Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuropsychologische und neurofunktionelle Aspekte der sehr frühen Alzheimererkrankung

Die Pathologie der Alzheimerdemenz (AD) beginnt im anteromedialen Temporallappen (aMTL), spez. im medialen perirhinalen Kortex (mPRK), und breitet sich uber den entorhinalen Kortex (ERK) z.B. zum lateralen perirhinalen Kortex (lPRK) und parahippocampalen Kortex (PHK) aus. Neben dem aMTL sind weitere Hirnregion von der Pathologie betroffen, bspw. der Parietallappen (PL). Hauptziel dieser Promotionsschrift ist die Ermittlung der PL und aMTL Beteiligung bei Gedachtnisprozessen, die hirnstrukturelle Abbildung des Pathologieverlaufes der AD sowie die Evaluierung von neuroanatomisch begrundeten, kognitiven Markern fur die Fruhdiagnostik der AD. Bei der Abbildung von Gedachtnisprozessen durch einen visuellen Test fanden wir bei gesunden (n=56) und an AD oder einer leichten amnestischen kognitiven Storung (aMCI) erkrankten Personen (n=56), dass die Anzahl korrekt beurteilter Stimuli beim sofortigen Abruf mit Atrophie im PL und im aMTL, beim verzogerten Abruf mit PL Atrophie korreliert. Zur strukturellen Darstellung des Pathologieverlaufs analysierten wir die kortikalen Dicken von manuell segmentierten ERKs, mPRKs, lPRs und PHKs von aMCI (n=23) und AD Patienten (n=34) sowie Kontrollpersonen (n=46 bzw. n=31). Wir fanden signifikante Atrophie im mPRK sowie im ERK in der aMCI, der AD und im direkten Vergleich auch zwischen diesen Gruppen, jedoch keine Atrophie im lPRK und PHK. Zudem lokalisierten wir die Stellen im mPRK und ERK, an denen sich AD Patienten maximal von Gesunden unterscheiden. Daraus resultiert die Frage, ob bei AD auch die Funktionalitat des mPRKs und ERKs abgebildet werden kann. Anhand gangiger neuropsychologischer Tests von gesunden Probanden (n=31) und fruhen AD Patienten (n=58) entwickelten wir Formeln zur Schatzung der mPRK und ERK Dicken um zu sehen, ob das semantische (via mPRK) vor dem episodischen Gedachtnis (via ERK) beeintrachtig ist. Die Anwendung auf eine Stichprobe von 28 gesunden Personen, die im Langzeitverlauf eine AD entwickelten (NC-AD), und 28 gesund bleibenden Kontrollpersonen ergab, dass die geschatzte Dicke des mPRKs und des ERKs in der NC-AD Gruppe bereits zwolf Jahre vor der AD-Diagnose verringert war und rund 4 Jahre vor der AD-Diagnose (ungefahrer Zeitpunkt einer MCI-Diagnose) weiter abnahm. Es stellt sich folglich die Frage, ob beide dieser Marker die allerersten Symptome im neuropsychologischen Setting erfassen konnen. Wir analysierten gangige neuropsychologische Testverfahren bei 27 Individuen, die im Langzeitverlauf eine milde kognitive Storung entwickelten (NC-MCI), sowie bei 60 gesund bleibenden Probanden. Die ersten Defizite liessen sich in der NC-MCI Gruppe acht Jahre vor der Diagnose durch episodische Gedachtnistests feststellen. Rund zwei Jahre vor Diagnose konnten Auffalligkeiten mittels Testungen fur semantisches Gedachtnis, psychomotorische Geschwindigkeit, Exekutivfunktionen und Fremdanamnese nachgewiesen werden. Die Resultate zeigen, dass der ERK und mPRK in der AD Pathologie sehr fruh betroffen sind und messbare funktionale Beeintrachtigungen aufweisen.
Privacy Preserving Estimation of Social Influence

