Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Bean Necrotic Mosaic Virus: A Member of a Novel Evolutionary Lineage within the Genus Tospovirus

Background Tospoviruses (Genus Tospovirus, Family Bunyaviridae) are phytopathogens responsible for significant worldwide crop losses. They have a tripartite negative and ambisense RNA genome segments, termed S (Small), M (Medium) and L (Large) RNA. The vector-transmission is mediated by thrips in a circulative-propagative manner. For new tospovirus species acceptance, several analyses are needed, e.g., the determination of the viral protein sequences for enlightenment of their evolutionary history. Methodology/Principal Findings Biological (host range and symptomatology), serological, and molecular (S and M RNA sequencing and evolutionary studies) experiments were performed to characterize and differentiate a new tospovirus species, Bean necrotic mosaic virus (BeNMV), which naturally infects common beans in Brazil. Based upon the results, BeNMV can be classified as a novel species and, together with Soybean vein necrosis-associated virus (SVNaV), they represent members of a new evolutionary lineage within the genus Tospovirus. Conclusion/Significances Taken together, these evidences suggest that two divergent lineages of tospoviruses are circulating in the American continent and, based on the main clades diversity (American and Eurasian lineages), new tospovirus species related to the BeNMV-SVNaV clade remain to be discovered. This possible greater diversity of tospoviruses may be reflected in a higher number of crops as natural hosts, increasing the economic impact on agriculture. This idea also is supported since BeNMV and SVNaV were discovered naturally infecting atypical hosts (common bean and soybean, respectively), indicating, in this case, a preference for leguminous species. Further studies, for instance a survey focusing on crops, specifically of leguminous plants, may reveal a greater tospovirus diversity not only in the Americas (where both viruses were reported), but throughout the world.
Marriage ? Social Psychology and Neuroscience : Strange Bedfellows or a Healthy

can be found at: Group Processes & Intergroup Relations Additional services and information for http://gpi.sagepub. com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://gpi.sagepub. com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub. com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub. com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://gpi.sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/11/2/247 SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): (this article cites 44 articles hosted on the Citations
Evolutionary Adaptive Self-Generating Prototypes for imbalanced datasets

The nearest neighbor (NN) is one of the most well known classifiers in pattern recognition. Despite the high classification accuracy, the NN has several drawbacks: high storage requirements, bad time of response, and high noise sensitivity. Prototype Generation (PG) is one of the most well-known solutions to tackle these shortcomings. In supervised classification, many real world datasets do not have an equitable distribution among the different classes, these are called imbalanced datasets. Many PG techniques that have a high classification accuracy in regular datasets, have a poor performance when dealing with imbalanced datasets. The Self-Generating Prototypes (SGP) is one of these techniques. The Adaptive Self-Generating Prototypes was proposed to tackle the SGP problem with imbalanced datasets, but, in doing so, the reduction rate is compromised. This paper proposes the Evolutionary Adaptive Self-Generating Prototypes (EASGP), a SGP based technique with iterative merging and evolutionary pruning to help find the optimal solution. An experimental analysis is performed with datasets of different levels of imbalance ratio and statistical tests are used to evaluate the proposed technique. The results obtained show that EASGP outperforms previous SGP based algorithms in classification accuracy and reduction.
Can Native T1 Mapping Differentiate between Healthy and Diffuse Diseased Myocardium in Clinical Routine Cardiac MR Imaging?

