Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incorporating Unsupervised Learning in Activity Recognition

Users are constantly involved in a multitude of activities in ever-changing context. Analyzing activities in contextrich environments has become a great challenge in context-awareness research. Traditional methods for activity recognition, such as classification, cannot cope with the variety and dynamicity of context and activities. In this paper, we propose an activity recognition approach that incorporates unsupervised learning. We analyze the feasibility of applying subspace clustering--a specific type of unsupervised learning-- to high-dimensional, heterogeneous sensory input. Then we present the correspondence between clustering output and classification input. This approach has the potential to discover implicit, evolving activities, and can provide valuable assistance to traditional classification based methods.
Evasion of natural killer cells by influenza virus

NK cells are important innate immune effectors during influenza virus infection. However, the influenza virus seems able to use several tactics to counter NK cell recognition for immune evasion. In this review, we will summarize and discuss recent advances regarding the understanding of NK cell evasion mechanisms manipulated by the influenza virus to facilitate its rapid replication inside the respiratory epithelial cells.
NADPH Oxidase 4 Promotes Endothelial Angiogenesis Through Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Activation

Background— Reactive oxygen species serve signaling functions in the vasculature, and hypoxia has been associated with increased reactive oxygen species production. NADPH oxidase 4 (Nox4) is a reactive oxygen species–producing enzyme that is highly expressed in the endothelium, yet its specific role is unknown. We sought to determine the role of Nox4 in the endothelial response to hypoxia. Methods and Results— Hypoxia induced Nox4 expression both in vitro and in vivo and overexpression of Nox4 was sufficient to promote endothelial proliferation, migration, and tube formation. To determine the in vivo relevance of our observations, we generated transgenic mice with endothelial-specific Nox4 overexpression using the vascular endothelial cadherin promoter (VECad-Nox4 mice). In vivo, the VECad-Nox4 mice had accelerated recovery from hindlimb ischemia and enhanced aortic capillary sprouting. Because endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) is involved in endothelial angiogenic responses and eNOS is activated by reactive oxygen species, we probed the effect of Nox4 on eNOS. In cultured endothelial cells overexpressing Nox4, we observed a significant increase in eNOS protein expression and activity. To causally address the link between eNOS and Nox4, we crossed our transgenic Nox4 mice with eNOS−/− mice. Aortas from these mice did not demonstrate enhanced aortic sprouting, and VECad-Nox4 mice on the eNOS−/− background did not demonstrate enhanced recovery from hindlimb ischemia. Conclusions— Collectively, we demonstrate that augmented endothelial Nox4 expression promotes angiogenesis and recovery from hypoxia in an eNOS-dependent manner.
Reject option to reduce false prediction rates for EEG-motor imagery based BCI

The Filter Bank Common Spatial Pattern (FBCSP) algorithm had been shown to be effective in performing multi-class Electroencephalogram (EEG) decoding of motor imagery using the one-versus-the-rest approach on the BCI Competition IV Dataset IIa. In this paper, we propose a method to reduce false detection rates of decoding through a rejection option based on the difference in the posterior probability computed by the Naïve Bayesian classifier. We applied the proposed approach on the BCI Competition IV Dataset IIa, and the results showed a decrease in the false detection rates from 34.6 % to 6.9%, while average decoded trials decreased from 93.2% to 34.2% using a rejection threshold between 0.1 and 0.9. We subsequently formulated a method to optimize the rejection threshold based on the maximum F0.5 score. The optimal rejection threshold yielded an average decrease in false detection rate to 19.1% with an average of 67.5% of trials decoded. The results showed the feasibility of decreasing false detection rates at a cost of rejection. Nevertheless, the results suggest that the use of reject option (RO) may be used as a training feedback system to train subjects' overt and covert EEG control strategies for better (dexterity and safety) continuous control of external device.
Sinomenine reduces neuronal cell apoptosis in mice after traumatic brain injury via its effect on mitochondrial pathway

Background Sinomenine (SIN) has been shown to have protective effects against brain damage following traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the mechanisms and its role in these effects remain unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the potential mechanisms of the protective effects of SIN. Methods The weight-drop model of TBI in Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) mice were treated with SIN or a vehicle via intraperitoneal administration 30 min after TBI. All mice were euthanized 24 h after TBI and after neurological scoring, a series of tests were performed, including brain water content and neuronal cell death in the cerebral cortex. Results The level of cytochrome c (Cyt c), malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD) were restored to some degree following the SIN treatment. The SIN treatment significantly decreased caspase-3 expression and reduced the number of positive cells by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labeling (TUNEL) assay and improved the survival of neuronal cells. Additionally, the pretreatment levels of MDA were restored, while Bax translocation to mitochondria and Cyt c release into the cytosol were reduced by the SIN treatment. Conclusion SIN protected neuronal cells by protecting them against apoptosis via mechanisms that involve the mitochondria following TBI.
Neighborhood hypergraphs of bipartite graphs

