Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Education differentiates cognitive performance and resting state fMRI connectivity in healthy aging

Objectives In healthy aging, the way people differently cope with cognitive and neural decline is influenced by the exposure to cognitively enriching life-experiences. Education is one of them, so that in general the higher the education the better the expected cognitive performance in aging. At the neural level, it is not clear yet whether education can differentiate resting state functional connectivity profiles and their cognitive underpinnings. Thus, with this study, we aimed to investigate whether the variable education allowed for a finer description of age-related differences in cognition and resting state FC. Methods We analyzed in 197 healthy individuals (137 young adults aged 20-35, and 60 older adults aged 55-80 from the publicly available LEMON database), a pool of cognitive and neural variables, derived from magnetic resonance imaging, in relation to education. Firstly, we assessed age-related differences, by comparing young and older adults. Then, we investigated the possible role of education in outlining such differences, by splitting the group of older adults based on their education. Results In terms of cognitive performance, older adults with higher education and young adults were comparable in language and executive functions. Interestingly, they had a wider vocabulary compared to young adults and older adults with lower education. Concerning functional connectivity, the results showed significant age- and education-related differences within three networks: the Visual-Medial, the Dorsal Attentional and the Default Mode network (DMN). For the DMN, we also found a relationship with memory performance, which strengthen the evidence that this network has a specific role in linking cognitive maintenance and FC at rest in healthy aging. Discussion Our study revealed that education contributes to differentiate cognitive and neural profiles in healthy older adults. Also, the DMN could be a key network in this context, as it may reflect some compensatory mechanisms relative to memory capacities in older adults with higher education.
Delta-band neural envelope tracking predicts speech intelligibility in noise in preschoolers

Behavioral tests are currently the gold standard in measuring speech intelligibility. However, these tests can be difficult to administer in young children due to factors such as motivation, linguistic knowledge and cognitive skills. It has been shown that measures of neural envelope tracking can be used to predict speech intelligibility and overcome these issues. However, its potential as an objective measure for speech intelligibility in noise remains to be investigated in preschool children. Here, we evaluated neural envelope tracking as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in 14 5-year-old children. We examined EEG responses to natural, continuous speech presented at different SNRs ranging from -8 (very difficult) to 8 dB SNR (very easy). As expected delta band (0.5-4 Hz) tracking increased with increasing stimulus SNR. However, this increase was not strictly monotonic as neural tracking reached a plateau between 0 and 4 dB SNR, similarly to the behavioral speech intelligibility outcomes. These findings indicate that neural tracking in the delta band remains stable, as long as the acoustical degradation of the speech signal does not reflect significant changes in speech intelligibility. Theta band tracking (4-8 Hz), on the other hand, was found to be drastically reduced and more easily affected by noise in children, making it less reliable as a measure of speech intelligibility. By contrast, neural envelope tracking in the delta band was directly associated with behavioral measures of speech intelligibility. This suggests that neural envelope tracking in the delta band is a valuable tool for evaluating speech-in-noise intelligibility in preschoolers, highlighting its potential as an objective measure of speech in difficult-to-test populations.
CD99 Promotes Self-renewal in Hematopoietic Stem Cells and Leukemia Stem Cells by Regulating Protein Synthesis

Blood production is sustained by hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which are typically the only blood cells capable of long-term self-renewal. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is initiated by aberrantly self-renewing malignant stem cells termed leukemia stem cells (LSCs). HSCs exhibit and depend on low levels of protein synthesis to self-renew. However, the mechanisms by which HSCs regulate protein synthesis to maintain their capacity for self-renewal in the setting of proliferative stress and leukemogenesis remain unknown. Here we show CD99, a cell surface protein upregulated in LSCs, is required for self-renewal of proliferating HSCs and LSCs. We found that loss of CD99 in HSCs and LSCs leads to increased protein synthesis and that their self-renewal capacity can be restored by translation inhibition. These data demonstrate a functional role for CD99 in constraining protein synthesis, which may promote the clonal expansion of HSCs and LSCs that leads to AML. Furthermore, they show that similar to HSCs, LSCs depend on regulated protein synthesis.
Regional Gene Expression in the Retina, Optic Nerve Head, and Optic Nerve of Mice with Experimental Glaucoma and Optic Nerve Crush

