Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In silico investigation of the functional effects of KCNQ1-G269S mutation in human ventricles

A recent study identified a loss-in-function mutation KCNQ1-G269S in long-QT patients who remained asymptomatic at rest but exhibited prolonged QT intervals after exercise, showing loss-of-function and blunted adrenergic activation in the slow component of delayed rectifier K+ current (IKs). The aim of this study was to evaluate the functional effects of the mutation in human ventricles through computer modelling. The O'Hara-Rudy model of human ventricular cells was modified to incorporate an updated model of IKs and an adrenergic activation model. The single cell models were then incorporated into a 1D strand model to quantify the effects of the mutation on tissue vulnerability in genesis of uni-directional conduction block. Using a 3D anatomical model of human ventricles and torso model, effects of the mutation on ventricular electrical activities and electrocardiograms (ECG) were simulated. It was shown that the mutation exerted moderate prolongations to action potential duration (APD) in the absence of adrenergic stimulation, and slightly increased the tissue vulnerability to produce unidirectional conduction block. These effects were much more pronounced after adrenergic stimulation. Simulated ECGs revealed moderate and severe QT prolongations for at rest and after exercise conditions respectively, which matched the clinical data. Our simulations provide insights into the pathological mechanisms of the KCNQ1-G269S mutation.
Speed estimation for robotic fish using onboard artificial lateral line and inertial measurement unit

Many species of fish use the lateral line for underwater information extraction. In spite of the extensive work on artificial lateral line (ALL) and inertial measurement unit (IMU), the ALL and IMU are rarely used together to estimate the speed of robotic fish. Here we show that an artificial lateral line and an inertial measurement unit can be used cooperatively to estimate the speed of a swimming robotic fish. Based on the analysis of the robotic fish, we use an optimal information fusion decentralized filter algorithm to efficiently fuse the information of ALL and IMU for speed estimation. Our robotic fish has an artificial lateral line consisting of 11 pressure sensors and an inertial measurement unit. Experiments conducted with the freely swimming robotic fish demonstrate that the proposed scheme is able to efficiently estimate the robot speed with small errors in real time.
Multi pose face detection and pose estimation using Multi-class LogitBoost algorithm

We handle the problem of detecting and classifying face pose views in images at the same time developing a Multi-class view detection. In order to solve this problem we use Multi-class LogitBoost algorithm in order to construct corresponding classifier structure. Although approaches generally use binary classifiers for each view class detection, we develop one multi-class classifier using LogitBoost algorithm. We collect large number of background images under a cascade of classifiers constructed with multi-class boosting algorithm. Using this classification approach each pose view of the face images can be detected and classified at the same time and rejecting the background images at each stage of the multi-class classifier cascade as well. Experiments on video images have shown that the performance of this classification approach is similar to the other state-of-art approaches for the detection and pose estimation of face images.
The Teenage Nonviolence Test: Internal Consistency and Stability.

This research study was designed to establish the reliability of the Teenage Nonviolence Test (TNT). The consistency and factor structure of the TNT using a sample of 376 adolescents were evaluated. The stability of the TNT was assessed over time by administering the TNT twice with a two week intervening interval to 87 adolescents. The TNT appears to be a reliable measure of nonviolent tendencies among teenagers. An appendix presents a copy of the test instrument. (Contains 21 references and 9 tables.) (Author/GCP) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Internal Consistency and Stability of TNT 1 The Teenage Nonviolence Test: Internal Consistency and Stability Daniel M. Mayton II Jonathon Weedman Jennifer Sonnen Celeste Grubb Masa Hirose Lewis-Clark State College U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position cr policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 Paper presented at the 107th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston, Ma, USA, August 21, 1999. Requests for reprints can be made to the Department of Psychology, Lewis-Clark State College, Lewiston, Idaho, 83501, U.S.A. or through InterNet (dmayton @ lcsc.edu).
Moving object detection with laser scanners

