Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross-Domain Learning from Multiple Sources: A Consensus Regularization Perspective

Classification across different domains studies how to adapt a learning model from one domain to another domain which shares similar data characteristics. While there are a number of existing works along this line, many of them are only focused on learning from a single source domain to a target domain. In particular, a remaining challenge is how to apply the knowledge learned from multiple source domains to a target domain. Indeed, data from multiple source domains can be semantically related, but have different data distributions. It is not clear how to exploit the distribution differences among multiple source domains to boost the learning performance in a target domain. To that end, in this paper, we propose a consensus regularization framework for learning from multiple source domains to a target domain. In this framework, a local classifier is trained by considering both local data available in one source domain and the prediction consensus with the classifiers learned from other source domains. Moreover, we provide a theoretical analysis as well as an empirical study of the proposed consensus regularization framework. The experimental results on text categorization and image classification problems show the effectiveness of this consensus regularization learning method. Finally, to deal with the situation that the multiple source domains are geographically distributed, we also develop the distributed version of the proposed algorithm, which avoids the need to upload all the data to a centralized location and helps to mitigate privacy concerns.
Hemodynamic and Autonomic Adjustments to Real Life Stress Conditions in Humans

Psychological stress represents a risk factor for hypertension, but mechanisms are not known in detail. In this investigation we tested the hypothesis that real-life stress conditions produce changes in autonomic cardiac and vascular regulation that might differ in magnitude. University students, a well-established model of mild real-life stress, were examined shortly before a university examination, and a second time 3 months afterward, during holiday. Autonomic cardiovascular regulation was assessed by a noninvasive approach, based on autoregressive analysis of RR interval variability (V) and of systolic arterial pressure (SAP) V. The overall level of stress in the two sessions was gauged from the elevated salivary cortisol (5.6±0.5 versus 2.4±0.2 ng/mL, P <0.05) and altered cytokine profile (P <0.05). During the stress day, the RR interval was reduced and arterial pressure increased significantly; simultaneously, the normalized low frequency component of RRV (a marker of sympathetic modulation of the sinoatrial node) was increased and the index &agr; (a measure of baroreflex gain) reduced. Concomitantly, the autonomic response to the sympathetic excitation produced by standing was altered: cardiac response was impaired and vascular responsiveness increased. Markers of autonomic regulation of the sinoatrial node correlated significantly with cortisol levels, both at rest and also considering standing induced changes, suggesting a gradual range of effects. The data support the concept that mild real-life stress increases arterial pressure and impairs cardiovascular homeostasis. These changes, assessable with spectral analysis of cardiovascular variability, might contribute, in susceptible individuals, to the link between psychological stress and increased cardiovascular risk of hypertension.
TagMe! – Enhancing Social Tagging with Spatial Context

TagMe! is a tagging and exploration front-end for Flickr images, which enables users to annotate speciﬁc areas of an image, i.e. users can attach tag assignments to a speciﬁc area within an image and further categorize the tag assignments. Additionally, TagMe! automatically maps tags and categories to DBpedia URIs to clearly deﬁne the meaning. In this work we discuss the diﬀerences between tags and categories and show how both facets can be applied to learn semantic relations between concepts referenced by tags and categories. We also expose the beneﬁts of the visual (spatial) context of the tag assignments, with respect to ranking algorithms for search and retrieval of relevant items. We do so by analyzing metrics of size and position of the annotated areas. Finally, in our experiments we compare diﬀerent strategies to realize semantic mappings and show that already lightweight approaches map tags and categories with high precisions (86.85% and 93.77% respectively). The TagMe! system is currently available at http://tagme.groupme. org
Assistive Technology Applications in Educational Programs of Children with Multiple Disabilities: A Case Study Report on the State of the Practice

