Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biological aging and the etiology of aneuploidy

A prevalent hypothesis concerning the cause of the rise in aneuploid conceptions with maternal age is that the changes that accompany normal ovarian aging increase the rate of meiotic errors in the oocyte. Biological aging of the ovary is accompanied by a decline in both the total oocyte pool and the number of antral follicles maturing per cycle, as well as changes in the levels of circulating reproductive hormones. The biological aging hypothesis predicts that aneuploidy rates should be higher in women with a prematurely reduced oocyte pool, and that women with trisomic conceptions should show signs of earlier ovarian aging than women of the same chronological age without trisomic conceptions. Comprehensive studies of aneuploidy in groups of women with known causes of premature ovarian failure remain to be done, though anecdotal evidence does suggest increased rates of pregnancy loss and aneuploidy. Smoking, which is a well-documented cause of earlier ovarian aging, is not associated with an increase in aneuploid conceptions. Evidence from women with unilateral ovariectomies is inconsistent. Support for the biological aging hypothesis was provided by one study showing that menopause occurred about a year earlier in women with a trisomic spontaneous abortion compared to women with chromosomally normal conceptions. Associations between high FSH and pregnancies with Down syndrome and chromosomally abnormal spontaneous abortions have also been reported. However, the most direct test of the hypothesis, which compared antral follicle counts and hormonal levels in women with trisomic pregnancies and those with chromosomally normal pregnancies, failed to find a difference in the expected direction. A prospective study of FSH levels in women with subfertility also failed to find an association with the rate of pregnancy loss. The bulk of evidence thus suggests that, if the processes of biological aging are indeed related to aneuploidy, they probably involve factors other than those measured by oocyte or antral follicle pool size and reproductive hormone levels.
VT-KFER: A Kinect-based RGBD+time dataset for spontaneous and non-spontaneous facial expression recognition

Human facial expressions have been extensively studied using 2D static images or 2D video sequences. The main limitations of 2D-based analysis are problems associated with large variations in pose and illumination. Therefore, an alternative is to utilize depth information, captured from 3D sensors, which is both pose and illumination invariant. The Kinect sensor is an inexpensive, portable, and fast way to capture the depth information. However, only a few researchers have utilized the Kinect sensor for the automatic recognition of facial expressions. This is partly due to the lack of a Kinect-based publicly available RGBD facial expression recognition (FER) dataset that contains the relevant facial expressions and their associated semantic labels. This paper addresses this problem by presenting the first publicly available RGBD+time facial expression recognition dataset using the Kinect 1.0 sensor in both scripted (acted) and unscripted (spontaneous) scenarios. Our fully annotated dataset includes seven expressions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear, anger, and neutral) for 32 subjects (males and females) aged from 10 to 30 and with different skin tones. Both human and machine evaluation were conducted. Each scripted expression was ranked quantitatively by two research assistants in the Psychology department. Baseline machine evaluation resulted in average recognition accuracy levels of 60% and 58.3% for 6 expressions and 7 expressions recognition, respectively, when features from 2D and 3D data were combined.
The role of p53 and Ki67 in Paget's disease of the vulva and the breast.