The detection and tracking of moving objects is an essential task in robotics. The CMU‐RI Navlab group has developed such a system that uses a laser scanner as its primary sensor. We will describe our algorithm and its use in several applications. Our system worked successfully on indoor and outdoor platforms and with several different kinds and configurations of two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional laser scanners. The applications vary from collision warning systems, people classification, observing human tracks, and input to a dynamic planner. Several of these systems were evaluated in live field tests and shown to be robust and reliable. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Explaining Differing Perceptions of Employees’ Skill Needs: The Case of Garment Workers in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian economy has grown significantly and the government has prioritized industrial skills development and expanded technical and vocational education and training (TVET). However, mismatches between the skills available and the skills required are widespread and the unemployment rate for TVET graduates is high. Little scholarly effort has been made to empirically identify the exact types and domains of skills in which these supply&#8211;demand mismatches happen. The present study relies on interviews with 30 vocational trainers, 19 employees, 13 factory managers and 3 garment industry experts. To measure the perception gaps between the supply and demand sides of worker skills and explain why mismatches occur, we conducted an assessment in which assessors from among the factory managers and vocational trainers along with the three industry experts concurrently graded the garment&#8208;manufacturing vocational skills of the same workers. For this purpose, we developed a unique instrument that captures the knowledge and skills of workers in real work environments. The analysis reveals that TVET trainers expect students to have comprehensive skills and grade the skills of workers more generously, whereas factory managers expect not variety but quality, and score workers&#8217; performance more critically. Differences in the educational backgrounds and practical experience of assessors contribute to these gaps. The evidence from this study suggests that the vocational skills assessment instrument we have developed for our research is valid and can serve as a basis for future large&#8208;scale performance assessments.
Health Resources and Strategies among Employed Women in Norway during Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

The number of women in paid employment is increasing. However, when becoming a mother for the first time, many seem unprepared for the challenge of balancing motherhood and work as well as for the impact on their health. The aim of this study was to investigate the health resources and strategies of employed women in Norway during pregnancy and early motherhood by means of salutogenic theory. A hypothetical-deductive interpretive approach based on Antonovsky's salutogenic theory was applied in a secondary analysis. A total of six themes were identified; three were classified as health resources when experiencing tension and three as health strategies. Salutogenic theory seems to be a useful framework for illuminating the health resources and strategies adopted by employed women who become mothers. The identified health resources when experiencing tension and the health strategies applied may have implications for maternity care professionals and employers in promoting the health of such women and supporting them to combine work and family life.
Local Ablative Strategies for Ductal Pancreatic Cancer (Radiofrequency Ablation, Irreversible Electroporation): A Review

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has still a dismal prognosis. Locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) accounts for the 40% of the new diagnoses. Current treatment options are based on chemo- and radiotherapy regimens. Local ablative techniques seem to be the future therapeutic option for stage-III patients with PDAC. Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) and Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) are actually the most emerging local ablative techniques used on LAPC. Initial clinical studies on the use of these techniques have already demonstrated encouraging results in terms of safety and feasibility. Unfortunately, few studies on their efficacy are currently available. Even though some reports on the overall survival are encouraging, randomized studies are still required to corroborate these findings. This study provides an up-to-date overview and a thematic summary of the current available evidence on the application of RFA and IRE on PDAC, together with a comparison of the two procedures.
The Role of MicroRNAs in Cancer Susceptibility

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are germline variations interspersed in the human genome. These subtle changes of DNA sequence can influence the susceptibility to various pathologies including cancer. The functional meaning of SNPs is not always clear, being, the majority of them, localized in noncoding regions. The discovery of microRNAs, tiny noncoding RNAs able to bind the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of target genes and to consequently downregulate their expression, has provided a functional explanation of how some SNPs positioned in noncoding regions contribute to cancer susceptibility. In this paper we summarize the current knowledge of the effect on cancer susceptibility of SNPs included in regions related with miRNA-dependent pathways. Hereditary cancer comes up from mutations that occur in high-penetrant predisposing tumor genes. However, a considerable part of inherited cancers arises from multiple low-penetrant predisposing gene variants that influence the behavior of cancer insurgence. Despite the established significance of such polymorphic variants in cancer predisposition, sometimes their functional role remains unknown. The discovery of a new group of genes called microRNAs (miRNAs) opened an avenue for the functional interpretation of polymorphisms involved in cancer predisposition.
Augmented product codes and lattices

This paper concerns the construction of the so-called augmented product codes and augmented product lattices. These are obtained by augmenting product codes or product lattices from certain classes thus obtaining a higher dimensional code or a lattice from the same class. Certain properties of the augmented product construction are derived, and a few examples are given for code/lattice constructions. In particular, it is shown that the Reed-Muller codes, the Golay code, the Barnes-Wall lattices as well as the Leech lattice all have an augmented product construction
Regional Variations in Productivity Premium of Exporters: Evidence from plant-level data

Exporters are more productive than non-exporters. Although this is a stylized fact, little is known on regional variations within a country. Based on plant-level longitudinal data covering all manufacturing industries in all regions of Japan, this paper finds that the productivity premium of exporters tends to be significantly smaller in regions proximate to the core and in regions with higher market potential. We have also confirmed that our principal findings are consistent with plant-level entry/exit dynamics. The export decision is not completely determined by the firm's own productivity; it is also affected by local market size and export costs.
Literacy groupings for reading success

