Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prospects of Stem Cell Therapy for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Certain regions of the adult brain have the ability for partial self-repair after injury through production of new neurons via activation of neural stem/progenitor cells (NSCs). Nonetheless, there is no evidence yet for pervasive spontaneous replacement of dead neurons by newly formed neurons leading to functional recovery in the injured brain. Consequently, there is enormous interest for stimulating endogenous NSCs in the brain to produce new neurons or for grafting of NSCs isolated and expanded from different brain regions or embryonic stem cells into the injured brain. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), characterized by hyperexcitability in the hippocampus and spontaneous seizures, is a possible clinical target for stem cell based therapies. This is because these approaches have the potential to curb epileptogenesis and prevent chronic epilepsy development and learning and memory dysfunction after hippocampal damage related to status epilepticus or head injury. Grafting of NSCs may also be useful for restraining seizures during chronic epilepsy. The aim of this review is to evaluate current knowledge and outlook pertaining to stem cell based therapies for TLE. The first section discusses the behavior of endogenous hippocampal NSCs in human TLE and animal models of TLE, and evaluates the role of hippocampal neurogenesis in the pathophysiology and treatment of TLE. The second segment considers the prospects for preventing or suppressing seizures in TLE using exogenously applied stem cells. The final part analyzes problems that remain to be resolved before initiating clinical application of stem cell based therapies for TLE.
Gaining perspective on spatial perspective taking

ABSTRACT Spatial perspective taking is a term that encompasses a class of phenomena that assess the extent to which a perceiver can access spatial information relative to a viewpoint different from the perceiver’s egocentric viewpoint (e.g. something on my right is on the left of someone facing me). We investigated whether spatial perspective taking that involves judging how objects are oriented around an agent is susceptible to alterations in social motivations. In all experiments, participants saw a picture of two objects and asked to judge the relationship between the objects when there was, or was not, an agent between them. Results from Experiment 1 showed that participants spontaneously described the objects from the agent’s perspective when he was present. Experiments 2 and 3 explored whether this effect was altered by prior participant exposure to manipulations of social inclusion or social exclusion. Results from these two studies demonstrated that socially included participants and socially excluded participants did not differ in their tendencies to adopt the spatial perspective of another. These results are discussed in the context of the results of other studies showing that perspective taking can be influenced by social motivations.
Analysis of the Interaction between Globular Head Modules of Human C1q and Its Candidate Receptor gC1qR

The heterotrimeric globular head (gC1q) domain of human C1q is made up of the C-terminal ends of the three individual chains, ghA, ghB, and ghC. A candidate receptor for the gC1q domain is a multi-functional pattern recognition protein, gC1qR. Since understanding of gC1qR and gC1q interaction could provide an insight into the pleiotropic functions of gC1qR, this study was undertaken to identify the gC1qR-binding site on the gC1q domain, using the recombinant ghA, ghB, and ghC modules and their substitution mutants. Our results show that ghA, ghB, and ghC modules can interact with gC1qR independently, thus reinforcing the notion of modularity within the gC1q domain of human C1q. Mutational analysis revealed that while Arg162 in the ghA module is central to interaction between gC1qR and C1q, a single amino acid substitution (arginine to glutamate) in residue 114 of the ghB module resulted in enhanced binding. Expression of gC1qR and C1q in adherent monocytes with or without pro-inflammatory stimuli was also analyzed by qPCR; it showed an autocrine/paracrine basis of C1q and gC1qR interaction. Microscopic studies revealed that C1q and gC1qR are colocalized on PBMCs. Cell proliferation assays indicated that ghA, ghB, and ghC modules were able to attenuate phytohemagglutinin-stimulated proliferation of PBMCs. Addition of gC1qR had an additive effect on the anti-proliferative effect of globular head modules. In summary, our results identify residues involved in C1q-gC1qR interaction and explain, to a certain level, their involvement on the immune cell surface, which is relevant for C1q-induced functions including inflammation, infection, and immunity.
Effects of Ozone Oxidative Preconditioning on TNF-α Release and Antioxidant-Prooxidant Intracellular Balance in Mice During Endotoxic Shock