OBJECTIVE Paget's disease of the vulva (PDV) and Paget's disease of the breast (PDB) are uncommon diseases, accounting for approximately 1% of all vulval neoplasms and 0.5-4% of all breast cancers, respectively. In 10-30% of vulval cases an invasive adenocarcinoma is present. In such cases the disease is often aggressive and recurrence rate is high. This is in contrast to PDB where the general consensus is that almost all cases are associated with an in situ or invasive ductal carcinoma. Our aim was to examine the presence of the tumor suppressor protein p53 and the proliferation marker Ki67 in PDV and PDB and correlate any differences in the expression of these two proteins with the presence of an underlying carcinoma. METHODS Immunohistochemistry was performed on 52 archival cases of PDV, which included 10 with associated invasive adenocarcinoma of the vulva, and on 37 archival cases of PDB, including 26 with available associated ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) or invasive carcinoma of the breast. All cases were formalin-fixed and paraffin wax-embedded. Monoclonal antibodies were used with microwave antigen retrieval. Streptavidin-biotin-horseradish peroxidase and 3,3'-diaminobenzidine detection methods were employed to visualize antibody binding and staining. A section was scored positive for p53 if more than 10% of cell nuclei were stained brown and Ki67 was expressed as a percentage of positive cells to the nearest 5% of cells showing nuclear positivity (Ki67 staining index). RESULTS p53 was expressed in 15 of 52 (29%) PDV cases and 5 of 37 (13%) cases of PDB. Four of the ten cases (40%) of PDV associated with invasive disease expressed p53 compared with 11 of 42 (26%) cases without invasive disease. The mean Ki67 staining index for PDV associated with invasion was 19%, and for that without invasion, 16%. In the breast cases, the mean staining index was 11%. CONCLUSION Our data suggest that p53 may have a role to play in PDV progression, and may be a late event in some cases, especially those associated with invasive disease. Ki67 has no apparent prognostic role in PDV as there was no significant difference between those cases associated with and those without invasive disease. Neither p53 nor Ki67 appears to have a prognostic role to play in PDB.
A concave optimization-based approach for sparse portfolio selection

This paper considers a portfolio selection problem in which portfolios with minimum number of active assets are sought. This problem is motivated by the need of inducing sparsity on the selected portfolio to reduce transaction costs, complexity of portfolio management, and instability of the solution. The resulting problem is a difficult combinatorial problem. We propose an approach based on the definition of an equivalent smooth concave problem. In this way, we move the difficulty of the original problem to that of solving a concave global minimization problem. We present as global optimization algorithm a specific version of the monotonic basin hopping method which employs, as local minimizer, an efficient version of the Frank–Wolfe method. We test our method on various data sets (of small, medium, and large dimensions) involving real-world capital market from major stock markets. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the presented methodology in terms of global optimization. Furthermore, also the out-of-sample performances of the selected portfolios, as measured by Sharpe ratio, appear satisfactory.
Low-dose dexamethasone augments the ovarian response to exogenous gonadotrophins leading to a reduction in cycle cancellation rate in a standard IVF programme.

BACKGROUND Cancellation of assisted conception cycles because of poor ovarian response to gonadotrophins is a significant problem in assisted reproduction. Various adjuvant treatments have been suggested to improve responsiveness. This study reports on the potential benefits of low dose dexamethasone. METHODS Patients <40 years of age were invited to participate in a twin centre prospective double blind randomized placebo controlled study. A total of 290 patients were recruited and computer randomized using sealed envelopes to receive either 1 mg dexamethasone (n = 145) or placebo tablets (n = 145) in addition to a standard long protocol gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogue with gonadotrophin stimulation regime. RESULTS A significantly lower cancellation rate for poor ovarian response was observed in the dexamethasone group compared with controls (2.8 versus 12.4% respectively, P < 0.002). Further comparisons between the dexamethasone group and controls were made of median fertilization rates (60 versus 61% respectively, NS), implantation rates (16.3 versus 11.6% respectively, NS) and pregnancy rate per cycle started (26.9 versus 17.2%, NS). The benefit was apparent in patients both with polycystic and normal ovaries. CONCLUSION Low dose dexamethasone co-treatment reduces the incidence of poor ovarian response. It may increase clinical pregnancy rates and should be considered for inclusion in stimulation regimes to optimize ovarian response.
Real-Time Monitoring and Control of Soluble Signaling Factors Enables Enhanced Progenitor Cell Outputs from Human Cord Blood Stem Cell Cultures