Objectives T1 mapping allows quantitative myocardial assessment, but its value in clinical routine remains unclear. We investigated, whether the average native myocardial T1 value can be used as a diagnostic classifier between healthy and diffuse diseased myocardium. Methods Native T1 mapping was performed in 54 persons with healthy hearts and in 150 patients with diffuse myocardial pathologies (coronary artery disease (CAD): n = 76, acute myocarditis: n = 19, convalescent myocarditis: n = 26, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM): n = 12, dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM): n = 17) at 1.5 Tesla in a mid-ventricular short axis slice using a modified Look-Locker inversion recovery (MOLLI) sequence. The average native myocardial T1 value was measured using dedicated software for each patient. The mean as well as the range of the observed average T1 values were calculated for each group, and compared using t-test. The ability of T1 mapping to differentiate between healthy and diffuse diseased myocardium was assessed using receiver operating characteristic analysis (ROC). Results The mean T1 value of the group “healthy hearts” (955±34ms) differed significantly from that of the groups DCM (992±37ms, p<0.001), HCM (980±44ms, p = 0.035), and acute myocarditis (974±36ms, p = 0.044). No significant difference was observed between the groups “healthy hearts” and CAD (951±37ms, p = 0.453) or convalescent myocarditis (965±40ms, p = 0.240). The average native T1 value varied considerably within all groups (range: healthy hearts, 838-1018ms; DCM, 882-1034ms; HCM, 897-1043ms; acute myocarditis, 925-1025ms; CAD, 867-1082ms; convalescent myocarditis, 890-1071ms) and overlapped broadly between all groups. ROC analysis showed, that the average native T1 value does not allow for differentiating between healthy and diffuse diseased myocardium, except for the subgroup of DCM. Conclusions The average native T1 value in cardiac MR imaging does not allow differentiating between healthy and diffusely diseased myocardium in individual cases.
β-AR Blockers Suppresses ER Stress in Cardiac Hypertrophy and Heart Failure

Background Long-term β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) blockade reduces mortality in patients with heart failure. Chronic sympathetic hyperactivity in heart failure causes sustained β-AR activation, and this can deplete Ca2+ in endoplasmic reticulum (ER) leading to ER stress and subsequent apoptosis. We tested the effect of β-AR blockers on ER stress pathway in experimental model of heart failure. Methods and discussions ER chaperones were markedly increased in failing hearts of patients with end-stage heart failure. In Sprague-Dawley rats, cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure was induced by abdominal aortic constriction or isoproterenol subcutaneous injection. Oral β-AR blockers treatment was performed in therapy groups. Cardiac remodeling and left ventricular function were analyzed in rats failing hearts. After 4 or 8 weeks of banding, rats developed cardiac hypertrophy and failure. Cardiac expression of ER chaperones was significantly increased. Similar to the findings above, sustained isoproterenol infusion for 2 weeks induced cardiac hypertrophy and failure with increased ER chaperones and apoptosis in hearts. β-AR blockers treatment markedly attenuated these pathological changes and reduced ER stress and apoptosis in failing hearts. On the other hand, β-AR agonist isoproterenol induced ER stress and apoptosis in cultured cardiomyocytes. β-AR blockers largely prevented ER stress and protected myocytes against apoptosis. And β-AR blockade significantly suppressed the overactivation of CaMKII in isoproterenol-stimulated cardiomyocytes and failing hearts in rats. Conclusions Our results demonstrated that ER stress occurred in failing hearts and this could be reversed by β-AR blockade. Alleviation of ER stress may be an important mechanism underlying the therapeutic effect of β-AR blockers on heart failure.
Impact of utilisation of uncompleted handouts on power point presentations (PPT) in rural Indian medical institute

Introduction Note taking while attending a PPT requires high activity of memory and writing process which ultimately leads to what is called “death by power point” referring to boredom and fatigue. To overcome this we planned to evaluate the impact of utilisation of uncompleted handouts given prior to PPT presentations. Methods Final year MBBS students were divided in 2 batches, batch A and batch B. For a set of lectures one batch was provided with handouts before lecture while the other batch was given lectures only. Crossover was done to avoid bias, all the lectures being given by the same presenter. At the end of each lecture, a short questionnaire of 10 Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) was provided to the students. Mean scores were calculated for lectures with handouts and without handouts. Results For a set of lectures, when batch A was provided with handouts, the mean score was 28.2; for batch B to which no handouts were given the mean score was 23.4. Similarly, for batch B when provided with handouts the mean score was 29.1, for batch A which was not provided with handouts the mean score was 24. There was an average increase of 4.2 marks. Actual gain when handouts were provided was 1.2 marks per lecture. It was more for the batch comprising of repeater students as compared to the batch of fresher students. Increase in attendance was also noted. Conclusion Providing uncompleted handouts before a didactic lecture definitely results in increase in knowledge gain; repeater students benefit more with uncompleted handouts,
Augmenting Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback

As computational agents are increasingly used beyond research labs, their success will depend on their ability to learn new skills and adapt to their dynamic, complex environments. If human users — without programming skills — can transfer their task knowledge to agents, learning can accelerate dramatically, reducing costly trials. The TAMER framework guides the design of agents whose behavior can be shaped through signals of approval and disapproval, a natural form of human feedback. More recently, TAMER+RL was introduced to enable human feedback to augment a traditional reinforcement learning (RL) agent that learns from a Markov decision process’s (MDP) reward signal. Using a reimplementation of TAMER and TAMER+RL, we address limitations of prior work, contributing in two critical directions. First, the four successful techniques for combining a human reinforcement with RL from prior TAMER+RL work are tested on a second task, and these techniques’ sensitivities to parameter changes are analyzed. Together, these examinations yield more general and prescriptive conclusions to guide others who wish to incorporate human knowledge into an RL algorithm. Second, TAMER+RL has thus far been limited to a sequential setting, in which training occurs before learning from MDP reward. We modify the sequential algorithms to learn simultaneously from both sources, enabling the human feedback to come at any time during the reinforcement learning process. To enable simultaneous learning, we introduce a new technique that appropriately determines the magnitude of the human model’s influence on the RL algorithm throughout time and state-action space. Appearing in Proceedings of the ICML Workshop on New Developments in Imitation Learning, Bellevue, WA, USA, 2011. Copyright 2011 by the author(s)/owner(s).
Fasting and nonfasting LDL cholesterol: to measure or calculate?

Whether lipid profiles should be measured in the fasting or nonfasting state is a hot topic (1)(2). The fasting state is that used conventionally (3)(4); however, it would be much simpler for patients worldwide if a lipid profile could be taken at any time of the day, irrespective of the time since and the content of the last meal. In both the US and Europe, LDL cholesterol is currently considered the most important measurement in a lipid profile (3)(5). Direct assays for measuring LDL cholesterol are widely available and used in many laboratories; however, even if LDL cholesterol measured with a direct method gives results similar to those calculated with the Friedewald equation, it is unclear how the 2 measurements compare in predicting ischemic cardiovascular disease. In this issue of Clinical Chemistry , Mora et al. report on an evaluation of fasting LDL cholesterol concentrations calculated with the Friedewald equation vs direct measurement of fasting and nonfasting LDL cholesterol concentrations for predicting cardiovascular disease in a prospective study of 27 331 women from the Women’s Health Study (6). They also examined misclassification of individuals into the National Cholesterol Education Program risk categories (3) with direct measurement of LDL cholesterol, compared with conventional Friedewald calculation of LDL cholesterol. These topics are timely and important. In 1972, Friedewald, Levy, and Fredrickson presented a new method for estimating LDL cholesterol and compared it with the gold standard of preparative ultracentrifugation (7). The method required only the measurement of plasma total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglyceride concentrations—all of which can be measured without the use of laborious and expensive …
Industry taxonomy engineering: the case of the European software ecosystem

Presently, no methods exist that support the creation process of an industry taxonomy within a specific domain. Without such a method, taxonomies remain erroneous, making the development of, for instance, a directory of companies for research, extremely hard. This paper presents a method for creating complete and encompassing domain specific taxonomies. With such a method, researchers can create complete, consistent, taxonomies that in turn provide a strong basis for data model development. The method is applied in practice, and the industry taxonomy is evaluated by practitioners.
A pilot study of the convergent validity of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey (Spanish adaptation)

The Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) is one of the most used instruments in the study of organizational culture. The aim of this study was to evaluate the convergent validity of the Spanish version of the DOCS using the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) developed by Cooke and Lafferty. This instrument is the most widelyused and researched tool in the field of organizational psychology. The convergent validity of these instruments was evaluated using Pearson’s correlation analysis. The sample comprised 344 members from different research groups of a Spanish university. A poor correlation was found between the DOCS and the aggressive-defensive culture dimension of the OCI. However, high correlations were found between the DOCS and the constructive culture dimension of the OCI, suggesting that the latter dimension provides the main conceptual and psychometric equivalence between the two instruments. Thus, the DOCS may be a tool that is specialized in the evaluation of constructive cultures.
A local diffusion wavelet approach for scattered data registration based on GPU

In order to register partly overlapped data clouds measured from different view points, a multi-resolution registration method based on local diffusion wavelet features was proposed. Firstly, we detect multi-scale salient points from large number of original data, and a subset of data was extracted within a neighbourhood around each salient point. Secondly, diffusion wavelet decomposition was performed on each neighbourhood data set. We constructed a multi-resolution feature descriptor using wavelets coefficients for each of feature points. The correspondences were computed between two sets of feature points by measuring the similarity of feature descriptors. The algorithms were implemented in a parallel way on GPU to improve the efficiency.
Generalized Descent Algebras

Abstract If $A$ is a subset of the set of reflections of a finite Coxeter group $W$ , we define a sub- $\mathbb{Z}$ -module ${{\mathcal{D}}_{A}}\left( W \right)$ of the group algebra $\mathbb{Z}W$ . We discuss cases where this submodule is a subalgebra. This family of subalgebras includes strictly the Solomon descent algebra, the group algebra and, if $W$ is of type $B$ , the Mantaci–Reutenauer algebra.
Comparative Analysis of Tactile Sensitivity between Blind, Deaf and Unimpaired People

- This paper presents the methodological procedures and the results of a tactile sensitivity analysis to vibrotactile stimuli. The procedure consists in the attempt of a visual, hearing impaired person as well as an unimpaired one, initially trained, to identify three vibrotactile standard stimuli ( target frequency from 17.8, 31.6 and 56.2 Hz) having as starting point the sending of an initial stimulus (initial frequency ). The results were obtained through the analyses between the rightness mean while identifying the target frequency, among 1) visually and hearing impaired people as well as unimpaired ones: 2) visually and hearing impaired men and women and unimpaired ones: 3) visually and hearing impaired children, teenagers and adults as well as unimpaired ones; and 4) people with congenital and acquired blindness or deafness. A comparative analysis was done between the tactile sensitivity of the forefinger and the thumb, middle, ring and little fingers, as well as a comparison between the sensitivities in the target frequencies in the three groups (blind, deaf and unimpaired people). The results assessment obtained in the experiment was based on the t-student statistical method for paired and independent samples and ANOVA with a classification criterion.
Comparison of Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms for prototype selection in nearest neighbor classification

The nearest neighbor classifiers are popular supervised classifiers due to their ease of use and good performance. However, in spite of their success, they suffer from some defects such as high storage requirements, high computational complexity, and low noise tolerance. In order to address these drawbacks, prototype selection has been studied as a technique to reduce the size of training datasets without deprecating the classification accuracy. Due to the need of achieving a trade-off between accuracy and reduction, Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) are emerging as methods efficient in solving the prototype selection problem. The goal of this paper is to perform a systematic comparison among well-known MOEAs in order to study their effects in solving this problem. The comparison involves the study of MOEAs' performance in terms of the well-known measures such as hypervolume, Δ index and coverage of two sets. The empirical analysis of the experimental results is validated through a statistical multiple comparison procedure.
Audio Fingerprint Extraction Using an Adapted Computational Geometry Algorithm

