Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Thalamocortical Mechanism for the Absence of Overt Motor Behavior in Covertly Aware Patients.

IMPORTANCE It is well accepted that a significant number of patients in a vegetative state are covertly aware and capable of following commands by modulating their neural responses in motor imagery tasks despite remaining nonresponsive behaviorally. To date, there have been few attempts to explain this dissociation between preserved covert motor behavior and absent overt motor behavior. OBJECTIVES To investigate the differential neural substrates of overt and covert motor behavior and assess the structural integrity of the underlying networks in behaviorally nonresponsive patients. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A case-control study was conducted at an academic center between February 7, 2012, and November 6, 2014. Data analysis was performed between March 2014 and June 2015. Participants included a convenience sample of 2 patients with severe brain injury: a paradigmatic patient who fulfilled all clinical criteria for the vegetative state but produced repeated evidence of covert awareness (patient 1) and, as a control case, a patient with similar clinical variables but capable of behavioral command following (patient 2). Fifteen volunteers participated in the study as a healthy control group. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES We used dynamic causal modeling of functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare voluntary motor imagery and motor execution. We then used fiber tractography to assess the structural integrity of the fibers that our functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed as essential for successful motor execution. RESULTS The functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed that, in contrast to mental imagery, motor execution was associated with an excitatory coupling between the thalamus and primary motor cortex (Bayesian model selection; winning model Bayes factors >17). Moreover, we detected a selective structural disruption in the fibers connecting these 2 regions in patient 1 (fractional anisotropy, 0.294; P = .047) but not in patient 2 (fractional anisotropy, 0.413; P = .35). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE These results suggest a possible biomarker for the absence of intentional movement in covertly aware patients (ie, specific damage to motor thalamocortical fibers), highlight the importance of the thalamus for the execution of intentional movements, and may provide a target for restorative therapies in behaviorally nonresponsive patients.
Microglia and monocyte-derived macrophages: functionally distinct populations that act in concert in CNS plasticity and repair

Functional macrophage heterogeneity is recognized outside the central nervous system (CNS), where alternatively activated macrophages can perform immune-resolving functions. Such functional heterogeneity was largely ignored in the CNS, with respect to the resident microglia and the myeloid-derived cells recruited from the blood following injury or disease, previously defined as blood-derived microglia; both were indistinguishably perceived detrimental. Our studies have led us to view the myeloid-derived infiltrating cells as functionally distinct from the resident microglia, and accordingly, to name them monocyte-derived macrophages (mo-MΦ). Although microglia perform various maintenance and protective roles, under certain conditions when they can no longer provide protection, mo-MΦ are recruited to the damaged CNS; there, they act not as microglial replacements but rather assistant cells, providing activities that cannot be timely performed by the resident cells. Here, we focus on the functional heterogeneity of microglia/mo-MΦ, emphasizing that, as opposed to the mo-MΦ, microglia often fail to timely acquire the phenotype essential for CNS repair.
Timing driven placement using complete path delays

A methodology for standard cell or gate array designs is described. A new approach is introduced whereby the placement process is divided into a global step and a detailed step. The timing drive placement (TDP) system balances wirability and timing constraints so that the final released design meets timing criteria. This is achieved by dynamically evaluating the timing of critical paths during placement. TDP is significant because convergence to a timed wirable solution early in the physical design cycle is achieved, or else it becomes apparent that logic changes are required. <<ETX>>
Pursuing projections: keeping a robot on path

For an autonomous robot navigating in an unstructured outdoor environment, staying close to a path is crucial to successfully reaching its goal. Although the degree of accuracy with which it estimates its own location affects its ability to stay on the path, accuracy in estimate of lateral distance from the path is far more important for successful navigation than accuracy in estimate of position along the path. Utilizing methods based only on relative angular measurements between landmarks in the environment, we draw from techniques used in statistical pattern recognition to show how landmarks can be chosen for localization which will not only give good estimate of location in spite of the measurement error, but will also keep the robot on the path. We demonstrate how identical landmark configurations can produce very different results in localizing to a path and show how simple heuristics can be used to choose the best configuration for path localization. <<ETX>>
Characterization of the processing and granular targeting of human proteinase 3 after transfection to the rat RBL or the murine 32D leukemic cell lines

