Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DyPERS: Dynamic Personal Enhanced Reality System

DyPERS, 'Dynamic Personal Enhanced Reality System', is a wearable system which uses augmented reality and computer vision to autonomously retrieve 'media memories' based on associations with real objects the user encounters. These are evoked as audio and video clips taken by the user and overlayed on top of real objects the user looks at. The user's visual and auditory scene is stored in real-time by the system (upon request) and is then associated (by user input) with a snap shot of a visual object. The object acts as a key which is detected by a real-time vision system when it is in view, triggering DyPERS to play back the appropriate audio-visual sequence. The vision system is a probabilistic algorithm which is capable of discriminating between hundreds of everyday objects under varying viewing conditions (lighting, pose, etc.). The record-andassociate paradigm of the system has many potential applications. Results on the use of the system in a museum tour scenario are described.
High-Resolution Linkage Map and Chromosome-Scale Genome Assembly for Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) from 10 Populations

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a major staple crop in Africa, Asia, and South America, and its starchy roots provide nourishment for 800 million people worldwide. Although native to South America, cassava was brought to Africa 400–500 years ago and is now widely cultivated across sub-Saharan Africa, but it is subject to biotic and abiotic stresses. To assist in the rapid identification of markers for pathogen resistance and crop traits, and to accelerate breeding programs, we generated a framework map for M. esculenta Crantz from reduced representation sequencing [genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS)]. The composite 2412-cM map integrates 10 biparental maps (comprising 3480 meioses) and organizes 22,403 genetic markers on 18 chromosomes, in agreement with the observed karyotype. We used the map to anchor 71.9% of the draft genome assembly and 90.7% of the predicted protein-coding genes. The chromosome-anchored genome sequence will be useful for breeding improvement by assisting in the rapid identification of markers linked to important traits, and in providing a framework for genomic selection-enhanced breeding of this important crop.
Same-different texture discrimination in pigeons: testing competing models of discrimination and stimulus integration.

The choice behavior of 6 pigeons performing a mulltidimensional same-different texture discrimination was examined. On each trial, they had to choose among 2 choice hoppers depending on whether a color, shape, or redundant (color and shape) target signal was present or not in a textured stimulus. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were produced by variations in the priori signal presentation probabilities across conditions. Quantitative analyses of these ROC curves were used to evaluate different competing theories of discrimination (signal detection vs. high-threshold-default response models) and information integration (independent observations, additive integration, unidimensional models). The results suggested the structure of the pigeons' choice behavior in this same-different discrimination was best described by an unequal variance signal detection model involving a unidimensional evidence variable (e.g., degree of difference).
Homocysteine and Cognitive Performance in Elders with Self-Neglect

Elevated plasma homocysteine has been associated with altered cognitive performance in older adults. Elders referred to Adult Protective Services (APS) for self-neglect have been reported to have elevated plasma homocysteine levels and to suffer from cognitive impairment. This study assesses the association, if any, between plasma homocysteine and cognitive performance among elders with self-neglect. Methods: Sixty-five community-living adults, 65 years of age and older, reported to Adult Protective Services for self-neglect and 55 matched controls (matched for age, ethnicity, gender and socio-economic status) consented and participated in this study. The research team conducted in-home comprehensive geriatric assessments which included the mini-mental state exam (MMSE), the 15-item geriatric depression scale (GDS), the Wolf-Klein Clock Drawing Tests (CDT) and a comprehensive nutritional biochemistry panel, which included plasma homocysteine. Student s t tests and Pearson correlations were conducted to assess for bivariate associations. Results: Elders with self-neglect had significantly higher plasma homocysteine levels (M=12.68umol/L, sd=4.4) compared to the controls (M=10.40umol/L, sd=3.61;t=3.21, df=127, p=.002). There were no statistically significant associations between cognitive performance and plasma homocysteine in the self-neglect group, however there was a significant correlation between plasma homocysteine and the CDT among the controls (r=-.296, p=.022). Conclusion: Mean plasma homocysteine levels were significantly higher in elders with self-neglect, however, they do not appear to be related to cognitive performance, indicating that cognitive impairment in elder self-neglect involve mechanisms other than hyperhomocysteinemia. These findings warrant further investigation
Salmonella enterica in the Chicken: How it has Helped Our Understanding of Immunology in a Non-Biomedical Model Species

