Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ENERGY LOSS IN A STRONGLY COUPLED THERMAL MEDIUM AND THE GAUGE-STRING DUALITY

We review methods developed in the gauge-string duality to treat energy loss by energetic probes of a strongly coupled thermal medium. After introducing the black hole description of the thermal medium, we discuss the trailing string behind a heavy quark and the drag force that it implies. We then explain how to solve the linearized Einstein equations in the presence of the trailing string and extract from the solutions the energy density and the Poynting vector of the dual gauge theory. We summarize some efforts to compare these calculations to heavy ion phenomenology.
Does Cataract Surgery Alleviate Poverty? Evidence from a Multi-Centre Intervention Study Conducted in Kenya, the Philippines and Bangladesh

Background Poverty and blindness are believed to be intimately linked, but empirical data supporting this purported relationship are sparse. The objective of this study is to assess whether there is a reduction in poverty after cataract surgery among visually impaired cases. Methodology/Principal Findings A multi-centre intervention study was conducted in three countries (Kenya, Philippines, Bangladesh). Poverty data (household per capita expenditure – PCE, asset ownership and self-rated wealth) were collected from cases aged ≥50 years who were visually impaired due to cataract (visual acuity<6/24 in the better eye) and age-sex matched controls with normal vision. Cases were offered free/subsidised cataract surgery. Approximately one year later participants were re-interviewed about poverty. 466 cases and 436 controls were examined at both baseline and follow-up (Follow up rate: 78% for cases, 81% for controls), of which 263 cases had undergone cataract surgery (“operated cases”). At baseline, operated cases were poorer compared to controls in terms of PCE (Kenya: $22 versus £35 p = 0.02, Bangladesh: $16 vs $24 p = 0.004, Philippines: $24 vs 32 p = 0.0007), assets and self-rated wealth. By follow-up PCE had increased significantly among operated cases in each of the three settings to the level of controls (Kenya: $30 versus £36 p = 0.49, Bangladesh: $23 vs $23 p = 0.20, Philippines: $45 vs $36 p = 0.68). There were smaller increases in self-rated wealth and no changes in assets. Changes in PCE were apparent in different socio-demographic and ocular groups. The largest PCE increases were apparent among the cases that were poorest at baseline. Conclusions/Significance This study showed that cataract surgery can contribute to poverty alleviation, particularly among the most vulnerable members of society. This study highlights the need for increased provision of cataract surgery to poor people and shows that a focus on blindness may help to alleviate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Language Learning Disabilities

Developmental language learning impairments affect 10 to 20% of children and increase their risk of later literacy problems (dyslexia) and psychiatric disorders. Both oral- and written-language impairments have been linked to slow neural processing, which is hypothesized to interfere with the perception of speech sounds that are characterized by rapid acoustic changes. Research into the etiology of language learning impairments not only has led to improved diagnostic and intervention strategies, but also has raised fundamental questions about the neurobiological basis of speech, language, and reading, as well as hemispheric lateralization.
Ist Negativsymptomatik bei Schizophrenie überhaupt behandelbar? Ein systematisches Literaturreview zur Wirksamkeit psychotherapeutischer Interventionen für Negativsymptomatik

Die Negativsymptomatik stellt einen der bedeutendsten Prädiktoren für Einschränkungen im Funktionsniveau von Menschen mit Schizophrenie dar. Allerdings wird dieser Symptombereich weitgehend als nicht behandelbar wahrgenommen. In diesem Artikel hinterfragen wir dieses Vorurteil, indem wir die Ergebnisse der existierenden Wirksamkeitsstudien für Behandlungsprogramme für Negativsymptomatik zusammenstellen. Wir beschränkten uns bei unserer systematischen Literatursuche ausschließlich auf Studien, die die Negativsymptomatik als primäres Behandlungsziel auswiesen, da vorherige Übersichtsarbeiten diesen Aspekt vernachlässigt hatten. Wir identifizierten 36 Studien, die gezielt die Wirksamkeit psychologischer Interventionen für Negativsymptomatik bei Störungen aus dem schizophrenen Formenkreis überprüften. Insgesamt stellten sich die Ergebnisse der Studien wie folgt dar: Der Behandlungseffekt für die motivationalen Komponenten der Negativsymptomatik war am größten in Studien, die kognitive Verhaltenstherapie und/oder soziale Kompetenztrainings verwendeten. Die größten Behandlungseffekte für die Affektverflachung ergaben sich in Studien zu nonverbalen Behandlungsansätzen wie der körperorientierten Psychotherapie. Auch für kognitive Remediation wurden positive Behandlungseffekte für die Negativsymptomatik gefunden, die allerdings nur teilweise mit einer Verbesserung der kognitiven Leistungsfähigkeit zusammenhingen. Obwohl es an methodisch guten Therapiestudien mangelt, zeigt unsere Literaturübersicht, dass die Negativsymptomatik psychotherapeutisch durchaus behandelbar ist. Unsere Zusammenstellung kann vor diesem Hintergrund als Entscheidungsstütze bei der Therapieplanung für Patienten mit Negativsymptomatik dienen.
Enabling Power-Efficient Designs with III-V Tunnel FETs

