Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nusinersen versus Sham Control in Later‐Onset Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Background Nusinersen is an antisense oligonucleotide drug that modulates pre–messenger RNA splicing of the survival motor neuron 2 (SMN2) gene. It has been developed for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Methods We conducted a multicenter, double‐blind, sham‐controlled, phase 3 trial of nusinersen in 126 children with SMA who had symptom onset after 6 months of age. The children were randomly assigned, in a 2:1 ratio, to undergo intrathecal administration of nusinersen at a dose of 12 mg (nusinersen group) or a sham procedure (control group) on days 1, 29, 85, and 274. The primary end point was the least‐squares mean change from baseline in the Hammersmith Functional Motor Scale–Expanded (HFMSE) score at 15 months of treatment; HFMSE scores range from 0 to 66, with higher scores indicating better motor function. Secondary end points included the percentage of children with a clinically meaningful increase from baseline in the HFMSE score (≥3 points), an outcome that indicates improvement in at least two motor skills. Results In the prespecified interim analysis, there was a least‐squares mean increase from baseline to month 15 in the HFMSE score in the nusinersen group (by 4.0 points) and a least‐squares mean decrease in the control group (by –1.9 points), with a significant between‐group difference favoring nusinersen (least‐squares mean difference in change, 5.9 points; 95% confidence interval, 3.7 to 8.1; P<0.001). This result prompted early termination of the trial. Results of the final analysis were consistent with results of the interim analysis. In the final analysis, 57% of the children in the nusinersen group as compared with 26% in the control group had an increase from baseline to month 15 in the HFMSE score of at least 3 points (P<0.001), and the overall incidence of adverse events was similar in the nusinersen group and the control group (93% and 100%, respectively). Conclusions Among children with later‐onset SMA, those who received nusinersen had significant and clinically meaningful improvement in motor function as compared with those in the control group. (Funded by Biogen and Ionis Pharmaceuticals; CHERISH ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02292537.)
UV-induced improvement in ZnO thin film conductivity: a new in situ approach

We report a long-lasting enhancement in electrical properties occurs when zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films prepared by spray pyrolysis in a nitrogen atmosphere are treated with UV prior to the films' first exposure to air (here termed “in situ irradiation”). Carrier mobilities as high as 44.3 cm2 V−1 s−1 – the highest values yet reported for any ZnO thin films made by spray pyrolysis – are exhibited by samples deposited at ca. 376 °C. In fact, such mobility values compare favorably with results that have been obtained using more complex, vacuum-based deposition techniques. The results of electrical, chemical, and microstructural characterization as a function of irradiation and deposition temperature indicate that the improved electrical properties stem from a modification of the relative populations of donor and acceptor defects at the grain boundaries of these polycrystalline films, allowing parallels to be drawn to the well-known phenomenon of “persistent” photoconductivity in ZnO. Finally, we consider how these observations about the interaction of ZnO with UV light relate to factors that limit the electrical performance of practical, transparent conducing oxide thin films.
Some general methods for tampering with watermarks

Watermarks allow embedded signals to be extracted from audio and video content for a variety of purposes. One application is for copyright control, where it is envisaged that digital video recorders will not permit the recording of content that is watermarked as "never copy". In such a scenario, it is important that the watermark survive both normal signal transformations and attempts to remove the watermark so that an illegal copy can be made. We discuss to what extent a watermark can be resistant to tampering and describe a variety of possible attacks.
Different Responses in Induction of Allergen Specific Immunoglobulin G4 and IgE-Blocking Factors for Three Mite Subcutaneous Immunotherapy Products