Salmonella infection of the chicken is important both as a source of foodborne human salmonellosis and as a source of disease in the chicken itself. Vaccination and other control strategies require an understanding of the immune response and as such have been important in understanding both mucosal immunity and more generally the response to bacterial infection. In this review, we discuss the contribution the study of avian salmonellosis has made to understanding innate immunity including the function of phagocytic cells, pattern recognition receptors, and defensins. The mucosal response to Salmonella infection and its regulation and the contribution this makes in protection against infection and persistence within the gut and future directions in better understanding the role of TH17 and Tregs in this response. Finally, we discuss the role of the immune system and its modulation in persistent infection and infection of the reproductive tract. We also outline key areas of research required to fully understand the interaction between the chicken immune system and Salmonella and how infection is maintained in the absence of substantive gastrointestinal disease.
Blocking effect of a biotinylated protease inhibitor on the egress of Plasmodium falciparum merozoites from infected red blood cells

Abstract The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum invades human red blood cells. Before infecting new erythrocytes, the merozoites have to exit their host cell to get into the blood plasma. Knowledge about the mechanism of egress is scarce, but it is thought that proteases are basically involved in this step. We have introduced a biotinylated dibenzyl aziridine-2,3-dicarboxylate (bADA) as an irreversible cysteine protease inhibitor to study the mechanism of merozoite release and to identify the proteases involved. The compound acts on parasite proteins in the digestive vacuole and in the host cell cytosol, as judged by fluorescence microscopy. The inhibitor blocks rupture of the host cell membrane, leading to clustered merozoite structures, as evidenced by immunoelectron microscopy. Interestingly, bADA did not prevent rupture of the parasitophorous vacuole membrane (PVM) that surrounds the parasite during the period of intraerythrocytic maturation. The compound appears to be a valuable template for the development of inhibitors specific for individual plasmodial proteases, which would be useful tools to dissect the molecular mechanisms underlying the process of merozoite release and consequently to develop potent antimalarial drugs.
Sparse radial sampling LBP for writer identification

Sampling Local Binary Patterns, a variant of Local Binary Patterns (LBP) for text-as-texture classification. By adapting and extending the standard LBP operator to the particularities of text we get a generic text-as-texture classification scheme and apply it to writer identification. In experiments on CVL and ICDAR 2013 datasets, the proposed feature-set and a simple end-to-end pipeline demonstrate State-Of-the-Art (SOA) performance. Among the SOA, the proposed method is the only one that is based on dense extraction of a single local feature descriptor. This makes it fast and applicable at the earliest stages in a DIA pipeline without the need for segmentation, binarization, or extraction of multiple features.
Psychotherapy and schizophrenia: An analysis of requirements of an individual psychotherapy for persons with profoundly disorganized selves

Many emerging views of outcome from schizophrenia emphasize that persons must recover a sense of their own identity, agency, and personal worth. While this is intuitively appealing and consistent with a wide range of literature, it raises the issue of how best to facilitate this. In this article we explore how integrative psychotherapy might address issues of narrative and recovery from schizophrenia among persons experiencing more profound levels of disorganization. Illustrated with a case example we explore in particular the barriers posed to psychotherapy by a client's cacophonous self-presentations. We then describe techniques from an integrative perspective that might help therapists enter dialogue with persons so afflicted. Our claim is that psychotherapy can revitalize dialogues within the client and between the client and others that enable the reconstruction of a personal narrative from which a life plan might be articulated.
Late-life alcohol consumption and 20-year mortality.

BACKGROUND Growing epidemiological evidence indicates that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with reduced total mortality among middle-aged and older adults. However, the salutary effect of moderate drinking may be overestimated owing to confounding factors. Abstainers may include former problem drinkers with existing health problems and may be atypical compared to drinkers in terms of sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality over 20 years among 1,824 older adults, controlling for a wide range of potential confounding factors associated with abstention. METHODS The sample at baseline included 1,824 individuals between the ages of 55 and 65. The database at baseline included information on daily alcohol consumption, sociodemographic factors, former problem drinking status, health factors, and social-behavioral factors. Abstention was defined as abstaining from alcohol at baseline. Death across a 20-year follow-up period was confirmed primarily by death certificate. RESULTS Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk. A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers. However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 51 and 45%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers. CONCLUSIONS Findings are consistent with an interpretation that the survival effect for moderate drinking compared to abstention among older adults reflects 2 processes. First, the effect of confounding factors associated with alcohol abstention is considerable. However, even after taking account of traditional and nontraditional covariates, moderate alcohol consumption continued to show a beneficial effect in predicting mortality risk.
Development of a handheld EMG device for assessment and assistive purposes during post stroke therapy