Results are reported of a two-year case study that analyzed how assistive technology was used in educational programs for 14 children with multiple disabilities who had two to ten years experience with assistive technology. The authors employed a modified longitudinal approach to study assistive technology use, the effects of technology applications, and barriers to the achievement of the children's educational goals. Data collection procedures included direct observation, videotapes of children as they used assistive technologies, questionnaires, and interviews with teachers and parents. In spite of a number of barriers, by the end of the study the children were able to use technology tools to accomplish tasks previously not possible due to the severity of their disabilities. The greatest improvement occurred in the areas of social and emotional development. The implications for assistive technology use by children with multiple disabilities are discussed.
Ground-glass nodules on chest CT as imaging biomarkers in the management of lung adenocarcinoma.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to review the clinical significance of ground-glass nodules (GGNs) in the management of lung adenocarcinoma. CONCLUSION GGNs can serve as imaging biomarkers that represent the bronchioloalveolar carcinoma component in adenocarcinoma on histology and indicate a better prognosis in patients with lung adenocarcinoma. The evolution of GGNs reflects the multistep progression of adenocarcinoma. Despite the high probability of malignancy of GGNs, the possibility of overdiagnosis should be considered in the management of GGNs.
Disambiguation of Biomedical Abbreviations

Abbreviations are common in biomedical documents and many are ambiguous in the sense that they have several potential expansions. Identifying the correct expansion is necessary for language understanding and important for applications such as document retrieval. Identifying the correct expansion can be viewed as a Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) problem. A WSD system that uses a variety of knowledge sources, including two types of information specific to the biomedical domain, is also described. This system was tested on a corpus of ambiguous abbreviations, created by automatically identifying the correct expansion in Medline abstracts, and found to identify the correct expansion with up to 99% accuracy.
Male Participation in Promoting Sexual and Reproductive Health Agenda in Africa: Reflections on social change and democracy

This paper examines male participation programs designed to improve sexual and reproductive health in Africa. It uses male participation as a model for larger development, democracy and good governance outcomes in African countries. The paper begins by exploring the conceptual and programmatic underpinnings for men engagement, male involvement, male mobilization or male partnership in development. It presents results from a case study on the Male Championship’s initiative implemented to mobilize men in support of the Prevention of Mother-to- Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in Malawi. The paper demonstrates that male participation programs integrate a robust approach to social mobilization, coalition building, community advocacy, midstream consultations, peer-to peer motivation, collective visioning and client communication, which result in changes at the individual, facility and social levels. The paper suggests the design and execution of male participation grounded in human rights based approach to program for wider development agenda and good governance initiatives in Africa. ` Keywords: social mobilization, male engagement, social change, reproductive health, gender equality, social innovation
Software For Automated On-Wafer Testing

The MIMIC Phase I program2 has funded the development of test software that has been designed for automated testing of a broad range of MMICs device types (amplifiers, mixers, phase shifters, multiple pole switches, oscillators, etc.). The test software is an integrated RF/microwave measurement package that allows automated on-wafer, carrier, and module level testing. The objective of the development was to create software that would improve the efficiency of testing MMICs and MMIC-based subsystems, thereby reducing test costs to military systems. This objective was accomplished. The software is easy-to-learn and easy-to-use, but "intelligent" enough to be able to automatically control the measurements of complex MMICs. The software program has been named "AutoTEST", and it has been written for personal computer instrument controllers.
Structural changes of human epidermis induced by human leukocyte‐derived proteases

Abstract: During the process of inflammation human neutrophils release potent serine proteases, such as human leukocyte elastase and cathepsin G. In psoriasis these enzymes are relased within the epidermis. To investigate the destructive potential of neutrophil‐derived serine proteases these were applied on viable human epidermis as well as full thickness human skin in vitro. Human leukocyte elastase and cathepsin G were found to dissociate keratinocytes from epidermal sheets in a time‐ and dose‐dependent fashion. Significant keratinocyte dissociation was observed 4 h after application of 3 nM human leukocyte elastase. By electron microscopy of elastase‐or cathepsin G‐treated full thickness human skin, widening of the extracellular space followed by complete separation of keratinocytes without intradesmosomal cleavage was observed. In addition, cathepsin G induced membrane damage as well as destruction of intracellular organelles. Thus, neutrophil‐derived serine proteases exert pronounced destructive potential in human epidermis in concentrations likely to appear in lesional psoriatic skin.
Tactile motion instructions for physical activities