Ozone oxidative preconditioning is a prophylactic approach, which favors the antioxidant-prooxidant balance for preservation of cell redox state by the increase of antioxidant endogenous systems in both in vivo and in vitro experimental models. Our aim is to analyze the effect of ozone oxidative preconditioning on serum TNF-α levels and as a modulator of oxidative stress on hepatic tissue in endotoxic shock model (mice treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS)). Ozone/oxygen gaseous mixture which was administered intraperitoneally (0.2, 0.4, and 1.2 mg/kg) once daily for five days before LPS (0.1 mg/kg, intraperitoneal). TNF-α was measured by cytotoxicity on L-929 cells. Biochemical parameters such as thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), enzymatic activity of catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and glutathione-S transferase were measured in hepatic tissue. One hour after LPS injection there was a significant increase in TNF-α levels in mouse serum. Ozone/oxygen gaseous mixture reduced serum TNF-α levels in a dose-dependent manner. Statistically significant decreases in TNF-α levels after LPS injection were observed in mice pretreated with ozone intraperitoneal applications at 0.2 (78%), 0.4 (98%), and 1.2 (99%). Also a significant increase in TBARS content was observed in the hepatic tissue of LPS-treated mice, whereas enzymatic activity of glutathion-S transferase and glutathione peroxidase was decreased. However in ozone-treated animals a significant decrease in TBARS content was appreciated as well as an increase in the activity of antioxidant enzymes. These results indicate that ozone oxidative preconditioning exerts inhibitory effects on TNF-α production and on the other hand it exerts influence on the antioxidant-prooxidant balance for preservation of cell redox state by the increase of endogenous antioxidant systems.
Big Data For Query Expansion : A Comparison of Content-based versus Social-based Keywords

As the amount of online information continues to grow, search becomes an increasingly vital user activity. However, it is difficult to motivate users to generate an appropriate, detailed query so query expansion is commonly used to bolster user's searches. We compare two query expansion methods. The first expands a query using previously submitted queries, the social approach, implemented using Google Search Autocomplete. The second uses phrases as they are found in text, the content approach, implemented using the Google Web Corpus. The query datasets consist of 207,638 tri-gram and 232,981 bi-gram queries from the AOL 500K User Session Collection search corpus that are expanded using both approaches. We use term specificity and term ambiguity, calculated using WordNet, to evaluate the effect on the queries. We evaluate the effect on the query results by calculating domain diversity for a 1% sample of the queries and complete this analysis by calculating edit distance. On average, expansion terms suggested using the social approach were significantly (p < .01) less ambiguous and more specific (p < .01) than terms suggested using the content approach. The search results for the 1% sample of expanded queries showed a small but significantly lower number (p < .01) of distinct domains returned for the social approach. Finally, edit distance showed that query expansion significantly impacts the results returned by the search engine compared to the unexpanded query. This study is the first in a series to understand how modern search engines influence our information retrieval and the breadth, depth and completeness of information available to the community.
Panel Data Clustering and Its Application to Discount Rate of B Stock in China

Panel data is a two-dimensional data included time and the cross section. Through constructing a panel data matrix, the clustering method is applied to panel data analysis. This method solves the heterogeneity question of dependent variable which belongs to panel data, before on their statistical analysis. In the part of case analysis, the question about discount rate of B stock in China is studied by using panel data clustering method. We find that conducting every independent variable clustering and comparing the result with dependent clustering result contribute to estimate and test the regression model parameter.
Tiwiki: Searching Wikipedia with Temporal Constraints

Temporal information retrieval received a lot of attention during the last years and it is, in the meantime, widely accepted in the IR community that temporal information needs are important to tackle. A particular type of temporal queries are those with explicit temporal constraints, which make almost 15% of today's Web search queries. Although several approaches to allow textual search combined with temporal constraints regarding the content of the documents have been suggested, there are no publicly available search engines allowing for a time-centric search experience. In this paper, we suggest TIWIKI, a time-aware search engine for Wikipedia. Relying on steadily updated Wikipedia dumps annotated with temporal expressions, queries with textual and temporal components can be formulated and are served by ranking the search results based on aggregated values of temporal and textual relevance. As the search results directly link to the original Wikipedia pages, the Tiwiki search engine can be considered as slightly delayed, yet timely access to Wikipedia.
Consumers as legitimating agents: How consumer‐citizens challenge marketer legitimacy on social media

Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer-citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business-society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. First, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer-citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Second, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer-citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities.
A Model for Distributed Agile Release Planning: Doctoral Symposium Paper

In this paper we describe a PhD research plan which focuses on the problem of insular thinking in distributed software development projects and its implications. The objective is to break up insular thinking in distributed agile software development through the targeted application of different media. The result of this work will be a model for distributed agile release planning. We intend to improve agile distributed release planning through the application of this model. Selected parts of the model will be evaluated through a software prototype which uses data of the Ice Breaker System project.
Evaluation of spoken multimodal conversation

