Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low Heart Rate Variability in a 2-Minute Rhythm Strip Predicts Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Mortality From Several Causes: The ARIC Study

BackgroundLow heart rate variability (HRV) is associated with a higher risk of death in patients with heart disease and in elderly subjects and with a higher incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the general population. Methods and ResultsWe studied the predictive value of HRV for CHD and death from several causes in a population study of 14 672 men and women without CHD, aged 45 to 65, by using the case-cohort design. At baseline, in 1987 to 1989, 2-minute rhythm strips were recorded. Time-domain measures of HRV were determined in a random sample of 900 subjects, for all subjects with incident CHD (395 subjects), and for all deaths (443 subjects) that occurred through 1993. Relative rates of incident CHD and cause-specific death in tertiles of HRV were computed with Poisson regression for the case-cohort design. Subjects with low HRV had an adverse cardiovascular risk profile and an elevated risk of incident CHD and death. The increased risk of death could not be attributed to a specific cause and could not be explained by other risk factors. ConclusionsLow HRV was associated with increased risk of CHD and death from several causes. It is hypothesized that low HRV is a marker of less favorable health.
Predictive accuracy and sources of variability in calculated free testosterone estimates

Background Serum free testosterone (FT) concentrations are commonly requested, but because reference FT methods are too laborious various calculational algorithms for FT based on total testosterone (TT) and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) are frequently used. This study provides the first large-scale evaluation of the predictive accuracy and sources of variability for different FT formulae compared with direct laboratory measurements. Methods Using a large data-set of direct FT measurements by centrifugal ultrafiltration, the predictive accuracy of five different formulas for cFT (four existing plus a new formula) is evaluated in 3975 consecutive blood samples. In a second data-set of 124 samples from a reference panel of healthy eugonadal young men, we estimate the relative influence of the five algorithms and eight different TT and two SHBG assays including all available commercial total TT and SHBG assays together with a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry T reference method. Results cFT formulae show wide discrepancies with equilibrium-binding algorithms showing systematic overestimation relative to direct FT measurements, whereas two empirical cFT methods were more concordant. Variations between commercially available TT immunoassays have a strong impact on calculation of FT with TT assays contributing 82.2% of overall variance compared with 13.7% for the cFT algorithms and 4.1% for the SHBG assays. Conclusions If FT measurements are requested and direct measurement impractical, cFT formulae using TT and SHBG immunoassays provide an approximation to direct FT measurement that is strongly dependent on the TT, cFT formula used and, to a lesser extent, SHBG immunoassays.
Suspiciousness perception in dynamic scenes: a comparison of CCTV operators and novices

Perception of scenes has typically been investigated by using static or simplified visual displays. How attention is used to perceive and evaluate dynamic, realistic scenes is more poorly understood, in part due to the problem of comparing eye fixations to moving stimuli across observers. When the task and stimulus is common across observers, consistent fixation location can indicate that that region has high goal-based relevance. Here we investigated these issues when an observer has a specific, and naturalistic, task: closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring. We concurrently recorded eye movements and ratings of perceived suspiciousness as different observers watched the same set of clips from real CCTV footage. Trained CCTV operators showed greater consistency in fixation location and greater consistency in suspiciousness judgements than untrained observers. Training appears to increase between-operators consistency by learning “knowing what to look for” in these scenes. We used a novel “Dynamic Area of Focus (DAF)” analysis to show that in CCTV monitoring there is a temporal relationship between eye movements and subsequent manual responses, as we have previously found for a sports video watching task. For trained CCTV operators and for untrained observers, manual responses were most highly related to between-observer eye position spread when a temporal lag was introduced between the fixation and response data. Several hundred milliseconds after between-observer eye positions became most similar, observers tended to push the joystick to indicate perceived suspiciousness. Conversely, several hundred milliseconds after between-observer eye positions became dissimilar, observers tended to rate suspiciousness as low. These data provide further support for this DAF method as an important tool for examining goal-directed fixation behavior when the stimulus is a real moving image.
Three-Dimensional Object Motion and Velocity Estimation Using a Single Computational RGB-D Camera

In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) object moving direction and velocity estimation method is presented using a dual off-axis color-filtered aperture (DCA)-based computational camera. Conventional object tracking methods provided only two-dimensional (2D) states of an object in the image for the target representation. The proposed method estimates depth information in the object region from a single DCA camera that transforms 2D spatial information into 3D model parameters of the object. We also present a calibration method of the DCA camera to estimate the entire set of camera parameters for a practical implementation. Experimental results show that the proposed DCA-based color and depth (RGB-D) camera can calculate the 3D object moving direction and velocity of a randomly moving object in a single-camera framework.
Classical BRST charge for nonlinear algebras