Monitoring and control of primary cell cultures is challenging as they are heterogenous and dynamically complex systems. Feedback signaling proteins produced from off-target cell populations can accumulate, inhibiting the production of the desired cell populations. Although culture strategies have been developed to reduce feedback inhibition, they are typically optimized for a narrow range of process parameters and do not allow for a dynamically regulated response. Here we describe the development of a microbead-based process control system for the monitoring and control of endogenously produced signaling factors. This system uses quantum dot barcoded microbeads to assay endogenously produced signaling proteins in the culture media, allowing for the dynamic manipulation of protein concentrations. This monitoring system was incorporated into a fed-batch bioreactor to regulate the accumulation of TGF-β1 in an umbilical cord blood cell expansion system. By maintaining the concentration of TGF-β1 below an upper threshold throughout the culture, we demonstrate enhanced ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic progenitor cells at higher input cell densities and over longer culture periods. This study demonstrates the potential of a fully automated and integrated real-time control strategy in stem cell culture systems, and provides a powerful strategy to achieve highly regulated and intensified in vitro cell manufacturing systems. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2014;111: 1258–1264. © 2013 The Authors Biotechnology and Bioengineering Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Human awareness viewed from natural language concept formation: Focusing on affective words related to facial expressions

Mental Image Directed Semantic Theory (MIDST) has already shown that each physical event concept (e.g., “carry”, “separate”) in natural language is characterized by a so-called “event pattern”, abstract pattern formed by the constituents of its referents. Therefore, people are assumed significantly aware of the event pattern involved when they cognize or recognize a physical event discerned with the others. Such event patterns are modeled as so-called “loci in attribute spaces” in MIDST. This is also the case for mental event concepts (e.g., “love”, “sympathize”). For example, a 5-dimensional attribute space can be provided for human emotion. This paper describes an approach toward a human mentality, so called Kansei, in order to provide robots with a function to measure peoples' emotions toward external things, focusing on human awareness in concept formation of affective words related to facial expressions of Buddhism statues.
Effect of MPEG audio compression on vocoders used in statistical parametric speech synthesis

This paper investigates the effect of MPEG audio compression on HMM-based speech synthesis using two state-of-the-art vocoders. Speech signals are first encoded with various compression rates and analyzed using the GlottHMM and STRAIGHT vocoders. Objective evaluation results show that the parameters of both vocoders gradually degrade with increasing compression rates, but with a clear increase in degradation with bit-rates of 32 kbit/s or less. Experiments with HMM-based synthesis with the two vocoders show that the degradation in quality is already perceptible with bit-rates of 32 kbit/s and both vocoders show similar trend in degradation with respect to compression ratio. The most perceptible artefacts induced by the compression are spectral distortion and reduced bandwidth, while prosody is better preserved.
Uninterruptible power supply for short-time power back-up using ultracapacitors

This paper presents an uninterruptible power supply capable of proving power for several seconds. Ultracapacitors are used as the storage method since they are suitable for pulse power applications and longer life time. Selection of ultracapacitors and controller design for associated power electronic converters are presented in this paper. Further simulation results of the proposed uninterruptible power supply are also included in the paper.
VEX1 controls the allelic exclusion required for antigenic variation in trypanosomes

Significance Despite intense interest over a period of decades, mechanisms of allelic exclusion have remained unsolved mysteries in the field of eukaryotic gene expression control. Parasitic African trypanosomes express variant surface glycoproteins (VSGs) in a monoallelic fashion and have long been a paradigm for studies in this area. We used an RNA interference screen for loss of exclusion and identified and characterized VSG exclusion 1 (VEX1). VEX1 sequestration restricts expression and prevents the simultaneous establishment of more than one active VSG gene. VEX1 also appears to reinforce sequestration-based exclusion through homology-dependent repression. Our results indicate a “winner-takes-all” mechanism that allows parasitic trypanosomes to express just one VSG gene at a time. Allelic exclusion underpins antigenic variation and immune evasion in African trypanosomes. These bloodstream parasites use RNA polymerase-I (pol-I) to transcribe just one telomeric variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) gene at a time, producing superabundant and switchable VSG coats. We identified trypanosome VSG exclusion-1 (VEX1) using a genetic screen for defects in telomere-exclusive expression. VEX1 was sequestered by the active VSG and silencing of other VSGs failed when VEX1 was either ectopically expressed or depleted, indicating positive and negative regulation, respectively. Positive regulation affected VSGs and nontelomeric pol-I–transcribed genes, whereas negative regulation primarily affected VSGs. Negative regulation by VEX1 also affected telomeric pol-I–transcribed reporter constructs, but only when they contained blocks of sequence sharing homology with a pol-I–transcribed locus. We conclude that restricted positive regulation due to VEX1 sequestration, combined with VEX1-dependent, possibly homology-dependent silencing, drives a “winner-takes-all” mechanism of allelic exclusion.
Detection and interpretation of genomic structural variation in health and disease

