Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probabilistic programming: Concepts and challenges (extended abstract)

A multitude of different probabilistic programming languages exists today, all extending a traditional programming language with primitives to support modeling of and reasoning with complex, structured probability distributions. Examples include functional languages (Church [Goodman et al., 2008], IBAL [Pfeffer, 2001]), object-oriented languages (Figaro [Pfeffer, 2009]), and logic languages (ProbLog [De Raedt et al., 2007], PRISM [Sato and Kameya, 2001]). Each of these languages employs its own probabilistic primitives, and comes with a particular syntax, semantics and inference procedure. This makes it hard to understand the underlying programming concepts, to appreciate the differences between the different languages, and to relate them to work in related fields such as statistical relational learning or probabilistic databases. To obtain a better understanding of probabilistic programming, we propose to use the notion of probabilistic programming concepts, that is, common notions underlying the primitives used by various probabilistic languages. In a recent survey [De Raedt and Kimmig, 2013], we identify a number of such core programming concepts, discuss the execution mechanisms that they require and use these to position state-of-the-art probabilistic languages and their implementation. While doing so, we focus on probabilistic extensions of logic programming languages such as Prolog, which have been developed since more than 20 years. These core concepts include probabilistic ones such as different types of random variables (binary, discrete, continuous) or stochastic memoization (whether or not repeated occurrences of the same random variable share their value), as well as concepts originating in programming languages such as second order predicates and meta-calls, and general modeling concepts such as constraints or time and dynamics. Inference is a key challenge in probabilistic programming and statistical relational learning. Furthermore, the choice of inference approach often influences which probabilistic primitives can be supported. Enormous progress has been made in the past few years w.r. t. probabilistic inference and numerous inference procedures have been contributed. Therefore, we also identify some core classes of inference mechanisms for probabilistic programming and discuss which ones to use for which probabilistic concept. This work also reveals and summarizes a number of challenges and directions for future work. Efficient inference approaches for languages supporting a broad range of concepts are needed. Promising directions include lifted inference, as studied mainly in the statistical relational learning community so far, and MCMC approaches, which show promise in probabilistic programming
The role of critical thinking in the knowledge building process of a networked community of nurses

Although the concepts of criticism, critical thought, and of being critical, etc. have been explored along millennia of hurnan history, it is only recently that critical thinking itself has become a focal point of research. Despite the numerous definitions attributed to critical thinking, operationalizing the concept was key in order to understand its role in the knowledge building process of a networked comrnunity of nurses, object of this study. Our research aims to assess, analyze and understand how critical thinking unfolds in the dialogical, reflective and recursive process of networked knowledge building. The smdy was based on a constructivist framework and adopted the notions ofprogressive communication (Campos, 2003) and scheinatization (Grize, 1991). The method adopted to verify our research questions is discourse analysis. A grid was developed and applied to identify critical thinking within networked discourse. Quantitative and qualitative data were used in order to assess the level of critical thinking (weak or strong). Resuits suggest that the nurses engaged in critical thinking. The level of critical thinking, found in the studied sequences, varied but was overali judged as being strong. In addition, data suggest that astute use of skepticism (judgment) and assessment of staternents by the nurses were beneficial.
Mg2+-dependent folding of a Diels-Alderase ribozyme probed by single-molecule FRET analysis

Here, we report a single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) study of a Diels-Alderase (DAse) ribozyme, a 49-mer RNA with true catalytic properties. The DAse ribozyme was labeled with Cy3 and Cy5 as a FRET pair of dyes to observe intramolecular folding, which is a prerequisite for its recognition and turnover of two organic substrate molecules. FRET efficiency histograms and kinetic data were taken on a large number of surface-immobilized ribozyme molecules as a function of the Mg2+ concentration in the buffer solution. From these data, three separate states of the DAse ribozyme can be distinguished, the unfolded (U), intermediate (I) and folded (F) states. A thermodynamic model was developed to quantitatively analyze the dependence of these states on the Mg2+ concentration. The FRET data also provide information on structural properties. The I state shows a strongly cooperative compaction with increasing Mg2+ concentration that arises from association with several Mg2+ ions. This transition is followed by a second Mg2+-dependent cooperative transition to the F state. The observation of conformational heterogeneity and continuous fluctuations between the I and F states on the ∼100 ms timescale offers insight into the folding dynamics of this ribozyme.
Resiliency Improvements in Medical Emergency Staff in Burn Missions: A Qualitative Study in an Iranian Context

