Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stream Data Management Based on Integration of a Stream Processing Engine and Databases

Developments in network and sensor device technologies enable us to easily obtain real-world information, such as locations of moving objects, weather information, news, and stock prices. These data are continuously supplied, and they are regarded as data streams. Because of the dramatical increase of streaming data, their management and utilization has become more and more important. This paper describes a data stream management system named Harmonica. Harmonica employs an architecture combining our stream processing engine named stream-spinner and relational DBMSs. Based on the architecture, the system processes both continuous queries and traditional one-shot queries. Moreover, Harmonica supports continuous persistence requirements for streaming data as well as queries including selection, join, projection, and user-defined functions over data streams. Users can also specify continuous queries that integrate streaming data and persistent data stored in databases. Using the Harmonica API, users can develop a variety of applications coping with different continuous steaming data and data stored in databases. Our system can be deployed in network environments to achieve efficient and dependable distributed stream processing.
Glutamate Released from Glial Cells Synchronizes Neuronal Activity in the Hippocampus

Glial cells of the nervous system directly influence neuronal and synaptic activities by releasing transmitters. However, the physiological consequences of this glial transmitter release on brain information processing remain poorly understood. We demonstrate here in hippocampal slices of 2- to 5-week-old rats that glutamate released from glial cells generates slow transient currents (STCs) mediated by the activation of NMDA receptors in pyramidal cells. STCs persist in the absence of neuronal and synaptic activity, indicating a nonsynaptic origin of the source of glutamate. Indeed, STCs occur spontaneously but can also be induced by pharmacological tools known to activate astrocytes and by the selective mechanical stimulation of single nearby glial cells. Bath application of the inhibitor of the glutamate uptake dl-threo-β-benzyloxyaspartate increases both the frequency of STCs and the amplitude of a tonic conductance mediated by NMDA receptors and probably also originated from glial glutamate release. By using dual recordings, we observed synchronized STCs in pyramidal cells having their soma distant by <100 μm. The degree of precision (<100 msec) of this synchronization rules out the involvement of calcium waves spreading through the glial network. It also indicates that single glial cells release glutamate onto adjacent neuronal processes, thereby controlling simultaneously the excitability of several neighboring pyramidal cells. In conclusion, our results show that the glial glutamate release occurs spontaneously and synchronizes the neuronal activity in the hippocampus.
Predicting COPD Failure by Modeling Hazard in Longitudinal Clinical Data

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) accounts for the highest rate of hospital readmissions and is the third leading cause of death in Canada, the United States and worldwide. Predicting COPD failure provides a prognostic warning of death or readmission, and is crucial to early intervention and decision-making. The aim of this study is to perform COPD failure prediction on longitudinal data. To address the inappropriate estimation of Cox hazard in current approaches, we propose a new representation of hazard to capture the relationship between survival probability and time-varying risk factors in a concise but effective way. To optimize model parameters, we design and maximize a new joint likelihood that comprises two components used to estimate survival status separately for failure and censored patients. A regularized optimization is performed on the joint likelihood to prevent overfitting arising from model learning. Our approach is applied to a real-life COPD data set and outperforms the current state-of-the-art prediction models in terms of the survival AUC, concordance index and Birer score metrics, this reveals that the great promise of our approach for clinical prediction.
On the Consistency of eneral raint = Satis S

The problem of checking for consistency of Constraint-Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) is a fundamental problem in the field of constraint-based reasonning. Moreover, it is a hard problem since satisfiability of CSPs belongs to the class of NPcomplete problems. So, in (Freuder 1982), Freuder gave theoretical results concerning consistency of binary CSPs (two variables per constraints). In this paper, we proposed an extension to these results to general CSP (n-ary constraints). On one hand, we define a partial consistency well adjusted to general CSPs called hyper-k-consistency. On the other hand, we proposed a measure of the connectivity of hypergraphs called width of hypergraphs. Using width of hypergraphs and hyper-kconsistency, we derive a theorem defining a sufficient condition for consistency of general CSPs.
A Quantitative Exploration of Alcohol-Related Regret Among Undergraduate Students

ABSTRACT Background: Heavy drinking is linked to a number of deleterious consequences, many of which carry the possibility of regret: a negative cognitive emotion involving self-blame. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine who among undergraduates is most likely to experience alcohol-related regret. Method: Data were taken from an online survey of undergraduates (N = 354) from a Midwestern university. Results: Though both men and women were more likely to report alcohol-related regret when they engaged in drinking to get drunk, participation in Greek life and intercollegiate sports were significant predictors of alcohol-related regret for women. Discussion: Behavioral intentions matter, and when students drink with the intention of getting drunk, they are more likely to experience situations that can compromise their health and safety and jeopardize the networks that bind them to the university. The strength of reference groups and peer norms may also influence college women’s behavioral choices. Translation to Health Education Practice: A harm reduction approach may be best suited to the effective management of student alcohol use. When centered within the social contexts that are most influential to students (eg, sororities/fraternities, sports teams), group programming efforts may have the greatest potential impact.
Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Temperature Analysis