Exploiting word-of-mouth effect to create viral cascades in social networks is a very appealing possibility from the marketing standpoint. However, in order to set up an effective viral marketing campaign, one has first to accurately estimate social influence. This is usually done by analyzing user activity data. As we point out in this paper, the data analysis and sharing that is needed to estimate social influence raises important privacy issues that may jeopardize the legal, ethical and societal acceptability of such practice, and in turn, the concrete applicability of viral marketing in the real world. In this paper we devise secure multiparty protocols that allow a group of service providers and a social networking platform to jointly compute social influence, in a privacy preserving manner.
Mobile query optimization based on agent-technology for distributed data warehouse and OLAP applications

With the rapid collection of data in a wide variety of fields - ranging from business transactions through medical investigations to scientific research - the demands on data analysis tools are ever growing. Today's challenges are less related to data storage and information retrieval, but can rather be found in the analysis of data on a global scale in a heterogeneous information system: technologies such as on-line analytical processing, data mining and knowledge discovery in databases all require the integration of information and efficient query processing. In distributed and heterogeneous datasets this can only be achieved by the efficient distribution and scheduling of subtasks in a distributed computing resource. We propose the use of mobile query optimizations based on agent-technology for distributed data warehouse and OLAP applications to adapt the concurrent query execution dynamically to the computing resource it executes on. This is of particular importance in cluster and grid computing.
Diagnosis of cryptococcal and tuberculous meningitis in a resource‐limited African setting

Objectives Cryptococcal meningitis (CM) and tuberculous meningitis (TBM) are common in HIV‐infected adults in Africa and difficult to diagnose. Inaccurate diagnosis results in adverse outcomes. We describe patterns of meningitis in a Malawian hospital, focusing on features which differentiate CM and TBM with the aim to derive an algorithm using only clinical and basic laboratory data available in this resource‐poor setting.
Impact of Antibodies That React With Liver Tissue and Donor-Specific Anti-HLA Antibodies in Pediatric Idiopathic Posttransplantation Hepatitis

Background The cause of late graft dysfunction has not been elucidated. Although an antibody-mediated reaction is suspected as a potential mechanism, the target antigens have not been clarified. Methods To clarify the etiology of idiopathic posttransplantation hepatitis (IPTH), we simultaneously examined the presence of antibodies that react with liver tissue (ARLT) by means of indirect immunofluorescence staining, as well as the presence of donor-specific anti-human leukocyte antigen antibodies (HLA-DSA). A subanalysis of the IPTH group was also performed. Within the IPTH group, the correlation between ARLT titer and clinical data were analyzed. Results In the sera of patients with IPTH (30 patients), ARLT were found at a significantly higher frequency than in patients without IPTH (42 patients; P < 0.001). Moreover, the ARLT titer appeared to be correlated with the severity of hepatitis or hepatic injury. In contrast, the frequency of HLA-DSA was significantly lower in patients with IPTH than in patients without IPTH (P = 0.001). Conclusion Our findings indicate that ARLT, and not HLA-DSA, profoundly influence the etiology of IPTH.
Total oxidant/antioxidant status in jaundiced newborns before and after phototherapy.

OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of phototherapy on serum oxidant and antioxidant status in hyperbilirubinemic full-term newborns. METHOD Thirty-four full-term infants from 3 to 10 days of age exposed to phototherapy were studied. The serum antioxidant status was assessed by measuring the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and individual antioxidant components: vitamin C, uric acid, albumin, thiol contents and total bilirubin. The oxidant status was assessed by determining the total oxidant status (TOS), oxidative stress index (OSI) and individual oxidant components: malondialdehyde (MDA), and lipid hydroperoxide levels. RESULTS Vitamin C, uric acid, total bilirubin and MDA concentration were significantly lower, whereas serum TOS, lipid hydroperoxide and OSI levels were significantly higher after phototherapy (p < 0.05). There were significant positive correlations between serum total bilirubin and MDA (r = 0.434, p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Although the MDA level was reduced after phototherapy, phototherapy has a negative impact on numerous parts of the oxidant/antioxidant defense system in jaundiced full-term newborns, exposing them to potential oxidative stress.
A Test of the Critical Assumption of the Sensory Bias Model for the Evolution of Female Mating Preference Using Neural Networks

