Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In £ uenza : interspecies transmission and emergence of new pandemics

In£uenza is a well-known yearly threat, so why is it considered to be an emerging disease? It is because the virus evolves so rapidly that every year new viruses emerge, and every century three to four emergent strains are `new' enough to cause pandemics. Historically, pandemics have been both unpredictable and devastating. As we learn more about how and where pandemic strains evolve, strategies for blocking their emergence and for recognition of potentially dangerous strains will become possible [1].
Features as Sufficient Statistics

An image is often represented by a set of detected features. We get an enormous compression by representing images in this way. Furthermore, we get a representation which is little affected by small amounts of noise in the image. However, features are typically chosen in an ad hoc manner. We show how a good set of features can be obtained using sufficient statistics. The idea of sparse data representation naturally arises. We treat the 1-dimensional and 2-dimensional signal reconstruction problem to make our ideas concrete.
Trade, Endogenous Quality, and Welfare in Motion Pictures

Trade benefits consumers and producers, and the effects of trade can operate through product quality: larger markets can have greater investment and therefore higher quality products. We explore this channel in the movie industry, where quality is produced exclusively with sunk costs, these sunk costs are high, and international revenue is important. We develop a structural econometric model of the global movie market, which we use to document that half of world consumers’ – and virtually all of US consumers’ – gains from trade operate through quality. We also analyze the counterfactual impact of the elimination of European film subsidies.
The Effects of Concurrent Resistance and Endurance Exercise on Hunger Feelings and PYY in Obese Men

Purpose: Exercise could reverse the positive energy balance by increased energy expenditure and hunger suppresses. Hormones that play a role in appetite involved in the brain-gut axis of eating behavior come from different sources. No studies have examined the effect of acute concurrent exercise on hunger and PYY. Our purpose was to investigate the effects of a bout concurrent exercise on hunger feelings and plasma PYY in in obese men. Materials and Methods: Twelve-four untrained obese male were volunteered to participate in this study. Participants after eating standard breakfast, performed 7 resistance exercises against resistance corresponding to 60% of 1RM bout then ran on the cycle ergometer for 30 minutes at 60% of maximum heart rate in a random cross-over fashion. Venous blood sample was obtained in pre exercise and 30min post exercise bout. Visual analogue scales (VAS) used to assess subjective hunger sensations. Data were analyzed by Student’s paired and unpaired t-tests. Statistical significance was set at P<0.05. Results: There was a significant increase in plasma PYY concentration at post exercise compared with pre exercise and control (p=0.038). Hunger scores were significantly decreased 30-min following the exercise period in experimental group (p=0.003). Conclusion: Our results showed that plasma PYY concentration increased and hunger depressed following a combined resistance and aerobic exercise at 60% of 1RM or HRmax in obese men. Therefore, increased plasma PYY concentration after a single concurrent exercise session in obese men may possibly contribute to hunger (appetite) suppression.
Women in Science – and Elsewhere

This uniquely interdisciplinary study offers a provocative, contemporary look at the ‘Woman Question’ in relation to higher education at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Leading feminist scholars from a wide variety of perspectives and disciplines — including history, philosophy, education, psychology, sociology, and economics — evaluate the role of biology, discrimination, and choice in rationalizing women’s exclusion from fully participating in the process of knowledge production, as well as examining institutional impediments. Contextualizing arguments against women’s inclusion and including contemporary perspectives on gender, this book offers a rich, multi-layered examination and critical insights into understanding the near universal difficulties that women encounter as they seek to participate fully in the process of knowledge production.
Differential calculus on a Lie algebroid and Poisson manifolds

A Lie algebroid over a manifold is a vector bundle over that manifold whose properties are very similar to those of a tangent bundle. Its dual bundle has properties very similar to those of a cotangent bundle: in the graded algebra of sections of its external powers, one can define an operator similar to the exterior derivative. We present in this paper the theory of Lie derivatives, Schouten-Nijenhuis brackets and exterior derivatives in the general setting of a Lie algebroid, its dual bundle and their exterior powers. All the results (which, for their most part, are already known) are given with detailed proofs. In the final sections, the results are applied to Poisson manifolds.
Tyrosine kinase oncogenes abrogate interleukin-3 dependence of murine myeloid cells through signaling pathways involving c-myc: conditional regulation of c-myc transcription by temperature-sensitive v-abl

