Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identical but not the same: The value of discordant monozygotic twins in genetic research

Monozygotic (MZ) twins show remarkable resemblance in many aspects of behavior, health, and disease. Until recently, MZ twins were usually called “genetically identical”; however, evidence for genetic and epigenetic differences within rare MZ twin pairs has accumulated. Here, we summarize the literature on MZ twins discordant for Mendelian inherited disorders and chromosomal abnormalities. A systematic literature search for English articles on discordant MZ twin pairs was performed in Web of Science and PubMed. A total number of 2,016 publications were retrieved and reviewed and 439 reports were retained. Discordant MZ twin pairs are informative in respect to variability of phenotypic expression, pathogenetic mechanisms, epigenetics, and post‐zygotic mutagenesis and may serve as a model for research on genetic defects. The analysis of single discordant MZ twin pairs may represent an elegant approach to identify genes in inherited disorders. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
THE NONLINEAR MASLOV INDEX AND THE CALABI HOMOMORPHISM

In this paper, we find that the asymptotic nonlinear Maslov index defined on the universal cover of the group of all contact Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of the standard (2n - 1)-dimensional contact sphere is a quasimorphism. Then we show our main result: Let M be standard (n - 1)-dimensional complex projective space. We prove that the value of the pullback of the asymptotic nonlinear Maslov index to the universal cover of the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of M, when evaluated on a diffeomorphism supported in a sufficiently small open subset of M, equals times the Calabi invariant of this diffeomorphism.
Tractable Multivariate Binary Density Estimation and the Restricted Boltzmann Forest

We investigate the problem of estimating the density function of multivariate binary data. In particular, we focus on models for which computing the estimated probability of any data point is tractable. In such a setting, previous work has mostly concentrated on mixture modeling approaches. We argue that for the problem of tractable density estimation, the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) provides a competitive framework for multivariate binary density modeling. With this in mind, we also generalize the RBM framework and present the restricted Boltzmann forest (RBForest), which replaces the binary variables in the hidden layer of RBMs with groups of tree-structured binary variables. This extension allows us to obtain models that have more modeling capacity but remain tractable. In experiments on several data sets, we demonstrate the competitiveness of this approach and study some of its properties.
A synthetic traffic model for Quake3

This paper presents our development of a synthetic traffic model for the interactive online computer game Quake3. The goal is a traffic model that can be used by researchers and Internet Service Provider engineers to estimate the potential future impact of Quake3 traffic over IP networks. We developed our ns2 simulation model for Quake3's IP traffic by running live network experiments and characterising the observed packet length, packet inter-arrival times, and data rates (in packets- and bits- per second). Our observations are documented in this paper, and we expect our traffic model will assist network planners who wish to better support real-time game traffic.
Excitatory Amino Acid Transporters of the Salamander Retina: Identification, Localization, and Function

The rapid re-uptake of extracellular glutamate mediated by a family of high-affinity glutamate transporter proteins is essential to continued glutamatergic signaling and neuronal viability, but the contributions of individual transporter subtypes toward cellular physiology are poorly understood. Because the physiology of glutamate transport in the salamander retina has been well described, we have examined the expression and function of glutamate transporter subtypes in this preparation. cDNAs encoding five distinct salamander excitatory amino acid transporter (sEAAT) subtypes were isolated, and their molecular properties and distributions of expression were compared. We report evidence that at least four distinct sEAAT subtypes are expressed in glial (Müller) cells. In addition, four of the five transporter subtypes are localized in neurons throughout the retina. The brightest immunostaining was seen in the synaptic regions of the inner and outer plexiform layers and in the outer nuclear layer. Using electrophysiological measurements in the Xenopus oocyte expression system, we also examined the pharmacology and ionic dependence of the four expressing transporter subtypes that make it possible to distinguish, on the basis of functional behavior, among the various subtypes. Although no simple correlation between transporter subtype and retinal cell physiology can be made, the diverse population of sEAAT transporter subtypes with unique localization and functional properties indicates that glutamate transporters play a wide variety of roles in retinal function and are likely to underlie both the uptake of glutamate by Müller cells and the glutamate-elicited chloride conductance involved in signal transduction by photoreceptors and bipolar cells.
The sequence NPFXD defines a new class of endocytosis signal in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The yeast membrane protein Kex2p uses a tyrosine-containing motif within the cytoplasmic domain for localization to a late Golgi compartment. Because Golgi membrane proteins mislocalized to the plasma membrane in yeast can undergo endocytosis, we examined whether the Golgi localization sequence or other sequences in the Kex2p cytoplasmic domain mediate endocytosis. To assess endocytic function, the Kex2p cytoplasmic domain was fused to an endocytosis-defective form of the alpha-factor receptor. Ste2p. Like intact Ste2p, the chimeric protein, Stex22p, undergoes rapid endocytosis that is dependent on clathrin and End3p. Uptake of Stex22p does not require the Kex2p Golgi localization motif. Instead, the sequence NPFSD, located 37 amino acids from the COOH terminus, is essential for Stex22p endocytosis. Internalization was abolished when the N, P, or F residues were converted to alanine and severely impaired upon conversion of D to A. NPFSD restored uptake when added to the COOH terminus of an endocytosis-defective Ste2p chimera lacking lysine-based endocytosis signals present in wild-type Ste2p. An NPF sequence is present in the cytoplasmic domain of the a- factor receptor, Ste3p. Mutation of this sequence prevented pheromone- stimulated endocytosis of a truncated form of Ste3p. Our results identify NPFSD as a clathrin-dependent endocytosis signal that is distinct from the aromatic amino acid-containing Golgi localization motif and lysine-based, ubiquitin-dependent endocytosis signals in yeast.
Library for Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement / Coarsening Simulations