We study the construction of the classical nilpotent canonical BRST charge for the nonlinear gauge algebras where a commutator (in terms of Poisson brackets) of the constraints is a finite order polynomial of the constraints. Such a polynomial is characterized by the coefficients forming a set of higher order structure constraints. Assuming the set of constraints to be linearly independent, we find the restrictions on the structure constraints when the nilpotent BRST charge can be written in a simple and universal form. In the case of quadratically nonlinear algebras we find the expression for third order contribution in the ghost fields to the BRST charge without the use of any additional restrictions on the structure constants.
A Meta-analytic approach via data integration for simultaneous Gene selection and Prediction in Alzheimer's disease

Motivation: The discovery of biomarkers, as well as classifying subjects in proper disease group is an ubiquitous task in any bioinformatics research. Over the last decade there is an exponential growth in bioinformatics research and related publications. This is also prompted by the increasing usage of publicly available data set. Unfortunately these studies are so heterogenous in terms of the analyzed biological construct, the technology used and the database organization that they can hardly be put together to do a single more powerful analysis. This type of multi-study analysis by combining several data sets is often termed as “Meta-analysis” in the literature. In this paper we present a very general framework for combining several studies under L1-norm support vector machine (SVM) framework. Results: L1-norm SVM has the computational advantage over many other competing classification algorithms. It also inherits the automatic feature selection property owing to its absolute norm penalty. Proposed L1-norm SVM with the multi-study generalization is first elucidated via an extensive simulation study. A new voting based strategy for choosing the optimum value of the tuning parameters, as well as feature selection is also explored. Next we apply our algorithm for classification and biomarker selection in combining several studies related to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Using the pathway analysis software Pathway Studio, we analyzed the biomarkers with respect to their pathways and their inferences in literature with AD. As a result, our methodology identified already established as well as new pathways and biomarkers of AD. The combined data set preserve most of the top voted biomarkers from separate data sets. Also we reveal some new set of candidate biomarkers only discovered when combining several studies together using our approach.
Collaborative Competition Mechanism for Gene Activation In Vivo

ABSTRACT The mechanism by which gene regulatory proteins gain access to their DNA target sites is not known. In vitro, binding is inherently cooperative between arbitrary DNA binding proteins whose target sites are located within the same nucleosome. We refer to such competition-based cooperativity as collaborative competition. Here we show that arbitrarily chosen foreign DNA binding proteins, LexA and Tet repressor, cooperate with an adjacently binding endogenous activator protein, Gcn4, to coactivate expression of chromosomal reporter genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Coactivation requires that the cooperating target sites be within a nucleosome-length distance; it leads to increased occupancy by Gcn4 at its binding site; and it requires both Gcn5 and Swi/Snf which, at an endogenous Gcn4-dependent promoter, act subsequent to Gcn4 binding. These results imply that collaborative competition contributes to gene regulation in vivo. They further imply that, even in the presence of the cell's full wild-type complement of chromatin remodeling factors, competition of regulatory proteins with histone octamer for access to regulatory target sites remains a quantitative determinant of gene expression levels. We speculate that initial target site recognition and binding may occur via spontaneous nucleosomal site exposure, with remodeling factor action required downstream to lock in higher levels of regulatory protein occupancy.
Multi-Robot Systems Middleware Applied to Soccer Robots

 This paper describes the basic concepts and features of a Robotic Middleware for multi-robot teams. The moddleware puts constrains on some of the robot programmer's options, and can accept plans described by state machines, Petri nets and other types of decision-making algorithms, including fuzzy-logic decision-making and rule-based systems. Its current version enables concurrent multi-platform programming, modularity (for exible module replacement and easy module edition/modi cation), and independence from robot hardware. We show examples of the middleware application to cooperative soccer robots.
Saliva secretion and its relation to feeding in cattle