Proteinase 3 (PR3) is a neutrophil serine protease stored in the azurophil granules of the promyelocyte and its successors. The protease has been identified as an autoantigen for anti‐neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibodies (ANCA) occurring in patients with Wegener's granulomatosis. To characterize the biosynthesis and processing of human PR3 in a transgenic cellular model, cDNA encoding human pre‐proproteinase 3 cloned from U‐937 cells was transfected to the rat basophilic/mast cell line RBL‐1 and the murine myeloblast‐like cell line 32D cl3. The stable expression of transgenic proteinase 3 was characterized by biosynthetic labeling, followed by immunoprecipitation, sodium dodecyl sulfate‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and fluorography. After pulse labeling for 30 min two proforms of PR3 (32 and 35 kDa), differing in carbohydrate content but with protein cores of identical size, were demonstrated. Chase of the label resulted in a processed 32‐kDa form clearly visible in RBL, but only faintly in 32D cells, probably indicating delayed intracellular transfer in the latter cell line. Partial digestion with N‐glycosidase F showed that both potential N‐glycosylation sites on PR3 were occupied and conversion of the oligosaccharide side chains into complex forms was demonstrated by acquisition of resistance to endoglycosidase H. Translocation of PR3 to granules was shown by subcellular fractionation and immunocytochemistry. Enzymatic activation of PR3 was suggested by affinity to diisopropylfluorophosphate and removal of an amino‐terminal propeptide. Cells transfected with PR3 showed positive immunofluorescence for ANCA‐containing sera from patients with Wegener's granulomatosis. Our results show that human PR3 transfected to RBL or 32D cells is synthesized as a 29‐kDa protein core glycosylated on two distinct sites. Oligosaccharide trimming and proteolytic processing occur and the protein is targeted for granular storage in a form antigenic for ANCA. J. Leukoc. Biol. 61: 113–123; 1997.
Bowman and CANEs: Implementation of an Active Network

In parallel with active networks research, eeorts have been underway to deene and standardize an architectural framework. The framework divides the function-ality of an active network node into two components: an Execution Environment (EE) deenes a programming interface that allows users to control the active network , a NodeOS deenes a set of basic functions to access and manage the resources of the active node. EEs use the abstractions provided by the NodeOS to build a virtual machine made available to users. Feedback from implementation eeorts is critical for reening the standards being developed. We are building an active network comprised of the CANEs execution environment and the Bowman NodeOS. Bowman is constructed by layering active-network-speciic operating system functionality on top of a standard host operating system. The host operating system provides low level mechanisms; Bowman provides a channel communication abstraction, an a-ow computation abstraction and a state-store memory abstraction, along with an extension mechanism to enrich the functionality. The CANEs EE provides a composition framework for active services based on customizing a generic underlying program by injecting code to run in speciic points called slots. This paper reports on our experience in implementing Bowman, instantiating CANEs on top of Bowman, and developing applications within CANEs.
Visualization by Demonstration: An Interaction Paradigm for Visual Data Exploration

Although data visualization tools continue to improve, during the data exploration process many of them require users to manually specify visualization techniques, mappings, and parameters. In response, we present the Visualization by Demonstration paradigm, a novel interaction method for visual data exploration. A system which adopts this paradigm allows users to provide visual demonstrations of incremental changes to the visual representation. The system then recommends potential transformations (Visual Representation, Data Mapping, Axes, and View Specification transformations) from the given demonstrations. The user and the system continue to collaborate, incrementally producing more demonstrations and refining the transformations, until the most effective possible visualization is created. As a proof of concept, we present VisExemplar, a mixed-initiative prototype that allows users to explore their data by recommending appropriate transformations in response to the given demonstrations.
Inhibition of Ced-3/ICE-related Proteases Does Not Prevent Cell Death Induced by Oncogenes, DNA Damage, or the Bcl-2 Homologue Bak

There is increasing evidence for a central role in mammalian apoptosis of the interleukin-1β– converting enzyme (ICE) family of cysteine proteases, homologues of the product of the nematode “death” gene, ced-3. Ced-3 is thought to act as an executor rather than a regulator of programmed cell death in the nematode. However, it is not known whether mammalian ICE-related proteases (IRPs) are involved in the execution or the regulation of mammalian apoptosis. Moreover, an absolute requirement for one or more IRPs for mammalian apoptosis has yet to be established. We have used two cell-permeable inhibitors of IRPs, Z-Val-Ala-Asp.fluoromethylketone (ZVAD.fmk) and t-butoxy carbonyl-Asp.fluoromethylketone (BD.fmk), to demonstrate a critical role for IRPs in mammalian apoptosis induced by several disparate mechanisms (deregulated oncogene expression, ectopic expression of the Bcl-2 relative Bak, and DNA damage–induced cell death). In all instances, ZVAD.fmk and BD.fmk treatment inhibits characteristic biochemical and morphological events associated with apoptosis, including cleavage of nuclear lamins and poly-(ADP-ribose) polymerase, chromatin condensation and nucleosome laddering, and external display of phosphatidylserine. However, neither ZVAD.fmk nor BD.fmk inhibits the onset of apoptosis, as characterized by the onset of surface blebbing; rather, both act to delay completion of the program once initiated. In complete contrast, IGF-I and Bcl-2 delay the onset of apoptosis but have no effect on the kinetics of the program once initiated. Our data indicate that IRPs constitute part of the execution machinery of mammalian apoptosis induced by deregulated oncogenes, DNA damage, or Bak but that they act after the point at which cells become committed to apoptosis or can be rescued by survival factors. Moreover, all such blocked cells have lost proliferative potential and all eventually die by a process involving cytoplasmic blebbing.
Based IKE Protocol Design for Internet Applications

The Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol is most widely used as a secure key exchange protocol to exchange key materials and negotiate security associations between two security gateways for any secure communications over Internet. However, the original IKE is too flexible, complex and weak to denial-of-service (DoS) attack; several enhanced IKE version have been proposed to replace the original one. In this paper, an elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) based and certificate less IKE protocol is proposed. It eliminates the use of certificates for authentication, replaces the RSA based Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange by Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange, and instead of cookies, hash value of initiator’s public key, identity and IP address is used to prevent DoS attack. One advantage of the proposed scheme is that it provides same level of security as RSA with less key size, as well as it generates an ECC based common secret key, used for symmetric encryption, which requires less processing time, less computation cost and less storage space than the time required in the public key encryption-based techniques. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of C3IT
Social inequalities in the demand, supply and utilisation of psychological treatment

Introduction: Socioeconomic deprivation is associated with higher prevalence of mental disorders but poor access to care. We conducted a national workforce survey to examine the demand, supply and utilisation of primary care psychological services. Aim: To understand the variability in the rates of access to psychological care in different geographical areas. Method: This was a cross-sectional survey of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services. Data were collected from 144 services covering 180 local areas in England, using a freedom of information request. The access gap (AG) was defined as the percentage of cases that did not receive treatment, from the wider pool of cases referred for psychological care. We examined correlations between the demand (number of referrals), and supply (workforce size) of psychological care with local area prevalence rates of common mental disorders and the index of multiple deprivation (IMD). Regression analyses were used to assess if the variability in AG may be explained by IMD and workforce size, controlling for local population statistics. Results: Workforce size was weakly correlated with the IMD (r = 0.16, p = 0.04) and prevalence rates (r = 0.16, p = 0.03). The AG was significantly associated with IMD, number of referrals, prevalence rates and treatment waiting times, but not with workforce size. Together, these variables explained approximately 26% of variance in the AG. Conclusions: Socioeconomic deprivation is associated with psychological service utilisation, irrespective of the demand–supply function, particularly when contrasting the poorest and most affluent areas.
Reactive Query Policies: A Formalism for Planning with Volatile External Information

To generate plans for collecting data for data mining, an important problem is information volatility during planning: the information needed by the planning system may change or expire during the planning process, as changes occur in the data being collected. In such situations, the planning system faces two challenges: how to generate plans despite these changes, and how to guarantee that a plan returned by the planner will remain valid for some period of time after the planning ends. The focus of our work is to address both of the above challenges. In particular, we provide: 1) A formalism for reactive query policies, a class of strategies for deciding when to reissue queries for information that has changed during the planning process. This class includes all query management strategies that have yet been developed. 2) A new reactive query policy called the presumptive strategy. In our experiments, the presumptive strategy ran exponentially faster than the lazy strategy, the best previously known query management strategy. In the hardest set of problems we tested, the presumptive strategy took 4.7% as much time and generated 6.9% as many queries as the lazy strategy
How Similar is Rating Similarity to Content Similarity?

The success of a recommendation algorithm is typically measured by its ability to predict rating values of items. Although accuracy in rating value prediction is an important property of a recommendation algorithm there are other properties of recommendation algorithms which are important for user satisfaction. One such property is the diversity of recommendations. It has been recognized that being able to recommend a diverse set of items plays an important role in user satisfaction. One convenient approach for diversication is to use the rating patterns of items. However, in what sense the resulting lists will be diversied is not clear. In order to assess this we explore the relationship between rating similarity and content similarity of items. We discuss the experimental results and the possible implications of our ndings.
Optimal radio channel recommendations with explicit and implicit feedback

The very large majority of recommender systems are running as server-side applications, and they are controlled by the content provider, i.e., who provides the recommended items. This paper focuses on a different scenario: the user is supposed to be able to access content from multiple providers, in our application they offer radio channels, and it is up to a personal recommender installed on the clients' side to decide which channel to select and recommend to the user. We exploit the implicit feedback derived from the user's listening behavior, and we model channel recommendation as a sequential decision making problem. We have implemented a personal RS that integrates reinforcement learning techniques to decide what channel to play every time the user asks for a new music track or the current track finishes playing. In a live user study we show that the proposed system can sequentially select the next channel to play such that the users listen to the streamed tracks for a larger fraction, and for more time, compared to a baseline system not exploiting implicit feedback.
Live music programming in Haskell