While learning new motor skills, we often rely on feedback from a trainer. Auditive feedback and demonstrations are used most frequently, but in many domains they are inappropriate or impractical. We introduce tactile instructions as an alternative to assist in correcting wrong posture during physical activities, and present a set of full-body vibrotactile patterns. An initial study informed the design of our tactile patterns, and determined appropriate locations for feedback on the body. A second experiment showed that users perceived and correctly classified our tactile instruction patterns in a relaxed setting and during a cognitively and physically demanding task. In a final experiment, snowboarders on the slope compared their perception of tactile instructions with audio instructions under real-world conditions. Tactile instructions achieved overall high recognition accuracy similar to audio instructions. Moreover, participants responded quicker to instructions delivered over the tactile channel than to instructions presented over the audio channel. Our findings suggest that these full-body tactile feedback patterns can replace audio instructions during physical activities.
Sites of superoxide anion production detected by lucigenin in calf pulmonary artery smooth muscle.

Sources of superoxide anion (O2-.) production in calf pulmonary artery smooth muscle homogenate and subcellular fractions were examined in this study by measurement of the chemiluminescence produced by the reaction of O2-. with 50 microM lucigenin, because recent evidence suggests that endogenously produced reactive O2 species appear to mediate certain vascular responses. In the homogenate fraction, an NADH (0.1 mM)-dependent oxidoreductase activity was the major detected source of chemiluminescence. NADPH (0.1 mM) produced only 3% of the O2-. observed with NADH. Quantitation of certain other potential sources of O2-. (under optimized conditions), including xanthine oxidase (0.1 mM hypoxanthine), mitochondria (5 mM succinate + 30 microM antimycin), cyclooxygenase/lipoxygenase (1 microM arachidonic acid + 0.1 mM NADPH), or autooxidation (0.1 mg/ml superoxide dismutase), resulted in the detection of minimal amounts (< 3% of NADH) of chemiluminescence. Estimation of mitochondrial O2-. production from tissue respiration rates suggests that lucigenin is a poor detector of intramitochondrial O2-. These observations were confirmed by examination of chemiluminescence produced by subcellular fractions, where the major activity detected was an NADH oxidoreductase, which fractionated in a manner closely matching the activity of the microsomal marker enzyme rotenone-insensitive NADH-cytochrome c reductase. Because this NADH oxidoreductase appears to be a major vascular smooth muscle-derived source of O2-. production, this system has the potential to be an important endogenous source for the generation of vasoactive reactive O2 species.
Structure-dependent immunostimulatory effect of CpG oligodeoxynucleotides and their delivery system

Unmethylated cytosine-phosphate-guanosine (CpG) oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) are recognized by Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) found in antigen-presenting cells and B cells and can activate the immune system. Using CpG ODNs as an adjuvant has been found to be effective for treating infectious diseases, cancers, and allergies. Because natural ODNs with only a phosphodiester backbone are easily degraded by nuclease (deoxyribonuclease [DNase]) in serum, CpG ODNs with a phosphorothioate backbone have been studied for clinical application. CpG ODNs with a phosphorothioate backbone have raised concern regarding undesirable side effects; however, several CpG ODNs with only a phosphodiester backbone have been reported to be stable in serum and to show an immunostimulatory effect. In recent years, research has been conducted on delivery systems for CpG ODNs using nanoparticles (NPs). The advantages of NP-based delivery of CpG ODN include (1) it can protect CpG ODN from DNase, (2) it can retain CpG ODN inside the body for a long period of time, (3) it can improve the cellular uptake efficiency of CpG ODN, and (4) it can deliver CpG ODN to the target tissues. Because the target cells of CpG ODN are cells of the immune system and TLR9, the receptor of CpG ODN is localized in endolysosomes, CpG ODN delivery systems are required to have qualities different from other nucleic acid drugs such as antisense DNA and small interfering RNA. Studies until now have reported various NPs as carriers for CpG ODN delivery. This review presents DNase-resistant CpG ODNs with various structures and their immunostimulatory effects and also focuses on delivery systems of CpG ODNs that utilize NPs. Because CpG ODNs interact with TLR9 and activate both the innate and the adaptive immune system, the application of CpG ODNs for the treatment of cancers, infectious diseases, and allergies holds great promise.
Inferentialism and Singular Reference