While ruminants are eating food, saliva is secreted by the parotid, the submaxillary, and the sublingual glands (Colin, 1886; Ellenberger & Hofmeister, 1887; Bailey & Balch, 1961 b). According to Ellenberger & Hofmeister (1887) the submaxillary glands secrete only during eating and volumes as great as 480 ml in I h are produced by these glands in cows. The parotid glands, on the other hand, secrete continuously although their activity is greatly enhanced during the mastication of food (Bailey & Balch, 1961 b). By recovering swallowed food boluses from cows and measuring the increase in the amount of water they contained, Colin (1886) and Balch (1958) showed that as much as five parts of saliva could be added to one part of hay though only one part or less was added to one part of fodder beet or succulent green food. During the consumption of certain diets the amounts of saliva secreted exceeded 40 1. in a single day. Variations in the amount of saliva added to the rumen while different foods are being eaten might have an effect on the subsequent digestion of the food. In the work reported here an attempt was made to clarify the factors that govern the flow of saliva while certain foods are being eaten. In addition, the relationship between the flow of mixed saliva and re-mastication during rumination was studied. From the results of these experiments and those reported earlier (Bailey & Balch, 1961c) a preliminary estimate has been made of the total daily flow of saliva.
Performance analysis of serve on the move wireless LANs

Recently proposals are made to mount wireless trans-receivers on periodically moving vehicles. These vehicles were primarily meant to facilitate human transportation in places like large universities. The idea was to design economical networks using the already existing infrastructure, when delays can be tolerated. The salient feature of these networks is that the wireless server does not stop, rather provides the service to the users while on the move and as long as the contact is available. Thus the service of various users waiting on such networks is interlinked. One cannot model this system with existing continuous/discrete polling models, as the later assume the server to stop and serve before resuming with its journey. We obtain the conditions for stability and then the workload analysis. We also discuss optimal scheduling policies.
Pose and Motion from Contact

In the absence of vision, grasping an object often relies on tactile feedback from the fingertips. As the finger pushes the object, the fingertip can feel the contact point move. If the object is known in advance, from this motion the finger may infer the location of the contact point on the object, and thereby, the object pose. This paper primarily investigates the problem of determining the pose (orientation and position) and motion (velocity and angular velocity) of a planar object with known geometry from such contact motion generated by pushing. A dynamic analysis of pushing yields a nonlinear system that relates through contact the object pose and motion to the finger motion. The contact motion on the fingertip thus encodes certain information about the object pose. Nonlinear observability theory is employed to show that such information is sufficient for the finger to “observe” not only the pose, but also the motion of the object. Therefore, a sensing strategy can be realized as an “observer” of the nonlinear dynamical system. Two observers are subsequently introduced. The first observer, based on the work of Gauthier, Hammouri, and Othman (1992), has its “gain” determined by the solution of a Lyapunov-like equation; it can be activated at any time instant during a push. The second observer, based on Newton’s method, solves for the initial (motionless) object pose from three intermediate contact points during a push. Under the Coulomb-friction model, the paper deals with support friction in the plane and/or contact friction between the finger and the object. Extensive simulations have been done to demonstrate the feasibility of the two observers. Preliminary experiments (with an Adept robot) have also been conducted. A contact sensor has been implemented using strain gauges.
Gestion proactive du changement dans les projets de réingénierie des processus métiers

La problematique de cette etude est la gestion du changement dans les projets d'implementation de progiciel. L'approche proposee est la gestion proactive du changement. Elle est basee sur des actions a priori pour reduire l'impact negatif du changement. Ces actions sont optimisees et ciblees sur certains processus de l'entreprise identifies par prediction. Notre objectif est de combiner la gestion quantitative et non-quantitative du changement dans les projets ERP afin de lever leurs limites. En effet, la litterature montre que les methodes non-quantitatives proposent des actions de gestion du changement, sans pour autant accompagner ces actions d'une optimisation et d'un ciblage formalise. Les techniques quantitatives, quant a elles, proposent des modeles mais ne definissent pas des actions claires. La demarche proposee repose sur l'application du processus de datamining. Nous nous sommes interesses a trois concepts principaux qui sont l'ampleur, l'effort de gestion et l'impact du changement. L'idee est de tirer parti des informations collectees dans des projets d'implementation de progiciel anterieurs, pour etablir des relations quantitatives et objectives entre ces trois concepts. La premiere composante de l'application du datamining est l'utilisation d'un modele pour faire des predictions sur l'impact potentiel du changement. Cet impact est mesure de maniere predictive par rapport a la variation des criteres de performance du processus apres sa restructuration et son implementation dans le progiciel. L'unite d'analyse dans l'etude est le processus metier. La seconde composante de l'application du processus de datamining est la prise de decision basee sur les predictions du modele. L'ampleur et l'effort de gestion du changement sont consideres comme des explications pour l'impact du changement. Ils sont utilises aussi comme levier dans les actions a definir pour la gestion de cet impact. Notre approche intervient principalement dans la phase " d'adequation et de configuration " du projet ERP (Tomas, 2000) dans laquelle les processus sont restructures. Elle vient completer la simulation, le prototypage (qui inclut l'analyse des ecarts) pour l'acceptation d'un processus " en-devenir ".
Restoration of Foxp3+ Regulatory T-cell Subsets and Foxp3− Type 1 Regulatory-like T Cells in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases During Anti-tumor Necrosis Factor Therapy

