Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Numerical Analysis Model for the Interpretation of In Vivo Platelet Consumption Data

Unlike anemias, most thrombocytopenias cannot be separated into those due to impaired production and those due to accelerated consumption. While rapid clearance of labeled platelets from the bloodstream can be followed in thrombocytopenic individuals, no model exists for quantitatively inferring from autologous or allogeneic platelet consumption data what changes in random consumption, lifespan dependent consumption, and platelet production rate may have caused the thrombocytopenia. Here we describe a numerical analysis model which resolves these issues. The model applies three parameter values (a random consumption rate constant, a lognormally-distributed platelet lifespan, and the standard deviation of the latter) to a matrix comprising a series of platelet cohorts which are sequentially produced and fractionally consumed in a series of time intervals. The cohort platelet counts achieved after equilibration of production and consumption both enumerate the population age distribution and sum to the population platelet count. Continued platelet consumption after production is halted then serves to model in vivo platelet consumption data, with consumption rate in the first such interval defining the equilibrium platelet production rate. We use a least squares fitting procedure to find parameter values which best fit observed platelet consumption data obtained in WT and thrombocytopenic WASP(-) mice. Equilibrium platelet age distributions are then ‘grafted’ into the matrix to allow modeling of the consumption of WT platelets in WASP(-) recipients, and vice versa. The optimal parameter values obtained indicate that random WT platelet consumption accounts for a larger fraction of platelet turnover than was previously suspected. Platelet WASP deficiency accelerates random consumption, and a trans effect of recipient WASP deficiency contributes to this. Application of the model to clinical data will allow distinctions to be made between thrombocytopenias due primarily to impaired platelet production and those due to acceleration of random or lifespan-dependent platelet consumption.
A fast optimal robust path delay fault testable adder

In this paper we explore the test complexity of the adder function with respect to the robust path delay fault model. A lower bound of /spl omega/(n/sup 2/) for the cardinality of a complete test set for a combinational n-bit adder is proven. This result is valid for any adder design known until now. In addition we present a fast O(/spl radic/n)-time adder that is fully robust path delay fault testable with a test set of size /spl Theta/(n/sup 2/).
Semisupervised ECG Ventricular Beat Classification With Novelty Detection Based on Switching Kalman Filters

Automatic processing and accurate diagnosis of pathological electrocardiogram (ECG) signals remains a challenge. As long-term ECG recordings continue to increase in prevalence, driven partly by the ease of remote monitoring technology usage, the need to automate ECG analysis continues to grow. In previous studies, a model-based ECG filtering approach to ECG data from healthy subjects has been applied to facilitate accurate online filtering and analysis of physiological signals. We propose an extension of this approach, which models not only normal and ventricular heartbeats, but also morphologies not previously encountered. A switching Kalman filter approach is introduced to enable the automatic selection of the most likely mode (beat type), while simultaneously filtering the signal using appropriate prior knowledge. Novelty detection is also made possible by incorporating a third mode for the detection of unknown (not previously observed) morphologies, and denoted as X-factor. This new approach is compared to state-of-the-art techniques for the ventricular heartbeat classification in the MIT-BIH arrhythmia and Incart databases. F1 scores of 98.3% and 99.5% were found on each database, respectively, which are superior to other published algorithms' results reported on the same databases. Only 3% of all the beats were discarded as X-factor, and the majority of these beats contained high levels of noise. The proposed technique demonstrates accurate beat classification in the presence of previously unseen (and unlearned) morphologies and noise, and provides an automated method for morphological analysis of arbitrary (unknown) ECG leads.
Fatigue and its association with sociodemographic variables among multiple sclerosis patients

Objective: To explore the relationship between fatigue, sociodemographic and clinical variables in a population of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Rationale: There is a need to identify empirical relationships with possible antecedents of fatigue among patients with MS. Methods: A mailed questionnaire designed to survey sociodemographic variables and the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) was mailed to 502 individuals from the population of patients with definite MS in the city of O slo. A total of 368 (73%) responded. C linical data were collected from the O slo C ity MS-Registry. Results: The prevalence of fatigue in this population was 60.1%. The FSS score showed a negative correlation with education (r =-0.15, P <0.01) and a positive correlation with age (r =0.20, P B-0.001) and time since disease onset (r =0.11, P B-0.05). When controlled for gender, level of education and time since disease onset, the data showed a positive relationship between fatigue and age (P B-0.001) among patients with primary progressive (PP) disease. This relationship between age and fatigue was not found among patients with relapsing-remitting/secondary progressive (RR/SP) disease. Conclusion: The negative relationship between level of formal educatio n (FE) and fatigue among individuals with RR/SP disease suggests that behavioral factors may be among the antecedents of fatigue in this patient group. In contrast to normative data from the general population, our findings revealed no differences in fatigue related to gender. Thus, this study supports the hypothesis that there are disease-specific antecedents of fatigue among patients with MS.
Solid-State Cache Management

