Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
False vs. missed discoveries, Gaussian decision theory, and the Donsker-Varadhan principle

The article touches on two themes in which Larry Brown has been interested, namely foundations, and mathematical analysis of Bayesian deci- sion theory. In the section on foundations, a new formulation of the problem of testing is given, and is theoretically explored. The formulation strikes a balance between false discoveries and missed discoveries. Basic higher order asymptotic theory for the α level that this formulation would imply is then worked out. Accuracy is investigated and examples are given. In the section on Bayesian decision theory, first, the Brown identities are connected to a set of inequalities of elliptic boundary value problems. It is shown by four specific results that sometimes a result in that field can lead to new results in Bayesian decision theory, and sometimes a result in decision theory can give surprisingly useful information about a problem in that field. For instance, Brown identities can provide amazingly good estimates of best constants in the Nash inequalities over Sobolev spaces. The article ends with a result on the modern theory of high dimensional Gaussian mean estimation. By means of a triangulation of the Brown identity, the Rayleigh-Ritz variational formula of boundary value problems, and the famous Donsker-Varadhan result connecting the Rayleigh-Ritz formula to the absorption time of a Brownian motion into the boundary of a smooth bounded open domain, we show that the minimax risk of estimating the Gaussian mean can be approximated by chasing a Brownian motion to the boundary of the parameter space. This link should be tested by simulation. 1. Foreword Although my failing eyesight has limited my normal activities, when the editors of this volume kindly invited me to write an article, I knew that it was an honor that I could not pass. I first corresponded with Larry Brown around 1982, when I was a PhD student at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. In the 30 years that have followed, I have learned from and have been inspired by Larry Brown's signature humility, and his work in numerous areas, including decision theory and mathematical analysis of difficult Bayesian problems, foundations, asymptotics, and theoretical validation of methodologies. This article touches on two of these themes, which form an extremely small corner of Larry Brown's work. These are among the main topics on which I have myself corresponded with him, or have worked with him. It is my greatest pleasure to present these few calculations in honor of Professor Brown.
On Constructing the Voronoi Diagram for Lines in the Plane under a Linear-Function Distance

We consider the problem of constructing the Voronoi diagram for a set of weighted lines in the plane. First, we examine the case when each of the given lines is assigned an additive real weight, and next---a more general case when each line is endowed with a linear function, and the distance between any point in the plane and a weighted line is given by the value of the associated linear function of the latter, to which the Euclidean distance between the point and the line is passed as the argument.Our proposed method is based on the wavefront propagation, and allows for an efficient computation of the respective Voronoi diagrams, as well as for the analysis of their structure and properties. Its advantage over the general approach to studying and constructing Voronoi diagrams, which, in our case, would require the computation of the lower envelope of a set of half-planes in three-dimensional space, lies in its relative simplicity.
High parenting aggravation among US immigrant families.

OBJECTIVES We examined the association between the joint effects of children's immigrant family type and race/ethnicity on parenting aggravation. METHODS We analyzed data on a nationally representative sample of 101 032 children aged birth through 17 years from the 2003 National Survey of Children's Health. RESULTS Analysis of the Aggravation in Parenting Scale showed that 26% of foreign-born parents with foreign-born children were highly aggravated, followed by 22% of foreign-born parents with US-born children and 11% of US-born parents. Multivariable analyses indicated that all minority parents experienced high parenting aggravation compared with non-Hispanic White US-born parents; the odds of reporting parenting aggravation were 5 times higher for Hispanic foreign-born parents. All foreign-born parents, regardless of race/ethnicity, reported significantly elevated parenting aggravation. Parents of adolescents, children with special health care needs, and nontraditional and lower-income households were also more likely to report high parenting aggravation. CONCLUSIONS Our findings clearly document significantly elevated levels of parenting aggravation among immigrant and minority families. Public health programs and clinicians should target referrals and interventions for these families to avoid potential health problems for both children and their families.
Evidence of a role for cyclic ADP‐ribose in calcium signalling and neurotransmitter release in cultured astrocytes