Recent technological advances in the detection of genomic structural variation have revolutionized the field of medical genetics. Genome-wide screening for copy-number variants in routine molecular diagnostics unveiled the presence of an unforeseen amount of structural variation in the genome. Owing to the massive amount of patients analyzed, the analysis of the resulting data became exponentially more complex. Simultaneously, novel insights in the impact of structural variation on the phenotype forced the re-evaluation of the pathogenicity of copy-number variations in more complex inheritance models. As a consequence, the challenge of today’s genetics shifted from the mere detection of structural variation to the correct annotation and interpretation of the data. Various databases and data mining tools are available to help in the interpretation of the data, but making decisions on the pathogeniticy of the variation is still challenging. This review provides an overview of current laboratory techniques to detect structural variation, options to analyze and annotate data from genome-wide methods and caveats to take into account in interpretation of results.
Concurrent Intelligent Integration and Optimisation Engine for Supply Chains Management

In this paper, we introduce a service framework for supply chain management, this is a top level rule based design, it can handle heterogeneous networks and allows integration with key enabling technologies like RFID tracking and leverages the power of an inference engine to manage, monitor and optimize flow networks and supply chain entities. An extension of previous work by the authors, some details of the run-time design are given along with some previous experimental results and impacts for industries. Future work points to further investigation of more heterogeneous services and their interactions within the framework and impact for industry.
The Early Head Start Father Studies: Design, Data Collection, and Summary of Father Presence in the Lives of Infants and Toddlers

In this introductory article to the Special Issue, we provide an overview of the research and policy context for the Early Head Start Father Studies. We describe the methods used to conduct the father studies, which began in 1997 and were designed to complement the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a random assignment evaluation of 3,001 families - half who received Early Head Start services and half who did not. The Early Head Start Father Studies included in the Special Issue addressed 5 key research questions about low-income fathers and their children (all under 3 years old) using a variety of data collection approaches, including mother report, father report, father - child videotaped interactions, and Early Head Start program staff report. Here we describe the father studies' methods and response rates, father demographics, and father - child relationship status.
International Journal of Hospitality Management Determinants and Outcome of Career Competencies: Perspectives of Hotel Managers in China

This study aims to explore the determinants and outcome of career competencies. Based on the notion that organizations and individuals have respective obligations in the career management of employees', this study developed perceived " organizational career management' (OCM) and " career commitment " as determinants and career satisfaction as an outcome of career competencies. Data were collected in the state-owned hotels in China, and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed relationships. The findings indicate that both perceived OCM and career commitments have positive, direct effects on career competencies. The findings of this study may benefit both hotels and hotel employees by providing valuable implications.
A guitar tablature score follower

Although guitar tablature is the most prevalent musical score format on the internet, score following programs are only made for traditional musical scores or MIDI. The following work demonstrates a score following method for guitar tablature (tabs). In this method, a guitar tab parser interprets the score from HTML or ASCII text tabs which is then synthesised with guitar-like parameters. Finally, real-time audio to audio synchronisation methods are then used to accurately track the musicians position within the tab. A prototype application has been made to demonstrate this technique.
A Model of Influences on Students' Self-Rating of Change in Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Abilities after Four Years of College.