The sensory bias model for the evolution of mating preferences states that mating preferences evolve as correlated responses to selection on nonmating behaviors sharing a common sensory system. The critical assumption is that pleiotropy creates genetic correlations that affect the response to selection. I simulated selection on populations of neural networks to test this. First, I selected for various combinations of foraging and mating preferences. Sensory bias predicts that populations with preferences for like-colored objects (red food and red mates) should evolve more readily than preferences for differently colored objects (red food and blue mates). Here, I found no evidence for sensory bias. The responses to selection on foraging and mating preferences were independent of one another. Second, I selected on foraging preferences alone and asked whether there were correlated responses for increased mating preferences for like-colored mates. Here, I found modest evidence for sensory bias. Selection for a particular foraging preference resulted in increased mating preference for similarly colored mates. However, the correlated responses were small and inconsistent. Selection on foraging preferences alone may affect initial levels of mating preferences, but these correlations did not constrain the joint evolution of foraging and mating preferences in these simulations.
Practical trade-offs for open interconnection

There is increasing market pressure to provide support for the open interconnection of systems via general purpose protocol suites such as OSI and TCP/IP. The complexity of these protocols means that the achievement of acceptable performance is not easy. Indeed, some would claim it is impossible, and advocate lean, closed protocols. A further aspect of communications architectures in the world outside the research laboratory is that they must be well structured and modular, in order to meet the needs of orderly systems development and the provision of configurable products. This paper examines the trade-offs between these three aspects of protocol stack development: conformance to standards, reasonable performance and modularity. It finds that while a considerable amount of work has been carried out in recent times, it is apparent that we do not know yet how to achieve all three.
Resolving Discrepancy between Nucleotides and Amino Acids in Deep-Level Arthropod Phylogenomics: Differentiating Serine Codons in 21-Amino-Acid Models

Background In a previous study of higher-level arthropod phylogeny, analyses of nucleotide sequences from 62 protein-coding nuclear genes for 80 panarthopod species yielded significantly higher bootstrap support for selected nodes than did amino acids. This study investigates the cause of that discrepancy. Methodology/Principal Findings The hypothesis is tested that failure to distinguish the serine residues encoded by two disjunct clusters of codons (TCN, AGY) in amino acid analyses leads to this discrepancy. In one test, the two clusters of serine codons (Ser1, Ser2) are conceptually translated as separate amino acids. Analysis of the resulting 21-amino-acid data matrix shows striking increases in bootstrap support, in some cases matching that in nucleotide analyses. In a second approach, nucleotide and 20-amino-acid data sets are artificially altered through targeted deletions, modifications, and replacements, revealing the pivotal contributions of distinct Ser1 and Ser2 codons. We confirm that previous methods of coding nonsynonymous nucleotide change are robust and computationally efficient by introducing two new degeneracy coding methods. We demonstrate for degeneracy coding that neither compositional heterogeneity at the level of nucleotides nor codon usage bias between Ser1 and Ser2 clusters of codons (or their separately coded amino acids) is a major source of non-phylogenetic signal. Conclusions The incongruity in support between amino-acid and nucleotide analyses of the forementioned arthropod data set is resolved by showing that “standard” 20-amino-acid analyses yield lower node support specifically when serine provides crucial signal. Separate coding of Ser1 and Ser2 residues yields support commensurate with that found by degenerated nucleotides, without introducing phylogenetic artifacts. While exclusion of all serine data leads to reduced support for serine-sensitive nodes, these nodes are still recovered in the ML topology, indicating that the enhanced signal from Ser1 and Ser2 is not qualitatively different from that of the other amino acids.
Vind: a robot self-localization framework