In Making It Explicit (1994) Robert Brandom claims that we may distinguish those linguistic expressions with object-representational purport — the singular terms — from others merely by the structure of their inferential relations. A good part of his inferentialist program rests on this claim. At first blush it can seem implausible: linguistic expressions stand in inferential relations to each other, so how could we appeal to those relations to decide on the obtaining of what seems to be relation between linguistic expressions and objects in general (viz., x purports to represent y)? It is perhaps not surprising then that Brandom's proposal fails. But it definitely is surprising how it fails. The problem is that in order to specify the sort of generality there is to an expression's inferential role, one must appeal to some version of the traditional distinction between extensional and nonextensional occurrences of expressions, and there appears to be no way to draw anything like that distinction in inferentialist terms. For the inferential proprieties governing the different occurrences an expression can have are so varied that they do not determine a binary partition of those occurrences.
On the algebraic structure of quasi-cyclic codes III: generator theory

Following Parts I and II, quasi-cyclic codes of given index are studied as codes over a finite polynomial ring. These latter codes are decomposed by the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), or equivalently the Mattson-Solomon transform, into products of shorter codes over larger alphabets. We characterize and enumerate self-dual one-generator quasi-cyclic codes in that context. We give an algorithm to remove some equivalent codes from that enumeration. A generalization to multigenerator codes is sketched.
Weak bisimulation and open maps

A systematic treatment of weak bisimulation and observational congruence on presheaf models is presented. The theory is developed with respect to a "hiding" functor from a category of paths to observable paths. Via a view of processes as bundles, we are able to account for weak morphisms (roughly only required to preserve observable paths) and to derive a saturation monad (on the category of presheaves over the category of paths). Weak morphisms may be encoded as strong ones via the Kleisli construction associated to the saturation monad. A general notion of weak open-map bisimulation is introduced, and results relating various notions of strong and weak bisimulation are provided. The abstract theory is accompanied by fine concrete study of two key models for concurrency, the interleaving model of synchronisation trees and the independence model of labelled event structures.
Asymptotic Capacity of Multi-Level Amplify-and-Forward Relay Networks

This paper analyzes the capacity of a wireless relay network composed of a large number of nodes that operate in an amplify-and-forward mode and that divide into a fixed number of levels. The capacity computation relies on the study of products of large random matrices, whose limiting eigenvalue distribution is computed via a set of recursive equations.
New developments in the treatment of cardiac failure

The prognosis for severe heart failure in children (in the absence of a correctable congenital lesion) is poor. Recently, there have been advances in treatment in both medical and surgical fields. Diuretics are still used to produce rapid symptom relief; however, there has recently been a trend to use a combined lower dose regimen of loop and thiazide diuretic,1 which has some therapeutic advantage, although pre-prepared combination drugs are limited in children by the high doses available. Digoxin use remains controversial, although it is now accepted to be an orally active inotrope its use in adults does not improve survival.2Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are now considered the cornerstone of heart failure treatment. In adults they have been shown to reduce mortality.3 4 There is no equivalent published data on such large series in children, but most paediatric cardiologists agree on the effectiveness of these drugs. A paediatric suspension of captopril has become available in the UK this year, a suspension of crushed tablets was used in infants before this. Careful introduction of captopril in a hospital environment is essential because of first dose hypotension and exacerbation of occult renovascular disease. β Blockers have been shown …
Revisiting FPGA Acceleration of Molecular Dynamics Simulation with Dynamic Data Flow Behavior in High-Level Synthesis