This work presents an adapted version of the Computational Geometry Algorithm (CGA) used for the development of audio-based applications and services. The CGA algorithm analyses an audio stream and produces a unique set of points that can be considered to be the audio data “fingerprint”. It is shown that this fingerprint is coding-independent, a fact that can render the proposed algorithm suitable for multiple purposes, including the categorisation of content identity and the identification of audio clips, hence providing support for the realisation of audio sorting/searching tasks and services. Additionally, based on specific novel applications and services, the overall algorithmic performance and efficiency characteristics of the CGA algorithm are discussed and analysed.
Risk of Type 2 Diabetes among Osteoarthritis Patients in a Prospective Longitudinal Study

Objectives. Our aim was to determine the risk of diabetes among osteoarthritis (OA) cases in a prospective longitudinal study. Methods. Administrative health records of 577,601 randomly selected individuals from British Columbia, Canada, from 1991 to 2009, were analyzed. OA and diabetes cases were identified by checking physician's visits and hospital records. From 1991 to 1996 we documented 19,143 existing OA cases and selected one non-OA individual matched by age, sex, and year of administrative records. Poisson regression and Cox proportional hazards models were fitted to estimate the effects after adjusting for available sociodemographic and medical factors. Results. At baseline, the mean age of OA cases was 61 years and 60.5% were women. Over 12 years of mean follow-up, the incidence rate (95% CI) of diabetes was 11.2 (10.90–11.50) per 1000 person years. Adjusted RRs (95% CI) for diabetes were 1.27 (1.15–1.41), 1.21 (1.08–1.35), 1.16 (1.04–1.28), and 0.99 (0.86–1.14) for younger women (age 20–64 years), older women (age ≥ 65 years), younger men, and older men, respectively. Conclusion. Younger adults and older women with OA have increased risks of developing diabetes compared to their age-sex matched non-OA counterparts. Further studies are needed to confirm these results and to elucidate the potential mechanisms.
Working Paper / Document de travail 2011-32 Bank Leverage Regulation and Macroeconomic Dynamics

Bank of Canada working papers are theoretical or empirical works-in-progress on subjects in economics and finance. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors. No responsibility for them should be attributed to the Bank of Canada. Abstract This paper assesses the merits of countercyclical bank balance sheet regulation for the stabilization of financial and economic cycles and examines its interaction with monetary policy. The framework used is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with banks and bank capital, in which bank capital solves an asymmetric information problem between banks and their creditors. In this economy, the lending decisions of individual banks affect the riskiness of the whole banking sector, though banks do not internalize this impact. Regulation, in the form of a constraint on bank leverage, can mitigate the impact of this externality by inducing banks to alter the intensity of their monitoring efforts. We find that countercyclical bank leverage regulation can have desirable stabilization properties, particularly when financial shocks are an important source of economic fluctuations. However, the appropriate contribution of countercyclical capital requirements to stabilization after a technology shock depends on the size of the externality and on the conduct of the monetary authority. Résumé Les auteurs évaluent les avantages de la réglementation contracyclique des bilans bancaires pour la stabilisation des cycles économiques et financiers, et examinent comment cette réglementation interagit avec la politique monétaire. Ils s'appuient sur un modèle d'équilibre général dynamique et stochastique comportant des banques et des fonds propres bancaires, dans lequel les fonds propres apportent la solution à un problème d'asymétrie d'information entre les établissements et leurs créanciers. Dans cette représentation de l'économie, les décisions de chaque banque en matière de prêt ont une incidence sur le risque présenté par l'ensemble du secteur bancaire, même si les banques n'internalisent pas cet effet. La réglementation, qui consiste en une limitation du levier financier, peut atténuer l'influence de cette externalité en incitant les banques à modifier l'intensité de leurs efforts de surveillance. Les auteurs constatent que la réglementation contracyclique du levier financier peut avoir des propriétés stabilisatrices souhaitables, en particulier lorsque les chocs financiers sont une importante source de fluctuations économiques. Néanmoins, après un choc technologique, l'apport adéquat des exigences de fonds propres contracycliques à la stabilisation dépend de l'ampleur de l'externalité et de la conduite de la politique monétaire. Classification JEL : E44, E52, G21 Classification de la Banque : Cadre de …