Solid-state drives (SSDs) composed of multiple flash memory chips are often deployed as a cache in front of a cheap and slow disks [5, 2, 7]. This provides the performance of flash with the cost of disk for large data sets, and is actively used by Facebook and others to provide low-latency access to petabytes of data [3]. An SSD-backed cache, though, is limited by its narrow block interface and internal block management, both of which are designed to serve as a disk replacement [1, 8, 9]. Caches have at least three different behaviors than general-purpose storage. First, data in a cache may be present elsewhere in the system, and hence need not be durable. Thus, caches have more flexibility in how they manage data than a device dedicated to storing data persistently. Second, a cache stores data from
On learning and recognition of secure patterns

Learning and recognition of secure patterns is a well-known problem in nature. Mimicry and camouflage are widely-spread techniques in the arms race between predators and preys. All of the information acquired by our senses is therefore not necessarily secure or reliable. In machine learning and pattern recognition systems, we have started investigating these issues only recently, with the goal of learning to discriminate between secure and hostile patterns. This phenomenon has been especially observed in the context of adversarial settings like biometric recognition, malware detection and spam filtering, in which data can be adversely manipulated by humans to undermine the outcomes of an automatic analysis. As current pattern recognition methods are not natively designed to deal with the intrinsic, adversarial nature of these problems, they exhibit specific vulnerabilities that an adversary may exploit either to mislead learning or to avoid detection. Identifying these vulnerabilities and analyzing the impact of the corresponding attacks on pattern classifiers is one of the main open issues in the novel research field of adversarial machine learning. In the first part of this talk, I introduce a general framework that encompasses and unifies previous work in the field, allowing one to systematically evaluate classifier security against different, potential attacks. As an example of application of this framework, in the second part of the talk, I discuss evasion attacks, where malicious samples are manipulated at test time to avoid detection. I then show how carefully-designed poisoning attacks can mislead learning of support vector machines by manipulating a small fraction of their training data, and how to poison adaptive biometric verification systems to compromise the biometric templates (face images) of the enrolled clients. Finally, I briefly discuss our ongoing work on attacks against clustering algorithms, and sketch some possible future research directions.
An identity-based key infrastructure suitable for messaging and its application to e-mail

Identity-based encryption (IBE) systems are relatively recently proposed; yet they are highly popular for messaging applications since they offer new features such as certificateless infrastructure and anonymous communication. However, recent studies also reveal that the infrastructure needed for IBE systems may be as complicated as the conventional public key cryptosytems and not sufficient research has been conducted in relevant issues concerning the infrastructure. In this paper, we intended to propose an IBE infrastructure for messaging applications. The proposed infrastructure requires one registration authority and at least one public key generator and they secret share the master secret key. In addition, the PKG also shares the same master secret with each user in the system in a different way. Therefore, the PKG will never be able to learn the private keys of users under non-collusion assumption. Users can also select meaningful pseudonyms and communicate anonymously using them with other users in the system. We discuss different aspects of the proposed infrastructure such as security, key revocation, uniqueness of the identities, and non-repudiation that constitute the main drawbacks of other IBE schemes. We demonstrate that our infrastructure solves many of these drawbacks under certain assumptions. We also provide some implementation results to show the feasibility of the proposed infrastructure.
High Lp(a) lipoprotein level in maternal serum may interfere with placental circulation and cause fetal growth retardation

We report on a woman with an Lp(a) lipoprotein level above the 99th centile of the population distribution of concentrations, who at the age of 43 had had deep vein thrombosis causing a pulmonary embolus and whose brother, who also had a very high level, had suffered a cerebral infarction at the age of 43. She had given birth to three children, all with very low birth weight, one of whom died when 3 months old. The placentas had been small and ischemic. The concurrence of a very high Lp(a) lipoprotein level, familial thromboembolic disease and recurrent placental ischemia with delivery of children with low birth weight suggests the possibility that a very high Lp(a) lipoprotein concentration may predispose to placental insufficiency, presumably arising from pathological changes in maternal uterine vessels in the placental bed. If confirmed, a very high Lp(a) lipoprotein level may be a factor to consider in women who have repeated pregnancies with placental insufficiency and who give birth to children with low birth weight.
Passenger and Cell-Phone Conversations in Simulated Driving