Background: Medical emergency staff complete understanding of the nature of resiliency in burn events is a prerequisite for improving the quality of clinical service delivery in pre-hospital burn events. Objectives: The present study aimed to describe resiliency in view of medical emergency staff in burn events. Materials and Methods: The present qualitative study was performed using a content analysis method. In total, 18 Iranian emergency care personnel participated in the study. A purposeful sampling method was applied until reaching data saturation. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and field observations. Afterwards, data was analyzed by face content analysis. Results: By analyzing 456 primary codes, four main concepts including: 1) scene safety/security, 2) effective clinical decision making, 3) self-efficacy and 4) religious support were extracted through content analysis from experiences of pre-hospital emergency personnel during burn care. Conclusions: Different factors affect resiliency improvements in medical emergency staff and consequently the quality of pre-hospital burn care. This study showed that various factors such as scene security/safety, effective decision making, self-efficacy and religious support are effective in the improvement of resiliency and the quality of pre-hospital emergency care.
Intervention for executive functions development in early elementary school children: effects on learning and behaviour, and follow-up maintenance

Abstract Executive functions (EF) can be promoted by classroom interventions. Our study investigated whether (a) an intervention conducted by teachers improves EF in children; (b) there are effects on behaviour and academic achievement; and (c) there are stable benefits in a one-year follow-up. Fifty-eight first-graders, divided into experimental (EG = 28) and control (CG = 30) groups, were assessed in EF, reading and arithmetic tests. Parents and teachers answered EF and behaviour functional scales. The intervention was conducted by teachers in the classroom context. EG children showed greater gains in EF and outperformed controls on reading and arithmetic measures. The EG maintained better performance in the one-year follow-up and showed transfer effect for behaviour measures. The EF intervention may be a useful tool for promoting improved adjustment and academic achievement.
On using adversary simulators to obtain tight lower bounds for response times

Many embedded systems have soft real-time constraints and it is useful to have an estimate for the worst-case response time of each task. Formal analysis provides safe upper bounds but they are too pessimistic for complex architectures. Simulators can be used to establish a lower bound for the worst-case response time, but classic simulators apply arrival patterns originally conceived for uniprocessor and fail to achieve a good estimate. In this paper we present the concept of an adversary simulator that generates arrival patterns to stress the system. We implemented a simple and fast heuristic that allows the adversary simulator to obtain lower bounds that are considerably tighter than those of classic simulators. We designed the heuristic specifically for fixed-priority scheduling with Deadline Monotonic and Deadline minus Computation Time Monotonic priority ordering.
INVOLUNTARY SMOKING AND ASTHMA SEVERITY IN CHILDREN: DATA FROM THE THIRD NATIONAL HEALTH AND NUTRITION EXAMINATION SURVEY (NHANES III)

Mannino DM, Homa JM, Redd SC. Chest. 2002;122: 409–415 Purpose of the Study. To determine the indicators of asthma severity among children in the United States with high and low levels of tobacco exposure. Study Population. The subjects were 523 children (age: 4–16) with physician-diagnosed asthma. Methods. The study population was obtained from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), which is a Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC)-sponsored survey of a representative US population that underwent an extensive evaluation including a questionnaire, physical examination, lung function, and serum cotinine levels. Only children with a prior diagnosis of asthma were included in the analysis. Asthma severity was based on the frequency of symptoms. Serum cotinine levels were ranked as low ( 0.115 ng/mL), intermediate (0.116–0.639 ng/mL), and high (0.64–0.20 ng/ml). Subjects that reported active smoking or had serum cotinine 20 ng/mL (indicating active smoking or use of chewing tobacco) were excluded. Cotinine levels were then compared with measures of asthma severity. Results. Of the 13 944 children 17 years old who participated in NHANES III, 1025 had physician-diagnosed asthma. After exclusion for children 4 years old, those without physical examinations or cotinine levels and 13 with cotinine levels 20 523 children remained in the study group. Of these, 294 completed pulmonary function testing. Of the 523 tobacco-exposed children studied, 78.6% had mild asthma, 6.8% had moderate asthma, and 14.6% had severe asthma. The authors found that increased asthma severity was associated with higher cotinine levels. They also found that lower forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) levels and a greater proportion of children with FEV1 80% were also associated with increased levels of cotinine. They found a mean FEV1 decrement of 8.1% in the environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)-exposed children versus 1.8% in all the children. A surprising finding was that children with higher cotinine levels were less likely to have been hospitalized for asthma in the previous year, but all other measures of severity were higher in the group. Conclusions. The authors conclude that their study provides evidence that children with asthma who are exposed to tobacco smoke have generally increased asthma severity and decreased lung function. Reviewer’s Comments. Yet another study to provide evidence to our patients and their caregivers that tobacco smoke is detrimental to health, specifically in this study to children with asthma.
A New Mutation Operator Based on the T Probability Distribution in Evolutionary Programming

A new mutation operator based on the T probability distribution is studied. The T probability distribution is stable and can generate an offspring that is farther away from its parent than the commonly employed Gaussian mutation. Moreover, it has a better fine-tuning ability than the Cauchy mutation. In this paper, evolutionary programming (EP) with mutations based on the T probability distribution is studied. The new algorithm is tested on 23 benchmark functions and compared with the conventional EP and the fast EP. The experimental results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional EP and the fast EP
Methodological consideration for the recruitment of upper limb muscles during two joint arm movements

