Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can Taichi Reshape the Brain? A Brain Morphometry Study

Although research has provided abundant evidence for Taichi-induced improvements in psychological and physiological well-being, little is known about possible links to brain structure of Taichi practice. Using high-resolution MRI of 22 Tai Chi Chuan (TCC) practitioners and 18 controls matched for age, sex and education, we set out to examine the underlying anatomical correlates of long-term Taichi practice at two different levels of regional specificity. For this purpose, parcel-wise and vertex-wise analyses were employed to quantify the difference between TCC practitioners and the controls based on cortical surface reconstruction. We also adopted the Attention Network Test (ANT) to explore the effect of TCC on executive control. TCC practitioners, compared with controls, showed significantly thicker cortex in precentral gyrus, insula sulcus and middle frontal sulcus in the right hemisphere and superior temporal gyrus and medial occipito-temporal sulcus and lingual sulcus in the left hemisphere. Moreover, we found that thicker cortex in left medial occipito-temporal sulcus and lingual sulcus was associated with greater intensity of TCC practice. These findings indicate that long-term TCC practice could induce regional structural change and also suggest TCC might share similar patterns of neural correlates with meditation and aerobic exercise.
A Study of Three Alternative Workstation-Server Architectures for Object Oriented Database Systems

In the engineering and scientific marketplaces, the workstation-server model of computing is emerging as the standard of the 1990s. Implementing an object-oriented database system in this environment immediately presents the design choice of how to partition database functionality between the server and workstation processor. To better understand the alternatives to this fundamental design decision, we analyze three different workstation-server architectures. The three approaches are labeled object server, in which individual objects pass between the server and workstation, puge server, in which a disk page is the unit of transport and the server buffers pages, andfrle server, where whole pages are transferred as well, but they are accessed directly by the workstation process via a remote file service (namely, NFS). Our main conclusions are that the page-server and file-server architectures benefit most from clustering, that the relative performance of the pageand object-server architectures is very sensitive to the degree of database clustering and the size of the workstation’s buffer pool relative to the size of the database, and that, while the file-server architecture dominates the page-server architecture on read-intensive operations, the opposite is true on write-intensive operations.
Value prediction for speculative multithreaded architectures

The speculative multithreading paradigm (speculative thread-level parallelism) is based on the concurrent execution of control-speculative threads. The efficiency of microarchitectures that adopt this paradigm strongly depends on the performance of the control and data speculation techniques. While control speculation is used to predict the most effective points where a thread can be spawned, data speculation is required to eliminate the serialization imposed by inter-thread dependences. This work studies the performance of different value predictors for speculative multithreaded processors. We propose a value predictor, the increment predictor, and evaluate its performance for a particular microarchitecture that implements this execution paradigm (Clustered Speculative Multithreaded architecture). The proposed trace-oriented increment predictor clearly outperforms trace-adapted versions of the last value, stride and context-based predictors, specially for small-sized history tables. A 1-KB increment predictor achieves a 73% prediction accuracy and a performance that is just 13% lower than that of a perfect value predictor.
World's first wearable humanoid robot that augments our emotions

In the paper we are proposing a conceptually novel approach to reinforcing (intensifying) own feelings and reproducing (simulating) the emotions felt by the partner during online communication through wearable humanoid robot. The core component, Affect Analysis Model, automatically recognizes nine emotions from text. The detected emotion is stimulated by innovative haptic devices integrated into the robot. The implemented system can considerably enhance the emotionally immersive experience of real-time messaging. Users can not only exchange messages but also emotionally and physically feel the presence of the communication partner (e.g., family member, friend, or beloved person).
Neonatal outcomes of twin pregnancies delivered at late-preterm versus term gestation based on chorionicity and indication for delivery

Abstract Objective: To investigate the neonatal outcomes of twin pregnancies delivered at late-preterm versus term gestation based on chorionicity and indication for delivery. Study Design: This is a retrospective cohort study of women with twin pregnancies delivered at ≥34 weeks of gestation from 1995 to 2014. Subjects were categorized into two groups according to gestational age at delivery: late-preterm group (34–36 weeks) and term group (≥37 weeks). Neonatal outcome measures including neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission, mechanical ventilator support, and respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) were compared between the late-preterm and term group based on chorionicity (monochorionic or dichorionic) and delivery indication (elective or non-elective). Results: A total of 1198 twin pregnancies were included in the study: 679 in the late-preterm group and 519 in the term group. Late-preterm twin infants had higher rates of NICU admission, mechanical ventilator support, and RDS than did term twin infants, regardless of the chorionicity and indication for delivery. In the multivariable analysis, late-preterm birth, monochorionicity, and non-elective delivery were independently associated with a significantly higher risk of NICU admission and mechanical ventilator support. Conclusion: The late-preterm birth was associated with a higher risk of adverse neonatal outcome regardless of chorionicity and indication for delivery, and showed significantly increased risk by monochorionicity and non-elective delivery.
The Importance of Soil‐Type Contrast in Modulating August Precipitation Distribution Near the Edwards Plateau and Balcones Escarpment in Texas