III-V Tunnel FETs (TFET) possess unique characteristics such as steep slope switching, high gm/IDS, uni-directional conduction, and low voltage operating capability. These characteristics have the potential to result in energy savings in both digital and analog applications. In this paper, we provide an overview of the power efficient properties of III-V TFETs and designs at the device, circuit and architectural level.
Generalized God-Objects: a Paradigm for Interacting with Physically-Based Virtual World

In this paper, we show a method to interact with physically-based environments in a way which guarantee their integrity whatever the mechanical properties of the virtual interaction tool and the control device. It consists in an extension of the god-object concept. The interaction tools are modeled as physical bodies which tend to reach, if possible, the position maintained by the user. Their behavior is computed via the dynamic laws of motion by the simulation engine, as the other bodies in the scene. The cases of articulated rigid bodies and deformable bodies are studied. This mechanism also provides a unified framework which allows the control of virtual objects via devices providing force feedback or not. Finally, some applications including virtual surgery are shown to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.
Generating a Long Range Plan for a New Class of Astronomical Observatories

We present a long range planning (LRP) system, the Spike Plan Window Scheduler, which has been in use for observations on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for the past four years and which is being adapted for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) and Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) orbiting astronomical observatories. Due to the relatively underconstrained nature of this domain, generating a long range plan is not handled in the traditional AI planning sense of generating operators to achieve goals. Rather, producing an LRP is treated as a type of scheduling problem where what is being scheduled are not the scientific observations themselves, but “plan windows” for the scientific observations. This paper investigates planning subproblems which arise in this type of domain. In particular, we discuss the SIRTF Long Range Plan which requires planning of “instrument campaigns” in conjunction with observation plan window scheduling.
Privacy-Assured Outsourcing of Image Reconstruction Service in Cloud

Large-scale image data sets are being exponentially generated today. Along with such data explosion is the fast-growing trend to outsource the image management systems to the cloud for its abundant computing resources and benefits. How to protect the sensitive data while enabling outsourced image services, however, becomes a major concern. To address these challenges, we propose outsourced image recovery service (OIRS), a novel outsourced image recovery service architecture, which exploits different domain technologies and takes security, efficiency, and design complexity into consideration from the very beginning of the service flow. Specifically, we choose to design OIRS under the compressed sensing framework, which is known for its simplicity of unifying the traditional sampling and compression for image acquisition. Data owners only need to outsource compressed image samples to cloud for reduced storage overhead. In addition, in OIRS, data users can harness the cloud to securely reconstruct images without revealing information from either the compressed image samples or the underlying image content. We start with the OIRS design for sparse data, which is the typical application scenario for compressed sensing, and then show its natural extension to the general data for meaningful tradeoffs between efficiency and accuracy. We thoroughly analyze the privacy-protection of OIRS and conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the system effectiveness and efficiency. For completeness, we also discuss the expected performance speedup of OIRS through hardware built-in system design.
A labor of love? Emotion work in intimate relationships

Drawing on relational developmental systems and gender relations perspectives, this study analyzed data from 1,932 heterosexual couples from Waves 1 and 2 of the German Family Panel to answer three questions: (1) What are the longitudinal associations between male and female partners’ emotion work provision and relationship satisfaction? (2) Are there gender differences in associations between emotion work and relationship satisfaction? (3) Does autonomy moderate associations among these focal variables? An actor–partner interdependence model revealed emotion work was linked to heightened future relationship satisfaction, and female partners’ emotion work was the strongest predictor of both partners’ relationship satisfaction. Latent variable interactions demonstrated male partners’ emotion work was linked to female partners’ heightened relationship satisfaction only when men also reported high levels of autonomy. Emotion work may be a “labor of love” that builds future relationship satisfaction while under the differential “management” of autonomous self-representation and gender norms of affective care.
Risk factors for infection with carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae: a case-case-control study