Retroviral expression vectors carrying the tyrosine kinase oncogenes abl, fms, src, and trk abrogate the requirements of murine myeloid FDC-P1 cells for interleukin-3 (IL-3). Factor-independent clones constitutively express c-myc in the absence of IL-3, whereas in parental cultures c-myc transcription requires the presence of the ligand. To directly test the effect of a tyrosine kinase oncogene on c-myc expression, retroviral constructs containing three different temperature-sensitive mutants of v-abl were introduced into myeloid IL-3-dependent FDC-P1 and 32D cells. At the permissive temperature, clones expressing temperature-sensitive abl behaved like wild-type abl-containing cells in their growth properties and expressed c-myc constitutively. Temperature shift experiments demonstrated that both IL-3 abrogation and the regulation of c-myc expression correlated with the presence of functional v-abl. Induction of c-myc expression by reactivation of temperature-sensitive v-abl mimicked c-myc induction by IL-3 in that it did not require protein synthesis and occurred at the level of transcription, with effects on both initiation and a transcription elongation block. However, v-abl-regulated FDC-P1 cell growth differed from IL-3-regulated growth in that c-fos and junB, which are normally induced by IL-3, were not induced by activation of v-abl.
The role of child maltreatment in early deviations in cognitive and affective processing abilities and later peer relationship problems

Abstract Despite considerable research demonstrating the adverse consequences of child maltreatment, including a heightened risk for adaptational failures and psychopathology, longitudinal evaluations of processes contributing to negative outcomes have been limited. Problems in peer relations constitute a critical developmental risk for future maladaptation among maltreated children, transferring relationship disturbance from the family to new interpersonal contexts. The linkages of a history of child maltreatment to early deviations in cognitive/affective processes, which subsequently lead to difficulties in peer relations were examined. Specifically, in a sample of 46 maltreated and 43 nonmaltreated low-income children, laboratory assessments of affect understanding and cognitive control functioning were conducted, followed by later peer and teacher assessments of peer relations in the school setting. Maltreated children were shown to evidence early deviations in their understanding of negative affect as well as immaturity in their cognitive controls. Maltreated children also were shown to have lower social effectiveness and higher levels of undercontrolled and aggressive behavior in the school setting. Physically abused children were found to be more rejected by their peers. Cognitive control functioning partially mediated the effect of maltreatment on later social effectiveness. Negative affect understanding mediated both the relation of maltreatment on later dysregulated behavior in the peer setting and the effect of physical abuse on later rejection by peers. The results are discussed in terms of their support for organizational/transactional theory and the implications they have for prevention and intervention.
Functional analysis of the Escherichia coli genome using the sequence-to-structure-to-function paradigm: identification of proteins exhibiting the glutaredoxin/thioredoxin disulfide oxidoreductase activity.

The application of an automated method for the screening of protein activity based on the sequence-to-structure-to-function paradigm is presented for the complete Escherichia coli genome. First, the structure of the protein is identified from its sequence using a threading algorithm, which aligns the sequences to the best matching structure in a structural database and extends sequence analysis well beyond the limits of local sequence identity. Then, the active site is identified in the resulting sequence-to-structure alignment using a "fuzzy functional form" (FFF), a three-dimensional descriptor of the active site of a protein. Here, this sequence-to-structure-to-function concept is applied to analysis of the complete E. coli genome, i.e. all E. coli open reading frames (ORFs) are screened for the thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase activity of the glutaredoxin/thioredoxin protein family. We show that the method can identify the active sites in ten sequences that are known to or proposed to exhibit this activity. Furthermore, oxidoreductase activity is predicted in two other sequences that have not been identified previously. This method distinguishes protein pairs with similar active sites from proteins pairs that are just topological cousins, i.e. those having similar global folds, but not necessarily similar active sites. Thus, this method provides a novel approach for extraction of active site and functional information based on three-dimensional structures, rather than simple sequence analysis. Prediction of protein activity is fully automated and easily extendible to new functions. Finally, it is demonstrated here that the method can be applied to complete genome database analysis.
[Survival and quality of life of patients with multiple organ failure one year after leaving an intensive care unit].

BACKGROUND The patients' mortality with multiple organ failure (MOF) is very high and patients who consume the most resources are those with uncertain prognosis. In order to use the limited resources adequately, it is necessary to know the cost-benefit relationship of their treatment and in this study cost, mortality, quality of life (QOL) of survivors who developed MOF has been investigated. PATIENTS AND METHODS Mortality in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and mortality QOL (with modified EuroQOL Instrument) one year after discharge were studied in 239 admitted patients who developed MOF. Cost was estimated from administrative dats of cost patients-day. To determine mortality independent predicting factors, a logistic regression model was used. RESULTS Of the 239 patients studied, 144 (60%) died in ICU and 29 (12%) died after discharge. The independent predicting factors of mortality one year after discharge from ICU were: age (p < 0.1, odds ratio [OR] = 1.02), cardiac surgery (p < 0.0000, OR = 0.1899) and trauma (p < 0.05, OR = 0.2287). Of the 66 surviving patients, 18% were severely discapacitated. Forty one percent recovered their previous QOL, 18% improved it and 39% got worse. Patients with MOF consumed 64% of ICU total resources and of these, 77% was consumed by patients who died and by severely discapacitated. CONCLUSION A high proportion of resources were used by MOF patients, but patients who died and who remained with worst QOL consumed the highest part. Although the mortality after one year was high (72%), 80% of the survivors achieved an acceptable QOL and for this reason, treatment of these patients should not be limited if survival and QOL predictions are not 100% correct.
The game performance assessment instrument (GPAI): development and preliminary validation.

