Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Erythropoietin Regulates the In Vitro and In Vivo Production of Neuronal Progenitors by Mammalian Forebrain Neural Stem Cells

Recent studies have shown that neurogenesis is enhanced after hypoxia and that erythropoietin (EPO), an inducible cytokine, is produced in the brain as part of the intrinsic hypoxia response. Thus, we asked whether EPO might regulate neurogenesis by forebrain neural stem cells (NSCs). We found that EPO receptors are expressed in the embryonic germinal zone during neurogenesis as well as in the adult subventricular zone, which continues to generate neurons throughout adulthood. Cultured NSCs exposed to a modest hypoxia produced two- to threefold more neurons, which was associated with an elevation in EPO gene expression. The enhanced neuron production attributable to hypoxia was mimicked by EPO and blocked by coadministration of an EPO neutralizing antibody. EPO appears to act directly on NSCs, promoting the production of neuronal progenitors at the expense of multipotent progenitors. EPO infusion into the adult lateral ventricles resulted in a decrease in the numbers of NSCs in the subventricular zone, an increase in newly generated cells migrating to the olfactory bulb, and an increase in new olfactory bulb interneurons. Infusion of anti-EPO antibodies had the opposite effect: an increase in the number of NSCs in the subventricular zone and a decrease in the number of newly generated cells migrating to the bulb. These findings suggest that EPO is an autocrine–paracrine factor, capable of regulating the production of neuronal progenitor cells by forebrain NSCs.
enviroCar - Crowd Sourced Traffic and Environment Data for Sustainable Mobility

This paper introduces the enviroCar project which aims at crowd sourcing the collection of environmental and traffic data. For this purpose a data collection architecture relying on onboard sensors of cars, mobile phones and web services has been developed. Besides providing drivers with precise infor- mation about their driving style and its environmental/economical impact, the enviroCar system offers a new and complementary source of data for traffic planning tasks. The resulting data sets are published as anonymised open data and thus serve as a basis for collaboration between citizens, scientists as well as traffic planners in the sense of citizen science.
Causation, statistics, and sociology

Three different understandings of causation, each importantly shaped by the work of statisticians, are examined from the point of view of their value to sociologists: causation as robust dependence, causation as consequential manipulation, and causation as generative process. The last is favoured as the basis for causal analysis in sociology. It allows the respective roles of statistics and theory to be clarified and is appropriate to sociology as a largely non-experimental social science in which the concept of action is central
Star-Path Size Multipartite Ramsey Numbers Surahmat

For graphs G1, G2, · · · , Gk, the (generalized) size multipartite Ramsey number mj(G1, G2, · · · , Gk) is the least natural number l so that any colouring of the edges of Kj×l with k colours will yield a copy of Gi in the ith colour for some i. In this note, we determine the exact value of the size multipartite Ramsey number mj(Ps,K1,n) for all integers n and s, where Ps denotes a path on s vertices and K1,n denotes a star on n + 1 vertices. Mathematics Subject Classification: 05C55, 05D10
The activity of neurons in the rostral medulla of the rat during withdrawal from noxious heat

Neurons of the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM) have been implicated in the modulation of nociceptive transmission. In order to further analyze their role in pain behavior, we studied their activity while eliciting the tail flick reflex with noxious heat. Recording sites were regions in the RVM from which microstimulation (less than or equal to 10 microA, 400 mu sec, 50 Hz continuous pulse trains) inhibited the tail flick reflex. Extracellular unit activity and tail temperature were recorded, stored, and plotted with reference to either the time of tail flick or the time when the stimulating temperature reached 45 degrees C. Neuronal discharges were found to be either increased (on- cells), decreased (off-cells), or unchanged around the time of the tail flick. The decreases in discharge were more closely correlated with the tail flick behavior than with the temperature of the stimulus. These off-cells were located at sites of lowest threshold for tail flick inhibition and tended to be ventral to on-cells. We propose that off- cells must pause if the tail flick is to occur, and that this pausing allows the transmission of nociceptive input through spinal reflex loops.
A study of relative motion point trajectories for action recognition

Trajectories extracted by previous methods for human action recognition contain irrelevant changes, and the Orientation-Magnitude descriptors of their shapes lack the robustness to camera motion. To solve these problems, action recognition by tracking salient relative motion points is proposed in this paper. Firstly, motion boundary detector which suppresses the camera constant motion is utilized to extract motion features. After processing the detected boundaries by the adaptive threshold, the super-pixels that contain salient points are defined as relative motion regions. Then tracking the points within super-pixels is to generate trajectories. For the trajectory shape, the pre-defined orientation assignments with coarse-to-fine quantization levels are used to produce orientation statistics. Finally, the descriptors of oriented gradient, motion boundary, oriented statistic and their combination are adopted to represent action videos, respectively. On the benchmark KTH and UCF-sports action datasets, experimental results show that the extracted trajectories can describe the movement process of object. Compared with the conventional algorithms, our method with multiple kernel learning obtains good performance.
The ‘too few, too bright’ tropical low‐cloud problem in CMIP5 models