Astrocytes possess different, efficient ways to generate complex changes in intracellular calcium concentrations, which allow them to communicate with each other and to interact with adjacent neuronal cells. Here we show that cultured hippocampal astrocytes coexpress the ectoenzyme CD38, directly involved in the metabolism of the calcium mobilizer cyclic ADP‐ribose, and the NAD+ transporter connexin 43. We also demonstrate that hippocampal astrocytes can release NAD+ and respond to extracellular NAD+ or cyclic ADP‐ribose with intracellular calcium increases, suggesting the existence of an autocrine cyclic ADP‐ribose‐mediated signalling. Cyclic ADP‐ribose‐induced calcium changes are in turn responsible for an increased glutamate and GABA release, this effect being completely inhibited by the cyclic ADP‐ribose specific antagonist 8‐NH2‐cADPR. Furthermore, addition of NAD+ to astrocyte‐neuron co‐cultures results in a delayed intracellular calcium transient in neuronal cells, which is strongly but not completely inhibited by glutamate receptor blockers. These data indicate that an astrocyte‐to‐neuron calcium signalling can be triggered by the CD38/cADPR system, which, through the activation of intracellular calcium responses in astrocytes, is in turn responsible for the increased release of neuromodulators from glial cells.
The Effect of Body Position on Physiological Factors that Contribute to Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) resolves in lateral sleep in 20% of patients. However, the effect of lateral positioning on factors contributing to OSA has not been studied. We aimed to measure the effect of lateral positioning on the key pathophysiological contributors to OSA including lung volume, passive airway anatomy/collapsibility, the ability of the airway to stiffen and dilate, ventilatory control instability (loop gain), and arousal threshold. DESIGN Non-randomized single arm observational study. SETTING Sleep laboratory. PATIENTS/PARTICIPANTS 20 (15M, 5F) continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP)-treated severe OSA patients. INTERVENTIONS Supine vs. lateral position. MEASUREMENTS CPAP dial-downs performed during sleep to measure: (i) Veupnea: asleep ventilatory requirement, (ii) passive V0: ventilation off CPAP when airway dilator muscles are quiescent, (iii) Varousal: ventilation at which respiratory arousals occur, (iv) active V0: ventilation off CPAP when airway dilator muscles are activated during sleep, (v) loop gain: the ratio of the ventilatory drive response to a disturbance in ventilation, (vi) arousal threshold: level of ventilatory drive which leads to arousal, (vii) upper airway gain (UAG): ability of airway muscles to restore ventilation in response to increases in ventilatory drive, and (viii) pharyngeal critical closing pressure (Pcrit). Awake functional residual capacity (FRC) was also recorded. RESULTS Lateral positioning significantly increased passive V0 (0.33 ± 0.76L/min vs. 3.56 ± 2.94L/min, P < 0.001), active V0 (1.10 ± 1.97L/min vs. 4.71 ± 3.08L/min, P < 0.001), and FRC (1.31 ± 0.56 L vs. 1.42 ± 0.62 L, P = 0.046), and significantly decreased Pcrit (2.02 ± 2.55 cm H2O vs. -1.92 ± 3.87 cm H2O, P < 0.001). Loop gain, arousal threshold, Varousal, and UAG were not significantly altered. CONCLUSIONS Lateral positioning significantly improves passive airway anatomy/collapsibility (passive V0, pharyngeal critical closing pressure), the ability of the airway to stiffen and dilate (active V0), and the awake functional residual capacity without improving loop gain or arousal threshold.
Interplay between verbal response latency and physiology of children with autism during ECA interactions

The affective state of children with autism is not always ex-pressed or discernible through observational cues, a phenomenon which is further confounded by vast variability across individuals on the autism spectrum. Electrodermal Activity (EDA) is a physiological signal indicative of a person’s arousal and thus af-fording us new insights into a child’s inner affective state. In this work we study EDA cues of children with autism while interacting with an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA). EDA is affected by both cognitive and social factors. In this paper, we consider the child’s verbal response latency as the overt behavioral cue and link it with his/her physiology. A classiﬁcation experiment was performed to differentiate between physiological cues of high and low verbal response latency intervals, based on the assumption that different kinds of mechanisms are triggered in each case. Our results indicate that physiological patterns between short and long verbal response latencies are more discriminative for some children than others, suggesting the existence of multiple levels of cognitive and social efforts across children. They also show variable levels of arousal response, which can provide a complementary view of the observational cues.
Constrained State Estimation and Control over Communication Networks