This two-phased study looked at the effectiveness of ability grouping children for literacy instruction at a time when current literature has mixed reviews on the concept of grouping in this manner. The Phase One participants were kindergarten-level children and the Phase Two participants were Grade 1-level children. The students were assessed at the beginning and ending of each phase, the kindergarten-level students with the locally developed Reading Group Assessment and the Grade 1-level students with the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment instrument. The DIBELS scores were compared to Prince George School District Grade One Norms. This comparison determined that the Grade 1-level students in this research made a statistically significant amount of improvement in Phoneme Segmentation Fluency and a smaller amount of improvement in Nonsense Word Fluency over their Prince George counterparts. Overall, student assessment scores indicated reading improvement. Results of this study allowed me to conclude that ability grouping children for literacy instruction was an effective strategy that should be repeated. --P. ii.
Low-bitrate benefits of JPEG compression on sift recognition

Feature detection and image matching are two important tasks in photogrammetry. Their application continues to grow in a various fields, from simple photogrammetry tasks such as feature recognition, to the development of sophisticated models to deal with bandwidth problems in mobile devices. Due to low bit-rate requirement of the current mobile communication, Mobile Visual Search became a very challenging problem. In this direction, this paper presents important conclusions based on a comprehensive evaluation of SIFT matching performance against various parameters (e.g. JPEG quality/compression in model and test images, image resolution, etc). The main conclusion of the performed experiments is that reducing JPEG quality from 100% to 30% slightly impart the matching performance, while it significantly reduces the communication bandwidth requirement by ≈ 70%.
Answering with Time-Series Graphs

Statistical graphs are ubiquitous mechanisms for data visualization such that most, if not all, enterprises communicate information through them. However, many graphs are stored as unstructured images or proprietary binary objects, making them difficult to work with beyond the reports in which they are embedded. While graphs can be mapped to more common XML representations, these lack expressive semantics to discover new knowledge about them or to answer queries at various levels of granularity. This paper describes an OWL ontology that facilitates the representation, exchange, reasoning and query answering of statistical graph data. We illustrate the advantages of using an ontological approach to discover and query about time-series statistical graphs.
Collagen Synthesis The Effect of Estrogen on Ovine Anterior Cruciate Ligament Fibroblasts : Cell Proliferation

Estrogen has been implicated as a causal factor for anterior cruciate ligament injuries in women. Studies have demonstrated a decrease in anterior cruciate ligament fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis at supraphysiologic levels of estrogen in a rabbit model. Hypothesis: The authors hypothesized that physiologic levels of estrogen would have no significant effect on anterior cruciate ligament fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis in an ovine model. Methods: Anterior cruciate ligament fibroblasts were isolated from sheep knees using routine cell culture methods. The cells were exposed to 17β-estradiol at physiologic concentrations of 2.2, 5, 15, 25, 250, and 2500 pg/ml. Cell proliferation was determined by cell counts on days 4 and 6. Collagen synthesis was determined by H-proline incorporation on day 4. Immunohistochemistry was performed to detect estrogen receptors. Results: Immunohistochemistry demonstrated the presence of estrogen receptors in ovine anterior cruciate ligament fibroblasts. There was no significant difference in anterior cruciate ligament fibroblast proliferation or collagen synthesis regardless of 17βestradiol concentration. Conclusions: Based on results of this study, and given the low turnover of collagen in ligaments, it is unlikely that a 2to 3-day per month increase in circulating estrogen would result in rapid, clinically significant alterations in material properties of the anterior cruciate ligament in vivo. The etiology of noncontact anterior cruciate ligament injuries is complex and multifactorial in nature, meriting further investigation.
Assessment of Shallow Groundwater Recharge from Extreme Rainfalls in the Sanjiang Plain, Northeast China