Previous generations of climate models have been shown to under‐estimate the occurrence of tropical low‐level clouds and to over‐estimate their radiative effects. This study analyzes outputs from multiple climate models participating in the Fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) using the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project Observations Simulator Package (COSP), and compares them with different satellite data sets. Those include CALIPSO lidar observations, PARASOL mono‐directional reflectances and CERES radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. We show that current state‐of‐the‐art climate models predict overly bright low‐clouds, even for a correct low‐cloud cover. The impact of these biases on the Earth' radiation budget, however, is reduced by compensating errors. Those include the tendency of models to under‐estimate the low‐cloud cover and to over‐estimate the occurrence of mid‐ and high‐clouds above low‐clouds. Finally, we show that models poorly represent the dependence of the vertical structure of low‐clouds on large‐scale environmental conditions. The implications of this ‘too few, too bright low‐cloud problem’ for climate sensitivity and model development are discussed.
A new three phase multilevel inverter topology with reduced number of switches with Common Mode Voltage elimination

This paper presents a new topology for a 3-φ, three step multilevel inverter (MLI) with Common Mode Voltage (CMV) elimination. The proposed MLI structure is realized with fewer switching power devices compared to the conventional MLI solutions for CMV elimination. Reduced number of switching power semiconductors results in a smaller amount of driver circuits, less installation space and low cost. Further, due to the elimination of CMV, the proposed MLI is free from issues like EMI and leakage current. Presented topology is compared with other topologies to prove its superiority. Simulation results are presented to confirm the capability of the proposed MLI.
The effect of leg dominance on lower limb kinematics during a 180° pivot maneuver in healthy female soccer players at three different stages of physical maturation

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of leg dominance on lower limb kinematics during a 180° pivot maneuver in healthy female soccer players at three different stages of maturation: pre-pubertal, pubertal, and post-pubertal. Twenty-seven athletes of four female soccer teams (Under 10, 12, 14, and 18 year old teams) were recruited from the Lakehead Express Soccer Club in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The modified Pubertal Maturation Observation Scale (PMOS) was used to classify nine participants into each maturational group: pre-pubertal (10.3 ± 1.1 years), pubertal (12 ± 1.4 years), or post-pubertal (14.8 ± 2.0 years). Testing involved the completion of a short maximal effort sprint coupled with a pivoting turn. This included a 3.5 m acceleration starting from a stationary position, immediately followed by a 180° pivot maneuver with either their dominant or non-dominant leg, and another 3.5 m acceleration towards and through the starting position. Trials were recorded using two Basler high-speed digital video cameras and timed using a wireless timing gate system. The angles of knee flexion, hip flexion, thigh and shank rotations, and hip abduction/adduction were evaluated at initial contact (IC), maximum knee flexion (MKF), and toe-off (TO) during the 180° pivot maneuver. To assess the interaction effects for each of the dependent variables, 2 (leg dominance) x 3 (maturation stage) x 3 (instants) factorial ANOVAs were used. Two significant interaction effects were observed between the post-pubertal and the pubertal groups for shank rotation angle. The post-pubertal group had a greater shank internal rotation angle with the nondominant leg at both MKF and TO. In addition, there were significant main effects for knee and hip flexion angles, hip adduction/abduction angle, and thigh and shank rotation angles among instants. Although not statistically significant, there were noteworthy, practically important trends observed in the data. The dominant leg had smaller knee flexion angles at each event MATURATION AND LIMB DOMINANCE ON PIVOTING TURN 3 within each group, smaller hip flexion angles within the post-pubertal group at IC and MKF and within the pubertal group, as well as larger adduction angles at MKF and TO within each group. Furthermore, the post-pubertal group had the largest peak hip abduction angles and hip flexion angles at IC when isolating on the dominant leg. The results of this study suggest that postpubertal females pivoting with their dominant leg perform kinematic patterns that may lead to a greater risk for an ACL in jury during a 180° pivot maneuver as compared to less mature players on the non-dominant leg. The use of the FIFA 11+ Warm-up Manual Part 1: Running Exercises by all participants in this study may have implications for the training of female soccer players, as statistically significant maturational differences were not observed. MATURATION AND LIMB DOMINANCE ON PIVOTING TURN 4 Table of
Cyclostationary Detection Based Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, cyclostationary detection Based spectrum sensing is considered for cognitive radio networks. We first summarize the existing first-order and second-order cyclostationary detection algorithms, which can be considered as a brief tutorial on detection theory of the cyclostationary signals. Based on this, we propose a cooperative spectrum sensing method for a cognitive radio networks with multiple terminals and one fusion center. It is shown that the proposed method have reliable performance even in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. It is also found that the increasing number of secondary users (SUs) can result in improved detection performance, especially at low SNR. Simulation results are then provided to corroborate the proposed studies.  Index Terms—Cognitive radio, cooperative spectrum sensing, cyclostationary detection.
Mechanism approach to artificial intelligence and emotion research

Both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Emotion (AE) have received much attention from academic as well as engineering circles. Structuralism, functionalism and behaviorism have been the three dominant approaches to the simulation of intelligence in history up to the present. All the approaches have made progress so far whereas they also, however, facing difficulties in their development. Further more, there have been no connections between the research in AI and that in AE. An attempt was thus made in the paper to propose another approach to the research in AI and AE. Different from the structuralism, functionalism and behaviorism, this approach is featured with the direct concern with the central mechanism of intelligence and emotion and is therefore termed mechanism approach. It is discovered as consequence that the transformations from information to knowledge and further to intelligence are the nucleus of the mechanism to AI and AE. A by-product that seems significant also achieved the same time that the three named approaches to AI can well be unified within the framework of mechanism approach. These discoveries, both AI and AE can successfully be simulated by mechanism approach and unifying the three approaches into harmonious one, may open up a new stage for the research in AI and AE as well as the integration of these two.
Incentive-Driven Energy Trading in the Smart Grid

The smart grid is widely considered as an efficient and intelligent power system. With the aid of communication technologies, the smart grid can enhance the efficiency and reliability of the grid system through intelligent energy management. However, with the development of new energy sources, storage and transmission technologies together with the heterogeneous architecture of the grid network, several new features have been incorporated into the smart grid. These features make the energy trading more complex and pose a significant challenge on designing efficient trading schemes. Based on this motivation, in this paper, we present a comprehensive review of several typical economic incentive approaches adopted in the energy-trading control mechanisms. We focus on the technologies that address the challenges specific to the new features of the smart grid. Furthermore, we investigate the energy trading in a new cloud-based vehicle-to-vehicle energy exchange scenario. We propose an optimal contract-based electricity trading scheme, which efficiently increases the generated profit.
How query extensions reflect search result abandonments

It is often considered that high abandonment rate corresponds to poor IR system performance. However several studies suggested that there are so called good abandonments, i.e. situations when search engine result page contains enough details to satisfy the user information need without necessity to click on search results. In this work we propose to look at query extensions. We see that an extension by itself might motivate abandonment type (good or bad) for the underlying query to some degree. We also propose a way to find potentially good abandonment extensions in an automated manner.
Changing spaces: the Arabidopsis mucilage secretory cells as a novel system to dissect cell wall production in differentiating cells

As the outer boundary of plant cells, the cell wall is integral to all aspects of plant growth, development, and interactions with the environment. Dicot primary cell walls are composed of a network of cellulose, hemicellulose and proteins embedded in a matrix of acidic pectins. Pectins are synthesized in the Golgi apparatus by the sequential addition of nucleotide sugars by glycosyltransferases, following which they are secreted to the apoplast. During their differentiation, the mucilage secretory cells (MSCs) of the Arabidopsis seed coat undergo sequential biosynthesis and secretion of a primarily pectinaceous mucilage followed by secondary cell wall production. Several genes affecting MSC differentiation have been identified with roles ranging from the production of nucleotide sugar substrates for pectin synthesis to putative cell wall modification enzymes to transcription factors required to control MSC differentiation. These preliminary studies of the MSCs demonstrate that they will play a valuable r.
Adaptive Caches: Effective Shaping of Cache Behavior to Workloads

We present and evaluate the idea of adaptive processor cache management. Specifically, we describe a novel and general scheme by which we can combine any two cache management algorithms (e.g., LRU, LFU, FIFO, Random) and adaptively switch between them, closely tracking the locality characteristics of a given program. The scheme is inspired by recent work in virtual memory management at the operating system level, which has shown that it is possible to adapt over two replacement policies to provide an aggregate policy that always performs within a constant factor of the better component policy. A hardware implementation of adaptivity requires very simple logic but duplicate tag structures. To reduce the overhead, we use partial tags, which achieve good performance with a small hardware cost. In particular, adapting between LRU and LFU replacement policies on an 8-way 512KB L2 cache yields a 12.7% improvement in average CPI on applications that exhibit a non-negligible L2 miss ratio. Our approach increases total cache storage by 4.0%, but it still provides slightly better performance than a conventional 10-way set-associative 640KB cache which requires 25% more storage
Immigration, Participation in Health Services and Social Occupations: A Literature Review

Introduction: According to the World Health Organisation ‘participation’, meaning involvement in everyday occupations, has a positive influence on health and wellbeing and lack thereof can lead to negative health consequences. Occupational therapy scholars believe this phenomenon needs exploring with attention to context. Variability is apparent in the way participation has been addressed in the context of voluntary immigration. This review aims to identify how the concept of participation and its association with the health and wellbeing of immigrants is addressed in research literature. Methods: A literature review method was applied. The data bases searched were: PubMed, ASSIA, CINHAL, PsycINFO, AMED, CRD, EBESCO Host, Sociological Abstract, Lexis and EMBASE. Articles that fulfilled all inclusion criteria were critically appraised in order to assess their quality. Sixteen articles from major related databases were included. Qualitative analysis was used throughout. Results: Participation was mostly identified by measuring the number of attendances or self-report of attendance in health-related services or social occupations. Four themes were identified: outlook of participation, contributing factors to participation, approaches to studying immigrants’ participation, and outcomes of participation. Conclusion: Participation lacks a common and exclusive definition that considers both objective and subjective experiences. How immigrants’ backgrounds and future perspectives affect what ‘participation’ means to them needs further exploration. The current publication has identified several contributing factors that need considering in health and social-related policies, plans and strategies. It is significant that enabling factors such as the positive attitude of immigrants, and providing support to immigrants can facilitate their participation pattern.
How do 16-18-year-old adolescents experience and respond to parental terminal illness and death? : an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Approximately 41,000 young people, under the age of 18, are bereaved of a parent each year within the U.K. (Child Bereavement Network, 2014; Winston’s Wish, 2016), and a significant number of these deaths will have been preceded by a period of terminal illness (TI). Adolescents are considered to be particularly susceptible to negative psychosocial outcomes when a parent is unwell (Grabiak, Bender & Puskar, 2007), yet adolescents as a group are less likely to access mental-health services (Reardon, Harvey, Baranowska, O’Brien, Smith & Creswell, 2017). Thus, whilst adolescents of terminally ill (TI) parents may present a vulnerable group, they may also be difficult to engage and subsequently support (Bremner, 2000). There has also been little consideration of how adolescents experience parental terminal illness (PTI), particularly considering their perceptions and experiences of support during this period. This study qualitatively explores the experiences of six individuals who had a parent diagnosed with a TI during late adolescence. Their experiences are explored in terms of their understanding, processing and adjustment to their parent’s TI, both as an individual, and in the context of their wider family and social setting. Their experiences and perceptions of support are additionally explored; considering the role of supportive individuals, services and interventions. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was employed to analyse participant data. Participants were individuals who had a parent diagnosed with a terminal illness aged 16-18. Four superordinate themes emerged from the data: 1) ‘Changing family dynamics’ 2) ‘grappling with adolescence and adjustment to loss’ 3) ‘Barriers to feeling/being supported’ 4) ‘Living with the consequences’. Participants relate the profound impact that PTI during adolescence has had and continues to have on their lives. Whilst there are prominent threads of difficulty and distress, elements of positive change and growth are also highlighted. Implications are discussed in terms of service provision and design, including therapeutic recommendations for counselling psychologists and other professionals working with this group.
An Analog VLSI Implementation of the Wake-Sleep Learning Algorithm Using BiStable Synaptic Weights

Drawing on biological systems for their inspiration, typical supervised neural networks learn to classify features within a set of inputs through repetition. Here, we focus on using an auto-encoder network to memorize each item in a set of inputs rather than to classify them. We have simulated this network in MATLAB using the “Wake-Sleep” learning algorithm proposed by Hinton et al. [1] and demonstrated that the algorithm can be used successfully with binary synaptic weights trained in a bistable manner. Working from these simulations, we have designed and simulated a low power analog VLSI synapse circuit with analog but bi-stable weights that can implement the WakeSleep algorithm.
Repurposing of conserved autophagy-related protein ATG8 in a divergent eukaryote

ABSTRACT Toxoplasma gondii and other apicomplexan parasites contain a peculiar non-photosynthetic plastid called the apicoplast, which is essential for their survival. The localization of autophagy-related protein ATG8 to the apicoplast in several apicomplexan species and life stages has recently been described, and we have shown this protein is essential for proper inheritance of this complex plastid into daughter cells during cell division. Although the mechanism behind ATG8 association to the apicoplast in T. gondii is related to the canonical conjugation system leading to autophagosome formation, its singular role seems independent from the initial catabolic purpose of autophagy. Here we also discuss further the functional evolution and innovative adaptations of the autophagy machinery to maintain this organelle during parasite division.