In this paper we describe the libMesh framework for parallel adaptive finite element applications. libMesh is an open-source software library that has been developed to facilitate serial and parallel simulation of multiscale, multiphysics applications using adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening strategies. The main software development is being carried out in the CFDLabat the University of Texas, but as with other open-source software projects; contributions are being made elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. The main goals of this article are: (1) to provide a basic reference source that describes libMesh and the underlying philosophy and software design approach; (2) to give sufficient detail and references on the adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening (AMR/C) scheme for applications analysts and developers; and (3) to describe the parallel implementation and data structures with supporting discussion of domain decomposition, message passing, and details related to dynamic repartitioning for parallel AMR/C. Other aspects related to C++ programming paradigms, reusability for diverse applications, adaptive modeling, physics-independent error indicators, and similar concepts are briefly discussed. Finally, results from some applications using the library are presented and areas of future research are discussed.
Robust motion-based segmentation in video sequences

Segmentation of a video into individual moving objects is an active research topic in digital video processing. It provides the basis for measurement and annotation as well as object based compression. An important step in bottom up motion segmentation is the merging of regions exhibiting similar motion. In some well-known methods the similarity between motion of two regions is defined as the euclidean distance between the corresponding vectors of motion parameters obtained by the least-squares estimation. This measure is sensitive to noise as it ignores the uncertainty of the estimates. Furthermore, we have found that it is not translation invariant. Recent methods have only partly solved the above problems. We propose a new method for motion segmentation. The major contribution is a new robust method for merging regions. The decision on equality of motion parameters in two regions is made via a statistical test. This leads to a new similarity measure, explicitly incorporating uncertainty in parameter estimation. Using this well founded measure a new merging algorithm is developed. We also show that the maximum likelihood merging of regions can be viewed as a generalization of the K-means clustering algorithm. The superior robustness of the new method has been confirmed by experiments on both artificial and real data.
Quote Recommendation for Dialogs and Writings

Citing proverbs and (famous) statements of other people can provide support, shed new perspective, and/or add humor to one’s arguments in writings or dialogs. Recommending quote for dialog or writing can be done by considering the various features of the current text called context. We present five new approaches to quote recommendation: 1) methods to adjust the matching granularity for better context matching, 2) random forest based approach that utilizes word discrimination, 3) convolutional neural network based approach that captures important local semantic features, 4) recurrent neural network based approach that reflects the ordering of sentences and words in the context, and 5) rank aggregation of these algorithms for maximum performance. We adopt as baseline state-of-the-arts in citation recommendation and quote recommendation. Experiments show that our rank aggregation method outperforms the best baseline by up to 46.7%. As candidate quotes, we use famous proverbs and famous statement of other person in dialogs and writings. The quotes and their contexts were extracted from Twitter, Project Gutenberg, and Web blog corpus. CCS Concepts • Information systems ~ Recommender systems • Natural language processing.
Altered Visual and Feet Proprioceptive Feedbacks during Quiet Standing Increase Postural Sway in Patients with Severe Knee Osteoarthritis