Matrix symmetrization and several related problems have an extensive literature, with a recurring ambiguity regarding their complexity and relation to graph isomorphism. We present a short survey of these problems to clarify their status. In particular, we recall results from the literature showing that matrix symmetrization is in fact NP‐hard; furthermore, it is equivalent with the problem of recognizing whether a hypergraph can be realized as the neighborhood hypergraph of a graph. There are several variants of the latter problem corresponding to the concepts of open, closed, or mixed neighborhoods. While all these variants are NP‐hard in general, one of them restricted to the bipartite graphs is known to be equivalent with graph isomorphism. Extending this result, we consider several other variants of the bipartite neighborhood recognition problem and show that they all are either polynomial‐time solvable, or equivalent with graph isomorphism. Also, we study uniqueness of neighborhood realizations of hypergraphs and show that, in general, for all variants of the problem, a realization may be not unique. However, we prove uniqueness in two special cases: for the open and closed neighborhood hypergraphs of the bipartite graphs. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 58: 69–95, 2008
Counting in the kidney.

Reduced nephron number (endowment) has been associated with an increased risk of developing essential hypertension1 and chronic renal failure2, as well as the success of long-term renal allografts3. It has also been suggested that a low nephron number might underlie the high incidence of end-stage renal disease in some transitional indigenous populations. Clearly, accurate and precise counts of nephrons are required to provide answers to these intriguing hypotheses.
Fluorescence/Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer Techniques to Study G-Protein-Coupled Receptor Activation and Signaling

Fluorescence and bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (FRET and BRET) techniques allow the sensitive monitoring of distances between two labels at the nanometer scale. Depending on the placement of the labels, this permits the analysis of conformational changes within a single protein (for example of a receptor) or the monitoring of protein-protein interactions (for example, between receptors and G-protein subunits). Over the past decade, numerous such techniques have been developed to monitor the activation and signaling of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in both the purified, reconstituted state and in intact cells. These techniques span the entire spectrum from ligand binding to the receptors down to intracellular second messengers. They allow the determination and the visualization of signaling processes with high temporal and spatial resolution. With these techniques, it has been demonstrated that GPCR signals may show spatial and temporal patterning. In particular, evidence has been provided for spatial compartmentalization of GPCRs and their signals in intact cells and for distinct physiological consequences of such spatial patterning. We review here the FRET and BRET technologies that have been developed for G-protein-coupled receptors and their signaling proteins (G-proteins, effectors) and the concepts that result from such experiments.
Pattern-oriented instruction and its influence on problem decomposition and solution construction

Novices often experience difficulties in problem analysis and solution construction. Pattern-oriented instruction (POI) is a pedagogical approach based on incorporating patterns into instruction design. It is well-grounded in cognitive theories concerning knowledge construction and organization as well as the acquisition of expertise in problem solving. We show that the incorporation of algorithmic patterns through POI may enhance the construction of algorithmic problem-solving knowledge. Findings of a comparative research study showed that novices who studied according to the POI approach exhibited better problem-solving competence than those who studied in a traditional manner. Specifically, they were more competent in problem decomposition and solution construction.
Preparation and Characterization of Silicone Oil/UF Resin Microcapsules as Erosion Inhibitor

Microcapsules with silicone oil as core and poly (urea-formaldehyde) as shell were prepared by direct in-situ polymerization process. The influences of formaldehyde-urea molar ratios on microcapsules morphologies were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The microcapsules were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), particle size analyzer, simultaneous thermal analyzer. The results showed that well dispersive microcapsules were obtained with average particle size of 2.5 μm when formaldehyde-urea molar ratio was 1.8:1.0 and that the weight ratio of silicon dioxide to microcapsule was 15.4%, which produced from pyrolysis of core material silicone oil. The prepared microcapsules were expected to a kind of high-efficiency erosion inhibitor when used in propellant.
Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) Inhibits Steroid Production in Theca Cells of Bovine Follicles In Vitro: Distinct Effect of LPS on Theca Cell Function in Pre- and Post-selection Follicles