A major risk factor for glaucomatous optic neuropathy is the level of intraocular pressure (IOP), which can lead to retinal ganglion cell axon injury and cell death. The optic nerve has a rostral unmyelinated portion at the optic nerve head followed by a caudal myelinated region. The unmyelinated region is differentially susceptible to IOP-induced damage in rodent models and in human glaucoma. While several studies have analyzed gene expression changes in the mouse optic nerve following optic nerve injury, few were designed to consider the regional gene expression differences that exist between these distinct areas. We performed bulk RNA-sequencing on the retina and on separately micro-dissected unmyelinated and myelinated optic nerve regions from naïve C57BL/6 mice, mice after optic nerve crush, and mice with microbead-induced experimental glaucoma (total = 36). Gene expression patterns in the naïve unmyelinated optic nerve showed significant enrichment of the Wnt, Hippo, PI3K-Akt, and transforming growth factor β pathways, as well as extracellular matrix–receptor and cell membrane signaling pathways, compared to the myelinated optic nerve and retina. Gene expression changes induced by both injuries were more extensive in the myelinated optic nerve than the unmyelinated region, and greater after nerve crush than glaucoma. Changes three and fourteen days after injury largely subsided by six weeks. Gene markers of reactive astrocytes did not consistently differ between injury states. Overall, the transcriptomic phenotype of the mouse unmyelinated optic nerve was significantly different from immediately adjacent tissues, likely dominated by expression in astrocytes, whose junctional complexes are inherently important in responding to IOP elevation.
Matching variants for functional characterization of genetic variants

Rapid and low-cost sequencing, as well as computer analysis, have facilitated the diagnosis of many genetic diseases, resulting in a substantial rise in the number of disease-associated genes. However, genetic diagnosis of many disorders remains problematic due to the lack of interpretation for many genetic variants, especially missenses, the infeasibility of high-throughput experiments on mammals, and the shortcomings of computational prediction technologies. Additionally, the available mutant databases are not well-utilized. Toward this end, we used Caenorhabditis elegans mutant resources to delineate the functions of eight missense variants (V444I, V517D, E610K, L732F, E817K, H873P, R1105K, and G1205E) and two stop codons (W937stop and Q1434stop), including several matching variants (MatchVar) with human in ciliopathy associated IFT-140 (also called CHE-11)//IFT140 (intraflagellar transport protein 140). Moreover, MatchVars carrying C. elegans mutants, including IFT-140(G680S) and IFT-140(P702A) for the human (G704S) (dbSNP: rs150745099) and P726A (dbSNP: rs1057518064 and a conflicting variation) were created using CRISPR/Cas9. IFT140 is a key component of IFT complex A (IFT-A), which is involved in the retrograde transport of IFT along cilia and the entrance of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) into cilia. Functional analysis of all ten variants revealed that P702A and W937stop, but not others phenocopied the ciliary phenotypes (short cilia, IFT accumulations, mislocalization of membrane proteins, and cilia entry of non-ciliary proteins) of the IFT-140 null mutant, indicating that both P702A and W937stop are phenotypic in C. elegans. Our functional data offered experimental support for interpreting human variants, by using ready-to-use mutants carrying MatchVars and generating MatchVars with CRISPR/Cas9.
Performance of the ATLAS muon trigger in pp collisions at = 8 TeV

Given the harsh detector environment produced by collisions of high energy protons at the LHC, events with muons in the final state are an important signature for many physics analyses. The ATLAS experiment employs a multi-level trigger architecture that selects the events in three sequential steps of increasing complexity and accuracy. The Level 1 trigger is implemented with custom-built hardware to reduce the event rate (in 2012) from 20 MHz to 70 kHz. Then the software-based higher level triggers refine the trigger decisions reducing the output rate down to several 100 Hz. The performance of the muon trigger is presented as determined with pp collision data collected in 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV.
Improved Self‐Energy Calculations for Pressure Broadening of Spectral Lines in Dense Plasmas