Objective The objective was to investigate how postural control in knee osteoarthritis (KOA) patients, with different structural severities and pain levels, is reorganized under different sensory conditions. Methods Forty-two obese patients (BMI range from 30.1 to 48.7 kg*m−2, age range from 50 to 74 years) with KOA were evaluated. One minute of quiet standing was assessed on a force platform during 4 different sensory conditions, applied 3 times at random: Eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC) standing on firm and soft (foam) surfaces (EO-soft and EC-soft). Centre of pressure (Cop) standard deviation, speed, range and Cop mean position in both directions (anterior-posterior and medial-lateral) were extracted from the force platform data. Structural disease severity was assessed from semiflexed standing radiographs and graded by the Kellgren and Lawrence (KL) score. Pain intensity immediately before the measurements was assessed by numeric rating scale (range: 0–10). Results The patients were divided into “less severe” (KL 1 and 2, n = 24) and “severe” (KL>2, n = 18) group. The CoP range in the medial-lateral direction was larger in the severe group when compared with the less severe group during EC-soft condition (P<0.01). Positive correlation between pain intensity and postural sway (range in medial-lateral direction) was found during EC condition, indicating that the higher the pain intensity, the less effective is the postural control applied to restore an equilibrium position while standing without visual information. Conclusion The results support that: (i) the postural reorganization under manipulation of the different sensory information is worse in obese KOA patients with severe degeneration and/or high pain intensity when compared with less impaired patients, and (ii) higher pain intensity is related to worse body balance in obese KOA patients.
A Complication of Management of Closed Incision with Negative-Pressure Wound Therapy.

Negative-pressure wound therapy is routinely utilized in plastic surgery for the treatment of open wounds. However, a newer system, known as closed-incision management (CIM), may minimize the likelihood of open wounds. CIM is designed for use after primary surgical skin closure. Many studies of the effects of CIM in various surgical disciplines have been published.1-3 The main features of CIM are increased perfusion, maintenance of a closed-wound environment, reduced seroma/hematoma incidence, and reduced tension of skin edges.1-3 CIM appeals to some plastic surgeons because of these advantages.4 However, to date, no publication has addressed the complications of CIM. We usually apply Steri-Strips (3 M, St. Paul, MN) after aesthetic surgery procedures, and their cost is nominal (approximately $4 per package). CIM is rarely utilized in our clinic because of its high cost (approximately $800). Moreover, we have observed superficial skin necrosis with CIM. In the present report, we emphasise the risk of this complication associated with CIM. A healthy 33-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital. She had excess skin and fat in her middle and lower abdomen (Figure 1A, C, E). Traditional abdominoplasty was planned. Preoperative …
Brazilian middle school students' college aspirations: An examination of individuals, families, school, and society

Brazilian Middle School Students’ College Aspirations: An Examination of Individuals, Families, School, and Society by Michelle Ann de la Rosa Dr. Andy Hargreaves, Dissertation Chair Research often overlooks students who are of Brazilian origin when considering educational equality and opportunity for different racial and ethnic groups. This qualitative study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the experiences and forces that influence the educational aspirations of Brazilian students and students of Brazilian origin living in the United States during their eighth grade year of middle school. It specifically considers students’ educational aspirations including the influence of families, the school, and the community on students’ ambitions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students, their parents, and educators (i.e., teachers, guidance counselors, a social worker, and a principal) from a middle school in the Northeast. Data showed that many students had developed postsecondary plans by the conclusion of their eighth grade year, including students’ thoughts relating to college, careers, and work. Students’ ambitions were significantly influenced by family members, especially parents, as well as by experiences with their families as immigrants in the United States. Legal status particularly affected students’ intended pathways. Findings from this study suggest the following three areas of need for Brazilian middle school students: (a) educational planning during middle school, (b) emphasis on the role of family connectedness and engagement for Brazilian families, and (c) adaptation to circumstances related to immigration status. One way of comprehending the needs of Brazilian middle school students and students of Brazilian origin in relation to the development of their educational aspirations is through integrating the theories of family and social capital. Family capital emphasizes the role of families in shaping students’ educational pathways; social capital highlights the need to develop ties beyond close networks as a means for accessing knowledge and resources that further students’ educational opportunities. Therefore, it is hoped that further attention to the family and social capital of Brazilian families in research, policy, and practice will build upon students’ ambitions and improve their educational opportunities.
A Trigger Counting Mechanism for Ring Topology

Consider a distributed system with n processors, which receive triggers from the outside world. The Distributed Trigger Counting (DTC) problem is to raise an alarm if the number of triggers over the system reaches w, which is an user specified input. DTC is used as a primitive operation in many applications, such as distributed monitoring, global snapshot etc. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for the DTC problem in a ring topology with a message complexity of O(n2 log(w/n)) and each node in the system receives O(n log(w/n)) number of messages. We also discuss about the possible tuning of the algorithm which results better complexities.
Analysis and simulation of interference suppression for space-time adaptive processing