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is one of the past decade's most important tools for enabling biology scientists and researchers to explore human health and diseases. However, due to the computation complexity of the MD algorithm, it takes weeks or even months to simulate a comparatively simple biology entity on conventional multicore processors. The critical path in molecular dynamics simulations is the force calculation between particles inside the simulated environment, which has abundant parallelism. Among various acceleration platforms, FPGA is an attractive alternative because of its low power and high energy efficiency. However, due to its high programming cost using RTL, none of the mainstream MD software packages has yet adopted FPGA for acceleration. In this paper we revisit the FPGA acceleration of MD in high-level synthesis (HLS) so as to provide affordable programming cost. Our experience with the MD acceleration demonstrates that HLS optimizations such as loop pipelining, module duplication and memory partitioning are essential to improve the performance, achieving a speedup of 9.5X compared to a 12-core CPU. More importantly, we observe that even the fully optimized HLS design can still be 2X slower than the reference RTL architecture due to the common dynamic (conditional) data flow behavior that is not yet supported by current HLS tools. To support such behavior, we further customize an array of processing elements together with a data-driven streaming network through a common RTL template, and fully automate the design flow. Our final experimental results demonstrate a 19.4X performance speedup and 39X energy efficiency for the widely used ApoA1 MD benchmark on the Convey HC1ex FPGA compared to a 12-core Intel Xeon server.
Cutting Edge: Dendritic Cells Are Essential for In Vivo IL-12 Production and Development of Resistance against Toxoplasma gondii Infection in Mice

A powerful IFN-γ response is triggered upon infection with the protozoan parasite, Toxoplasma gondii. Several cell populations, including dendritic cells (DCs), macrophages, and neutrophils, produce IL-12, a key cytokine for IFN-γ induction. However, it is still unclear which of the above cell populations is its main source. Diphtheria toxin (DT) injection causes transient DC depletion in a transgenic mouse expressing Simian DT receptors under the control of the CD11c promoter, allowing us to investigate the role of DCs in IL-12 production. T. gondii-inoculated DT-treated and control groups were monitored for IL-12 levels and survival. We show in this study that DC depletion abolished IL-12 production and led to mortality. Furthermore, replenishment with wild-type, but not MyD88- or IL-12p35-deficient, DCs rescued IL-12 production, IFN-γ-induction, and resistance to infection in DC-depleted mice. Taken together, the results presented in this study indicate that DCs constitute the major IL-12-producing cell population in vivo during T. gondii infection.
Inhibitie bij kinderen met een Taalontwikkelingsstoornis

This study focused on the question to what extent children with a Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show deficits on cognitive and behavioral measures of inhibition, and to what extent performance on these measures is related. The sample consisted of 30 monolingual children diagnosed with SLI, including 20 boys and 10 girls, with an average age of 10;4 years (M age = 10.39, SD = 1.09). The cognitive tests used are: ‘Walk, don’t walk’ and ‘Opposite worlds’ from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch). The inhibition scale of the Parentand Teacher questionnaire from the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), were completed to evaluate inhibition at the behavioral level. One sample t-tests showed that children with SLI scored lower than the average of the normative sample on ‘Walk, don’t walk’ (p = .006, d = 0.54). Furthermore, correlational analyzes showed a negligible weak or non-existent relationship between the cognitive tests of the TEA-Ch and the behavioral questionnaires of the BRIEF. Possible explanations are given and suggestions are discussed in terms of directions for future research.