In this paper we present a framework for robot localization codenamed Vind. The framework allows to configure a multi-sensor setup by describing the configuration and entering the sensor's parameters in a series of text-based and human-readable configuration files. The framework provides, among others, distributed communication capabilities and a state estimation implementation based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Vind can also be extended to include other state estimation implementations based on clearly defined interfaces and message structures. The aim of the framework is to foster reusability, and provide developers with tools to minimize the effort required to deploy a solution for the self-localization problem. In case of researchers working on the implementation of new state estimate algorithms, it also supports them by providing high level tools for the system integration aspects.
Distributed Computation Particle PHD filter

Particle probability hypothesis density filtering has become a promising means for multi-target tracking due to its capability of handling an unknown and time-varying number of targets in non-linear non-Gaussian system. However, its computational complexity grows linearly with the number of measurements and particles assigned to each target, and this can be very time consuming especially when numerous targets and clutter exist in the surveillance region. Addressing this issue, we present a distributed computation particle PHD filter for target tracking. Its framework consists of several local particle PHD filters at each processing element and a central unit. Each processing element takes responsibility for part particles but full measurements and provides local estimates; central unit controls particle exchange between processing elements and specifies a fusion rule to match and fuse the estimates from different local filters. The proposed framework is suitable for parallel implementation and maintains the tracking accuracy. Simulations verify the proposed method can provide comparative accuracy as well as a significant speedup with the standard particle PHD filter.
A Bioecologia do Desenvolvimento Humano e suas Interfaces com Educação Ambiental

O presente artigo visa a introduzir conceitos fundamentais da abordagem Bioecologica de desenvolvimento humano nas proposicoes de Urie Bronfenbrenner. O referido autor dedicou sua vida academica e profissional a construcao de um modelo teorico que, atraves da associacao de definicoes, conceitos, hipoteses e proposicoes simples e complexas, possibilitam o dialogo entre pesquisadores de diferentes areas de conhecimento. Neste ensaio, foram destacados alguns pontos de convergencia entre pensadores contemporâneos da Educacao Ambiental e a otica bioecologica do desenvolvimento humano. As possibilidades de interlocucao remetem: ao pensamento sistemico; ao foco nas interacoes de organismos-ambientes; a busca de compreensao sobre a cooperacao entre individuos, grupos e comunidades e a construcao de solucoes para uma sociedade ecologicamente equlibrada. Palavras-Chaves : Desenvolvimento humano; educacao ambiental; bioecologia do desenvolvimento humano. The Bioecology of Human Development and their interfaces with Environmental Education Abstract The present article aims to introduce fundamental concepts of the Bioecology of human development in the propositions of Urie Bronfenbrenner. This author has dedicated his academic and professional life to build a theoretical model that through the association of definitions, concepts, hypothesis and propositions either simple and complexes that provide the dialog among researchers of different areas of knowledge. This essay focused in some points of convergence between contemporary thinkers of Environmental Education and the ecological view of human development. The possibilities of interlocution are: the systemic approach; the focus in the interactions between organisms and environments; the search of understanding individual, group and community cooperation and the construction of solutions for an ecologically balanced society. Keywords : Human development: environmental education; bioecology of human development.
Quintessential Maldacena-Maoz Cosmologies

Maldacena and Maoz have proposed a new approach to holographic cosmology based on euclidean manifolds with disconnected boundaries. This approach appears, however, to be in conflict with the known geometric results (the Witten-Yau theorem and its extensions) on spaces with boundaries of non-negative scalar curvature. We show precisely how the Maldacena-Maoz approach evades these theorems. We also exhibit Maldacena-Maoz cosmologies with (cosmologically) more natural matter content, namely quintessence instead of Yang-Mills fields, thereby demonstrating that these cosmologies do not depend on a special choice of matter to split the euclidean boundary. We conclude that if our Universe is fundamentally anti-de Sitter-like (with the current acceleration being only temporary), then this may force us to confront the holography of spaces with a connected bulk but a disconnected boundary.
Display-aware image editing