The Balcones Escarpment in central Texas is a sloped region between the Edwards Plateau and the coastal plain. The metropolitan areas located along the Balcones Escarpment (e.g., San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas‐Fort Worth) are prone to heavy rain and devastating flood events. While the associated hydrological issues of the Balcones Escarpment have been extensively studied, the meteorological impacts of the Edwards Plateau and Balcones Escarpment are not well understood. The indeterminate impacts of the thermal and dynamic effects of the Edwards Plateau on August climatological precipitation are investigated in this study using the multisensor Stage IV precipitation data, high‐resolution dynamic downscaling, and short‐term sensitivity simulations. Analysis results indicate that the total August precipitation east of the Balcones Escarpment is suppressed and precipitation over the eastern part of the Edwards Plateau is enhanced. Locally initiated moist convection in the afternoon contributes most to the total precipitation during August in the region. The dynamic downscaling output captures the spatial pattern of afternoon precipitation, which is well aligned with the simulated upward motions. The clay‐based soil types that dominate the Edwards Plateau have great potential to retain soil moisture and limit latent heat fluxes, consequently leading to higher sensible heat flux than over the plain to the east. As a result, vertical motion is induced, triggering the afternoon moist convection over the Edwards Plateau under favorable conditions. In comparison, the sloping terrain plays a smaller role in triggering the convection. Short‐term sensitivity simulations for a clear day confirm and further prove such a diagnosis.
Pivotal Role of AKAP12 in the Regulation of Cellular Adhesion Dynamics: Control of Cytoskeletal Architecture, Cell Migration, and Mitogenic Signaling

Cellular dynamics are controlled by key signaling molecules such as cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) and protein kinase C (PKC). AKAP12/SSeCKS/Gravin (AKAP12) is a scaffold protein for PKA and PKC which controls actin-cytoskeleton reorganization in a spatiotemporal manner. AKAP12 also acts as a tumor suppressor which regulates cell-cycle progression and inhibits Src-mediated oncogenic signaling and cytoskeletal pathways. Reexpression of AKAP12 causes cell flattening, reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton, and the production of normalized focal adhesion structures. Downregulation of AKAP12 induces the formation of thickened, longitudinal stress fibers and the proliferation of adhesion complexes. AKAP12-null mouse embryonic fibroblasts exhibit hyperactivation of PKC, premature cellular senescence, and defects in cytokinesis, relating to the loss of PKC scaffolding activity by AKAP12. AKAP12-null mice exhibit increased cell senescence and increased susceptibility to carcinogen-induced oncogenesis. The paper describes the regulatory and scaffolding functions of AKAP12 and how it regulates cell adhesion, signaling, and oncogenic suppression.
Knowledge-Based Programs as Plans: Succinctness and the Complexity of Plan Existence

Knowledge-based programs (KBPs) are high-level protocols describing the course of action an agent should perform as a function of its knowledge. The use of KBPs for expressing action policies in AI planning has been surprisingly overlooked. Given that to each KBP corresponds an equivalent plan and vice versa, KBPs are typically more succinct than standard plans, but imply more on-line computation time. Here we make this argument formal, and prove that there exists an exponential succinctness gap between knowledge-based programs and standard plans. Then we address the complexity of plan existence. Some results trivially follow from results already known from the literature on planning under incomplete knowledge, but many were unknown so far.
Estimating the Number of Subpopulations (K) in Structured Populations

A key quantity in the analysis of structured populations is the parameter K, which describes the number of subpopulations that make up the total population. Inference of K ideally proceeds via the model evidence, which is equivalent to the likelihood of the model. However, the evidence in favor of a particular value of K cannot usually be computed exactly, and instead programs such as Structure make use of heuristic estimators to approximate this quantity. We show—using simulated data sets small enough that the true evidence can be computed exactly—that these heuristics often fail to estimate the true evidence and that this can lead to incorrect conclusions about K. Our proposed solution is to use thermodynamic integration (TI) to estimate the model evidence. After outlining the TI methodology we demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, using a range of simulated data sets. We find that TI can be used to obtain estimates of the model evidence that are more accurate and precise than those based on heuristics. Furthermore, estimates of K based on these values are found to be more reliable than those based on a suite of model comparison statistics. Finally, we test our solution in a reanalysis of a white-footed mouse data set. The TI methodology is implemented for models both with and without admixture in the software MavericK1.0.
Photopic negative response of focal electoretinograms in glaucomatous eyes.