We present new full-sky temperature maps in five frequency bands from 23 to 94 GHz, based on data from the first 3 years of the WMAP sky survey. The new maps are consistent with the first-year maps and are more sensitive. The 3 year maps incorporate several improvements in data processing made possible by the additional years of data and by a more complete analysis of the polarization signal. These include several new consistency tests as well as refinements in the gain calibration and beam response models. We employ two forms of multifrequency analysis to separate astrophysical foreground signals from the CMB, each of which improves on our first-year analyses. First, we form an improved "Internal Linear Combination" (ILC) map, based solely on WMAP data, by adding a bias-correction step and by quantifying residual uncertainties in the resulting map. Second, we fit and subtract new spatial templates that trace Galactic emission; in particular, we now use low-frequency WMAP data to trace synchrotron emission instead of the 408 MHz sky survey. The WMAP point source catalog is updated to include 115 new sources whose detection is made possible by the improved sky map sensitivity. We derive the angular power spectrum of the temperature anisotropy using a hybrid approach that combines a maximum likelihood estimate at low l (large angular scales) with a quadratic cross-power estimate for l > 30. The resulting multifrequency spectra are analyzed for residual point source contamination. At 94 GHz the unmasked sources contribute 128 ± 27 μK2 to l(l + 1)Cl/2π at l = 1000. After subtracting this contribution, our best estimate of the CMB power spectrum is derived by averaging cross-power spectra from 153 statistically independent channel pairs. The combined spectrum is cosmic variance limited to l = 400, and the signal-to-noise ratio per l-mode exceeds unity up to l = 850. For bins of width Δl/l = 3%, the signal-to-noise ratio exceeds unity up to l = 1000. The first two acoustic peaks are seen at l = 220.8 ± 0.7 and l = 530.9 ± 3.8, respectively, while the first two troughs are seen at l = 412.4 ± 1.9 and l = 675.2 ± 11.1. The rise to the third peak is unambiguous; when the WMAP data are combined with higher resolution CMB measurements, the existence of a third acoustic peak is well established. Spergel et al. use the 3 year temperature and polarization data to constrain cosmological model parameters. A simple six-parameter ΛCDM model continues to fit CMB data and other measures of large-scale structure remarkably well. The new polarization data produce a better measurement of the optical depth to reionization, τ = 0.089 ± 0.03. This new and tighter constraint on τ helps break a degeneracy with the scalar spectral index, which is now found to be ns = 0.960 ± 0.016. If additional cosmological data sets are included in the analysis, the spectral index is found to be ns = 0.947 ± 0.015.
The Role of DNA Double-Strand Breaks in Spontaneous Homologous Recombination in S. cerevisiae

Homologous recombination (HR) is a source of genomic instability and the loss of heterozygosity in mitotic cells. Since these events pose a severe health risk, it is important to understand the molecular events that cause spontaneous HR. In eukaryotes, high levels of HR are a normal feature of meiosis and result from the induction of a large number of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). By analogy, it is generally believed that the rare spontaneous mitotic HR events are due to repair of DNA DSBs that accidentally occur during mitotic growth. Here we provide the first direct evidence that most spontaneous mitotic HR in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is initiated by DNA lesions other than DSBs. Specifically, we describe a class of rad52 mutants that are fully proficient in inter- and intra-chromosomal mitotic HR, yet at the same time fail to repair DNA DSBs. The conclusions are drawn from genetic analyses, evaluation of the consequences of DSB repair failure at the DNA level, and examination of the cellular re-localization of Rad51 and mutant Rad52 proteins after introduction of specific DSBs. In further support of our conclusions, we show that, as in wild-type strains, UV-irradiation induces HR in these rad52 mutants, supporting the view that DNA nicks and single-stranded gaps, rather than DSBs, are major sources of spontaneous HR in mitotic yeast cells.
PASTAA: identifying transcription factors associated with sets of co-regulated genes