— This paper performs a joint analysis of control and coding for stability and performance of LTI systems connected over communication networks. We study the communication rate required for stability of the differential entropy and mean-square stability of the state estimation error. We show that the optimal control and coding problems in the minimization of an LQR cost are separable; we further show that the optimal control is linear in its argument and we provide the solution to the optimal quantization problem. Mean-square stability of an LTI system, as a function of the rate and network reliability, is also studied.
Resampling Algorithms for Particle Filters: A Computational Complexity Perspective

Newly developed resampling algorithms for particle filters suitable for real-time implementation are described and their analysis is presented. The new algorithms reduce the complexity of both hardware and DSP realization through addressing common issues such as decreasing the number of operations and memory access. Moreover, the algorithms allow for use of higher sampling frequencies by overlapping in time the resampling step with the other particle filtering steps. Since resampling is not dependent on any particular application, the analysis is appropriate for all types of particle filters that use resampling. The performance of the algorithms is evaluated on particle filters applied to bearings-only tracking and joint detection and estimation in wireless communications. We have demonstrated that the proposed algorithms reduce the complexity without performance degradation.
LA IS BETTER THAN EL: THE ROLE OF REGULARITY AND LEXICAL FAMILIARITY IN NOUN PHRASE PRODUCTION BY YOUNG SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN

Language production involves two stages of lexical retrieval with a word’s lemma (meaning, syntax) accessed before its lexeme (form). Adult speakers of gendered languages are said to access gender via the lemma (Vigliocco, Antonini and Garrett, 1997). However, presenting gender incongruous distractors during picture naming does not produce interference for Spanish speakers (Costa, Sebastian-Galles, Miozzo & Caramazza, 1999; O’Rourke, 2007). Spanish demonstrates predictability between determiner gender and noun form: 96.3% of nouns ending in /a/ are feminine, taking the definite determiner la, and 99.87% of nouns ending in /o/ are masculine, preceded by el (Teschner & Russell 1984). Morphophonological regularity might allow Spanishspeakers to bypass lemma-level gender. This dissertation addressed the question of whether young children learning Spanish access gender with the lemma of individual words, utilize language-specific morphophonological regularities alone, or use a combination of lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity. This was tested in an elicited imitation task manipulating lexical status, congruity and gender. Spanish-English bilingual children (2;0-4;0) and Spanish-speaking adults repeated Spanish words and non-words preceded by gender congruous and incongruous definite articles. If children access gender with lemmas, children should omit fewer articles for words vs. non-words in congruous (el libro-them bookm) versus incongruous conditions (la libro-thef bookm). If children use morphophonological patterns, words should show no advantage; however, children should omit fewer feminine than masculine
The Reputation Crisis: Risk Management Based Logical Framework to the Corporate Sustainability

The corporate reputation is an integral part of its overall performance. In this chapter, we argue that a stronger link should exist between risk management and corporate reputation in sustainable way. In view of the modern corporate risk management, reputation is the part of the risk intelligence based process management. This chapter is prepeared about managing corporate reputation with proactive process in the pre-crisis, crisis and pro-crisis situation. Managing reputation is not one time process. Our inspiration to this model comes from Weber's conceptual framework for modern sociology.
Detection of mecA and enterotoxin genes in Staphylococcus aureus isolates associated with bovine mastitis and characterization of Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) in MRSA strains.