Previous work on use of cell phones while driving compared cell phone conversations while driving with driving only conditions. This study investigated how conversing on a cell phone differs from conversing with a passenger. Participants conversed about close-call situations they experienced. We compared how well drivers followed task instructions when driving only, when driving and conversing on a cell phone, and when driving and conversing with a passenger. The results show that the number of driving errors was highest in the cell-phone condition. Analyzing the conversations we found that in passenger conversations more references were made to traffic and more turn taking followed those references than in cell phone conversations. The results show that passenger conversations differ from cell phone conversations because the surrounding traffic becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, and mitigating the potential effects of conversation on driving.
Evaluation of pause intervals between haptic/audio cues and subsequent speech information

Non-speech sounds and haptics have an important role in enabling access to user assistance material in ubiquitous computing scenarios. Non-speech sounds and haptics can be used to cue assistance material that is to be presented to users via speech. In this paper, we report on a study that examines user perception of the duration of a pause between a cue (which may be non-speech sound, haptic, or combined non-speech sound plus haptic) and the subsequent delivery of assistance material using speech.
Fast Simulation of Inextensible Hair and Fur

AbstractIn this paper we focus on the fast simulation of hair and fur on animated characters. While it is common in featureﬁlms to simulate hair and fur of computer generated actors, characters are still mostly hand-animated in computergames. A main difﬁculty of simulating hair is that it is perceived as inextensible by humans. Preventing an objectfrom being stretched is a global, non-linear problem. This is the reason why simulating completely inextensibleobjects in real-time remains a major challenge and an open research topic.Existing approaches typically use multiple iterations per visual frame to solve the physical equations followed bynumber of strain limiting iterations. Adjusting the number of iterations is a way to increase the accuracy of thesimulation at the expense of more computation and vice versa. In the extreme case of one solver iteration per visualframe, most existing methods break down, either by becoming unstable or by introducing a substantial amount ofstretching.In this paper, we present a robust method that guarantees inextensiblity with a single iteration per frame. Thisextreme performance comes at the price of reduced accuracy. We found that for applications in graphics, it isworth to pay this price because the inaccuracies are not visually disturbing but the speed of the method allows thesimulation of thousands of hairs in real-time.Categories and Subject Descriptors
Code generation for a SIMD architecture with custom memory organisation

Today's multimedia and DSP applications impose requirements on performance and power consumption that only custom processor architectures with SIMD capabilities can satisfy. However, the specific features of such architectures, including vector operations and high-bandwidth complex memory organization, make them notoriously complicated and time consuming to program. In this paper we present an automated code generation approach that dramatically reduces the effort of programming such architectures, by carrying out instruction scheduling and memory allocation based on a constraint programming formulation. Furthermore, the quality of the generated code is close to that of hand-written code by an experienced programmer with knowledge of the architecture. We demonstrate the viability of our approach on an existing custom heterogeneous DSP architecture, by compiling and running a number of typical DSP kernels, and comparing the results to hand-optimized code.
Synergism of Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte–Associated Antigen 4 Blockade and Depletion of Cd25+ Regulatory T Cells in Antitumor Therapy Reveals Alternative Pathways for Suppression of Autoreactive Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Responses

Therapeutic efficacy of a tumor cell–based vaccine against experimental B16 melanoma requires the disruption of either of two immunoregulatory mechanisms that control autoreactive T cell responses: the cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated antigen (CTLA)-4 pathway or the CD25+ regulatory T (Treg) cells. Combination of CTLA-4 blockade and depletion of CD25+ Treg cells results in maximal tumor rejection. Efficacy of the antitumor therapy correlates with the extent of autoimmune skin depigmentation as well as with the frequency of tyrosinase-related protein 2180–188–specific CTLs detected in the periphery. Furthermore, tumor rejection is dependent on the CD8+ T cell subset. Our data demonstrate that the CTL response against melanoma antigens is an important component of the therapeutic antitumor response and that the reactivity of these CTLs can be augmented through interference with immunoregulatory mechanisms. The synergism in the effects of CTLA-4 blockade and depletion of CD25+ Treg cells indicates that CD25+ Treg cells and CTLA-4 signaling represent two alternative pathways for suppression of autoreactive T cell immunity. Simultaneous intervention with both regulatory mechanisms is therefore a promising concept for the induction of therapeutic antitumor immunity.
Defects in the cartilaginous growth plates of brachymorphic mice

Homozygous brachymorphic (bm/bm) mice are characterized by disproportionately short stature. Newborn bm/bm epiphyseal cartilages are shorter than normal although the cells in the different zones of growth are relatively well organized. The extracellular matrix reacts poorly with stains specific for sulfated glycosaminoglycans. The ultrastructural appearance of the cartilage matrix indicates normal collagen fibrils; however, proteoglycan aggregate granules are smaller than normal and are present in reduced numbers, particularly in the columnar and hypertrophic zones of the growth plate. In addition, a prominent network of fine filaments, which are extractable in 4 M guanidine hydrochloride, are present in the bm/bm cartilage matrix. These findings suggest that a defect affecting the proteoglycan component of cartilage occurs in bm/bm mice.
Characterization of bacteria isolated from a bleached kraft pulp mill wastewater treatment system.