In postpartum dairy cows, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) derived from gram-negative bacteria such as Escherichia coli causes uterine inflammation and leads to ovarian dysfunction. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of LPS on steroid production in bovine theca cells at different stages of follicular development. Theca cells isolated from pre- and post-selection follicles (PRFs, <8.5 mm in diameter, and POFs, >8.5 mm in diameter, respectively) of bovine ovaries were exposed to LPS under luteinizing hormone (LH) conditions, estradiol (E2) conditions or both conditions in vitro. Bovine theca cells expressed the LPS receptor gene complex: Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), CD14 and MD2. LPS suppressed progesterone (P4) and androstenedione (A4) production with downregulation of steroidogenic enzyme transcripts when theca cells were stimulated with LH. By contrast, LPS did not affect P4 or A4 production when theca cells were stimulated with E2. P4 and A4 production in theca cells from PRFs was suppressed by LPS as early as at 48 h of culture, whereas the effect of LPS on theca cells from POFs was observed at 96 h of culture. The results demonstrate that LPS inhibits steroid production in theca cells under LH conditions. Moreover, theca cells from POFs showed a slower response to LPS compared with that of theca cells from PRFs, which might imply a distinct effect of LPS on follicles at different developmental stages. These findings suggest a possible mechanism of ovarian dysfunction and subsequent infertility in cows with endometritis.
A reduction-graph model of ratio decidendi

This paper proposes a model of ration decidendi as a justification structure consisting of a series of reasoning steps, some of which relate abstract predicates to other abstract predicates and some of which relate abstract predicates to specific facts. This model satisfies four adequacy criteria for ratio decidendi identified from the jurisprudential literature. In particular, the model shows how the theory under which a case is decided controls its precedential effect. By contrast, a purely case-based model of ratio fails to account for the dependency of precedential effect on the theory of decision.
Virulence of Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolates Harboring bla KPC-2 Carbapenemase Gene in a Caenorhabditis elegans Model

Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) is a carbapenemase increasingly reported worldwide in Enterobacteriaceae. The aim of this study was to analyze the virulence of several KPC-2-producing K. pneumoniae isolates. The studied strains were (i) five KPC-2 clinical strains from different geographical origins, belonging to different ST-types and possessing plasmids of different incompatibility groups; (ii) seven transformants obtained after electroporation of either these natural KPC plasmids or a recombinant plasmid harboring only the bla KPC-2 gene into reference strains K. pneumoniae ATCC10031/CIP53153; and (iii) five clinical strains cured of plasmids. The virulence of K. pneumoniae isolates was evaluated in the Caenorhabditis elegans model. The clinical KPC producers and transformants were significantly less virulent (LT50: 5.5 days) than K. pneumoniae reference strain (LT50: 4.3 days) (p<0.01). However, the worldwide spread KPC-2 positive K. pneumoniae ST258 strains and reference strains containing plasmids extracted from K. pneumoniae ST258 strains had a higher virulence than KPC-2 strains belonging to other ST types (LT50: 5 days vs. 6 days, p<0.01). The increased virulence observed in cured strains confirmed this trend. The bla KPC-2 gene itself was not associated to increased virulence.
WearCam: A head mounted wireless camera for monitoring gaze attention and for the diagnosis of developmental disorders in young children

Autism covers a large spectrum of disorders that affect the individual's way of interacting socially and is often revealed by the individual's lack of interest in gazing at human faces. Currently Autism is diagnosed in children no younger than 2 years old. This paper presents a new monitoring device, the WearCam, to help forming a diagnosis of this neurodevelopmental disorder at an earlier age than currently possible. The WearCam consists of a wireless camera located on the forefront of the child. The WearCam collects videos from the viewpoint of the child's head. Color detection, face detection and gaze detection are run on the data in order to locate the approximate gaze direction of the child and determine where her attention is drawn to (persons, objects, etc.). We report on early tests of the camera within normally developing children. Firstly the technical characteristics of the current prototype of the WearCam will be described. Afterwards the type of data collected with this device with young children will be shown.
RoboCupRescue 2012 - Robot League Team

This paper describes the approach used by Team Hector Darmstadt for participation in the 2012 RoboCup Rescue League com- petition. Participating in the RoboCup Rescue competition since 2009, the members of Team Hector Darmstadt focus on exploration of disas- ter sites using autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). The team has been established as part of a PhD program funded by the German Research Foundation at TU Darmstadt and combines exper- tise from Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. We give an overview of the complete system used to solve the problem of reliably nding victims in harsh USAR environments. This includes hardware as well as software solutions and diverse topics like locomotion, SLAM, pose estimation, human robot interaction and victim detection. As a con- tribution to the RoboCup Rescue community, major parts of the used software have been released and documented as open source software for ROS.
Roll Stall for Low-Aspect-Ratio Wings

The longitudinal aerodynamics of micro aerial vehicles, although not fully understood, have been the subject of several studies in recent years; however, little work has been done to investigate the lateral loading. In this experiment, flat-plate wings with rectangular planforms of aspect ratios AR=0.75, 1, 1.5, and 3 and tapered planforms of λ=0.75, 0.5, and 0.25 were placed in the wind tunnel at a Reynolds numbers of 7.5×104. Angle-of-attack sweeps were performed at sideslip angles of β=0, −5, −10, −15, 20 and −35 deg, and the side force, yaw moment, and roll moment were measured. Although the side force and yaw moment coefficients (CSF and Cn) were typically negligible, the roll moment coefficient Cl was found to increase linearly with angle of attack before stalling in a manner reminiscent of a lift curve. This “roll stall”, which has not previously been observed for micro-aerial-vehicle-type wings, is attributed to the upstream tip vortex creating an additional lift component due to its impact on th.
Beneficial Tensile Mean Strain Effects on the Fatigue Behavior of Superelastic NiTi