The purpose of this article is to report on the development and validation of the Game Performance Assessment Instrument (GPAI). The GPAI is a multidimensional system designed to measure game performance behaviors that demonstrate tactical understanding, as well as the player’s ability to solve tactical problems by selecting and applying appropriate skills. The GPAI provides analyses of individual game performance components (e.g., decisions made, skill execution, and support) and/or overall performance (e.g., game involvement and game performance). The individual game performance components were developed and evaluated by experts to determine validity and reliability. The GPAI protocol was field tested across three categories of games: invasion (soccer and basketball), net/wall (volleyball), and field/run/score (softball). Validity and reliability were examined through three separate studies using middle school physical education specialists and their sixth-grade classes. Findings suggest that the GPAI p.
On the variance of identified SIMO systems with spatially correlated output noise

In this paper, we study the problem of evaluating the accuracy of identified linear single-input multi-output (SIMO) dynamical models, where the disturbances affecting the output measurements are spatially correlated. Assuming that the input is an observed white noise sequence, we provide an expression for the covariance matrix of the parameter estimates when weighted least-squares (WLS) are adopted to identify the parameters. Then, we show that, by describing one of the subsystems composing the SIMO structure using less parameters than the other subsystems, substantial improvement on the accuracy of the estimates of some parameters can be obtained. The amount of such an improvement depends critically on the covariance matrix of the output noise and we provide a condition on the noise correlation structure under which the mentioned model parametrization gives the lowest variance in the identified model. We illustrate the derived results through some numerical experiments.
High speed ECC implementation on FPGA over GF(2m)

High speed Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) implementations on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) are highly desirable for applications requiring high speed cost effective and flexible implementations of public key cryptography. Recently, many binary ECC hardware accelerators have been presented based on the Montgomery point multiplication by exploiting the underlying parallelism of the point multiplication (PM). In this paper, we present a combined Montgomery point multiplication algorithm to achieve low latency ECC point multiplication by using novel pipelined full precision parallel multipliers over GF(2m). We adopt a careful schedule of point operations to achieve low latency and a smart pipelining in the ECC architecture to reduce the critical path delay. Our proposed ECC architecture is implemented on Virtex5 (XCV5LX110) for a fair comparison and on Virtex7 (XC7VX550T) to quantify performance. Our Virtex5 based implementation over GF(2163), consumes 10363 slices, takes only 5.1 μs for an ECC point multiplication with a frequency of 153 MHz, and has a latency of 780 clock cycles. Our Virtex-5 performance outperforms the fastest reported work on the same platform. Our Virtex7 implementation which can compute an ECC PM in 3.50 μs at a frequency of 223 MHz while utilising only 8736 slices is the highest speed implementation reported to date on FPGA.
Estudio funcional del receptor dopaminérgico D2 en el sistema nervioso central mediante el uso de ratones mutantes inducibles

Liberaciones suboptimas o excesivas de dopamina son rasgos caracteristicos de varias patologias muy frecuentes que incluyen a la enfermedad de Parkinson, esquizofrenia, desorden de deficit atencional e hiperactividad (ADHD) y autoadministracion compulsiva de drogas de abuso. En este trabajo se estudio el rol del D2R mediante la generacion de ratones mutantes condicionales. En primer lugar, generamos ratones deficientes de D2R en las neuronas dopaminergicas (autorreceptores). Estos ratones tienen la sintesis y liberacion de dopamina aumentada, son hiperactivos e hipersensibles a los efectos psicomotores de la cocaina, y tienen mayor motivacion para trabajar por la comida. En segundo lugar, estudiamos los efectos de la perdida de D2Rs en animales adultos que se habian desarrollado normalmente en comparacion con ratones deficientes en D2Rs constitutivos que desarrollan programas compensatorios tempranos. La abrupta remocion de los D2R en la adultez provoco una marcada disminucion de la locomocion, problemas severos en el aprendizaje y la coordinacion de rutinas motoras. En algunos casos, se observo rigidez y temblor en los animales en reposo con caracteristicas de parkinsonismo. Los resultados obtenidos, demostraron la importancia de la estricta regulacion mediada por los D2R (pre y postsinapticos) en el control de la actividad locomotora, la sensibilidad a drogas de abuso y el estado motivacional de los animales.
Belief Propagation in Qualitative Probabilistic Networks 3

Qualitative probabilistic networks (QPNs) [13] are an abstraction of in uence diagrams and Bayesian belief networks replacing numerical relations by qualitative in uences and synergies. To reason in a QPN is to nd the e ect of decision or new evidence on a variable of interest in terms of the sign of the change in belief (increase or decrease). We review our work on qualitative belief propagation, a computationally e cient reasoning scheme based on local sign propagation in QPNs. Qualitative belief propagation, unlike the existing graph-reduction algorithm, preserves the network structure and determines the e ect of evidence on all nodes in the network. We show how this supports meta-level reasoning about the model and automatic generation of intuitive explanations of probabilistic reasoning.
Pharmacological activities of natural triterpenoids and their therapeutic implications.