We investigated muscle activation levels or patterns determined during two-joint arm movements. Twelve subjects were instructed to move their right (dominant) wrists in a horizontal plane. Surface electromyographic activities were recorded from the brachioradialis, biceps brachii, and triceps brachii. The muscle activation level was demonstrated as a function of both the elbow and shoulder torque in a 3-dimensional plot and was represented as an eigen plane and dynamic preferred direction (PD). The PD of the bi-articular muscles was suitable for its anatomical and functional roles; however, that of the mono-articular brachioradialis muscle was affected by the shoulder torque. These results suggested that the bi-articular muscle makes the main contribution toward the generation of the kinematic requirement and/or control of the endpoint movement.
Polarization and Phase-Shifting for 3D Scanning of Translucent Objects

Translucent objects pose a difficult problem for traditional structured light 3D scanning techniques. Subsurface scattering corrupts the range estimation in two ways: by drastically reducing the signal-to-noise ratio and by shifting the intensity peak beneath the surface to a point which does not coincide with the point of incidence. In this paper we analyze and compare two descattering methods in order to obtain reliable 3D coordinates for translucent objects. By using polarization-difference imaging, subsurface scattering can be filtered out because multiple scattering randomizes the polarization direction of light while the surface reflectance partially keeps the polarization direction of the illumination. The descattered reflectance can be used for reliable 3D reconstruction using traditional optical 3D scanning techniques, such as structured light. Phase-shifting is another effective descattering technique if the frequency of the projected pattern is sufficiently high. We demonstrate the performance of these two techniques and the combination of them on scanning real-world translucent objects.
Distinct axo-somato-dendritic distributions of three potassium channels in CA1 hippocampal pyramidal cells

Potassium channels comprise the most diverse family of ion channels and play critical roles in a large variety of physiological and pathological processes. In addition to their molecular diversity, variations in their distributions and densities on the axo‐somato‐dendritic surface of neurons are key parameters in determining their functional impact. Despite extensive electrophysiological and anatomical investigations, the exact location and densities of most K+ channels in small subcellular compartments are still unknown. Here we aimed at providing a quantitative surface map of two delayed‐rectifier (Kv1.1 and Kv2.1) and one G‐protein‐gated inwardly rectifying (Kir3.2) K+ channel subunits on hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells (PCs). Freeze‐fracture replica immunogold labelling was employed to determine the relative densities of these K+ channel subunits in 18 axo‐somato‐dendritic compartments. Significant densities of the Kv1.1 subunit were detected on axon initial segments (AISs) and axon terminals, with an approximately eight‐fold lower density in the latter compartment. The Kv2.1 subunit was found in somatic, proximal dendritic and AIS plasma membranes at approximately the same densities. This subunit has a non‐uniform plasma membrane distribution; Kv2.1 clusters are frequently adjacent to, but never overlap with, GABAergic synapses. A quasi‐linear increase in the Kir3.2 subunit density along the dendrites of PCs was detected, showing no significant difference between apical dendritic shafts, oblique dendrites or dendritic spines at the same distance from the soma. Our results demonstrate that each subunit has a unique cell‐surface distribution pattern, and predict their differential involvement in synaptic integration and output generation at distinct subcellular compartments.
Basic fibroblast growth factor: a potential regulator of proliferation and intermediate filament expression in the retina

Proliferation of astrocytes, and a concomitant increase of intermediate filaments in astrocytes are two fundamental responses of the CNS to injury. We have previously identified these two events in the retina's response to detachment of the neural retina from the adjoining monolayer of retinal pigmented epithelium. In order to analyze the potential role of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in these responses, we studied cellular proliferation and intermediate filament protein expression in the retinas of cats and rabbits 4 d and 4 weeks after a single intravitreal injection of 1 microgram of bFGF. Our results show that bFGF stimulates both of these processes in an otherwise normal eye. The eyes that received bFGF had significantly elevated numbers of 3H-thymidine-labeled Muller cells, astrocytes, vascular cells, retinal pigmented epithelial cells, microglia, and macrophages by comparison to control eyes. This proliferation was apparent at 4 d after the injection of bFGF but not after 4 weeks. In control eyes, antibodies to glial fibrillary acidic protein and vimentin labeled intermediate filaments only in the inner (vitread) portion of the Muller cells, the specialized radial astrocytes that span the width of the retina. In eyes that had been injected with bFGF, almost the entire Muller cell cytoplasm was labeled at 4 d after injection; after 4 weeks, the cytoplasmic labeling intensity had increased significantly. Release or activation of endogenous stores of bFGF after injury or disease may be involved in the control of cellular proliferation and intermediate filament expression in the retina and elsewhere in the CNS.
Mobile robot localization using odometry and kinect sensor