Background:A defect in regulatory T cells (Tregs) may be involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Several subsets of human Foxp3+ Tregs (activated and resting Tregs) have now been identified, as well as an IL-10 and IFN-&ggr; double producing Foxp3− type 1 regulatory-like T cell (Tr1L). We have quantified these Tregs in patients with active IBD and during therapy with infliximab (IFX). Methods:Blood samples were obtained from healthy controls (n = 54) and patients with active IBD, either before (n = 62) or during IFX therapy (n = 75). Tregs were identified by immunofluorescent staining and flow cytometry analysis. Resting and activated Foxp3+ Tregs can be differentiated from Foxp3+effector T cells (Foxp3+ Teff) by the expression of CD45RA. Tr1L are identified as CD4+CD45RA−CD25−CD127−Foxp3− T cells. Results:A numerical deficiency of circulating resting Tregs, activated Treg cells, and Tr1L was documented in patients with active IBD. Baseline levels of these Treg subsets predicted clinical responses to IFX. We documented an upregulation of all 3 subsets during IFX therapy. Moreover, after therapy, significant differences in Treg subsets were seen between responders and nonresponders to IFX. Restoration of Tregs correlated with the clinical and biological response to IFX therapy. Trough serum levels of IFX positively correlated with the proportion of activated Treg cells and Tr1L during therapy. Conclusions:IFX therapy, when successful, results in upmodulation of the different types of Treg cells in the blood of patients with IBD. This effect might be relevant for understanding the mechanism of action of anti-TNF agents.
A Mobile Functional Region of Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus ORF50 Protein Independently Regulates DNA Binding and Protein Abundance

ABSTRACT The protein encoded by open reading frame 50 (ORF50) of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) functions as a transcriptional activator and in lytic viral DNA replication to mediate the switch from latent viral infection to the lytic phase. Here we identify regulatory regions of ORF50 protein that independently control DNA binding and abundance of the protein. One region contains a DNA-binding inhibitory sequence (DBIS) located between amino acids (aa) 490 and 535 of ORF50. A cluster of basic amino acids in this sequence is important in inhibiting DNA binding. The DBIS can function at the N or C terminus or internally in the ORF50 protein. Since the DBIS is functional in ORF50 protein purified from Escherichia coli, it is likely to work through an intramolecular mechanism. The second regulatory region, a protein abundance regulatory signal (PARS), consists of two components. Component I of the PARS overlaps the DBIS but can be differentiated from the DBIS by specific substitution of basic amino acid residues. Component II of PARS is located between aa 590 and 650. Mutation or deletion of either component results in abundant expression of ORF50 protein. When the two-component PARS was fused to a heterologous protein, Glutathione S-transferase, the fusion protein was unstable. Mutations in the DBIS or PARS impair the capacity of ORF50 to activate direct and indirect target viral promoters. Since these overlapping regulatory motifs are located in the C-terminal transactivation domain, they are likely to be important in controlling many actions of ORF50 protein.
Differentiated Participation of Thalamocortical Subnetworks in Slow/Spindle Waves and Desynchronization

During sleep, the electroencephalogram exhibits synchronized slow waves that desynchronize when animals awaken [desynchronized states (DSs)]. During slow-wave states, the membrane potentials of cortical neurons oscillate between discrete depolarized states (“Up states”) and periods of hyperpolarization (“Down states”). To determine the role of corticothalamic loops in generating Up/Down oscillations in rats, we recorded unit activities of layer 5 (L5) corticothalamic (CTh) cells in the frontal cortex, neurons in the thalamic reticular nucleus, and basal ganglia- and cerebellum-linked thalamic relay nuclei, while simultaneously monitoring the local cortical field potential to identify slow-wave/spindle oscillations and desynchronization. We found that (1) some basal ganglia-linked and reticular thalamic cells fire preferentially near the beginning of Up states; (2) thalamic cells fire more selectively at a given Up-state phase than do CTh cells; (3) CTh and thalamic cells exhibit different action potential timings within spindle cycles; and (4) neurons exhibit different firing characteristics when comparing their activity during Up states and DSs. These data demonstrate that cortico-thalamo-cortical subnetworks are temporally differentiated during slow and spindle oscillations, that the basal ganglia-linked thalamic nuclei are closely related with Up-state initiation, and that Up states and DSs are distinguished as different depolarization states of neurons within the network.