Purpose Specific immunoglobulin G4 (sIgG4) and immunoglobulin E (IgE)-blocking factors produced by subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT) play a critical role in the induction of allergen tolerance. However, comparative studies of available SCIT reagents on the induction of sIgG4 are limited. We compared increases in sIgG4 for three different house dust mite (HDM) SCIT reagents. Materials and Methods Seventy-two HDM sensitized allergic patients were enrolled and classified into four groups: 1) control (n=27), 2) SCIT with Hollister-Stier® (n=19), 3) Tyrosine S® (n=16), and 4) Novo-Helisen® (n=10). Levels of specific IgE (sIgE), sIgG4, and IgE blocking factor to Dermatophagoides farinae (D. farinae) were measured using ImmunoCAP (sIgE, sIgG4) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (IgE-blocking factors). Levels were measured before and 13.9±6.6 months after the SCIT. The allergen specificity and the induction levels of sIgE and sIgG4 were confirmed by immunoblot analysis. Results After SCIT, sIgG4 levels to D. farinae increased significantly; however, the increases differed significantly among the SCIT groups (p<0.001). Specific IgG4 levels to D. farinae were highest in Hollister-Stier® (3.7±4.1 mg/L), followed by Novo-Helisen® (2.2±2.3 mg/L) and Tyrosine S® (0.7±0.5 mg/L). In addition, patients who were administered using Hollister-Stier® showed the most significant decrease in IgE/IgG4 ratio (p<0.001) and increase in blocking factor (p=0.009). Finally, according to IgE immunoblot results, the Hollister-Stier® group showed the most significant attenuation of IgE binding patterns among others. Conclusion Currently available SCIT reagents induce different levels of specific IgG4, IgE/IgG4 ratio, and IgE-blocking factor.
Deep Inference of Personality Traits by Integrating Image and Word Use in Social Networks

Social media, as a major platform for communication and information exchange, is a rich repository of the opinions and sentiments of 2.3 billion users about a vast spectrum of topics. To sense the whys of certain social user's demands and cultural-driven interests, however, the knowledge embedded in the 1.8 billion pictures which are uploaded daily in public profiles has just started to be exploited since this process has been typically been text-based. Following this trend on visual-based social analysis, we present a novel methodology based on Deep Learning to build a combined image-and-text based personality trait model, trained with images posted together with words found highly correlated to specific personality traits. So the key contribution here is to explore whether OCEAN personality trait modeling can be addressed based on images, here called \emph{Mind{P}ics}, appearing with certain tags with psychological insights. We found that there is a correlation between those posted images and their accompanying texts, which can be successfully modeled using deep neural networks for personality estimation. The experimental results are consistent with previous cyber-psychology results based on texts or images. In addition, classification results on some traits show that some patterns emerge in the set of images corresponding to a specific text, in essence to those representing an abstract concept. These results open new avenues of research for further refining the proposed personality model under the supervision of psychology experts.
SDSS-IV MaNGA: Properties of galaxies with kinematically decoupled stellar and gaseous components

We study the properties of 66 galaxies with kinematically misaligned gas and stars from MaNGA survey. The fraction of kinematically misaligned galaxies varies with galaxy physical parameters, i.e. M∗, SFR and sSFR. According to their sSFR, we further classify these 66 galaxies into three categories, 10 star-forming, 26 ‘Green Valley’ and 30 quiescent ones. The properties of different types of kinematically misaligned galaxies are different in that the starforming ones have positive gradient in Dn4000 and higher gas-phase metallicity, while the green valley/quiescent ones have negative Dn4000 gradients and lower gas-phase metallicity on average. There is evidence that all types of the kinematically misaligned galaxies tend to live in more isolated environment. Based on all these observational results, we propose a scenario for the formation of star-forming galaxies with kinematically misaligned gas and stars − the progenitor accretes misaligned gas from a gas-rich dwarf or cosmic web, the cancellation of angular momentum from gas–gas collisions between the pre-existing gas and the accreted gas largely accelerates gas inflow, leading to fast centrally concentrated star formation. The higher metallicity is due to enrichment from this star formation. For the kinematically misaligned green valley and quiescent galaxies, they might be formed through gas-poor progenitors accreting kinematically misaligned gas from satellites which are smaller in mass.
Development of a hyper-redundant multijoint manipulator for maintenance of nuclear reactors