Motivation: A major challenge in regulatory genomics is the identification of associations between functional categories of genes (e.g. tissues, metabolic pathways) and their regulating transcription factors (TFs). While, for a limited number of categories, the regulating TFs are already known, still for many functional categories the responsible factors remain to be elucidated. Results: We put forward a novel method (PASTAA) for detecting transcriptions factors associated with functional categories, which utilizes the prediction of binding affinities of a TF to promoters. This binding strength information is compared to the likelihood of membership of the corresponding genes in the functional category under study. Coherence between the two ranked datasets is seen as an indicator of association between a TF and the category. PASTAA is applied primarily to the determination of TFs driving tissue-specific expression. We show that PASTAA is capable of recovering many TFs acting tissue specifically and, in addition, provides novel associations so far not detected by alternative methods. The application of PASTAA to detect TFs involved in the regulation of tissue-specific gene expression revealed a remarkable number of experimentally supported associations. The validated success for various datasets implies that PASTAA can directly be applied for the detection of TFs associated with newly derived gene sets. Availability: The PASTAA source code as well as a corresponding web interface is freely available at http://trap.molgen.mpg.de Contact: roider@molgen.mpg.de Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
In Vitro Growth of Preantral Follicle and Maturation of Intrafollicular Oocyte from Aged Mice

This study aimed to recover the ovarian function through in vitro culture of preantral follicles from aged mice. First, we isolated the preantral follicles from ovaries of sixty-seven-week old B6D2F1 mice with decreased fecundity to know how many follicles were present in them, which was 6 preantral follicles including 2 primary, 2 early secondary and late secondary follicles from 8 aged mice. It was confirmed that a few follicles (~2) were present in aged mice through histological analysis compared to adult mice as control. The 9 days of in vitro culture of preantal follicles showed in vitro growth and induced maturation after treatment with hCG (2.5 IU/mL) and EGF (5 ng/mL). Cumulus cells in the cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were removed using hyaluronidase and oocytes at the germinal vesicle (GV) and GV breakdown (GVBD) were obtained from preantral follicle culture of aged mice in vitro. In conclusion, these observations demonstrated that there still were a few preantral follicles in the ovaries of 67 week-old mice, which we were able to culture in vitro and oocytes were obtained from them. This study proposed an in vitro culture system using preantral follicle as a therapeutic strategy for fertility preservation in humans for assisted reproductive medicine.
LIMITATIONS ON THE NEUROSCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES

Neuroscientiﬁc scanning of meditators is taken as providing data on mystical experiences. However, problems concerning how the brain and consciousness are related cast doubts on whether any understanding of the content of meditative experiences is gained through the study of the brain. Whether neuroscience can study the subjective aspects of meditative experiences in general is also discussed. So too, whether current neuroscience can establish that there are “pure consciousness events” in mysticism is open to question. The discussion points to limitations on neuroscience’s capability to add to our understanding of the phenomenological content of mystical experiences.
Visual motor computations in insects.

With their relatively simple nervous systems and purpose-designed behaviors and reflexes, insects are an excellent organism in which to investigate how visual information is acquired and processed to guide locomotion and navigation. Flies maintain a straight course and monitor their motion through the environment by sensing the patterns of optic flow induced in the eyes. Bees negotiate narrow gaps by balancing the speeds of the images in their two eyes, and they control flight speed by holding constant the average image velocity as seen with their two eyes. Bees achieve a smooth landing on a horizontal surface by holding the image velocity of the surface constant during approach, thus ensuring that flight speed is automatically close to zero at touchdown. Foraging bees estimate the distance that they have traveled to reach a food source by integrating the optic flow experienced en route; this integration gives them a visually driven "odometer. " Insects have also evolved sophisticated visuomotor mechanisms for pursuing prey or mates and possibly for concealing their own motion while shadowing objects of interest.
AHEAD: Automated framework for hardware accelerated iterative data analysis

This paper introduces AHEAD, a novel domain-specific framework for automated (hardware-based) acceleration of massive data analysis applications with a dense (non-sparse) correlation matrix. Due to non-scalability of matrix inversion, often iterative computation is used for converging to a solution. AHEAD addresses two sets of domain-specific matrix computation challenges. First, the I/O and memory bandwidth constraints which limit the performance of hardware accelerators. Second, the hardness of handling large data because of the complexity of the known matrix transformations and the inseparability of non-sparse correlations. The inseparability problem translates to an increased communication cost with the accelerators. To optimize the performance within these limits, AHEAD learns the dependency structure of the domain data and suggests a scalable matrix transformation. The transformation minimizes the memory access required for matrix computing within an error threshold and thus, optimizes the mapping of domain data to the available (bandwidth constrained) accelerator resources. To facilitate automation, AHEAD also provides an Application Programming Interface (API) so users can customize the framework to an arbitrary iterative analysis algorithm and hardware mapping. Proof-of-concept implementation of AHEAD is performed on the widely used compressive sensing and general ℓ1 regularized least squares solvers. On a massive light field imaging data set with 4.6B non-zeros, AHEAD attains up to 320x iteration speed improvement using reconfigurable hardware accelerators compared with the conventional solver and about 4x improvement compared to our transformed matrix solver on a general purpose processor (without hardware acceleration).
Human Asf1 and CAF‐1 interact and synergize in a repair‐coupled nucleosome assembly pathway