Groundwater recharge from rainstorms can be vital for regional water resources. With the expansion of the need for more water in some specific regions under global climate change, groundwater is being pumped at a far greater rate than it can be naturally replenished. Considering that excess rainstorms could be utilized for groundwater recharge to lessen the declining tendency of regional groundwater level in the Sanjiang Plain, Northeast China, we analyzed groundwater changes in the quantity of a regional shallow aquifer in the region following extreme rainfall in 2013. The results show that shallow groundwater table in the north and central Sanjiang Plain increased following the 2013 extreme rainfall. Most of the annual maximal change of groundwater depth (MCGD) was in the range of 1 m to 3 m, occupying 72.1% of the study area. The average MCGD was 1.73 m in 2013, about 0.4 m higher than the mean value during the last five years (1.33 m). Spatially, the overall average groundwater depth showed an increasing trend from the southeast to the midwest and northeast. We estimated a total recharge of approximately 41.14 × 108 m3 from the 2013 extreme rainfall across the north and central Sanjiang Plain. This large quantity of recharge demonstrates the important role that large rainstorms can play in regional shallow groundwater resources.
H2Model Reduction Using LMIs

This paper considers the problem of H2reduced order approximation for both continuous and discrete time MIMO systems. A heuristic algorithm is proposed that utilizes necessary and sufficient conditions expressed in terms of a set of LMIs and a matrix rank constraint, and the alternating projection method. Also a method of finding starting points is suggested. Three numerical examples are employed to show the effectiveness of the choice of starting points and the capability of the algorithm to find at least as good approximants as other methods.
Social Support and Self-care in Heart Failure

Background and Objective:Self-care by heart failure (HF) patients is essential for optimal disease management of their condition. However, as the nature of HF is unrelenting and burdensome, self-care is usually achieved with the support of partners. It is not clear what role the level of social support by partners plays in HF self-care; therefore, this study sets out to determine the types of social support provided to HF patients and the impact of differing levels of social support on HF patients' self-care. Subjects and Method:This is secondary analysis of a subgroup of patients experiencing their second hospital admission for HF at baseline in the COACH study, a multisite trial conducted in the Netherlands. Measures included the European Heart Failure Self-care Behaviour Scale and a multiple component assessment of social support, which categorized patients into low, moderate, and high levels of social support according to the presence of a partner and their perception of support they received from their partner. Results and Conclusions:Patients (n = 333) had an average age of 72 (SD, 11) years, and 92% belonged to New York Heart Association class III or greater. Of the patients with partners (56%), only 49% had a high level of support from their partner. No demographic or clinical characteristic was associated with self-care behavior. Patients with a high level of support reported significantly better self-care (P = .002) than patients with low or moderate levels of social support. Patients with a high level of social support reported being significantly more likely to consult with a health professional for weight gain (P = .011), to limit the amount of fluids they have (P = .02), take their medication (P = .017), to get a flu shot (P = .001), and to exercise on a regular basis (P < .001) than those with medium or low levels of social support. The presence of social support by a partner is not sufficient to influence HF patients' self-care. Social support provided by partners needs to be of a quality and content that matches HF patients' perception of need to influence self-care. Caregivers, especially partners, should be considered as integral in the treatment and care of HF patients.
Gut Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Immunity

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), first found in bone marrow (BM), are the structural architects of all organs, participating in most biological functions. MSCs possess tissue-specific signatures that allow their discrimination according to their origin and location. Among their multiple functions, MSCs closely interact with immune cells, orchestrating their activity to maintain overall homeostasis. The phenotype of tissue MSCs residing in the bowel overlaps with myofibroblasts, lining the bottom walls of intestinal crypts (pericryptal) or interspersed within intestinal submucosa (intercryptal). In Crohn's disease, intestinal MSCs are tightly stacked in a chronic inflammatory milieu, which causes their enforced expression of Class II major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The absence of Class II MHC is a hallmark for immune-modulator and tolerogenic properties of normal MSCs and, vice versa, the expression of HLA-DR is peculiar to antigen presenting cells, that is, immune-activator cells. Interferon gamma (IFNγ) is responsible for induction of Class II MHC expression on intestinal MSCs. The reversal of myofibroblasts/MSCs from an immune-modulator to an activator phenotype in Crohn's disease results in the formation of a fibrotic tube subverting the intestinal structure. Epithelial metaplastic areas in this context can progress to dysplasia and cancer.
Method mining in experimental software engineering

In experimental software engineering, particularly in the domain of predicting or identifying some properties (quality, cost, maturity, etc.), many methods have been proposed. The effectiveness of these methods depends on the software domain, the development process and style, etc., so there is no unique adequate method. The necessity of searching some adequate methods is recognized, but only few search techniques have been proposed thus far. Zhimin proposed a method mining technique for predicting error-prone modules based on a knowledge base consisting of a lot of prediction results. Here, we improve Zhimin's method and propose a general method mining model for experimental software engineering, which can search for some adequate methods on the basis of the performance knowledge base. We also show several applications and their mining results, for example, error-prone module prediction and traceability link recovery.