Spoken multimodal dialogue systems in which users address face-only or embodied interface agents have been gaining ground in research for some time. Although most systems are still strictly task-oriented, the field is now moving towards domain-oriented systems and real conversational systems which are no longer defined in terms of the task(s) they support. This paper describes the first running prototype of such a system which enables spoken and gesture interaction with life-like fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen about his fairytales, life, study, etc., focusing on multimodal conversation. We then present recent user test evaluation results on multimodal conversation.
WatchOut: extending interactions on a smartwatch with inertial sensing

Current interactions on a smartwatch are generally limited to a tiny touchscreen, physical buttons or knobs, and speech. We present WatchOut, a suite of interaction techniques that includes three families of tap and swipe gestures which extend input modalities to the watch's case, bezel, and band. We describe the implementation of a user-independent gesture recognition pipeline based on data from the watch's embedded inertial sensors. In a study with 12 participants using both a round- and square-screen watch, the average gesture classification accuracies ranged from 88.7% to 99.4%. We demonstrate applications of this richer interaction capability, and discuss the strengths, limitations, and future potential for this work.
Identification of a Novel Human LAP1 Isoform That Is Regulated by Protein Phosphorylation

Lamina associated polypeptide 1 (LAP1) is an integral protein of the inner nuclear membrane that is ubiquitously expressed. LAP1 binds to lamins and chromatin, probably contributing to the maintenance of the nuclear envelope architecture. Moreover, LAP1 also interacts with torsinA and emerin, proteins involved in DYT1 dystonia and X-linked Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy disorder, respectively. Given its relevance to human pathological conditions, it is important to better understand the functional diversity of LAP1 proteins. In rat, the LAP1 gene (TOR1AIP1) undergoes alternative splicing to originate three LAP1 isoforms (LAP1A, B and C). However, it remains unclear if the same occurs with the human TOR1AIP1 gene, since only the LAP1B isoform had thus far been identified in human cells. In silico analysis suggested that, across different species, potential new LAP1 isoforms could be generated by alternative splicing. Using shRNA to induce LAP1 knockdown and HPLC-mass spectrometry analysis the presence of two isoforms in human cells was described and validated: LAP1B and LAP1C; the latter is putatively N-terminal truncated. LAP1B and LAP1C expression profiles appear to be dependent on the specific tissues analyzed and in cultured cells LAP1C was the major isoform detected. Moreover, LAP1B and LAP1C expression increased during neuronal maturation, suggesting that LAP1 is relevant in this process. Both isoforms were found to be post-translationally modified by phosphorylation and methionine oxidation and two LAP1B/LAP1C residues were shown to be dephosphorylated by PP1. This study permitted the identification of the novel human LAP1C isoform and partially unraveled the molecular basis of LAP1 regulation.
Identifying redundant wire replacements for synthesis and verification

Proposes the redundancy identification of wire replacement faults. The solutions rely on the satisfiability (SAT) formulation of redundancy identification, augmented with the means to effectively use any single stuck-at-value redundancy identification in the approximate schemes. We employ the novel use of don't care approximations that detect many redundant faults and quickly identify those that can be detected by stuck-at value identifications. A test generation scheme that uses the error-correcting properties of arithmetic transform is incorporated into the overall verification procedure. The test set provides high fault coverage.
Quasar Feedback on the Intracluster Medium

Galaxy groups are quite underluminous in X-rays compared to clusters, so the intracluster medium (ICM) has to be considerably underdense in the former. We consider this to be due to substantial energy fed back into the ICM when the baryons in the member galaxies condense into stars ending up in supernovae (SNe) or accrete onto central supermassive black holes energizing active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We compute the outflow and the blowout effects driven by the AGNs and the resulting steep luminosity-temperature correlation LX-T. We compare this with the SN contribution and with the X-ray data; the latter require the AGN energy to be coupled to the surrounding ICM at fractional levels around 5 × 10-2. We link the LX-T behavior with the parallel effects of the AGN feedback on the gas in the host galaxy; we find that these yield a correlation steep up to MBH ∝ σ5 between the galactic velocity dispersions and the central black hole masses.
Humanity and Virtuality – A Case with Virtual Reality