Adaptive antenna array, which mitigates interference signals by the spatial adaptive processing (SAP), has been widely used for interference suppression in GNSS receiver. Moreover, the space-time adaptive processing (STAP) is applied to improve the performance of anti-jamming of the antenna array. This paper analyzes the working principles of SAP and STAP, and then shows the anti-jamming performance of SAP and STAP by simulation. It is proved that STAP has a better performance in the case of multiple jamming signals. Finally, this paper validates that the signals processed by STAP still meet the requirement of the acquisition and tracking of receivers by comparing the correlation peak.
Robust Output Feedback Tracking Control for Time-Delay Nonlinear Systems Using Neural Network

In this paper, the problem of robust output tracking control for a class of time-delay nonlinear systems is considered. The systems are in the form of triangular structure with unmodeled dynamics. First, we construct an observer whose gain matrix is scheduled via linear matrix inequality approach. For the case that the information of uncertainties bounds is not completely available, we design an observer-based neural network (NN) controller by employing the backstepping method. The resulting closed-loop system is ensured to be stable in the sense of semiglobal boundedness with the help of changing supplying function idea. The observer and the controller designed are both independent of the time delays. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the main theoretic results obtained
Quetiapin in der Behandlung der bipolaren affektiven Störung

Quetiapin ist ein atypisches Neuroleptikum, das sowohl Positivals auch Negativsymptome schizophrener Erkrankungen gunstig beeinflusst, ohne extrapyramidalmotorische Nebenwirkungen auszulosen oder die Kognition ungunstig zu beeinflussen. Es gibt mittlerweile vier Fallberichte, sieben offene Studien, eine plazebokontrollierte, randomisierte Studie und eine retrospektive Untersuchung zum Einsatz von Quetiapin bei akuten Manien und therapierefraktaren bipolaren Erkrankungen bei verschiedenen Patientengruppen. Insgesamt scheint Quetiapin stimmungsstabilisierende Eigenschaften bei einem gunstigen Vertraglichkeitsprofil zu haben. Doppelblinde, plazebokontrollierte Studien mussen jedoch durchgefuhrt werden, um verbindliche Aussagen zum Einsatz von Quetiapin bei bipolaren Erkrankungen machen zu konnen.
Effect of Multimodal Plasmon Resonances on the Optical Properties of Five-Pointed Nanostars

The optical transmission and electric field distribution of plasmonic nanostructures dictate their performance in nano-optics and nano-biosensors. Here, we consider the use of hollow, five-pointed, star-shaped nanostructures made of Al, Ag, Au or Cu. We use simulations based on finite-difference time-domain and the discrete dipole approximation to identify the strongest plasmon resonances in these structures. In particular, we were seeking plasmon resonances within the visible part of the spectrum. The silver pentagrams exhibited the strongest such resonance, at a wavelength of about 530 nm. The visible-light resonances of Au and Cu pentagrams were relatively weaker and red-shifted by about 50 nm. The main resonances of the Al pentagrams were in the ultra-violet. All the nanostars also showed a broad, dipolar-like resonance at about 1000 nm. Surprisingly, the maximum field intensities for the visible light modes were greatest along the flanks of the stars rather than at their tips, whereas those of the dipolar-like modes in the near-infrared were greatest at the tips of the star. These findings have practical implications for sensor design. The inclusion of a conformally hollow interior is beneficial because it provides additional ‘hot spots’.
A Simplified Eigenstrain Approach for Determination of Sub-surface Triaxial Residual Stress in Welds

This paper discusses the localized eigenstrain method, a new technique for the determination of triaxial residual stresses deep within long welded joints. The technique follows from the “Inherent Strain Method” developed by Ueda, which uses a combined experimental and analytical approach to determine the source of residual stress (i.e., “eigenstrain” or, equivalently, “inherent strain”) by sectioning and strain measurement. Once the eigenstrain field is found, it is used to deduce residual stress in the original body prior to sectioning. The main advantage of this method is that residual stress is estimated within the entire welded joint. On the other hand, the localized technique focuses on finding residual stress only in the bead region of the joint, often a critical region with respect to fracture and fatigue. Because the method focuses only on near-bead residual stress, the required experimental effort is greatly reduced in comparison with Ueda’s original formulation. In the paper, we begin by presenting the eigenstrain method in general and then describe localization of the technique. A model problem is then developed and used to investigate the accuracy of the technique through numerical modeling. Finally, the advantages and drawbacks of this new method are discussed.
Identifying Cascades in Yelp Reviews

Social media has gained significant influence in the past few years, specifically for businesses looking to leverage the new technology to increase profits, whether by advertising through coupons, or promoting their customer service and good reputation. There has also been an increase in the popularity of review sites, free websites that the public can access to see fellow users’ reviews and ratings of businesses. These review sites have great potential to help or hurt a business, based on how visitors perceive other users’ reviews and ratings. We investigated whether or not previous reviews and ratings influenced potential patrons and future reviewers of a business (i.e. attempted to identify if cascades exist in business reviews).