This paper presents the development of a hand held Electromyograph (EMG) device for assisting the subject during therapy. Surface Elctromyogram (sEMG) is acquired, processed and utilized for assessment and assisting therapy. Developed device includes integrated wireless module to transmit raw EMG through wireless link to a PC for processing information required for assessment of therapy. For observatory assessment, LabVIEW based interface was developed. The interface will be used to develop interactive computer games for motivating the subjects during therapy sessions.
Human Experimental Pain Models for Assessing the Therapeutic Efficacy of Analgesic Drugs

Pain models in animals have shown low predictivity for analgesic efficacy in humans, and clinical studies are often very confounded, blurring the evaluation. Human experimental pain models may therefore help to evaluate mechanisms and effect of analgesics and bridge findings from basic studies to the clinic. The present review outlines the concept and limitations of human experimental pain models and addresses analgesic efficacy in healthy volunteers and patients. Experimental models to evoke pain and hyperalgesia are available for most tissues. In healthy volunteers, the effect of acetaminophen is difficult to detect unless neurophysiological methods are used, whereas the effect of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs could be detected in most models. Anticonvulsants and antidepressants are sensitive in several models, particularly in models inducing hyperalgesia. For opioids, tonic pain with high intensity is attenuated more than short-lasting pain and nonpainful sensations. Fewer studies were performed in patients. In general, the sensitivity to analgesics is better in patients than in healthy volunteers, but the lower number of studies may bias the results. Experimental models have variable reliability, and validity shall be interpreted with caution. Models including deep, tonic pain and hyperalgesia are better to predict the effects of analgesics. Assessment with neurophysiologic methods and imaging is valuable as a supplement to psychophysical methods and can increase sensitivity. The models need to be designed with careful consideration of pharmacological mechanisms and pharmacokinetics of analgesics. Knowledge obtained from this review can help design experimental pain studies for new compounds entering phase I and II clinical trials.
Auditory Contagious Yawning in Humans: An Investigation into Affiliation and Status Effects

While comparative research on contagious yawning has grown substantially in the past few years, both the interpersonal factors influencing this response and the sensory modalities involved in its activation in humans remain relatively unknown. Extending upon previous studies showing various in-group and status effects in non-human great apes, we performed an initial study to investigate how the political affiliation (Democrat vs. Republican) and status (high vs. low) of target stimuli influences auditory contagious yawning, as well as the urge to yawn, in humans. Self-report responses and a subset of video recordings were analyzed from 118 undergraduate students in the US following exposure to either breathing (control) or yawning (experimental) vocalizations paired with images of former US Presidents (high status) and their respective Cabinet Secretaries of Commerce (low status). The overall results validate the use of auditory stimuli to prompt yawn contagion, with greater response in the experimental than the control condition. There was also a negative effect of political status on self-reported yawning and the self-reported urge to yawn irrespective of the condition. In contrast, we found no evidence for a political affiliation bias in this response. These preliminary findings are discussed in terms of the existing comparative evidence, though we highlight limitations in the current investigation and we provide suggestions for future research in this area.
Embryonic Stem Cells and the Germ Cell Lineage