PURPOSE To determine the clinical importance of the photopic negative response (PhNR) of the focal electoretinogram (fERG) for diagnosing glaucoma. METHODS Fifty-nine eyes of 38 patients with open-angle glaucoma (OAG), 12 glaucoma suspects, and 32 eyes of 32 normal controls were studied. The fERGs were elicited by a 15 degrees stimulus spot on the macula region, the supero-temporal, and infero-temporal regions of the macula. The mean of the visual sensitivity was measured by standard automated perimetry (SAP). The optimal cutoff amplitudes of the focal PhNR and ratios of the focal PhNR/b-wave amplitudes that discriminated glaucomatous eyes from normal eyes were obtained from the receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS The amplitudes of the PhNR were significantly smaller in patients with OAG than in normal controls (P < 0.00001). A curvilinear relationship was found between the mean sensitivity (dB, on log scale) and the PhNR amplitude, and between the mean sensitivity and the PhNR/b-wave amplitude ratio. After converting the mean sensitivity from a logarithmic to a linear scale, the amplitude of the PhNR and PhNR/b-wave ratio were linearly correlated with the SAP-determined visual sensitivity in all retinal areas (r = .428-0.544, P < 0.0001). When the optimal cutoff values were used, the sensitivity and specificity of the PhNR/b-wave amplitude ratio were 98.3% and 90.1%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The reduction of the focal PhNR amplitude was associated with a local decrease in the retinal sensitivity in OAG. The high sensitivity and specificity suggest that the focal PhNR can be used to detect functional loss in OAG.
Multiple cerebral hemorrhages as a possible complication of antiblastic treatment with cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and fluoruracil (CMF) for breast cancer

In this paper we describe the case of a patient who underwent left breast radical mastectomy and corresponding removal of her axillary lymphonodes, for an infiltrating lobular cancer with massive colonizing (16 of 19 lymphonodes examined), stage T2N2M0. During chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and 5 fluoruracil (CMF), the patient presented a symptomatology characterized by anarthria and dysphagia. These symptoms were the consequences of multiple cerebral hemorrhages unrelated to alterations in the coagulation process. The temporal relation with the pharmacological treatment and the lack of other explanations of the induced phenomenon lead us to hypothesize a cytotoxic mechanism due to the CMP treatment
Genome Scale Patterns of Recombination between Coinfecting Vaccinia Viruses

ABSTRACT Recombination plays a critical role in virus evolution. It helps avoid genetic decline and creates novel phenotypes. This promotes survival, and genome sequencing suggests that recombination has facilitated the evolution of human pathogens, including orthopoxviruses such as variola virus. Recombination can also be used to map genes, but although recombinant poxviruses are easily produced in culture, classical attempts to map the vaccinia virus (VACV) genome this way met with little success. We have sequenced recombinants formed when VACV strains TianTan and Dryvax are crossed under different conditions. These were a single round of growth in coinfected cells, five rounds of sequential passage, or recombinants obtained using leporipoxvirus-mediated DNA reactivation. Our studies showed that recombinants contain a patchwork of DNA, with the number of exchanges increasing with passage. Further passage also selected for TianTan DNA and correlated with increased plaque size. The recombinants produced through a single round of coinfection contain a disproportionate number of short conversion tracks (<1 kbp) and exhibited 1 exchange per 12 kbp, close to the ∼1 per 8 kbp in the literature. One by-product of this study was that rare mutations were also detected; VACV replication produces ∼1 × 10−8 mutation per nucleotide copied per cycle of replication and ∼1 large (21 kbp) deletion per 70 rounds of passage. Viruses produced using DNA reactivation appeared no different from recombinants produced using ordinary methods. An attractive feature of this approach is that when it is combined with selection for a particular phenotype, it provides a way of mapping and dissecting more complex virus traits. IMPORTANCE When two closely related viruses coinfect the same cell, they can swap genetic information through a process called recombination. Recombination produces new viruses bearing different combinations of genes, and it plays an important role in virus evolution. Poxviruses are a family of viruses that includes variola (or smallpox) virus, and although poxviruses are known to recombine, no one has previously mapped the patterns of DNAs exchanged between viruses. We coinfected cells with two different vaccinia poxviruses, isolated the progeny, and sequenced them. We show that poxvirus recombination is a very accurate process that assembles viruses containing DNA copied from both parents. In a single round of infection, DNA is swapped back and forth ∼18 times per genome to make recombinant viruses that are a mosaic of the two parental DNAs. This mixes many different genes in complex combinations and illustrates how recombination can produce viruses with greatly altered disease potential.
Sex Differences in First-Ever Acute Stroke