The efficient assembly of newly replicated and repaired DNA into chromatin is essential for proper genome function. Based on genetic studies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the histone chaperone anti‐silencing function 1 (Asf1) has been implicated in the DNA repair response. Here, the human homologs are shown to function synergistically with human CAF‐1 to assemble nucleosomes during nucleotide excision repair in vitro. Furthermore, we demonstrate that hAsf1 proteins can interact directly with the p60 subunit of hCAF‐1. In contrast to hCAF‐1 p60, the nuclear hAsf1 proteins are not significantly associated with chromatin in cells before or after the induction of DNA damage, nor specifically recruited to damaged DNA during repair in a bead‐linked DNA assay. A model is proposed in which the synergism between hAsf1 and CAF‐1 for nucleosome formation during DNA repair is achieved through a transient physical interaction allowing histone delivery from Asf1 to CAF‐1.
ISIP 2000 CONVERSATIONAL SPEECH EVALUATION SYSTEM

In this paper, we describe the ISIP Automatic Speech Recognition system (ISIP-ASR) used for the Hub-5 2000 Engl ish evaluations. The system is a publ ic domain cross-word context-dependent HMM based systemandhasall thefunctionalitynormallyexpected in an LVCSR system, including Baum-Welch training for continuous densi ty HMMs, phonetic decision tree-based state-tying, word graph generation and rescoring. The acoustic models were trained on 60 hoursof Switchboardand20 hoursof CallHomedata. The system had a word error rate of 43.4% on Switchboard, 54.8% on CallHome, and an overal l error rate of 49.1%. Thi s paper descri bes the eval uati on system i n detai l and di scusses our post-evaluation experiments and impro vements.
DSP-based controller for a multi-degree prosthetic hand

The electromyographic (EMG) signal is used to discriminate eight hand motions: power grasp, hook grasp, wrist flexion, lateral pinch, flattened hand, centralized grip, three-jaw chuck and cylindrical grasp. From the analysis of the PC-based control system, a three-channel EMG signal is used to distinguish eight hand motions for the short below elbow amputee. Pattern recognition is used in this discriminative system. Three surface electrodes are placed on palmaris longus, entensor digitorum and flexor carpi ulnaris. Due to the complexity of the EMG signal and the portable consideration of the controller, a controller based on digital signal processor (DSP) is designed and implemented in this discriminative system. The DSP integrates the signal preprocessing module, the digital filter module and pattern recognition module into the controller. The online DSP controller can provide 87.5% correct rate for the discrimination of eight hand motions.
Author Manuscript, Published in "international Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Automatic Symmetry Plane Estimation of Bilateral Objects in Point Clouds

In this paper, the problem of estimating automatically the symmetry plane of bilateral objects (having perfect or imperfect mirror symmetry) in point clouds is reexamined. Classical methods, mostly based on the ICP algorithm, are shown to be limited and complicated by an inappropriate parameterization of the problem. First, we show how an adequate parameterization, used in an ICP-like scheme, can lead to a simpler, more accurate and faster algorithm. Then, using this parameterization, we reinterpret the problem in a probabilistic framework, and use the maximum likelihood principle to define the optimal symmetry plane. This problem can be solved efficiently using an EM algorithm. The resulting iterative scheme can be seen as an ICP-like algorithm with multiple matches between the two sides of the object. This new algorithm, implemented using a multiscale, multiresolution approach, is evaluated in terms of accuracy, robustness and speed on ground truth data, and some results on real data are presented.
The Asynchronous Bounded-Cycle model

In this paper, we introduce the Asynchronous Bounded-Cycle (ABC) model, which considerably relaxes the Theta-Model proposed by Le Lann and Schmid. The ABC model just bounds the ratio of the number of forward and backward messages in certain cycles in the space-time diagram of an asynchronous execution. It hence avoids any reference to end-to-end delays, allows individual messages to have arbitrary delays, and does not involve global synchrony conditions. We show that clock synchronization and lock-step rounds can easily be implemented and proved correct in the ABC model, even in the presence of Byzantine failures. Moreover, we show that any correct Theta-algorithm also works correctly in the ABC model. Our proof is based on a novel technique for assigning message delays to asynchronous executions, which is of independent interest.