A tendon-driven manipulator, the CT Arm, has a specific tendon traction transmission mechanism, in which a pair of tendons for driving a joint is pulled from base actuators via pulleys mounted on the based-side joints. The mechanism makes the most of the coupled drive function of the tendon tractions and thus enables the lightweight manipulator to exhibit enormous payload capability. By this tendon-driven mechanism, a multijoint manipulator with super-redundant degrees of freedom could be realized, which is suitable to the maintenance of nuclear reactors. In this article, we introduce the CT Arm and discuss the possibility of generating a multijoint maintenance manipulator for nuclear reactors, which must have super-redundant degrees of freedom. A position-coordination approach for a hyper-redundant manipulator to carry tools or inspection equipment passing through a hole to a work location in a nuclear reactor is also proposed. Computer simulation has been used to show the validity of the hyper-redundant.
Helicity-selective phase-matching and quasi-phase matching of circularly polarized high-order harmonics: towards chiral attosecond pulses

Phase matching of circularly polarized high-order harmonics driven by counter-rotating bi-chromatic lasers was recently predicted theoretically and demonstrated experimentally. In that work, phase matching was analyzed by assuming that the total energy, spin angular momentum and linear momentum of the photons participating in the process are conserved. Here we propose a new perspective on phase matching of circularly polarized high harmonics. We derive an extended phase matching condition by requiring a new propagation matching condition between the classical vectorial bi-chromatic laser pump and harmonics fields. This allows us to include the influence of the laser pulse envelopes on phase matching. We find that the helicity dependent phase matching facilitates generation of high harmonics beams with a high degree of chirality. Indeed, we present an experimentally measured chiral spectrum that can support a train of attosecond pulses with a high degree of circular polarization. Moreover, while the degree of circularity of the most intense pulse approaches unity, all other pulses exhibit reduced circularity. This feature suggests the possibility of using a train of attosecond pulses as an isolated attosecond probe for chiral-sensitive experiments.
Dynamic Cloud Network Control Under Reconfiguration Delay and Cost

Network virtualization and programmability allow operators to deploy a wide range of services over a common physical infrastructure and elastically allocate cloud and network resources according to changing requirements. While the elastic reconfiguration of virtual resources enables dynamically scaling capacity in order to support service demands with minimal operational cost, reconfiguration operations make resources unavailable during a given time period and may incur additional cost. In this paper, we address the dynamic cloud network control problem under non-negligible reconfiguration delay and cost. We show that while the capacity region remains unchanged regardless of the reconfiguration delay/cost values, a reconfiguration-agnostic policy may fail to guarantee throughput-optimality and minimum cost under nonzero reconfiguration delay/cost. We then present an adaptive dynamic cloud network control policy that allows network nodes to make local flow scheduling and resource allocation decisions while controlling the frequency of reconfiguration in order to support any input rate in the capacity region and achieve arbitrarily close to minimum cost for any finite reconfiguration delay/cost values.
Effect of Different Compacting Processes on the Microwave Sintering Behavior of LaNbO4/MoSi2 Composites

The green bodies of LaNbO4/MoSi2 composite materials were compacted by warm pressing and cold pressing processes, and then the composites were prepared by microwave sintering. Effects of the two different compaction processes on sintering process and sintered samples were analyzed. The results show that the density of the microwave sintered sample by cold pressing (5.599g/cm3) is similar to that of warm pressing (5.593 g/cm3). But cold pressing has some disadvantages, such as longer sintering time, incomplete sintered samples, peeling easily on the surface and delaminating, existing internal stress, having microcrack and impurities, and occurring distortion easily in sintered samples. The samples compacted by warm pressing have higher heating rate in the microwave sintering process, which have more homogeneous structures, no clear microcrack and big cavities, and higher fracture toughness after sintering. Compared with cold pressing, the comprehensive properties of warm pressing are better.
Coenzyme Q10 Supplementation in Aging and Disease

