Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning and remembering real-world events after medial temporal lobe damage

Significance We explored the role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in remembering recent events. Patients with MTL damage and healthy controls were taken on a walk during which 11 planned events occurred. Patients remembered fewer details about the events than controls. Nevertheless, the details made reference to particular places and events from the walk. In addition, patients were similarly impaired across different kinds of content (spatial and nonspatial). Last, the patients were particularly impaired at remembering the temporal order in which the events occurred. The findings illuminate the role of the MTL in memory for real-world events and in the spatial and nonspatial aspects of recollection. The hippocampus is important for autobiographical memory, but its role is unclear. In the study, patients with hippocampal damage and controls were taken on a 25-min walk on the University of California, San Diego, campus during which 11 planned events occurred. Memory was tested directly after the walk. In addition, a second group of controls took the same walk and were tested after 1 mo. Patients with hippocampal damage remembered fewer details than controls tested directly after the walk but remembered a similar number of details as controls tested after 1 mo. Notably, the details that were reported by patients had the characteristics of episodic recollection and included references to particular places and events. Patients exhibited no special difficulty remembering spatial details in comparison with nonspatial details. Last, whereas both control groups tended to recall the events of the walk in chronological order, the order in which patients recalled the events was unrelated to the order in which they occurred. The findings illuminate the role of the hippocampus in autobiographical memory and in the spatial and nonspatial aspects of episodic recollection.
Safety and efficacy of biodegradable vs. durable polymer drug-eluting stents: evidence from a meta-analysis of randomised trials.

AIMS Drug-eluting stents (DES) are a major advance in interventional cardiology; however concerns have been raised regarding their long-term safety due to the permanent nature of the polymer. New generation stents with biodegradable polymers (BDS) have recently been developed. The aim of this study was to perform a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing the safety and efficacy profile of BDS vs. durable polymer DES. METHODS AND RESULTS The MEDLINE/CENTRAL and Google Scholar databases were searched for RCTs comparing safety and efficacy of BDS vs. DES. Safety endpoints were mortality, myocardial infarction (MI), and stent thrombosis (ST). Efficacy endpoints were target vessel revascularisation (TVR), target lesion revascularisation (TLR) and six-month in-stent late loss (ISLL). The meta-analysis included eight RCTs (n=7,481). At a median follow-up of nine months, as compared to DES, BDS use did not increase mortality (OR [95% CI] = 0.91 [0.69-1.22], p=0.53) or MI (OR [95% CI] = 1.14 [0.90-1.44], p=0.29). Rate of late/very late ST was significantly reduced in BDS patients (OR [95% CI] = 0.60 [0.39-0.91], p=0.02), as was six-month ISLL (mean difference [95% CI] = -0.07 [-0.12; -0.02] mm, p=0.004) in comparison with DES patients. Rates of TVR and TLR were comparable between BDS and DES. CONCLUSIONS BDS are at least as safe as standard DES with regard to survival and MI, and more effective in reducing late ST, as well as six-month ISLL. Further large RCTs with long-term follow-up are warranted to definitively confirm the potential benefits of BDS.
The remarkable journey of adaptation of the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite to New World anopheline mosquitoes

Plasmodium falciparum originated in Africa, dispersed around the world as a result of human migration and had to adapt to several different indigenous anopheline mosquitoes. Anophelines from the New World are evolutionary distant form African ones and this probably resulted in a more stringent selection of Plasmodium as it adapted to these vectors. It is thought that Plasmodium has been genetically selected by some anopheline species through unknown mechanisms. The mosquito immune system can greatly limit infection and P. falciparum evolved a strategy to evade these responses, at least in part mediated by Pfs47, a highly polymorphic gene. We propose that adaptation of P. falciparum to new vectors may require evasion of their immune system. Parasites with a Pfs47 haplotype compatible with the indigenous mosquito vector would be able to survive and be transmitted. The mosquito antiplasmodial response could be an important determinant of P. falciparum population structure and could affect malaria transmission in the Americas.
Individuality and Contextual Variation of Character Behaviour for Interactive Narrative.