Background and Objectives: Staphylococcus aureus is one of the main causatives of bovine mastitis. Resistance of some strains to methicillin, can complicate the treatment of its infections. On the other hand, enterotoxin production is also important. Therefore, the aim of our study was to investigate the methicillin resistance and enterotoxin production in S. aureus isolates caused bovine mastitis. Materials and Methods: Four hundred and fifty milk samples were collected. After isolation of Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA strains were detected by cefoxitin disc diffusion and oxacillin agar screening methods. DNA was extracted by phenol – chloroform method and PCR was applied for mecA, sea and seb genes. SCCmec types of mecA gene were identified using multiplex-PCR. Results: Fifty-four (12%) S. aureus were isolated. Out of these, 10 and 9 MRSA strains identified by cefoxitin disc diffusion and oxacillin agar screening methods, respectively. All 10 MRSA isolates identified by cefoxitin disc diffusion, were positive for mecA gene and all of them belonged to SCCmec type IV. The sea genes were detected in 19 isolates and only two isolates were positive for seb genes. One isolate possessed both sea and seb genes. Conclusion: Findings of this study indicated that results of cefoxitin disc diffusion test is in concordance with the PCR for mecA gene and has a higher sensitivity compared to oxacillin agar screening method. Finally, Our findings suggest that enterotoxin A is the dominant type.
Lancet Dynamics in Greater Horseshoe Bats, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum

Echolocating greater horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) emit their biosonar pulses nasally, through nostrils surrounded by fleshy appendages (‘noseleaves’) that diffract the outgoing ultrasonic waves. Movements of one noseleaf part, the lancet, were measured in live bats using two synchronized high speed video cameras with 3D stereo reconstruction, and synchronized with pulse emissions recorded by an ultrasonic microphone. During individual broadcasts, the lancet briefly flicks forward (flexion) and is then restored to its original position. This forward motion lasts tens of milliseconds and increases the curvature of the affected noseleaf surfaces. Approximately 90% of the maximum displacements occurred within the duration of individual pulses, with 70% occurring towards the end. Similar lancet motions were not observed between individual pulses in a sequence of broadcasts. Velocities of the lancet motion were too small to induce Doppler shifts of a biologically-meaningful magnitude, but the maximum displacements were significant in comparison with the overall size of the lancet and the ultrasonic wavelengths. Three finite element models were made from micro-CT scans of the noseleaf post mortem to investigate the acoustic effects of lancet displacement. The broadcast beam shapes were found to be altered substantially by the observed small lancet movements. These findings demonstrate that—in addition to the previously described motions of the anterior leaf and the pinna—horseshoe bat biosonar has a third degree of freedom for fast changes that can happen on the time scale of the emitted pulses or the returning echoes and could provide a dynamic mechanism for the encoding of sensory information.
The Role of the Heat Shock Protein B8 (HSPB8) in Motoneuron Diseases

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA) are two motoneuron diseases (MNDs) characterized by aberrant protein behavior in affected cells. In familial ALS (fALS) and in SBMA specific gene mutations lead to the production of neurotoxic proteins or peptides prone to misfold, which then accumulate in form of aggregates. Notably, some of these proteins accumulate into aggregates also in sporadic ALS (sALS) even if not mutated. To prevent proteotoxic stresses detrimental to cells, misfolded and/or aggregated proteins must be rapidly removed by the protein quality control (PQC) system. The small heat shock protein B8 (HSPB8) is a chaperone induced by harmful events, like proteasome inhibition. HSPB8 is expressed both in motoneuron and muscle cells, which are both targets of misfolded protein toxicity in MNDs. In ALS mice models, in presence of the mutant proteins, HSPB8 is upregulated both in spinal cord and muscle. HSPB8 interacts with the HSP70 co-chaperone BAG3 and enhances the degradation of misfolded proteins linked to sALS, or causative of fALS and of SBMA. HSPB8 acts by facilitating autophagy, thereby preventing misfolded protein accumulation in affected cells. BAG3 and BAG1 compete for HSP70-bound clients and target them for disposal to the autophagy or proteasome, respectively. Enhancing the selective targeting of misfolded proteins by HSPB8-BAG3-HSP70 to autophagy may also decrease their delivery to the proteasome by the BAG1-HSP70 complex, thereby limiting possible proteasome overwhelming. Thus, approaches aimed at potentiating HSPB8-BAG3 may contribute to the maintenance of proteostasis and may delay MNDs progression.
POTENTIALS IN UNDIRECTED GRAPHS AND PLANAR MULTIFLOWS