Covering: 1990–2005. Previous review: Nat. Prod. Rep., 2005, 22, 487 This article reviews the pharmacological activity of naturally occurring triterpenoids excluding the degraded triterpenoids and cucurbitacins which have been reviewed recently. The therapeutic activities discussed include anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antiulcerogenic, antimicrobial and antiviral activity. 227 references are cited.
Endothelin‐induced contractions of tracheal smooth muscle and identification of specific endothelin binding sites in the trachea of the rat

1 The presence of specific binding sites and the contractile activity of the novel peptide, endothelin have been investigated in rat trachea. 2 Endothelin (10−8–10−5m) induced long‐lasting contraction of rat tracheal rings superfused with Krebs solution (EC50 5.4 × 10−6m). Contractions of the tissue to 10−6m endothelin were attenuated in Ca2+‐free medium containing 0.1 mM EGTA but unaffected by nicardipine (10−7m). 3 After equilibration in Ca2+‐free medium (without EGTA) a return to normal Ca2+ concentrations (2.5 mm), 30 min or 60 min following endothelin (10−6m), produced a sustained contraction of the tissue. 4 Specific binding sites for endothelin were identified on rat tracheal smooth muscle (KD 1.34 × 10−10m, maximal binding 1.2 fmol mm−2). Specific binding sites were also identified on nerve trunks. Endothelin binding was unaffected by co‐incubation with nicardipine (10−7m) or verapamil (10−7m). 5 The discrepancy between the apparent KD for endothelin binding and the EC50 for endothelin‐induced contraction suggests that the endothelin binding sites identified in this study may not be associated with the receptors mediating contraction. 6 These results indicate that endothelin binding sites are present on tracheal smooth muscle. The mechanism of endothelin‐induced contraction, whilst being dependent on extracellular calcium, does not appear to involve binding to the dihydropyridine‐ or verapamil‐sensitive sites on the voltage‐dependent Ca2+ channel. Its long duration of action may be associated with a sustained increase in Ca2+ permeability.
A stereo cameras setup for pedestrian detection enhancement

Pedestrian detection is an important and challenging area in computer vision with the potential to save lives. Although many works have already been developed to improve performance of pedestrian detection algorithms, none have yet been able to handle detection from afar due to pedestrians' small scales on images. This prevents these algorithms to be reliably applied to autonomous vehicles to avoid accidents on fast moving traffic. In this context, this paper proposes a cameras setup, which consists of two stereo cameras with different focal lengths and baselines, allowing to have higher pedestrian resolutions on images for a larger range of distances in front of the vehicle. Experimental results reveal a considerable enhancement on the detection performance, overcoming the difficulty caused by the reduced scale that pedestrians have on images.
Multiple imputation for missing data in a longitudinal cohort study: a tutorial based on a detailed case study involving imputation of missing outcome data

Abstract Multiple imputation (MI), a two-stage process whereby missing data are imputed multiple times and the resulting estimates of the parameter(s) of interest are combined across the completed datasets, is becoming increasingly popular for handling missing data. However, MI can result in biased inference if not carried out appropriately or if the underlying assumptions are not justifiable. Despite this, there remains a scarcity of guidelines for carrying out MI. In this paper we provide a tutorial on the main issues involved in employing MI, as well as highlighting some common pitfalls and misconceptions, and areas requiring further development. When contemplating using MI we must first consider whether it is likely to offer gains (reduced bias or increased precision) over alternative methods of analysis. Once it has been decided to use MI, there are a number of decisions that must be made during the imputation process; we discuss the extent to which these decisions can be guided by the current literature. Finally we highlight the importance of checking the fit of the imputation model. This process is illustrated using a case study in which we impute missing outcome data in a five-wave longitudinal study that compared extremely preterm individuals with term-born controls.
Agent Systems and Applications

As the number of deployed multi-agent applications increases, further and better experience with the technology is gained, enabling a strong evaluation of the field from a more practical perspective. In particular, questions relating to how the theory of multi-agent systems impacts on practice, and how the practical development itself compares with other technologies, can be answered in the light of a heightened level of maturity. Given the tensions between theoreticians and practitioners in computing in general, let alone their spats in AI or multi-agent systems in particular, the discussion on agent systems and applications was both vigorous and enthusiastic