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of 6 factors that affect college students' self-rating of change in problem solving and critical thinking abilities after 4 years of college. Based on the available literature, these six factors were selected for investigation: (1) Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores; (2) a socioeconomic indicator; (3) sex; (4) academic self-concept; (5) academic major; and (6) activities in the last year of college. Data were from the 1986-1990 Cooperative Institutional Research Project surveys of first-time, full-time students who enrolled as first-year students in 1986. A sample of 1,056 students provided complete information on all variables, and path analysis was used to test the proposed model. Data were analyzed using multiple regression procedures, and causal effects suggested by the model were estimated with ordinary least squares procedures. The results support five of the hypothesized seven paths and identify four additional significant paths. In the estimated model, the activities in which the student participated in the last year of college had the greatest significant direct effect. Academic self-concept was found to have both significant indirect and direct effects. The indirect effects were mediated only through activities, as academic major had no influence on ratings of self-change. As expected, prior achievement was found to have only an indirect effect on ratings of self-change. (Contains 4 tables, 2 figures, and 20 references.) (Author/SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. A Model of Influences on Students' Self-rating of Change in Problem Soking and Critical Thinking Abilities After Four Years of College
Family unification from universality

A direct consequence of the occurrence of fermion families in the standard model is the invariance of fermion currents under certain groups of (universality) transformations. In this paper we show how these universality properties can themselves be used as a method of finding and studying ``grand'' family unification models. In the exact standard model limit two independent universality groups ${S}_{\mathrm{wk}}$ and ${S}_{\mathrm{st}}$ of weak and strong gauge interactions are first identified. The subgroup of any family unification group $\mathcal{G}$ whose currents are invariant under ${S}_{\mathrm{wk}}{(S}_{\mathrm{st}})$ is then the centralizer ${G}_{\mathrm{wk}}{(G}_{\mathrm{st}})$ of ${S}_{\mathrm{wk}}{(S}_{\mathrm{st}})$ in $\mathcal{G}. $ Choosing $\mathcal{G}=SU(8N),$ we find ${G}_{\mathrm{wk}}=SU(2)$ and ${G}_{\mathrm{st}}=U(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{SU}(3);$ the standard model group ${G=G}_{\mathrm{wk}}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{G}_{\mathrm{st}}$ is the group which respects either weak or strong universality. The fundamental representation $8\mathbf{N}$ of $\mathrm{SU}(8N)$ decomposes under $\mathrm{SU}(2)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{SU}(3)$ as N copies of $(2,1)\ensuremath{\bigoplus}(2,3);$ their $U(1)$ charges are the usual hypercharges. A Higgs field transforming as $8\mathbf{N}$ accomplishes the secondary symmetry reduction [from G to ${U(1)}_{\mathrm{em}}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{SU}(3)]$ satisfactorily. The requirement that charged currents be $V\ensuremath{-}A$ forces all fermions to be left-handed in the unbroken G limit, making the model chirally invariant in a strong sense\char22{}fermions have no right-handed components to make masses with. The remedy proposed is that R-fermions are composites of L-fermions and Higgs bosons. If their binding is in one specific channel, R-fermions are shown to come in the right numbers and with the right couplings to ensure pure ${\mathrm{VU}(1)}_{\mathrm{em}}$ and $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ currents while leaving the $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ currents unchanged. It is finally argued that universality is most naturally understood in terms of a simple preonic structure for fermions (but not for gauge bosons), obviating the need for a primary $\mathcal{G}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}G$ Higgs mechanism. $\mathrm{SU}(8N)$ is then best interpreted as the global ``metaflavor'' group of L-chiral fermions. In this picture, $\mathcal{G}/G$ is not gauged; there are no ultraheavy gauge bosons and hence no anomaly or hierarchy problem.