Name: Ben Andrew Rutherford Date of Degree: May 5, 2017 Institution: Mississippi State University Major Field: Mechanical Engineering Major Professor: Dr. Tonya W. Stone Title of Study: Beneficial tensile mean strain effects on the fatigue behavior of superelastic NiTi Pages in Study 76 Candidate for Degree of Master of Science In this work, beneficial effects of tensile mean strain on fatigue behavior and microstructure of superelastic NiTi (i.e. Nitinol) are studied. Most applications, such as endovascular stents made with NiTi, are subjected to a combination of constant and cyclic loading; thus, understanding the fatigue behavior of NiTi undergoing mean strain loading is necessary. Cyclic strain-controlled fatigue tests are designed to investigate the effects of tensile mean strain on fatigue of superelastic NiTi. Experimental observations show that combinations of large tensile mean strains and small strain amplitudes improve the fatigue life of superelastic NiTi. This behavior arises from reversible, stress-induced phase transformations. The phase transformations cause “stress plateaus” or strain ranges with no change in stress value. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of the fracture surfaces of specimens revealed generally short crack growth. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) found the amount of residual martensite to be about ~8%, regardless of loading conditions
Generative and Discriminative Learning with Unknown Labeling Bias

We apply robust Bayesian decision theory to improve both generative and discriminative learners under bias in class proportions in labeled training data, when the true class proportions are unknown. For the generative case, we derive an entropy-based weighting that maximizes expected log likelihood under the worst-case true class proportions. For the discriminative case, we derive a multinomial logistic model that minimizes worst-case conditional log loss. We apply our theory to the modeling of species geographic distributions from presence data, an extreme case of labeling bias since there is no absence data. On a benchmark dataset, we find that entropy-based weighting offers an improvement over constant estimates of class proportions, consistently reducing log loss on unbiased test data.
MAXIMIZING LIFETIME OF –POWERLIMITED NETWORK WITH ACTIVE MINIMUM SPANNING TREE AGGREGATION

Recently proposed “Harness” is a system level group communicationware that enables a large number of nodes to exchange programmable network information using various communication patterns. It offers both scalability and versatility in message communication between a large set of nodes connected via any network. In this paper we show how the scalable message aggregation offered by the Harness can be used to set up a group communication pathway for power limited ad hoc wireless network. While, the harness can compute various patterns of communication in a distributed fashion and guide data as per the pattern, we show that minimum spanning tree with active message aggregation is one of the most power efficient modes. In this paper we show how dramatically it can improve the network life time.
Accuracy guaranties for $\ell_1$ recovery of block-sparse signals

We introduce a general framework to handle structured models (sparse and block-sparse with possibly overlapping blocks). We discuss new methods for their recovery from incomplete observation, corrupted with deterministic and stochastic noise, using block-$\ell_1$ regularization. While the current theory provides promising bounds for the recovery errors under a number of different, yet mostly hard to verify conditions, our emphasis is on verifiable conditions on the problem parameters (sensing matrix and the block structure) which guarantee accurate recovery. Verifiability of our conditions not only leads to efficiently computable bounds for the recovery error but also allows us to optimize these error bounds with respect to the method parameters, and therefore construct estimators with improved statistical properties. To justify our approach, we also provide an oracle inequality, which links the properties of the proposed recovery algorithms and the best estimation performance. Furthermore, utilizing these verifiable conditions, we develop a computationally cheap alternative to block-$\ell_1$ minimization, the non-Euclidean Block Matching Pursuit algorithm. We close by presenting a numerical study to investigate the effect of different block regularizations and demonstrate the performance of the proposed recoveries.
Product Innovations In Emerging Economies: The Moderating Role Of Collaborative Capacity

ð ð Abstract ð Studies on enterprise innovations have established the relationships between a number of determinants and enterprise innovativeness. However, such studies in general have been conducted in developed economies. Recent literature has called for broadening innovation-related research to other contexts, such as countries that are not considered "developed. " This study aims at examining how firms innovate in emerging economies. Specifically, we focus on the role of collaborative capacity in product innovations. Primary data collected from an ICT project in India has been used to test the relevant hypotheses. Initial findings show that firm size, sales value, and external R&D will affect enterprise innovations in the presence of collaborative capacity. ð