Pressure broadening of Lyman‐lines of hydrogen‐like lithium (Li2+) has been studied using a quantum statistical approach to the line shape in dense plasmas, for details see [1]. In this communication, we concentrate on the electronic self‐energy, which is a basic input to the theory of spectral line profiles. We discuss the effect of strong, i.e. close, collisions which have been neglected so far for Li2+ plasmas, but play generally an important role in dense plasmas, as has been shown in [2]. We present a method to calculate an improved electronic self‐energy including strong collisions based on a two‐body T‐matrix and an effective optical potential. The method is tested for level broadening of the ground state of hydrogen (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
A Survey on Privacy in Human Mobility

In the last years we have witnessed a pervasive use of location-aware technologies such as vehicular GPS-enabled devices, RFID based tools, mobile phones, etc which generate collection and storing of a large amount of human mobility data. The powerful of this data has been recognized by both the scientiﬁc community and the industrial worlds. Human mobility data can be used for different scopes such as urban trafﬁc management, urban planning, urban pollution estimation, etc. Unfortunately, data describing human mobility is sensitive, because people’s whereabouts may allow re-identiﬁcation of individuals in a de-identiﬁed database and the access to the places visited by individuals may enable the inference of sensitive information such as religious belief, sexual preferences, health conditions, and so on. The literature reports many approaches aimed at overcoming privacy issues in mobility data, thus in this survey we discuss the advancements on privacy-preserving mobility data publishing. We ﬁrst describe the adversarial attack and privacy models typically taken into consideration for mobility data, then we present frameworks for the privacy risk assessment and ﬁnally, we discuss three main categories of privacy-preserving strategies: methods based on anonymization of mobility data, methods based on the differential privacy models and methods which protect privacy by exploiting generative models for synthetic trajectory generation.
The hydrodynamic interaction of two small freely-moving spheres in a linear flow field

Two rigid spheres of radii a and b are immersed in infinite fluid whose velocity at infinity is a linear function of position. No external force or couple acts on the spheres, and the effect of inertia forces on the motion of the fluid and the spheres is neglected. The purpose of the paper is to provide a systematic and explicit description of those aspects of the interaction between the two spheres that are relevant in a calculation of the mean stress in a suspension of spherical particles subjected to bulk deformation. The most relevant aspects are the relative velocity of the two sphere centres (V) and the force dipole strengths of the two spheres (S′ij, S″ij), as functions of the vector r separating the two centres. It is shown that V, S′ij and S″ij depend linearly on the rate of strain at infinity and can be represented in terms of several scalar parameters which are functions of r/a and b/a alone. These scalar functions provide a framework for the expression of the many results previously obtained for particular linear ambient flows or for particular values of r/a or of b/a. Some new results are established for the asymptotic forms of the functions both for r/(a + b) [Gt ] 1 and for values of r − (a + b) small compared with a and b. A reasonably complete numerical description of the interaction of two rigid spheres of equal size is assembled, the main deficiency being accurate values of the scalar functions describing the force dipole strength of a sphere in the intermediate range of sphere separations. In the case of steady simple shearing motion at infinity, some of the trajectories of one sphere centre relative to another are closed, a fact which has consequences for the rheological problem. These closed forms are described analytically, and also numerically in the case b/a = 1.
On inference for partially observed nonlinear diffusion models using the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm

In this paper, we introduce a new Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to Bayesian analysis of discretely observed diffusion processes. We treat the paths between any two data points as missing data. As such, we show that, because of full dependence between the missing paths and the volatility of the diffusion, the rate of convergence of basic algorithms can be arbitrarily slow if the amount of the augmentation is large. We offer a transformation of the diffusion which breaks down dependency between the transformed missing paths and the volatility of the diffusion. We then propose two efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms to sample from the posterior-distribution of the transformed missing observations and the parameters of the diffusion. We apply our results to examples involving simulated data and also to Eurodollar short-rate data.
A Krylov Subspace Approach to Parametric Inversion of Electromagnetic Data Based on Residual Minimization

In this thesis we present a Krylov subspace technique and use residual minimization to efficiently solve parametric electromagnetic inversion problems. We exploit the shift-invariance property of Krylov subspaces to compute total fields inside a homogeneous object for a whole range of contrast values. As soon as these fields are found, we can determine the corresponding scattered fields in a straightforward manner. This approach allows us to solve the inverse problem by simply inspecting an objective function which measures the discrepancy between the measured and modeled scattered field data.
Displacement eddy current computation in magnetic laminates

The paper presents an equivalent circuit model of small magnetic laminated objects. The responses in the frequency domain of these laminates are significantly influenced by eddy currents which can exist even if the thickness of the magnetic films is smaller than the skin depth. These currents can circulate within the laminates because of the capacitive coupling across the dielectric layers separating the magnetic films. Using this model the effective permeability of the thin multilayer films has been computed also taking into account the displacement eddy currents. The results presented are in agreement with numerical and experimental tests available in literature. The authors have developed this model using the circuit theory because this approach has the major advantage of being simple to understand and easy to implement with a calculation code. >
Theoretical study of shear horizontal wave propagation in periodically layered piezoelectric structure

In this paper, the propagation of the shear horizontal wave (SH-wave) in the single piezoelectric layer and periodically layered piezoelectric structure is studied. Both the dispersion equation and transmission coefficients are derived to reveal the wave behavior of the corresponding structures when the piezoelectricity is ignored or the electrical circuit is open and closed. The zero-order mode of the piezoelectricity-ignored single plate is not dispersive and every higher order mode is dispersive with a cut-off frequency. Same features are found for the electrically open and closed cases except that the zero-order mode of the latter case is no more non-dispersive. The pass bands of the piezoelectricity-ignored periodically layered structure appear when the normalized frequency is an even integer under the normal incidence, and new stop bands will appear from the pass bands as the incident angle increases. The same features are observed for the band gaps of the electrically open and closed cases except t.
Avaliação nutricional de gestantes sob acompanhamento em serviços de pré-natal distintos: a região metropolitana e o ambiente rural

Resumo Objetivo Verificar diferenças em alguns aspectos nutricionais de gestantes acompanhadas em serviço de atenção pré-natal em uma cidade do interior e na região metropolitana. Métodos Foram avaliadas gestantes em atendimento pré-natal na cidade de Belo Horizonte (BH), região metropolitana, e Paula Cândido (PC), interior de MG. Aplicou-se um Questionário de Frequência Alimentar (QFA) contendo informações socioeconômicas e sobre o hábito alimentar, além disso, foram aferidos peso e altura no momento do atendimento e questionado o peso pré-gestacional, para posterior cálculo do IMC (índice de massa corpórea). A análise dos dados foi dividida por região e trimestre gestacional, utilizando o software SPSS versão 15.0, teste t para comparação de médias e qui-quadrado de independência, com 5% de significância. Resultados Foram incluídas 240 gestantes, sendo 90 do interior e 150 da região metropolitana. Destas, a maioria são casadas (BH = 56,6%; PC = 46,6%), não trabalham fora de casa (BH = 54,6%; PC = 84,4%), predominantemente se alimentam 3 a 4 vezes ao dia no 1° e 2° trimestre (BH = 54,0 e 46,0%; PC = 66,7 e 63,3%, respectivamente) e fazem 5 a 6 refeições ao dia no 3° trimestre em BH (44%). Houve ganho de peso significativo somente no 1° trimestre (BH: 58,0%; PC: 53,33%). Ganho de peso versus hábito alimentar foi significativo para as variáveis “almoça ou janta fora de casa,” no 1° trimestre BH (p = 0,006); “quantas vezes consome leite,” no 1° trimestre PC(p = 0,03); “quantas vezes consome fastfood,” no 3° trimestre BH (p = 0,009). Conclusões As gestantes em ambas regiões se alimentam de forma adequada, apesar da prevalência de sobrepeso pré-gestacional em BH e baixo nível de escolaridade e renda, principalmente no interior, indicador que pode ser pouco favorável à nutrição das gestantes neste período. Estudos de associação entre hábito alimentar e saúde do recém-nascido irão contribuir para maiores informações sobre a nutrição no período gestacional.
Adaptive servomechanism controller with an implicit reference model