This paper presents a system for generating non-verbal communication behaviour suitable for characters in interactive narrative. It is possible to customise the behaviour of individual character using a system of character profiles. This allows characters to have a strong individuality and personality. These same profiles also allow the characters’ behaviour to be altered in different contexts, allowing for suitably changing behaviour as the story unfolds.
Determining beam resistance of large-scale optics by measuring thresholds for surface damage caused by low-size laser beams

The paper describes an experimental method of determining probability density distribution for random threshold values of laser fluence, damaging surface of optical components. The method is as follows. Numerous surface sites of an optical component have been irradiated by a laser beam with a known non-uniform fluence distribution and magnitude sufficient for surface damage. Subsequently, the minimal fluence value ε has beens determined at the boundary of the damaged zone for each irradiation spot. It is shown that the sampling of minimal damage threshold values obtained from the above-described data assembly makes it possible to construct the probability density distribution f(ε). Knowledge of this distribution provides for the use of order statistics in damage threshold fluence data analysis and, thus, enhances accuracy and reliability of determination of surface strength for sizable optic components tested by small-diameter beams.
A Novel Trilateral Filter based Adaptive Support Weight Method for Stereo Matching

Adaptive support weight (ASW) approach represents the state-of-the-art local stereo matching method. Recent extensive evaluation studies on ASW approaches show that the bilateral filter weight function enables outstanding performance on a large dataset in comparison with various weight functions. However, it does not resolve the ambiguity induced by nearby pixels at different disparities but with similar colors. In this paper, we propose a novel trilateral filter based ASW method which remedies such ambiguities by considering disparity discontinuities through color discontinuity boundaries, i.e., the strength of the boundary between two pixels. The experimental evaluation on the Middlebury benchmark shows that the proposed algorithm ranks 15th out of 150 submissions and is the current most accurate local stereo matching algorithm.
Effects of Insect-Vector Preference for Healthy or Infected Plants on Pathogen Spread: Insights from a Model

Abstract Insects vector many plant pathogens and often have higher or lower densities on infected plants than on healthy plants. Two hypotheses may explain this observation: insects may preferentially orient toward and select one plant type (referred to as orientation preference) or insects may reside on infected plants for longer or shorter periods than on healthy plants (referred to as feeding preference). The effects of feeding preference and orientation preference were compared alone and in combination using a spatially explicit model. With feeding preference for healthy or infected plants, the qualitative relationship between the percentage of plants infected and the rate of pathogen spread was not affected. However, feeding preference for healthy plants increased rates of pathogen spread, whereas feeding preference for infected plants decreased rates of pathogen spread. Unlike feeding preference, orientation preference for healthy and infected plants produced qualitatively different relationships between the percentage of plants infected and the rate of pathogen spread. With orientation preference for healthy plants, the pathogen spread slowly when few plants were infected, but quickly once most plants were infected. In contrast, with orientation preference for infected plants, the pathogen spread quickly when few plants were infected, but slowly once most plants were infected. In sensitivity analyses, we found that assumptions about the latent period (time between infection and when insects can recognize a plant as being infected) and persistence (length of time an insect remains inoculative) altered the aforementioned effects in some cases. The results illustrate that feeding and orientation preference affect pathogen spread differently, highlighting the importance of elucidating the mechanisms that control vector preference for healthy versus infected plants.
Refinement Types for Secure Implementations

We present the design and implementation of a typechecker for verifying security properties of the source code of cryptographic protocols and access control mechanisms. The underlying type theory is a λ-calculus equipped with re¿nement types for expressing pre- and post-conditions within ¿rst-order logic. We derive formal cryptographic primitives and represent active adversaries within the type theory. Well-typed programs enjoy assertion-based security properties, with respect to a realistic threat model including key compromise. The implementation amounts to an enhanced typechecker for the general purpose functional language F#; typechecking generates veri¿cation conditions that are passed to an SMT solver. We describe a series of checked examples. This is the ¿rst tool to verify authentication properties of cryptographic protocols by typechecking their source code.
T-Ray NDE Inspections on the Fiber Direction of Thermoplastic PPS-Based CFRP Composites

Terahertz ray (T-ray) imaging has been emerged as one of the most promising new powerful nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, and new application systems are under processing development for the area applications. The terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz TDS) can be considered as a useful tool using general non-conducting materials; however it is quite limited to conducting materials. In this study, a new time-domain spectroscopy system was utilized for detecting and evaluating layup effect and flaw in FRP composite laminates. In order to solve various material properties, the index of refraction (n) and the absorption coefficient (α) are derived in reflective and transmission configuration using the terahertz time domain spectroscopy. However, the T-ray is limited in order to penetrate a conducting material to some degree. So, investigation of terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz TDS) was made and reflection and transmission configurations were studied for a 48-ply thermoplastic PPS (poly-phenylene sulfide)-based CFRP solid laminate.
kernlab - An S4 Package for Kernel Methods in R

kernlab is an extensible package for kernel-based machine learning methods in R. It takes advantage of R's new S4 ob ject model and provides a framework for creating and using kernel-based algorithms. The package contains dot product primitives (kernels), implementations of support vector machines and the relevance vector machine, Gaussian processes, a ranking algorithm, kernel PCA, kernel CCA, and a spectral clustering algorithm. Moreover it provides a general purpose quadratic programming solver, and an incomplete Cholesky decomposition method.
Determination of coumarin-type anticoagulants in human plasma by HPLC-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry with an ion trap detector.