Background and Purpose— There are few studies analyzing stroke in women, taking into account the vascular risk factors, cause of stroke, clinical picture, and outcome. The purpose of this study was to analyze possible sex differences in patients suffering first-ever acute stroke. Methods— From December 1995 to January 2002, 1581 patients with first-ever acute stroke were analyzed, taking into account sex, age, risk factors, clinical presentation, stroke subtype, treatment, and outcome data. Results— Mean age was higher in women than in men (P <0.001). Hypertension (P =0.0027) and cardioembolic disease (P =0.0035) were independent factors related to women. Alcohol overuse (P <0.001), smoking (P <0.001), and vascular peripheral disease (P =0.031) were related to the male sex. Women more often suffered aphasic disorders (P <0.001), visual field disturbances (P <0.05), and dysphagia (P <0.01) than men. There were no differences in hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes according to sex. Women suffered more cardioembolic strokes (P <0.001); men suffered more atherothrombotic (P <0.001) and lacunar strokes (P <0.05). Women who survived remained more disabled than men (P <0.001). Conclusions— Sex determines some clear differences in patients suffering a first-ever stroke. Women were, on average, 6 years older than men and had a different profile of vascular risk factors and a different distribution of stroke subtypes. Women had a longer hospital stay and remained more disabled than men. The amelioration of hypertension control and increase in anticoagulant treatment in patients with atrial fibrillation would be the best options for preventing stroke, especially in women.
A study on the complexity of TSP instances under the 2-exchange neighbor system

This work is related to the search of complexity measures for instances of combinatorial optimization problems. Particularly, we have carried out a study about the complexity of random instances of the Traveling Salesman Problem under the 2-exchange neighbor system. We have proposed two descriptors of complexity: the proportion of the size of the basin of attraction of the global optimum over the size of the search space and the proportion of the number of different local optima over the size of the search space. We have analyzed the evolution of these descriptors as the size of the problem grows. After that, and using our complexity measures, we find a phase transition phenomenon in the complexity of the instances.
Recommenders everywhere:: the WikiLens community-maintained recommender system

Suppose you have a passion for items of a certain type, and you wish to start a recommender system around those items. You want a system like Amazon or Epinions, but for cookie recipes, local theater, or microbrew beer. How can you set up your recommender system without assembling complicated algorithms, large software infrastructure, a large community of contributors, or even a full catalog of items? WikiLens is open source software that enables anyone, anywhere to start a community-maintained recommender around any type of item. We introduce five principles for community-maintained recommenders that address the two key issues: (1) community contribution of items and associated information; and (2) finding items of interest. Since all recommender communities start small, we look at feasibility and utility in the small world, one with few users, few items, few ratings. We describe the features of WikiLens, which are based on our principles, and give lessons learned from two years of experience running wikilens.org.
On clause and intonational phrase in Japanese: the syntactic grounding of prosodic constituent structure (特集 言語構造のインターフェイス)

Th is paper reviews evidence from recent research on Japanese sentence prosody, in particular Kawahara and Shinya (2008) on coordinated clauses and Kubo (1989) et seq, Deguchi and Kitagawa (2002) et seq, Ishihara (2002) et seq and Hirotani (2003) et seq on matrix and embedded wh-questions, which suggests that syntactic clauses correspond to a domain for certain of the pho- nological and phonetic phenomena that defi ne the intonational patterns of Japanese sentences. Th e fi nding that there is a clause-grounded intonational phrase domain of phonological representation in Japanese is predicted by a universal theory of the prosodic hierarchy as grounded in a universal theory of the syntax-phonology interface (Selkirk 2005). Th is paper lays out a new uni- versal Match theory of the syntax-prosodic constituency interface, according to which designated syntactic constituent types are called on to match up with corresponding prosodic constituent types. Match theory may be construed as a component of the theory of Spell-Out in minimalist phase theory (Chomsky 2001). Th e data also shows that recursive intonational phrase structure is pro- duced when the universal Match Clause constraint is satisfi ed on nested clausal domains. Th is is expected if indeed the availability of recursive prosodic structure derives from the organization of syntactic structure, through the agency of con- straints on the syntax-phonology interface. Th is theory that prosodic constituent structure above the foot is syntactically grounded thus meshes well with the Ito and Mester (2007) claim that the prosodic hierarchy repertoire is universal and highly restricted and that recursivity in prosodic structure is systematic.