Stem cells possess the unique ability to either propagate by self-renewal or to differentiate to mature tissues under the influence of appropriate molecular cues. This remarkable feature, also termed “stem cell potency” has been the focus of both a historical and current research spotlight on stem cells, and particularly the potential for human stem cells in regenerative medicine and organ transplantation. There are several classes of stem cells, all varying in degrees of pluripotency. Depending on the developmental stage from where they originate, stem cell potencies range from totipotency (ability to transform into all cell types), pluripotency (most cell types), multipotency (many cell types), oligopotency (few cell types) to unipotency (one cell type) (Smith, 2001). Among these, embryonic stem cells (ESCs) represent the prototypical pluripotent stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are localized to the inner cell mass of the developing mammalian blastocyst and can give rise to all future cell types and tissues of the organism. Additionally, a small population of embryonic stem cells is allocated to the germline (primordial germ cells). The evolution of these germline stem cells is different from the remaining cells which undergo gastrulation and give rise to the three germ layers (endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm) during development (Ewen & Koopman, 2010). The survival, gonadal migration and proper epigenetic programming of primordial germ cells (PGCs) are major, distinct and early events that have an impact on future fertility and the successful transmission of genetic information from parent to offspring. Finally, stem cells found in neonatal tissues, amniotic fluid, cord blood, and adult tissues are categorized as adult stem cells and are usually multipotent, oligopotent or unipotent. Adult stem cells are clinically important due to the absence of ethical and federal restrictions on their use. Furthermore, they are valued for their relative abundance and accessibility in somatic tissues. In contrast, human embryonic stem cells have been the focus of substantial research and discussion because of their unique potential to differentiate into almost all body cell types and tissues and the relative ease with which they are propagated in cell culture. The search for an alternative source of pluripotent stem cells other than from human embryos is a much sought after goal in the stem cell research community for several reasons. First, diversity in stem cells sources should be explored to better understand and evaluate their various clinical utilities. Second, immunological matching of stem cells to recipients is necessary to avoid rejection in stem cell-based regenerative therapies. Hence, the advent of induced pluripotency and nuclear reprogramming strategies have been well
Pancreatic GLP-1 receptor activation is sufficient for incretin control of glucose metabolism in mice.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) circulates at low levels and acts as an incretin hormone, potentiating glucose-dependent insulin secretion from islet β cells. GLP-1 also modulates gastric emptying and engages neural circuits in the portal region and CNS that contribute to GLP-1 receptor-dependent (GLP-1R-dependent) regulation of glucose homeostasis. To elucidate the importance of pancreatic GLP-1R signaling for glucose homeostasis, we generated transgenic mice that expressed the human GLP-1R in islets and pancreatic ductal cells (Pdx1-hGLP1R:Glp1r-/- mice). Transgene expression restored GLP-1R-dependent stimulation of cAMP and Akt phosphorylation in isolated islets, conferred GLP-1R-dependent stimulation of β cell proliferation, and was sufficient for restoration of GLP-1-stimulated insulin secretion in perifused islets. Systemic GLP-1R activation with the GLP-1R agonist exendin-4 had no effect on food intake, hindbrain c-fos expression, or gastric emptying but improved glucose tolerance and stimulated insulin secretion in Pdx1-hGLP1R:Glp1r-/- mice. i.c. v. GLP-1R blockade with the antagonist exendin(9-39) impaired glucose tolerance in WT mice but had no effect in Pdx1-hGLP1R:Glp1r-/- mice. Nevertheless, transgenic expression of the pancreatic GLP-1R was sufficient to normalize both oral and i.p. glucose tolerance in Glp1r-/- mice. These findings illustrate that low levels of endogenous GLP-1 secreted from gut endocrine cells are capable of augmenting glucoregulatory activity via pancreatic GLP-1Rs independent of communication with neural pathways.
Structural basis of target recognition by Atg8/LC3 during selective autophagy

Autophagy is a non‐selective bulk degradation process in which isolation membranes enclose a portion of cytoplasm to form double‐membrane vesicles, called autophagosomes, and deliver their inner constituents to the lytic compartments. Recent studies have also shed light on another mode of autophagy that selectively degrades various targets. Yeast Atg8 and its mammalian homologue LC3 are ubiquitin‐like modifiers that are localized on isolation membranes and play crucial roles in the formation of autophagosomes. These proteins are also involved in selective incorporation of specific cargo molecules into autophagosomes, in which Atg8 and LC3 interact with Atg19 and p62, receptor proteins for vacuolar enzymes and disease‐related protein aggregates, respectively. Using X‐ray crystallography and NMR, we herein report the structural basis for Atg8–Atg19 and LC3–p62 interactions. Remarkably, Atg8 and LC3 were shown to interact with Atg19 and p62, respectively, in a quite similar manner: they recognized the side‐chains of Trp and Leu in a four‐amino acid motif, WXXL, in Atg19 and p62 using hydrophobic pockets conserved among Atg8 homologues. Together with mutational analyses, our results show the fundamental mechanism that allows Atg8 homologues, in association with WXXL‐containing proteins, to capture specific cargo molecules, thereby endowing isolation membranes and/or their assembly machineries with target selectivity.
Routing in IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN): A Survey

6LoWPANs (IPv6-based Low-Power Personal Area Networks) are formulated by devices that are compatible with the IEEE 802.15. 4 standard. To moderate the effects of network mobility, the Internet Protocol (IP) does not calculate routes; it is left to a routing protocol, which maintains routing tables in the routers. 6LowPAN uses an adaptation layer between the network (IPv6) and data link layer (IEEE802.15.4 MAC) to fragment and reassemble IPv6 packets. The routing in 6LoWPAN is primarily divided on the basis of routing decision taken on adaptation or network layer. The objective of this paper is to present a state-of-the-art survey of existing routing protocols: LOAD, M-LOAD, DYMO-Low, Hi-Low, Extended Hi-Low, and S-AODV. These routing protocols have compared on the basis of different metric like energy consumption, memory uses, mobility, scalability, routing delay, an RERR message, a Hello message, and local repair. We have also presented the taxonomy of routing requirement; parameter for evaluating routing algorithm, and it was found that the routing protocol has its own advantages depending upon the application where it is used.