Water samples from the wastewater treatment system of a bleach kraft mill and from the river that supplies the mill were plated on six different media and culturable isolates were screened for substrate utilization patterns, taxonomic characters, plasmid content, and resistance to ampicillin, streptomycin, kanamycin, tetracycline, naldixic acid, mercury, nickel, copper, cobalt, cadmium, and zinc. A cluster analysis of the substrate utilization profiles and taxonomic characters revealed that Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, and Acidovorax spp. were common among the culturable isolates from the river, while Ancylobacter aquaticus, Klebsiella spp. , and an unknown group of pleomorphic Gram-negative methylotrophs were common among the culturable isolates from the mill treatment system. Of isolates from the settling pond and aerated lagoon, 78 and 64% carried plasmids, while only 56% of isolates from the river carried plasmids. Plasmids were significantly associated with resistance to cadmium but not with any other resistance characters. Large numbers of plasmid-carrying A. aquaticus strains and pleomorphic methylotrophs accounted for high plasmid incidence levels in the mill treatment system, and the ability to dechlorinate simple aliphatic substrates was found in these two groups as well as in one Pseudomonas strain.
Perlecan inhibits smooth muscle cell adhesion to fibronectin: Role of heparan sulfate

Smooth muscle cell migration, proliferation, and deposition of extracellular matrix are key events in atherogenesis and restenosis development. To explore the mechanisms that regulate smooth muscle cell function, we have investigated whether perlecan, a basement membrane heparan sulfate proteoglycan, modulates interaction between smooth muscle cells and other matrix components. A combined substrate of fibronectin and perlecan showed a reduced adhesion of rat aortic smooth muscle cells by 70–90% in comparison to fibronectin alone. In contrast, perlecan did not interfere with cell adhesion to laminin. Heparinase treated perlecan lost 60% of its anti‐adhesive effect. Furthermore, heparan sulfate as well as heparin reduced smooth muscle cell adhesion when combined with fibronectin whereas neither hyaluronan nor chondroitin sulfate had any anti‐adhesive effects. Addition of heparin as a second coating to a preformed fibronectin matrix did not affect cell adhesion. Cell adhesion to the 105‐ and 120 kDa cell‐binding fragments of fibronectin, lacking the main heparin‐binding domains, was also inhibited by heparin. In addition, co‐coating of fibronectin and 3H‐heparin showed that heparin was not even incorporated in the substrate. Morphologically, smooth muscle cells adhering to a substrate prepared by co‐coating of fibronectin and perlecan or heparin were small, rounded, lacked focal contacts, and showed poorly developed stress fibers of actin. The results show that the heparan sulfate chains of perlecan lead to altered interactions between smooth muscle cells and fibronectin, possibly due to conformational changes in the fibronectin molecule. Such interactions may influence smooth muscle cell function in atherogenesis and vascular repair processes. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Intercluster filaments of galaxies programme: Pilot study survey and results

We present results from a pilot study of a new wide-field, multicolour (BVR) CCD imaging project, designed to examine galaxy evolution along large-scale filaments that connect clusters of galaxies at intermediate redshifts (0.07 3r(Abell) from either cluster. By applying a simple field correction, we characterize this filament population by examining their colour distribution on a (V-R)-(B-V) plane. We confirm the galaxian filament detection at a 7.5 sigma level using a cut at M-V = -18 and we discuss their broad properties.
Interplay Between Toxoplasma gondii, Autophagy, and Autophagy Proteins

Survival of Toxoplasma gondii within host cells depends on its ability of reside in a vacuole that avoids lysosomal degradation and enables parasite replication. The interplay between immune-mediated responses that lead to either autophagy-driven lysosomal degradation or disruption of the vacuole and the strategies used by the parasite to avoid these responses are major determinants of the outcome of infection. This article provides an overview of this interplay with an emphasis on autophagy.
Evaluation of DNN-based Phoneme Estimation Approach on the NTCIR-12 SpokenQuery&Doc-2 SQ-STD Subtask

This paper proposes a correct phoneme sequence estimation method using a deep neural network (DNN)-based framework for spoken term detection (STD). We use a DNN architecture as a correct phoneme estimator. The DNN-based estimator estimates a correct phoneme sequence of an ut-terance from some sorts of phoneme-based transcriptions produced by multiple ASR systems in post-processing, for reducing phoneme errors. In the experimental evaluation on the NTCIR-12 SpokenQuery&Doc-2 SQ-STD test collection, our proposed approach defeated the baseline system prepared by the task organizers. However, our approach could not outperform our DTW-based STD method we previously proposed.