Objetive: To evaluate the association between quinolone exposure and the emergence of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) and to estimate CRKP-specific mortality. Methods: Case-case-control study implemented in a tertiary care institution. Three groups of patients were analyzed: 61 consecutive cases of infection with CRKP (Group I); 61 randomly chosen cases of patients infected with carbapenem-sensitive Klebsiella pneumoniae (CSKP; Group II); and 122 randomly chosen controls without CRKP or CSKP infection. Matching was based on the length of stay in intensive care unit and the date of bacterial isolation. An active search was performed for patients with CRKP and CSKP infection, and prospective cases were included in the study. We compared the results for Groups I and II against those for the controls by using two conditional logistic regression analyses that included infection as the dependent variable and controlled for time at risk and comorbidities. Results: Exposure to quinolones was not associated with CRKP infection: no association was found in the analysis of CRKP with the controls (OR= 1.7; 95% CI: 0.2-6.5) or in the analysis of CSKP against the controls (OR= 0.6; 95% CI: 0.2-1.6). Use of carbapenems (OR= 3.3; 95% CI: 1.2-9.3) and colonization with CRKP (OR= 3.3; 95% IC: 1.2-9.3) were specific risk factors for infection with CRKP. Mortality associated with CRKP was 61.3%. Conclusion: No association was found between exposure to quinolones and infection with CRKP; however, colonization by CRKP and use of carbapenems are risk factors for infection with CRKP.
Convergence of a Finite Difference Scheme to Weak Solutions of the System of Partial Differential Equations Arising in Mean Field Games

Mean field--type models describing the limiting behavior of stochastic differential games as the number of players tends to $+\infty$ were recently introduced by Lasry and Lions. Under suitable assumptions, they lead to a system of two coupled partial differential equations, a forward Bellman equation and a backward Fokker--Planck equation. Finite difference schemes for the approximation of such systems have been proposed in previous works. Here, we prove the convergence of these schemes towards a weak solution of the system of partial differential equations.
HLA-G as a Tolerogenic Molecule in Transplantation and Pregnancy

HLA-G is a nonclassical HLA class I molecule. In allogeneic situations such as pregnancy or allograft transplantation, the expression of HLA-G has been related to a better acceptance of the fetus or the allograft. Thus, it seems that HLA-G is crucially involved in mechanisms shaping an allogeneic immune response into tolerance. In this contribution we focus on (i) how HLA-G is involved in transplantation and human reproduction, (ii) how HLA-G is regulated by genetic and microenvironmental factors, and (iii) how HLA-G can offer novel perspectives with respect to therapy.
Simulation of the fault management with Self Healing mechanism (case study: LTE Network in Banda Aceh Area)

Fault management becomes an important part of operation and maintenance procedure. Operator cellular needs to reduce the number of errors, such us degradation or outage to provide a good service quality of the network. An automation is one of challenges to make operation and maintenance procedure becomes simpler. This paper presents a simulation of the Self-Healing mechanism in LTE network with a case study in the Banda Aceh Area. Self-healing is a domain of Self-Organizing Network (SON) that aims to detect, recover and compensate outages as well as possible. The simulation results showed that as a result of resource planning is too efficient, then the neighboring cell could take over traffic from the cell who experienced failure, but only a small portion of traffic that can be taken over, which is an average of 35%.
l-Tyrosine-loaded nanoparticles increase the antitumoral activity of direct electric current in a metastatic melanoma cell model

Inhibition of tumor growth induced by treatment with direct electric current (DC) has been reported in several models. One of the mechanisms responsible for the antitumoral activity of DC is the generation of oxidative species, known as chloramines. With the aim of increasing chloramine production in the electrolytic medium and optimizing the antitumoral effects of DC, poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL) nanoparticles (NPs) loaded with the amino acid tyrosine were obtained. The physical–chemical characterization showed that the NPs presented size in nanometric range and monomodal distribution. A slightly negative electrokinetic potential was also found in both blank NPs and l-tyrosine-loaded PCL NPs. The yield of the loading process was approximately 50%. Within 3 h of dissolution assay, a burst release of about 80% l-tyrosine was obtained. The in vitro cytotoxicity of DC was significantly increased when associated with l-tyrosine-loaded NPs, using a murine multidrug-resistant melanoma cell line model. This study showed that the use of the combination of nanotechnology and DC has a promising antineoplastic potential and opens a new perspective in cancer therapy.
Mutual coupling reduction in MIMO antenna system using EBG structures

This paper presents the results for a MIMO antenna embedded with an EBG structure. The EBG structure consists of slots loaded in the conventional mushroom EBG and exhibits a better surface-wave decoupling performance. The compact EBG structure is analyzed and its dispersion diagram is extracted. The EBG structure dimensions are optimized and inserted between the monopole antennas to reduce the mutual coupling between them. This method is verified by the ADS simulations and a significant -36 dB mutual coupling reduction is noticed from the simulations. The other metrics like correlation coefficient and diversity gain are found to be in appreciable level.
THE ROLE OF SEPARATION OF CONCERNS IN THE FORMAL SPECIFICATION OF DISTRIBUTED MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