We aim for composing algorithmic music in an interactive way with multiple participants. To this end we have developed an interpreter for a sub-language of the non-strict functional programming language Haskell that allows the modification of a program during its execution. Our system can be used both for musical live-coding and for demonstration and education of functional programming.
A Chlorfenapyr Mixture Net Interceptor® G2 Shows High Efficacy and Wash Durability against Resistant Mosquitoes in West Africa

Background Malaria control through use of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LN) is threatened by the selection of anopheline mosquitoes strongly resistant to pyrethroid insecticides. To sustain future effectiveness it is essential to identify and evaluate novel insecticides suitable for nets. Mixtures of two insecticides with contrasting mode of action have the potential to kill resistant vectors and restore transmission control provided the formulation can withstand regular washing over the net’s life span. Method The efficacy of a novel mixture LN, Interceptor® G2, that combines the pyrrole chlorfenapyr and pyrethroid alpha-cypermethrin was evaluated under controlled household conditions (experimental hut trial) and by laboratory bioassay against pyrethroid resistant An. gambiae in Benin before and after standardized washing. Comparison arms included standard alpha-cypermethrin LN, nets hand-treated with chlorfenapyr-only and untreated nets. Results The chlorfenapyr-alphacypermethrin LN demonstrated improved efficacy and wash resistance compared to a standard alpha-cypermethrin LN against pyrethroid resistant mosquitoes (resistance ratio 207). In experimental hut trial alpha-cypermethrin LN killed only 20% (95% CI 15–26%) of host-seeking An. gambiae whilst mixture LN killed 71% (95% CI 65–77%). Mixture LN washed 20 times killed 65% (95% CI 58–71%), and thus intensive washing reduced efficacy by only 6% (95% CI 1.3–11%). The chlorfenapyr net killed 76% (95% CI 70–81%). Personal protection and blood feeding inhibition did not differ between mixture and pyrethroid LN; however, the mixture LN was 2.5 (95% CI: 2.1–3.1) times more protective than untreated nets. Standard WHO cone bioassays conducted during day time hours failed to anticipate field efficacy but overnight tunnel tests successfully predicted mixture LN and chlorfenapyr net efficacy in field trials. Conclusion Interceptor® G2 LN demonstrates the potential to control transmission and provide community protection over the normal lifespan of long lasting nets where standard pyrethroid LN show signs of failing due to resistance.
Postmodern Applications within Latino/a Cultures

Postmodern approaches, specifically those based on ideas from social constructionism such as narrative therapy and solution-focused therapy, are currently being used in a variety of contexts and with multiple cultures. The authors suggest ways in which narrative therapy and solution-focused therapy may appropriately be used with Latino/a populations. The authors review basic tenets and techniques of both narrative and solution-focused therapy emphasizing their application to Latinos/as.
Load/Price Forecasting and Managing Demand Response for Smart Grids: Methodologies and Challenges

With the promises of smart grids, power can be more efficiently and reliably generated, transmitted, and consumed over conventional electricity systems. Through the two-way flow of information between suppliers and consumers, the grids can also adapt more readily to the increased penetration of renewable energy sources and encourage users' participation in energy savings and cooperation through the demand-response (DR) mechanism. An important issue in smart grids is therefore how to manage DR to reduce peak electricity load and hence future investment in thermal generations and transmission networks, and better utilize renewable energies to reduce our dependence on hydrocarbon. Effective DR depends critically on demand management and price/load/renewable energy forecasting, which call for sophisticated signal processing and optimization techniques. The objectives of this article are to: 1) introduce to the signal processing community the concept of smart grids, especially on the problems of price/load forecasting and DR management (DRM) and optimization, 2) highlight related signal processing applications and state-of-the-art methodologies, and 3) share the authors' research experience through concrete examples on price predictions and DRM and optimization, with emphasis on recursive online solutions and future challenges.
Modelling multi-episodic quality perception for different telecommunication services: First insights

Most studies on the perceptual quality evaluation of multi-media services are limited to short media samples or episodes, although typical usage of services occurs in a more regular way over longer periods of exposure (weeks, months or years). So far, it is unclear how the experience of individual episodic use is integrated to form an experience of one service as a whole, spanning over multiple usage episodes. In this paper, we present two studies on the quality experienced during multi-episodic usage of different media and communication services, and first approaches to model multi-episodic quality judgments. An analysis of the data shows that the particular instance of episodic judgment strongly affects the integration function, which makes it difficult to derive models of general validity. Ways to over-come the observed limitations are discussed.