Coenzyme Q (CoQ) is an essential component of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and an antioxidant in plasma membranes and lipoproteins. It is endogenously produced in all cells by a highly regulated pathway that involves a mitochondrial multiprotein complex. Defects in either the structural and/or regulatory components of CoQ complex or in non-CoQ biosynthetic mitochondrial proteins can result in a decrease in CoQ concentration and/or an increase in oxidative stress. Besides CoQ10 deficiency syndrome and aging, there are chronic diseases in which lower levels of CoQ10 are detected in tissues and organs providing the hypothesis that CoQ10 supplementation could alleviate aging symptoms and/or retard the onset of these diseases. Here, we review the current knowledge of CoQ10 biosynthesis and primary CoQ10 deficiency syndrome, and have collected published results from clinical trials based on CoQ10 supplementation. There is evidence that supplementation positively affects mitochondrial deficiency syndrome and the symptoms of aging based mainly on improvements in bioenergetics. Cardiovascular disease and inflammation are alleviated by the antioxidant effect of CoQ10. There is a need for further studies and clinical trials involving a greater number of participants undergoing longer treatments in order to assess the benefits of CoQ10 treatment in metabolic syndrome and diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders, kidney diseases, and human fertility.
Influence of the stress state in silicon on the anisotropic etching process

This paper presents evidence of the influence of the state of stress on anisotropic etching of (100) oriented Si in KOH water solution. External load is applied to strips of Si which modifies the initial internal stress state actually generated by a patterned SiO2 masking film. Results obtained for circular patterns indicate that the etch patterns on the strips subjected to negative and positive stresses are different from each other and are different from strips which have not been subjected to external loads. These observations indicate that the etching process is influenced by the presence of stresses in the silicon. A technique to analyze the stress is proposed. The resulting variations of etched features with applied stress is significant.
RepRap – the replicating rapid prototyper

SUMMARY This paper presents the results to date of the RepRap project – an ongoing project that has made and distributed freely a replicating rapid prototyper. We give the background reasoning that led to the invention of the machine, the selection of the processes that we and others have used to implement it, the designs of key parts of the machine and how these have evolved from their initial concepts and experiments, and estimates of the machine's reproductive success out in the world up to the time of writing (about 4500 machines in two and a half years).
Research on and Inheriting the Cultural Identity of the Rural Settlement in Northern Part of Shaanxi Province

This paper, taking the example of the rural settlement in north Shaanxi province, explores the effective approaches to preserving the traditional architecture and its culture and concentrates on study and protection of the cultural characteristics of the built environment. The paper serves to emphasize the investigation into the cultural identity of the physical and mental environment closely related to everyday life in a built environment, specialty and uncertainty of the cultural traits in a particular area and analyses of the interrelated social factors. The paper is established in the field research into a typical village in a particular area and comparative analysis of the general character and individuality of the cultural identity, resulting in a highly targeted concrete protection strategy. There are various factors that could have effects on the cultural identity of the physical and mental environment closely related to everyday life in a built environment, among which social factors are fairly dominant. The rural settlements embody the traditional cultural contexts in quite a few different aspects. Thus, it is of actual significance to formulate a corresponding inheriting strategy based on seeking for their influencing factors and embodiments.
Capabilities and limitations of the interferometric cartwheel

Quasi-simultaneous radar images can be produced by a low cost system using a set of passive receivers onboard a constellation of microsatellites in a special orbital configuration. The combination of these images can improve the final resolution in range and azimuth and systematically produce across-track and along-track interferometric data. The author reviews some of the technical particularities of these systems linked to (1) the system, such as the pulse scheduling, the orbital geometry, and the required pointing and positioning, and (2) the image quality, such as the ambiguity level, the required clock stability, the effect of varying baselines at various scales, focusing to higher resolution, and geometric limitations, mainly the behavior of the coherent combinations over terrain with high slopes. The author illustrates three applications of the concept in cooperation with the radar onboard the Japanese ALOS satellite, the ASAR instrument onboard the European ENVISAT, and as a study-case for defense applications of the concept. The author envisions even more innovative applications of the concept, for instance in simultaneous polarimetry and interferometry.
Vehicle Re-identification for Automatic Video Traffic Surveillance