BACKGROUND Coumarin-type anticoagulants are used for the long-term treatment and prevention of thromboembolic disorders. The identification of these drugs is crucial in patients with an increased prothrombin time of unknown origin. The aim of this study was to develop a sensitive and specific method for the simultaneous determination of phenprocoumon, acenocoumarol, and warfarin in human plasma by HPLC-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. METHODS After addition of the internal standard, p-chlorowarfarin, plasma samples were extracted using Oasis MCX solid-phase extraction cartridges. The compounds were separated on a Symmetry C18 column (Waters) with a mobile phase of acetonitrile-1 g/L formic acid (75:25 by volume) at a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min. RESULTS Extraction and separation of the three drugs and the internal standard were accomplished in 9 min. The overall extraction efficiency was >89% for all three compounds. The limits of detection were 1 microg/L for phenprocoumon and warfarin and 10 microg/L for acenocoumarol. Regression analysis of the calibration data revealed good correlation (r(2) >or=0.995) for all compounds. Within-run accuracies for quality-control samples were +/- 1% to 7% of the target concentration, with CVs <9%. CONCLUSIONS The proposed method enables the unambiguous identification and quantification of phenprocoumon, warfarin, and acenocoumarol in both clinical and forensic specimens. This method combines a new, rapid solid-phase extraction procedure with an extremely fast chromatographic analysis, which is especially advantageous for clinical laboratories.
Lines Classification in the Conformal Space R^(n+1,1)

Lines classification is the central tool for visibility calculation in dimension $n\ge 2$. It has been previously expressed in Grassmann Algebra, allowing to work with any couple of 2-vectors, which may represent two real lines or not. This article discusses about the nature of lines in the conformal model, searching if such a classification is still valid in R^(n+1,1). First, it shows that the projective classification can be expressed in terms of a {meet} operator. Then, given two real lines, the classification still works in the conformal model, but also allowing us to propound some techniques to identify lines and circles among general 3-vectors.
Hyperbolic approach to fuzzy control is optimal

In a series of papers and a book, Margaliot and Langholz (1999, 2000) proposed a hyperbolic approach to fuzzy control, in which they apply a certain hyperbolic non-linear transformation to the original variables. We consider all possible nonlinear transformations of this type and show that this hyperbolic transformation is indeed optimal.
A free boundary approach to shape optimization problems

The analysis of shape optimization problems involving the spectrum of the Laplace operator, such as isoperimetric inequalities, has known in recent years a series of interesting developments essentially as a consequence of the infusion of free boundary techniques. The main focus of this paper is to show how the analysis of a general shape optimization problem of spectral type can be reduced to the analysis of particular free boundary problems. In this survey article, we give an overview of some very recent technical tools, the so-called shape sub- and supersolutions, and show how to use them for the minimization of spectral functionals involving the eigenvalues of the Dirichlet Laplacian, under a volume constraint.
A layered approach for modelling agent conversations

Although the notion of conversations has been discussed for some time as a way in which to provide an abstract representation of extended agent message exchange, there is still no consensus established concerning how to use these abstractions effectively. This paper describes a layered approach based on coloured Petri Nets that can be used for modelling complex, concurrent conversations among agents in a multi-agent system. The approach can be used both to define simple conversation protocols and to define more complex conversation protocols composed of a number of simpler conversations. With this method it is possible (a) to capture the concurrent characteristics of a conversation, (b) to capture the state of a conversation at runtime, and (c) to reuse conversation structures for the processing of multiple concurrent messages. A prototype implementation of such a system with some examples is described.
Use and misuse of the concept of craving by alcohol, tobacco, and drug researchers.