In previous publications, the authors have proposed an approach to the formal specification of real-time systems based on a principle of maintaining a separation of concerns. More specifically, the authors advocate a separation of concerns between the specification of behaviour and requirements and also between the specification of abstract behaviour and real-time concerns. The aim of this paper is to evaluate this approach by studying the specification of a lip synchronisation algorithm, firstly, using a classical timed LOTOS and, secondly, by using a new technique based on the principle of maintaining a separation of concerns. The paper highlights a number of benefits resulting from maintaining a separation of concerns. Firstly, by separating out the real-time assumptions, the remaining specification of behaviour is totally abstract in the sense that it does not contain any performance or implementation considerations. Secondly, the real-time assumptions are immediately identifiable and can be easily changed if necessary. In addition, the most appropriate language can be used for each part of the specification and existing tools for the individual languages are not invalidated. The major drawback of the new approach is that a more complex verification process is required.
Influence of paternally imprinted genes on development.

The parental origin of chromosomes is critical for normal development in the mouse because some genes are imprinted resulting in a predetermined preferential expression of one of the alleles. Duplication of the paternal (AG: androgenones) or maternal (GG/PG: gynogenones/parthenogenones) genomes will result in an excess or deficiency of gene dosage with corresponding phenotypic effects. Here, we report on the effects of paternally imprinted genes on development following introduction of the AG inner cell mass into normal blastocysts. There was a striking increase in embryonic growth by up to 50%, and a characteristic change in embryonic shape, partly because of the corresponding increase in length of the anterior-posterior axis. These changes, between e12-e15, were proportional to the contribution from AG cells to the embryo. However, a contribution of AG cells in excess of 50% was invariably lethal as development progressed to e15. A limited number of chimeras were capable of full-term development provided there was a relatively low contribution from AG cells. The distribution of AG cells in chimeras was not uniform, especially later in development when there was a disproportionate presence of AG cells in the mesodermally derived tissues. Their contribution was consistently greater in the heart and skeletal muscle, but was considerably lower in the brain. Chimeras detected after birth were either dead or developed severe abnormalities of the skeletal elements, particularly of the ribs which were enlarged, distorted and fused, with greatly increased cartilaginous material with an absence of normal ossification. These phenotypic effects in chimeras are reciprocal to those observed in the presence of GG/PG cells, which resulted in a substantial size reduction approaching 50%. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Multi-modal descriptors for multi-class hand pose recognition in human computer interaction systems

Hand pose recognition in advanced Human Computer Interaction systems (HCI) is becoming more feasible thanks to the use of affordable multi-modal RGB-Depth cameras. Depth data generated by these sensors is a very valuable input information, although the representation of 3D descriptors is still a critical step to obtain robust object representations. This paper presents an overview of different multi-modal descriptors, and provides a comparative study of two feature descriptors called Multi-modal Hand Shape (MHS) and Fourier-based Hand Shape (FHS), which compute local and global 2D-3D hand shape statistics to robustly describe hand poses. A new dataset of 38K hand poses has been created for real-time hand pose and gesture recognition, corresponding to five hand shape categories recorded from eight users. Experimental results show good performance of the fused MHS and FHS descriptors, improving recognition accuracy while assuring real-time computation in HCI scenarios.
Quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization algorithm with inverse-proportional inertia weight

in order to improve the performance of particle swarm optimization algorithm and avoid trapping to local excellent situations, this paper presents a new quantum behaved particle swarm optimization algorithm with inverse proportional inertia weight. By the inverse proportional inertia weight function, with the number of iterations increasing, the value of inertia weight function decreasing, the algorithm can keep the searching capability in the early iteration and make the convergence accelerate in later iteration. Testing experiments show this new algorithm's merits not only having the global optimization performance but also raising capability for convergence speed and better quality solutions.
Recombinant human granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor activates intracellular killing of Leishmania donovani by human monocyte-derived macrophages

Recombinant granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rGM-CSF) obtained from cloned complementary Mo cell DNA and expressed in COS-1 cells activates cultured peripheral blood monocyte-derived macrophages in vitro to become cytotoxic for intracellular L. donovani. The antileishmanial effect of rGM-CSF, which can be completely neutralized by anti-rGM-CSF antiserum, is maximal after 36 h preincubation with the cultured macrophages, compared with that of rIFN-gamma, which reaches its maximum at 72 h of preincubation. The antileishmanial effect of GM- CSF as well as IFN-gamma is independent of detectable amounts of LPS and is not augmented by the addition of 10 or 50 ng/ml of LPS. Simultaneous administration of suboptimal doses of rGM-CSF and rIFN- gamma to monocyte-derived macrophages results in greater antileishmanial activity by these cells than administration of either lymphokine alone, although no enhancement of antileishmanial activity is observed when optimal doses of these two lymphokines are applied together.