This paper proposes an approach to the vehicle reidentification problem in a multiple camera system. We focused on the re-identification itself assuming that the vehicle detection problem is already solved including extraction of a full-fledged 3D bounding box. The re-identification problem is solved by using color histograms and histograms of oriented gradients by a linear regressor. The features are used in separate models in order to get the best results in the shortest CPU computation time. The proposed method works with a high accuracy (60% true positives retrieved with 10% false positive rate on a challenging subset of the test data) in 85 milliseconds of the CPU (Core i7) computation time per one vehicle re-identification assuming the fullHD resolution video input. The applications of this work include finding important parameters such as travel time, traffic flow, or traffic information in a distributed traffic surveillance and monitoring system.
CW DUV light sources for inspection tools

We describe true continuous-wave (CW), high-power, line-narrowed, deep-ultraviolet (DUV) light sources for the high-resolution metrology tools such as wafer inspection and mask inspection systems. The 198.5-nm CW radiation with 300-mW power has also been achieved by sum-frequency mixing (SFM) of 1064-nm output from a single-frequency Yb3+ fiber amplifier with the 244-nm radiation from a frequency-doubled argon-ion laser. The 266-nm CW DUV radiation with 5 W of maximum power has been generated by frequency doubling of 532-nm green laser output. Both sources utilize Brewster-cut CsLiB6O10 (CLBO) crystal for efficient and stable DUV light generation.
Getting closer: an empirical investigation of the proximity of user to their smart phones

Much research in ubiquitous computing assumes that a user's phone will be always on and at-hand, for collecting user context and for communicating with a user. Previous work with the previous generation of mobile phones has shown that such an assumption is false. Here, we investigate whether this assumption about users' proximity to their mobile phones holds for a new generation of mobile phones, smart phones. We conduct a data collection field study of 28 smart phone owners over a period of 4 weeks. We show that in fact this assumption is still false, with the within arm's reach proximity being true close to 50% of the time, similar to the earlier work. However, we also show that smart phone proximity within the same room (arm+room) as the user is true almost 90% of the time. We discuss the reasons for these phone proximities and the implications of this on the development of mobile phone applications, particularly those that collect user and environmental context, and delivering notification to users. We also show that we can accurately predict the proximity at the arm level and arm+room level with 75 and 83% accuracy, respectively, with features simple to collect and model on a mobile phone. Further we show that for several individuals who are almost always within the arm+room level, we can predict this level with over 90% accuracy.
Transcriptional regulation of peptidylarginine deiminase type IV: implications for rheumatoid arthritis

ii Acknowledgments . iii Table of Contents . iv List of Tables . vi List of Figures . viii Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 1.1 Inflammation . 1 1.2 Neutrophils in inflammation . 4 1.3 Autoimmune disease . 7 1.4 Rheumatoid arthritis . 8 1.5 Transcriptional regulation . 10 1.6 The NF-κB family . 13 1.7 The peptidylarginine deiminase family . 15 1.8 Biological function of PAD4 . 17 1.9 PAD4, citrullination, and rheumatoid arthritis . 19 1.10 Hypothesis . 20 Chapter 2: Materials and Methods . 22 2.1 Cell culture . 22 2.2 LPS stimulation . 22 2.3 TNF-α stimulation . 25 2.4 Retinoic acid stimulation . 25 2.5 Bioinformatic analysis . 25 2.6 RNA analysis . 26 2.7 Plasmid construction . 26 v 2.8 Transient transfection analysis . 26 2.9 Chromatin ImmunoPrecipitation (ChIP) . 27 2.10 Statistical analysis . 28 Chapter 3: Results . 29 3.1 Identification of the PAD4 promoter . 29 3.2 PAD4 is inducible in human HL-60 cells . 31 3.3 The PAD4 promoter contains a potential NF-κB binding site . 33 3.4 Inflammatory stimuli regulate PAD4 expression . 40 3.5 P50 binds the PAD4 promoter . 43 Chapter 4: Discussion . 49 4.1 Overview . 49 4.2 NF-κB may be important for transcriptional regulation of PAD4 . 50 4.3 The potential role of PAD4 during chronic inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis 52 4.4 Future directions . 54 4.5 Summary and conclusions . 55 References . 59 Curriculum Vitae . 68