In this research, I present the design and usability aspects of a virtual reality (VR) -based animation application (AnimaLand). By applying a user-centered design process I have succeeded in building an intuitive system for particle animation. I have studied both the basic usability aspects (learnability, ease of use, performance) and fundamental psychological phenomena (presence, flow, creativity) in the context of an artistic application. Doing so I are trying to form a holistic view of the users’ experience. This application has been both developed and tested with professional artists.
Wave interaction with two-dimensional bodies floating in a two-layer fluid: uniqueness and trapped modes

Existing results on the linearized water-wave problem for a homogeneous fluid are extended to the case of a two-layer fluid. In particular, the appropriate form of Maz'ya's identity is presented and used to obtain results on the uniqueness of the solutions to forcing problems for a structure in a two-layer fluid. Further, examples of geometries are constructed for which trapped modes occur; such modes are finite-energy solutions of the unforced problem and provide examples of non-uniqueness.
Accompagner /Encourager l'autonomie des apprenants via un Livret participatif numérique de Compétences en Réussite Étudiante (LiCoRÉ)

Notre proposition vise a presenter une demarche d'accompagnement vers l'autonomie des etudiants universitaires integrant la conception d'une application informatique d'un Livret participatif de Competences en Reussite Etu-diante (LiCoRe). L'objectif final est de permettre aux utilisateurs d'etre rapide-ment affilies dans le monde universitaire et d'etre de ce fait capable d'y reussir. Au cours de l'annee 2015-2016, une premiere version du prototype LiCore a ete developpee et un test utilisateur a ete realise. Nous proposons des premiers ele-ments d'analyse de ce test et des pistes d'evolution.
EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT METHODS FOR USING COLOUR INFORMATION IN GLOBAL STEREO MATCHING APPROACHES

Global algorithms currently represent the state-of-the-art in dense stereo matching. These methods first set up an energy function. The energy function is then subject to optimization, which is typically achieved via graph-cuts or belief propagation. In this paper, we concentrate on the energy modelling aspect. An experimental study that focuses on the role of colour in stereo energy functions is presented. We evaluate the performance of various forms for using colour and compare it against grey-scale matching. Colour is thereby represented in nine different colour systems. The L1 andL2 distances are evaluated for computing the colour differences in the selected systems. We embed the resulting energy functions into two stereo algorithms and test them on 30 ground truth test image pairs. The results of our benchmark show that colour information, in general, leads to a significant performance gain over using intensity only. According to our evaluation results, the selection of the applied colour space is of specific importance in global stereo matching.
On The Singular LQ Control Problem For Nonregular Implicit System

This paper concerns with the LQ control problem for nonregular implicit system. Main objective of this paper is to solve LQ control problem for nonregular implicit system by utilizing the equivalent relationship principle between two optimal control problems. By constructing a LQ control problem subject to the standard state space system which is equivalent to the original problem, we point out that solvability of the new one is the sufficient condition to guarantees existence and uniqueness of solution for the original LQ control problem. AMS (MOS) Subject Classification: Primary 49K15; Secondary 93B25.
A sound and complete query evaluation algorithm for relational databases with disjunctive information

There have been numerous attempts to represent incomplete information in relational databases ince the very beginning of the rehuional dambase theory [Co79, IL%, Re841. Two manifestations of the problem of representing incomplete information are disjunctive information and null value. The null value is a special symbol with some unknown properties, while disjunctive information represents disjunctive facts of the form: “P is the case, or Q is, or . but I do not know which”.
Towards intelligent fleet management: Local optimal speeds for fuel and emissions

In order to fulfill the policy requirements on increased transport energy efficiency and reduced emission impacts, smart control and management of vehicles and fleets have become important for the evolution of green intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The emergence of new information and communication technologies (ICT) and their applications, especially vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, serves as an effective means for continuous management of real traffic fleet by providing vehicle driving support and guidance, and therefore affecting driver behavior. This study presents a recent Swedish R&D project for developing a dynamic fleet management system that incorporates real-time traffic information, eco-driving guidance and automated vehicle control in real-time heavy vehicle platooning. In addition to a general illustration of the main objectives of the project, the paper presents a methodological approach to developed local fleet control strategies so that the fuel and emissions of the managed vehicle fleet can be reduced. Speed trajectories minimizing predefined objectives are derived by applying a discrete dynamic programming method, and an instantaneous emission estimator is used for predicting fuel and emissions. Numerical examples show that the method is promising for real-time fleet management applications with support of V2I communication while the computational efficiency of the method needs to be enhanced. The adaptive speed control approach is implemented in a microscopic traffic simulation environment for further evaluation.