We describe a set of image editing and viewing tools that explicitly take into account the resolution of the display on which the image is viewed. Our approach is twofold. First, we design editing tools that process only the visible data, which is useful for images larger than the display. This encompasses cases such as multi-image panoramas and high-resolution medical data. Second, we propose an adaptive way to set viewing parameters such brightness and contrast. Because we deal with very large images, different locations and scales often require different viewing parameters. We let users set these parameters at a few places and interpolate satisfying values everywhere else. We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach on different display and image sizes. Since the computational complexity to render a view depends on the display resolution and not the actual input image resolution, we achieve interactive image editing even on a 16 gigapixel image.
Modeling sequencing errors by combining Hidden Markov models

Among the largest resources for biological sequence data is the large amount of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) available in public and proprietary databases. ESTs provide information on transcripts but for technical reasons they often contain sequencing errors. Therefore, when analyzing EST sequences computationally, such errors must be taken into account. Earlier attempts to model error prone coding regions have shown good performance in detecting and predicting these while correcting sequencing errors using codon usage frequencies. In the research presented here, we improve the detection of translation start and stop sites by integrating a more complex mRNA model with codon usage bias based error correction into one hidden Markov model (HMM), thus generalizing this error correction approach to more complex HMMs. We show that our method maintains the performance in detecting coding sequences.
A clock delayed sleep mode domino logic for wide dynamic OR gate

A high performance and low power clock delayed sleep mode (CDSM) domino logic is proposed for wide fan-in domino logic. The CDSM-domino logic not only improves the robustness but also reduces the active and stand-by power. The proposed scheme reduces delay by 21%, dynamic power by 16%, and leakage power by 91% respectively compared to the typical wide fan-in domino logic in 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. In addition, the sleep mode entrance power is reduced to 10/sup -5/ of the HS-domino logic.
Staphylococcus aureus Serotype 5 Capsular Polysaccharide Is Antiphagocytic and Enhances Bacterial Virulence in a Murine Bacteremia Model

ABSTRACT Controversy persists over the role that the capsular polysaccharide plays in the pathogenesis of Staphylococcus aureusinfections. To address this issue, we compared the mouse virulence ofS. aureus Reynolds and capsule-defective mutant strains cultivated under conditions of high or low capsule expression. Strain Reynolds cells cultivated on Columbia salt agar plates expressed ∼100-fold more type 5 capsular polysaccharide than did cells cultivated in Columbia salt broth. The relative virulence of strain Reynolds and its capsule-defective mutants after growth on either solid or liquid medium was examined in mice challenged intraperitoneally or intravenously. The results indicated that agar-grown Reynolds cells were cleared from the bloodstream of mice less readily than broth-grown Reynolds cells. When the parental and mutant strains were cultivated on solid medium, strain Reynolds sustained a higher level of bacteremia than did the capsular mutants. We performed in vitro opsonophagocytic killing assays to determine whether staphylococcal virulence for mice correlated with resistance to phagocytosis. S. aureus Reynolds cultivated on solid medium was susceptible to phagocytic killing only in the presence of specific capsular antibodies and complement. Strain Reynolds grown in broth showed opsonic requirements for phagocytic killing that were similar to those of the capsular mutants (grown in broth or on agar); i.e., the bacteria were opsonized for phagocytosis by nonimmune serum with complement activity. These studies indicate that optimal expression of capsule enhances bacterial virulence in the mouse model of bacteremia, probably by rendering the organisms resistant to opsonophagocytic killing by leukocytes.
Using Minix to Teach Computer Security Courses

To address national needs for computer security education, many universities have incorporated computer and security courses into their undergraduate and graduate curricula. In these courses, students learn how to design, implement, analyze, test, and operate a system or a network to achieve security. Pedagogical research has shown that effective laboratory exercises are critically important to the success of these types of courses. However, such effective laboratories do not exist in computer security education. Intrigued by the successful practice in operating system and network courses education, we adopted a similar practice, i.e., building our laboratories based on an instructional operating system. We useMinix operating system as the lab basis, and each lab exercise requires students to add a different security mechanism to the system. Benefited from the instructional operating system, we can design our lab exercises in such a way that makes it easy for students to focus on one or a few specific security concepts while doing each exercise. The similar approach has proved to be effective in teaching operating system and network courses, but it has not yet been used in teaching computer security courses.