Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neurofilament homeostasis and motoneurone degeneration

Neurofilament disorganisation is a hallmark of various neurodegenerative diseases. We review here current knowledge of neurofilament structure, gene expression and function. Neurofilament involvement in motoneurone neurological diseases is discussed in view of recent data from transgenic and spontaneous mouse mutants. In the mammalian neurone, the three neurofilament subunits are assembled into intermediate filaments as obligate heteropolymers. The subunits are expressed differentially during development and adult life according to the cell type and its physiological state. In addition to the well‐established role of neurofilaments in the control of axonal calibre, there is increasing evidence that neurofilaments can interact with other cytoskeletal components and can modulate the axoplasmic flow. Although the extent to which neurofilament abnormalities contribute to the pathogenesis in human diseases remains unknown, emerging evidence suggests that disorganised neurofilaments can provoke degeneration and death of neurones. BioEssays 23:24–33, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Smokers' Characteristics and Cluster Based Quitting Rule Discovery Model for Enhancement of Government's Tobacco Control Systems

Discovery of cluster characteristics and interesting rules describing smokers’ clusters and the behavioural patterns of smokers’ quitting intentions is an important task in the development of an effective tobacco control systems. In this paper, we attempt to determine the characteristics of smokers’ clusters and simplified rule for predicting smokers’ quitting behaviour that can provide feedback to build a scientific evidence-based adaptive tobacco control systems. Standard clustering algorithm groups the data based on there inherent pattern. However, they seldom provide human understandable easy description of the clusters’. Again, standard decision tree (SDT) based rule discovery depends on decision boundaries in the feature space. This may limit the ability of SDT to learn intermediate concepts for high dimensional large datasets such as tobacco control. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based rule discovery model (CRDM) that builds conceptual groups from which a set of decision trees (a decision forest) are constructed to find smokers’ quitting rules. We also employ a re-labelling of unsupervised cluster (RLUC) approach to determine the characteristics of the clusters. RLUC approach uses re-labelling and decision tree approach to find the characteristics of the smokers’ clusters. Experimental results on the tobacco control data set show that decision rules from the decision forest constructed by CRDM are simpler and can predict smokers’ quitting intention more accurately than a single decision tree. RLUC approach finds textbased characteristics of the smokers’ clusters which are easily understandable for policy makers in the tobacco control systems.
Automatic Assessment of Prosody in High-Stakes English Tests

Prosody can be used to infer whether or not candidates fully understand a passage they are reading aloud. In this paper, we focused on automatic assessment of prosody in a read-aloud section for a high-stakes English test. A new method was proposed to handle fundamental frequency (F0) of unvoiced segments that signiﬁcantly improved the predictive power of F0. The k-means clustering method was used to build canonical contour models at the word level for F0 and energy. A direct comparison between the candidate’s contours and ideal contours gave a strong prediction of the candidate’s human prosody rating. Duration information at the phoneme level was an even better predictive feature. When the contours and duration information were combined, the correlation coefﬁcient r = 0 . 80 was obtained, which exceeded the correlation between human raters ( r = 0 . 75 ). The results support the use of the new methods for evaluating prosody in high-stakes assessments.
Iterative channel estimation in MIMO-OFDM systems

The multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is attractive for its high channel capacities and robustness to multipath fading in wireless communications. Channel estimation and data detection are investigated for MIMO-OFDM systems over time- and frequency-selective (doubly selective) channels. