Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shift toward Mechanical Isolation of Adipose-derived Stromal Vascular Fraction: Review of Upcoming Techniques

Background: Standard isolation of adipose stromal vascular fraction (SVF) requires the use of collagenase and is considered more than “minimally manipulated” by current good manufacturing practice requirements. Alternatively, nonenzymatic isolation methods have surfaced using physical forces to separate cells from the adipose matrix. The purpose of this study was to review the literature on the use of mechanical isolation protocols and compare the results. The implication for use as a standard procedure in practice is discussed. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed on mechanical isolation of SVF with a search of six terms on PubMed and Medline databases. One thousand sixty-six articles were subject to evaluation by predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: Two level 2 evidence articles and 7 in vitro studies were selected. SVF was isolated using automated closed systems or by subjecting the lipoaspirate to centrifugation only or by shaking or vortexing followed by centrifugation. Six articles reported isolation in laboratory settings and three inside the operating room. Stromal vascular cells expressed CD34, and CD44, CD73, CD90, and CD105, and differentiated along adipogenic and osteogenic lineages. When compared with enzymatic methods, mechanical isolation required less time but yielded fewer cells. Both case–control studies reported improved volume retention with cell-supplemented fat grafts for breast reconstruction. Conclusions: Mechanical isolation methods are alternatives to circumvent safety issues posed by enzymatic protocols. However, randomized comparative studies with long-term clinical outcomes using mechanically isolated stromal vascular cells are needed to identify their ideal clinical applications.
Affine Transformation of Multiple Mobile Robot Formation by Generalized Ant Colony Optimization

Transformation of a multi-robot formation is one of basic problems of coordination. A transformation scheme for the multi-robot formation is proposed in this paper by imposing algorithms of affine transformation and generalized ant colony optimization (GACO). The affine transformation pre-determine target positions of each robot. Then, the GACO algorithm can help the robots find the shortest paths to their target positions. The coordination between robots is obtained by the sense and communication technology, which is supposed to be equipped in the robots. The sense can make the robot perceive obstacles as well as its neighbors in the natural environment, especially, in a blind area. Therefore, the multi-robot system can change its formation to the new one without any collision. The proposed transformation is effectively used in a simulation of a seven-robot system by Star-Logo.
Resilience in the Face of Disaster: Prevalence and Longitudinal Course of Mental Disorders following Hurricane Ike

Objectives Natural disasters may increase risk for a broad range of psychiatric disorders, both in the short- and in the medium-term. We sought to determine the prevalence and longitudinal course of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder (PD), depression, and suicidality in the first 18 months after Hurricane Ike. Methods Six hundred fifty-eight adults representative of Galveston and Chambers Counties, Texas participated in a random, population-based survey. The initial assessment was conducted 2 to 5 months after Hurricane Ike struck Galveston Bay on September 13, 2008. Follow-up assessments were conducted at 5 to 9 and 14 to 18 months after Hurricane Ike. Results Past-month prevalence of any mental disorder (20.6% to 10.9%) and hurricane-related PTSD (6.9% to 2.5%) decreased over time. Past-month prevalence of PTSD related to a non-disaster traumatic event (5.8% to 7.1%), GAD (3.1% to 1.8%), PD (0.8% to 0.7%), depression (5.0% to 5.6%), and suicidality (2.6% to 4.2%) remained relatively stable over time. Conclusions PTSD, both due to the hurricane and due to other traumatic events, was the most prevalent psychiatric disorder 2 to 5 months after Hurricane Ike. Prevalence of psychiatric disorders declined rapidly over time, suggesting that the vast majority of individuals exposed to this natural disaster ‘bounced back’ and were resilient to long-term mental health consequences of this large-scale traumatic event.
The cost of migration: spoonbills suffer higher mortality during trans-Saharan spring migrations only

Explanations for the wide variety of seasonal migration patterns of animals all carry the assumption that migration is costly and that this cost increases with migration distance. Although in some studies, the relationships between migration distance and breeding success or annual survival are established, none has investigated whether mortality during the actual migration increases with migration distance. Here, we compared seasonal survival between Eurasian spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia leucorodia) that breed in The Netherlands and migrate different distances (ca 1000, 2000 and 4500 km) to winter in France, Iberia and Mauritania, respectively. On the basis of resightings of individually marked birds throughout the year between 2005 and 2012, we show that summer, autumn and winter survival were very high and independent of migration distance, whereas mortality during spring migration was much higher (18%) for the birds that wintered in Mauritania, compared with those flying only as far as France (5%) or Iberia (6%). As such, this study is the first to show empirical evidence for increased mortality during some long migrations, likely driven by the presence of a physical barrier (the Sahara desert) in combination with suboptimal fuelling and unfavourable weather conditions en route.
Virus-induced Interferon α Production by a Dendritic Cell Subset in the Absence of Feedback Signaling In Vivo

An effective type I interferon (IFN-α/β) response is critical for the control of many viral infections. Here we show that in vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV)-infected mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) the production of IFN-α is dependent on type I IFN receptor (IFNAR) triggering, whereas in infected mice early IFN-α production is IFNAR independent. In VSV-infected mice type I IFN is produced by few cells located in the marginal zone of the spleen. Unlike other dendritic cell (DC) subsets, FACS®-sorted CD11cintCD11b−GR-1+ DCs show high IFN-α expression, irrespective of whether they were isolated from VSV-infected IFNAR-competent or -deficient mice. Thus, VSV preferentially activates a specialized DC subset presumably located in the marginal zone to produce high-level IFN-α largely independent of IFNAR feedback signaling.
Sensory gating in primary insomnia

Although previous research indicates that sleep architecture is largely intact in primary insomnia (PI), the spectral content of the sleeping electroencephalographic trace and measures of brain metabolism suggest that individuals with PI are physiologically more aroused than good sleepers. Such observations imply that individuals with PI may not experience the full deactivation of sensory and cognitive processing, resulting in reduced filtering of external sensory information during sleep. To test this hypothesis, gating of sensory information during sleep was tested in participants with primary insomnia (n = 18) and good sleepers (n = 20). Sensory gating was operationally defined as (i) the difference in magnitude of evoked response potentials elicited by pairs of clicks presented during Wake and Stage II sleep, and (ii) the number of K complexes evoked by the same auditory stimulus. During wake the groups did not differ in magnitude of sensory gating. During sleep, sensory gating of the N350 component was attenuated and completely diminished in participants with insomnia. P450, which occurred only during sleep, was strongly gated in good sleepers, and less so in participants with insomnia. Additionally, participants with insomnia showed no stimulus‐related increase in K complexes. Thus, PI is potentially associated with impaired capacity to filter out external sensory information, especially during sleep. The potential of using stimulus‐evoked K complexes as a biomarker for primary insomnia is discussed.
How Useful is an Integrated SPECT/CT in Clinical Setting and Research?: Evaluation of a Low Radiation Dose 4 Slice System §

Hybrid imaging is becoming a popular technology in nuclear medicine. We have evaluated the added value of an integrated SPECT/low-dose multislice CT over conventional planar/SPECT nuclear imaging. Phantom and clinical studies were performed on the Infinia™ Hawkeye™ 4 slice (HWK-4) with an upgraded software package (Xeleris 2.05v) from GE Heatlthcare to assess 1) the benefit of CT for contrast-resolution, attenuation correction, and anatomic localisation; 2) the impact of hybrid imaging in 456 consecutive patients in a clinical setting. SPECT/CT data were compared to conventional planar/SPECT data and correlated to clinical, biochemical, morphological imaging, angiography, and pathology findings. SPECT/CT was well tolerated by the patients with minimal CT irradiation dose (< 2mSv). HWK-4 provided useful attenuation correction for its routine use in MPI and accurate anatomic localisation of physiological and pathological foci in 99m Tc-RBC, 99m Tc-HMPAO-WBC, 131/123 I-MIBG, Octreoscan ® , and 67 Ga studies. Low-dose multislice CT also helped detect gross morphological abnormalities. Hybrid imaging had a significant impact in ProstaScint ® and parathyroid imaging for image-guided intervention. In bone imaging and differentiated thyroid cancers, SPECT/CT was able to clarify equivocal findings from planar whole-body scan. SPECT/CT was also found useful to precisely localize sentinel lymph nodes. Research protocols are being evaluated for half-time acquisition with resolution recovery and quantification of tracer distribution. SPECT/low-dose multislice CT has been successfully implemented in routine clinical practice. CT provided added value for effective attenuation correction and accurate anatomic localisation of disease with an impact on patient management.
Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments

This chapter treats computer game playing as an affective activity, largely guided by the audio-visual aesthetics of game content (of which, here, we concentrate on the role of sound) and the pleasure of gameplay. To understand the aesthetic impact of game sound on player experience, definitions of emotions are briefly discussed and framed in the game context. This leads to an introduction of empirical methods for assessing physiological and psychological effects of play, such as the affective impact of sonic player-game interaction. The psychological methodology presented is largely based on subjective interpretation of experience, while psychophysiological methodology is based on measurable bodily changes, such as context-dependent, physiological experience. As a means to illustrate both the potential and the difficulties inherent in such methodology we discuss the results of some experiments that investigate game sound and music effects and, finally, we close with a discussion of possible research directions based on a speculative assessment of the future of player-game interaction through affective sound.
A comparison of adaptive appearance methods for tracking faces in video surveillance

Face recognition is increasingly employed by public safety organizations in decision support systems for video surveillance, to detect the presence of individuals of interest. In the context of spatiotemporal face recognition, tracking is an important function used to locate, follow and regroup faces of different individuals in a scene. Techniques for face tracking in video surveillance should be robust to changes in pose, expression and illumination, as well as occlusion in cluttered scenes. Given these challenges, trackers based on adaptive appearance modelling (AAM) typically improve target’s state estimation because they initiate and update an internal face model per individual according to changes in facial appearance. In this paper, the performance of three AAM trackers – Incremental Visual Tracking (IVT), Tracking Learning Detection (TLD) and Discriminative Sparse Coding based Tracking (DSCT) – are compared for face tracking with video surveillance applications in mind. These methods are evaluated according to area overlap error, tracking error and time complexity using Chokepoint videos collected in uncontrolled video-surveillance environments, where individuals walk through portals. Results indicate that IVT outperforms the others in its ability to accurately track faces in the presence of occlusion, and under variations in pose, scale and lighting. Further characterization of IVT indicates that using a small batch size and forgetting factor during update provide better tracking accuracy when face tracks changes in their capture conditions. When conditions change more gradually, IVT benefits from assessing facial quality before updating face models.
Universal Piecewise Polynomial Estimators for Machine Learning

We review and expand somewhat on some recent developments concerning the construction and analysis of piecewise polynomial estimators for the regression problem in Mathematical Learning Theory. The discussion will center on two issues. The ﬁrst of these is computational eﬃciency including possible online capability. The second is universality by which we mean the capability of the estimator to give rise to optimal convergence rates for a possibly wide class of prior classes without using any a-priori knowledge on the memebership of the regression function to any of these classes. More precisely, the main point of interest are estimators for which the probability of exceeding an optimal rate tends to zero as the number m of observed data increases. We focus on nonlinear methods built on piecewise polynomial approximation on adaptively reﬁned partitions. We describe a class of schemes that are inspired by thresholding concepts for wavelet expansions. We point out obstacles to treating piecewise polynomials of degree higher than one as compared with piecewise constant estimators and discuss several possible remedies.
2 Np-hardness

This lecture is about hardness and computational problems that seem hard. Almost all of the theory of hardness is based on assumptions. We make assumptions about some problems, then we do reductions from one problem to another. Then, we want to make the minimal number of assumptions necessary to show computational hardness. In fact, all work on computational complexity and hardness is essentially in designing efficient algorithms.
Methods for Motion Generation and Interaction with a Humanoid Robot: Case Studies of Dancing and Catching

We focus on creating realistic, adaptable movement for humanoid robots and virtual characters. Here we present motion synthesis of dance movements for a humanoid robot, and interactive behavior for catching. Our approach to motion generation includes collection of example human movements, handling of marker occlusion, extraction of motion parameters, and trajectory generation, all of which must be handled in such a way as to be faithful to the style of the original movements. In our interactive behavior, we generate ball-glove impact predictions and intercept motion trajectories for a real time catching task. In this paper we present our results and discuss ideas for future improvements.
Crosstalk from Non-Cancerous Mitochondria Can Inhibit Tumor Properties of Metastatic Cells by Suppressing Oncogenic Pathways

Mitochondrial-nucleus cross talks and mitochondrial retrograde regulation can play a significant role in cellular properties. Transmitochondrial cybrid systems (cybrids) are an excellent tool to study specific effects of altered mitochondria under a defined nuclear background. The majority of the studies using the cybrid model focused on the significance of specific mitochondrial DNA variations in mitochondrial function or tumor properties. However, most of these variants are benign polymorphisms without known functional significance. From an objective of rectifying mitochondrial defects in cancer cells and to establish mitochondria as a potential anticancer drug target, understanding the role of functional mitochondria in reversing oncogenic properties under a cancer nuclear background is very important. Here we analyzed the potential reversal of oncogenic properties of a highly metastatic cell line with the introduction of non-cancerous mitochondria. Cybrids were established by fusing the mitochondria DNA depleted 143B TK- ρ0 cells from an aggressive osteosarcoma cell line with mitochondria from benign breast epithelial cell line MCF10A, moderately metastatic breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-468 and 143B cells. In spite of the uniform cancerous nuclear background, as observed with the mitochondria donor cells, cybrids with benign mitochondria showed high mitochondrial functional properties including increased ATP synthesis, oxygen consumption and respiratory chain activities compared to cybrids with cancerous mitochondria. Interestingly, benign mitochondria could reverse different oncogenic characteristics of 143B TK- cell including cell proliferation, viability under hypoxic condition, anti-apoptotic properties, resistance to anti-cancer drug, invasion, and colony formation in soft agar, and in vivo tumor growth in nude mice. Microarray analysis suggested that several oncogenic pathways observed in cybrids with cancer mitochondria are inhibited in cybrids with non-cancerous mitochondria. These results suggest the critical oncogenic regulation by mitochondrial-nuclear cross talk and highlights rectifying mitochondrial functional properties as a promising target in cancer therapy.
Revolutionary Optimization by Evolutionary Principles

1. Introduction Optimization is an activity which does not belong to any particular discipline and is routinely used in almost all fields of science, engineering and commerce. The Chambers dictionary describes optimization as an act of 'making the most or best of anything'. Theoretically speaking, performing an optimization task in a problem means finding the most or best suitable solution of the problem. Mathematical optimization studies spend a great deal of effort in trying to describe the properties of such an ideal solution. Engineering or practical optimization studies, on the other hand, thrive to look for a solution which is as similar to such an ideal solution as possible. Although the ideal optimal solution is desired, the restrictions on computing power and time often make the practitioners happy with an approximate solution. Serious studies on practical optimization begun as early as the Second World War, when the need for efficient deployment and resource allocation of military personnel and accessories became important. Most development in the so-called 'classical' optimization field was made by developing step-by-step procedures for solving a particular type of an optimization problem. Often fundamental ideas from geometry and calculus were borrowed to reach the optimum in an iterative manner. Such optimization procedures have enjoyed a good 50 years of research and applications and are still going strong. However, around the middle of eighties, completely unorthodox and less-mathematical yet intriguing optimization procedures have been suggested mostly by computer scientists. It is not surprising because these 'non-traditional' optimization methods exploit the fast and distributed computing machines which are
Gene Variants of TCF7L2 Influence Weight Loss and Body Composition During Lifestyle Intervention in a Population at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE The impact of the diabetes risk gene transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2) on body weight is unclear. As TCF7L2 is expressed in adipose tissue and involved in Wnt-dependent regulation of adipogenesis, we studied the impact of TCF7L2 variants on body composition and weight loss during lifestyle intervention. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We genotyped 309 German subjects at increased risk for type 2 diabetes for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs7903146, rs12255372, rs11196205, and rs7895340 in TCF7L2 and performed oral glucose tolerance tests before and after a 9-month lifestyle intervention. Fat distribution was quantified using whole-body magnetic resonance imaging/spectroscopy in a subgroup of 210 subjects. RESULTS After adjustment for confounding variables, we observed a negative impact of the type 2 diabetes allele of SNP rs7903146 on change in BMI (P = 0.0034) and on changes in nonvisceral (P = 0.0032) and visceral fat (P = 0.0165) during lifestyle intervention. An association of rs7903146 with lifestyle intervention-induced changes in insulin secretion, glucose concentrations, liver fat, or insulin sensitivity were not detected (all P > 0.2). Essentially the same results were obtained with SNP rs1255372. In contrast, we found no effects of SNPs rs11196205 and rs7895340 on change in BMI (all P ≥ 0.5). CONCLUSIONS Our data reveal that diabetes-associated alleles of TCF7L2 are associated with less weight loss in response to lifestyle intervention. Thus, diabetes-associated TCF7L2 gene variation predicts the success of lifestyle intervention in terms of weight loss and determines individual susceptibility toward environmental factors.
Assessing the Impact of the homeML Format and the homeML Suite within the Research Community

The lack of a standard format to store data generated within the smart environments research domain is limiting the opportunity for researchers to share and reuse datasets. The opportunity to exchange datasets is further hampered due to the lack of an online resource to facilitate this. In our current work we have attempted to resolve these issues through the development of homeML, a proposed format to support the storage and exchange of data generated within a smart environment and the homeML suite, an online tool to support data exchange and reuse. A usability and functionality study performed by 8 unbiased members of the research community is presented and discussed. All participants in the study agreed that the homeML format could address the need for a standard format within this domain. Participants also agreed that the homeML suite would be a useful tool to be available to researchers as they perform experiments in the area of smart environments.
A Micro-foundational Model and Analysis of Evolving Social Networks

Many societies are organized in networks that are formed by people who meet and interact over time. In this paper, we present a first model to capture the micro-foundations of social networks evolution, where boundedly rational agents of different types join the network; meet other agents stochastically over time; and consequently decide to form social ties. A basic premise of our model is that in real-world networks, agents form links by reasoning about the benefits that agents they meet over time can bestow. We study the evolution of the emerging networks in terms of friendship and popularity acquisition given the following exogenous parameters: structural opportunism, type distribution, homophily, and social gregariousness. We show that the time needed for an agent to find "friends" is influenced by the exogenous parameters: agents who are more gregarious, more homophilic, less opportunistic, or belong to a type "minority" spend a longer time on average searching for friendships. Moreover, we show that preferential attachment is a consequence of an emerging doubly preferential meeting process: a process that guides agents of a certain type to meet more popular similar-type agents with a higher probability, thereby creating asymmetries in the popularity evolution of different types of agents.