Summary ‘Craving’ is found in common usage as well as technical jargon. In ordinary use, the term refers to strong desire or intense longing. Recently the meaning of the technical term ‘craving’ has been stretched to include all dispositions of dependent persons to use the addictive substance. Some researchers have further extended the term to include dispositions to avoid the substance. We argue that the mismatch between the current technical use of ‘craving’ and its use in ordinary language is problematic and misleading in many cases. Examination of the literature on ‘craving’ reveals that the entity has been conceptualized in a variety of ways, each with implications for suitable research techniques. Whatever the model of ‘craving’, we urge scientists to be circumspect in their use of such a loaded term and to use it only for ‘strong desires’ to take drugs. To do otherwise can lead authors to make more of their findings than mould be supported by a more cautious use of words.
Evaluation of Alfa grass soda lignin as a filler for novolak molding powder

Behavior of Alpha grass soda lignin was investigated for the preparation of novolak molding powders. Thermal analysis of the different investigated formulations indicated that molding powders prepared from Alpha grass soda lignin were more resistant to thermal degradation compared to a standard formulation prepared from wood flour. Limiting oxygen index determined for the different composites confirmed the higher thermal stability of Alpha grass soda lignin composites. Mechanical properties tested either from Shore hardness tests or from impact strength measurements revealed a slight decrease of mechanical properties for composites prepared from Alpha grass soda lignin. All these results showed the possibility to replace imported wood flours by locally available Alpha grass soda lignin to obtain phenolic composites with quite similar properties. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 97: 1065–1068, 2005
Effects of Semantic and Acoustic Context on Nonword Detection in Children With Hearing Loss

Purpose: Children with hearing loss (HL) are known to have smaller receptive vocabularies than children with normal hearing (NH). This may be due, in part, of their reduced exposure to new words and their slower rate of word learning. A necessary prerequisite to lexical development is the detection of new words in conversation. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of HL on children’s ability to detect the presence of nonwords within sentences that varied in semantic and acoustic context. Methods: Twenty-nine children with NH and 16 children with HL between the ages of 7 and 13 years participated. The children listened to short sentences and reported the number of nonwords detected, ranging from zero to two nonwords, in each sentence. The structure of the sentences was either meaningful or nonsensical to the children to reveal the effects of semantic context. The effects of acoustic context were revealed by presenting the sentences in quiet, steady-state noise, and in multi-talker babble. Results: Significant effects of age (older > younger), hearing (NH > HL), and listening condition (quiet > noise and babble) were observed. Also, nonword detection was better for semantically meaningful sentences than for nonsense sentences. Error analyses revealed that the children with NH tended to underestimate the number of nonwords in meaningful sentences but not in nonsense sentences. The children with HL, however, were more likely to underestimate the number of nonwords than were the children with NH for both meaningful and nonsense sentences. These error patterns were observed in each listening condition. Conclusions: Error patterns suggest that children with HL apply strong repair strategies during speech perception, which may limit their opportunities to learn new words.
DES-ncRNA: A knowledgebase for exploring information about human micro and long noncoding RNAs based on literature-mining

ABSTRACT Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), particularly microRNAs (miRNAs) and long ncRNAs (lncRNAs), are important players in diseases and emerge as novel drug targets. Thus, unraveling the relationships between ncRNAs and other biomedical entities in cells are critical for better understanding ncRNA roles that may eventually help develop their use in medicine. To support ncRNA research and facilitate retrieval of relevant information regarding miRNAs and lncRNAs from the plethora of published ncRNA-related research, we developed DES-ncRNA (www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/des_ncrna). DES-ncRNA is a knowledgebase containing text- and data-mined information from public scientific literature and other public resources. Exploration of mined information is enabled through terms and pairs of terms from 19 topic-specific dictionaries including, for example, antibiotics, toxins, drugs, enzymes, mutations, pathways, human genes and proteins, drug indications and side effects, mutations, diseases, etc. DES-ncRNA contains approximately 878,000 associations of terms from these dictionaries of which 36,222 (5,373) are with regards to miRNAs (lncRNAs). We provide several ways to explore information regarding ncRNAs to users including controlled generation of association networks as well as hypotheses generation. We show an example how DES-ncRNA can aid research on Alzheimer disease and suggest potential therapeutic role for Fasudil. DES-ncRNA is a powerful tool that can be used on its own or as a complement to the existing resources, to support research in human ncRNA. To our knowledge, this is the only knowledgebase dedicated to human miRNAs and lncRNAs derived primarily through literature-mining enabling exploration of a broad spectrum of associated biomedical entities, not paralleled by any other resource.
Flavors of Gaussian warping

In recent years, speech recognition researchers have proposed the use of Gaussian warping as a step in the computation of input speech feature parameters. This warping is intended to reduce the mismatch between the actual statistical distribution of parameters and the distribution hypothesized in the acoustic models used, i.e., the Gaussian distribution. In this paper, we compare variants of Gaussianization, including off-line and windowed (short-term) versions, which we evaluate on a corpus of Canadian Parliamentary Debates.