This paper presents a mobile robot localization system for an indoor environment using an inexpensive sensor system. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) and the particle filter (PF) is used for sensor fusion in pose estimation in order to minimize uncertainty in robot localization. The robot is maneuvered in a known environment with some visual landmarks. The prediction phase of the EKF and the PF are implemented using the information from the robot odometry whose error may accumulate over time. The update phase uses the Kinect measurements of the landmarks to correct the robot's pose. Experiment results show that, despite its low cost, the accuracy of the localization is comparable with most state-of-the-art odometry based methods.
Immune Responses to Ro60 and Its Peptides in Mice. I.  The Nature of the Immunogen and Endogenous Autoantigen Determine the Specificities of the Induced Autoantibodies

Anti-Ro60 autoantibodies are found in a variety of autoimmune disorders including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren's syndrome, primary biliary cirrhosis, and active hepatitis. They are the most prevalent autoantibodies in normal individuals and in asymptomatic mothers of infants afflicted with neonatal lupus. In the present study, immune responses to recombinant human Ro60 (rhRo60) and recombinant mouse Ro60 (rmRo60) and selected Ro60 peptides in non–SLE-prone mice were investigated. Multiple T and B cell epitopes were identified in Ro60. Immunizations with either xenogeneic or autologous Ro60 induced autoantibodies to a diverse group of autoantigens. In addition to La and Ro52, proteins in the small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP) particles such as SmA, SmB, SmD, and 70-kD U1-RNP were unexpectedly identified as targeted antigens. In the studies involving synthetic Ro60 peptides, both human and mouse Ro60316–335 peptides, which differ in three amino acids, were found to contain dominant cross-reactive T cell determinants. Immunizations with these peptides induced autoantibodies to Ro60, La, SmD, and 70-kD U1-RNP without autoantibodies to Ro52, SmA, or SmB. With human Ro60316–335 as the immunogen, additional autoantibodies reactive with the Golgi complex were found. In contrast to the immunodominance of both human and mouse Ro60316–335 peptides, the T cell determinant in human Ro60441–465 was dominant, whereas that in the mouse peptide was cryptic. Immunization with human Ro60441–465 induced primarily anti-peptide Abs. Mouse Ro60441–465 failed to induce an antibody response. These results show that both the nature of the immunogen and the immunogenicity of the related endogenous antigen are important in determining the specificities of the autoantibodies generated. They have significant implications for proposed mechanisms on the generation of complex patterns of autoantibodies to a diverse group of autoantigens in SLE patients.
What do stable isotopes tell us about hominid dietary and ecological niches in the pliocene

By now a reasonable set of carbon and oxygen isotope data from tooth enamel has been accumulated for South African Plio-Pleistocene hominids and associated fauna. Almost all individuals measured, independent of species and importantly, environment, show significant C4 dietary inputs with some individuals showing very substantial C4 inputs. This implies interactions with grassy environments for a period of well over a million years, a period that saw environments in southern Africa shift from closed woodlands to more open, grassy landscapes. Carbon isotope analysis alone is unable to permit the important distinction between direct consumption of grasses, or indirect consumption via grass-eating animals, such as small vertebrates and invertebrates. Other chemical tools provide ambiguous results. For instance, hominid strontium/calcium distributions at Swartkrans have been interpreted as supporting omnivory, but other explanations are equally plausible. Relatively low oxygen isotope values for all hominids in comparison to associated fauna show similarities with suids, monkeys and carnivores, but the causes of these similarities are as yet poorly understood. On present evidence hominid interaction with grassland foods is secure although their exact nature remains elusive. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
18F-FLT PET/CT imaging in a Wister rabbit inflammation model

The aim of the present study was to determine the tumour specificity of the newly developed nucleoside metabolic positron emission tomography (PET) tracer, 3′-deoxy-3′-18F-fluorothymidine (18F-FLT). Using 18F-FLT PET imaging, DNA synthesis and cell proliferation were detected in Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) abscess and calcium sulphate models in Wister rabbits. A total of eight rabbits were implanted with S. aureus in the left tibia to induce an inflammatory process. Calcium sulphate + gentamicin was implanted in the right tibia to induce a physical stimulus without bacterial multiplication. After four weeks, the animals underwent 18F-FLT PET imaging, bacterial culturing and tissue pathology. The uptake of 18F-FLT was significantly higher in the abscess site compared with that in the granuloma, with maximum standardised uptake values of 5.76±0.25 and 1.15±0.32, respectively (P<0.01). This indicates that 18F-FLT is not a specific tumour tracer since active inflammation also results in the uptake of this compound. However, the tumour specificity of this tracer is higher compared with that of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose. Therefore, 18F-FLT may be useful in the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant tumours.