The duality relation between shortest paths and potentials in directed graphs and the significance of both of these in the theory of network flows is well known. In this paper, we work out the analogous undirected notions, which neither are contained in nor contain their directed counterpart. They are more related to matching theory than to network flows: the corresponding min-path-max-potential theorem can be considered a weighted generalization of the Gallai–Edmonds structure theorem for matchings. In our earlier work [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 49 (1990), pp. 10–39], the corresponding theorems are proved in the special case of ±1 bipartite weightings, and this special case already contains the main points of the general proof. The goal of the present paper is to extrapolate from this ±1weighted bipartite special case the arbitrarily weighted general min-path-max-potential theorem and to show some algorithmic consequences related to planar multiflows, the Chinese postman problem, the weighted and unweighted matching structure, etc. In order to make this paper self-contained, we also include a compact, revised variant of earlier proofs, adapted to the present context. In addition to good characterization theorems and polynomial algorithms, efficient (logarithmic polynomial) parallel algorithms follow for some of these problems.
Helper-Dependent Adenovirus Is Superior to First-Generation Adenovirus for Expressing Transgenes in Atherosclerosis-Prone Arteries

Objective—Vascular gene transfer is a powerful tool for investigating and treating vascular diseases; however, its utility is limited by brevity of transgene expression and vector-associated inflammation. Helper-dependent adenovirus (HDAd), an advanced-generation adenovirus that lacks all viral genes, is superior to first-generation adenovirus (FGAd) in normal rabbit arteries. We compared HDAd to FGAd in arteries of cholesterol-fed rabbits, a model of early atherogenesis in which transgene expression might be decreased, and inflammation increased. Methods and Results—Carotid arteries of chow- and cholesterol-fed rabbits were infused with FGAd, HDAd, or medium. HDAd expressed a transgene at least as well in arteries of cholesterol-fed rabbits as in arteries of chow-fed rabbits and expressed more durably than FGAd. In arteries of cholesterol-fed rabbits, HDAd stimulated less intimal growth, lipid deposition, and inflammation than FGAd. Neither vector affected phenylephrine-induced contraction or nitroprusside-mediated relaxation; however, both vectors decreased maximal acetylcholine-stimulated vasorelaxation. The relative absence of intimal growth in HDAd arteries could interfere with the utility of this model for testing atheroprotective genes; however, both coinfusion of FGAd and extension of cholesterol feeding yielded larger intimal lesions, on which atheroprotective genes could be tested. Conclusion—HDAd is superior to FGAd for expression of transgenes in atherosclerosis-prone arteries.
Classification of acute leukaemia cells using multilayer perceptron and simplified fuzzy ARTMAP neural networks

Leukaemia is a cancer of blood that causes more death than any other cancers among children and young adults under the age of 20. This disease can be cured if it is detected and treated at the early stage. Based on this argument, the requirement for fast analysis of blood cells for leukaemia is of paramount importance in the healthcare industry. This paper presents the classification of white blood cells (WBC) inside the Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) and Acute Myelogenous Leukaemia blood samples by using the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Simplified Fuzzy ARTMAP (SFAM) neural networks. Here, the WBC will be classified as lymphoblast, myeloblast and normal cell for the purpose of categorization of acute leukaemia types. Two different training algorithms namely Levenberg-Marquardt and Bayesian Regulation algorithms have been employed to train the MLP network. There are a total of 42 input features that consist of the size, shape and colour based features, have been extracted from the segmented WBCs, and used as the neural network inputs for the classification process. The classification results indicating that all networks have produced good classification performance for the overall proposed features. However, the MLP network trained by Bayesian Regulation algorithm has produced the best classification performance with testing accuracy of 95.70% for the overall proposed features. Thus, the results significantly demonstrate the suitability of the proposed features and classification using MLP and SFAM networks for classifying the acute leukaemia cells in blood sample.