In this paper the classical servomechanism problem is resolved for the case of an unknown single-input single-output plant and an a priori uncertain command signal. Namely, it is assumed that the command signal is modelled as an output of a homogeneous dynamic system (exosystem ) of known order, but with unknown parameters. In order to provide asymptotic tracking for signals of that kind, a new closed-loop adaptive system, with an implicit reference model and original adaptive observer of the time derivatives of the command signal, is designed.
Nitrogen airglow sources: Comparison of Triton, Titan, and Earth

Detailed calculations of the emission rates of nitrogen airglow in the upper atmospheres of Triton and Titan by direct solar excitation, photoelectrons, and magnetospheric electrons are compared with the Voyager Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) observations. The principal spectral features of Triton's airglow are shown to be consistent with precipitation of magnetospheric electrons with power dissipation − 5 × 108 W. Solar excitation rates of the dominant N2 and N+ emission features are factors of 2–7 weaker than magnetospheric electron excitation. On Titan the calculated disk center and bright limb N+(1085 A) intensities by solar excitation agree with observed values, whereas if the 970A feature is mostly N2 c4 band emission, the calculated photoelectron excitation intensity is only 40% of the observed value. The difference could be due to magnetospheric electron precipitation. But the calculated LBH intensity by photoelectrons is in agreement with observations and suggests that magnetospheric electrons play a minor role in Titan's UV airglow. On the Earth solar/photoelectron excitation explains the observed N+(1085 A) and LBH intensities, accounts for only 40% of the N+(916 A) intensity, and overpredicts substantially the N2 c4 (0–0) band intensity.
A Wind Tunnel Investigation of the Growth of Graupel Initiated from Frozen Drops

Abstract The formation of graupel by the riming of freely suspended frozen drops has been studied in the UCLA Cloud Tunnel. The following parameters were varied: 1) initial frozen drop size, 2) ambient temperature, 3) liquid water content, 4) growth time and 5) cloud droplet size. The various combinations yielded a total of 16 separate growth environments each consisting of approximately 10 individual growth events. In all of the growth environments, heat dissipation was efficient enough so that all the water acquired by the growing ice particle immediately turned into ice (“dry growth” regime). From the observed growth rates of the ice particles, collection kernels were calculated. These kernels are significantly different from those of drops colliding with drops or those derived from the theoretically determined efficiency with which plate-like and columnar ice crystals collide with drops. In addition, the densities of rime acquired by the frozen drops during their transition to graupel were measured an.
Predictions of turbulent heat transfer in an axisymmetric jet impinging on a heated pedestal

Cooling or heating of a flat plate by an impinging jet, due to its many applications, has been widely studied. Recent experimental data concerning more complex geometries has become available. In this study, the cooling of a heated pedestal mounted on a flat plate, a configuration which is closer to the one met in some engineering applications (e.g., cooling of electronic components), has been numerically simulated. The normal velocity relaxation turbulence model (V2F model) in an axisymmetric geometry has been adopted. Results have been obtained for a range of jet Reynolds numbers and jet-to-pedestal distances. Comparison of the predicted heat transfer coefficient with experiments has shown a very good agreement. For comparison, results have also been obtained with the widely used κ – e turbulence model and the agreement with the data is poor.