then extend the model by assuming that the server is subject to operation‐independent failures upon which a repair process with random duration starts immediately. We also demonstrate how setup times, which may be required before resuming interrupted service or picking up a new customer, can be incorporated in the model. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013
A QoS framework to improve user satisfaction for accessing Internet in low quality connection

With the growing of Internet, an user QoS support for Internet application will play an important role for the success of this emerging technology. Unfortunately, Internet connection in such circumstance is often not reliable, causing difficulties in accessing information sources on the Web. In this paper, we present an approach that does not only enable the user QoS integration into Internet application, but also the selection of appropriate services based on user requirements and network performance. Furthermore, we present a QoS framework for implementing the user QoS mechanism as the platform for Internet application. The framework serves as a bridging layer between Internet application and the network mechanism.
Dynamic Metadata Management for Scalable Stream Processing Systems

Adaptive query processing is of utmost importance for the scalability of data stream processing systems due to the long-running queries and fluctuating stream characteristics. An essential prerequisite for adaptive runtime components is the presence of suitable metadata capturing the runtime state. As most of the metadata in such a system gets outdated over time, appropriate update mechanisms are required. Dynamic metadata management deals with the dynamic provision and continuous maintenance of metadata. This paper does not only address the issues in dynamic metadata management such as metadata dependencies and metadata update concepts, but also presents a scalable framework to efficiently manage the diversity of dynamic metadata in todays data stream processing systems. The core of our field-tested metadata framework is a publish-subscribe architecture that enables the system to identify and compute only the currently inquired metadata. This tailored metadata provision is crucial to scalability as maintaining all available metadata at runtime causes significant computational overhead when the number of continuous queries increases.
Social Media as a Sensor for Censorship Detection in News Media

Censorship in social media has been well studied and provides insight into how governments stifle freedom of expression online. Comparatively less (or no) attention has been paid to censorship in traditional media (e.g., news) using social media as a bellweather. We present a novel unsupervised approach that views social media as a sensor to detect censorship in news media wherein statistically significant differences between information published in the news media and the correlated information published in social media are automatically identified as candidate censored events. We develop a hypothesis testing framework to identify and evaluate censored clusters of keywords, and a new near-linear-time algorithm (called GraphDPD) to identify the highest scoring clusters as indicators of censorship. We outline extensive experiments on semi-synthetic data as well as real datasets (with Twitter and local news media) from Mexico and Venezuela, highlighting the capability to accurately detect real-world censorship events.
Oncotargets and Therapy Dovepress Dovepress Microrna-212 Inhibits Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cell Proliferation and Induces Apoptosis by Targeting Foxa1

MircroRNA-212 (miR-212) is proposed as a novel tumor-related miRNA and has been found to be significantly deregulated in human cancers. In this study, the miR-212 expression was found to be obviously downregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues as compared with adjacent nontumor tissues. Clinical association analysis indicated that low expression of miR-212 was prominently correlated with poor prognostic features of HCC, including high AFP level, large tumor size, high Edmondson-Steiner grading, and advanced tumor-node-metastasis tumor stage. Furthermore, the miR-212 expression was an independent prognostic marker for predicting both 5-year overall survival and disease-free survival of HCC patients. Our in vitro studies showed that upregulation of miR-212 inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in HepG2 cells. On the contrary, downregulation of miR-212 promoted cell proliferation and suppressed apoptosis in Huh7 cells. Interestingly, we found that upregulation of miR-212 decreased FOXA1 expression in HepG2 cells. Significantly, FOXA1 was identified as a direct target of miR-212 in HCC. FOXA1 was downregulated in HCC tissues as compared with noncancerous tissues. An inverse correlation between FOXA1 and miR-212 expression was observed in HCC tissues. Notably, FOXA1 knockdown inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in HepG2 cells. In conclusion, miR-212 is a potent prognostic marker and may suppress HCC tumor growth by inhibiting FOXA1 expression.
Empirical Algorithms to Map Global Broadband Emissivities Over Vegetated Surfaces

This paper describes two new methods that were used to generate 26 years (1985–2010) of broadband emissivity (BBE) products with spatiotemporal continuity at the global scale from satellite data recorded by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). On the basis of emissivity libraries, the study began with establishing relationships for converting channel emissivities of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and MODIS to BBEs for the 8–13.5-$\mu\hbox{m}$ spectral window and then developed two new algorithms from simultaneous ASTER emissivity products to estimate BBEs over vegetated surfaces using the MODIS and AVHRR data. The MODIS-data-based algorithm (MDBA) uses linear equations with MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and seven channels' albedo; the AVHRR-data-based algorithm uses nonlinear equations with AVHRR red and near-infrared reflectances. The proposed algorithms were first validated with ASTER emissivity products. Results indicated that the root-mean-square errors of both the proposed algorithms were less than 0.015 and their biases were less than 0.003. Comparison with MODIS emissivity products from the day/night algorithm showed that the estimated BBEs using the MDBA were generally smaller than the MODIS products. Cross-comparisons were also made between the proposed algorithms and the NDVI threshold method. Finally, strategies for mapping global BBE products from the MODIS and AVHRR data are presented, and some examples are discussed. The global BBE products are planned to be released throughout the network in the near future.
Detecting meaningful change using the North Star Ambulatory Assessment in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Clinician‐reported outcome instruments such as the North Star Ambulatory Assessment (NSAA) need to be able to detect clinically important change to be suitable for clinical trials. However, in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), identifying changes in function is not straightforward. In this study, we use Rasch‐transformed data to examine the responsiveness and minimal important difference (MID) of the NSAA in males with DMD receiving different corticosteroid regimes.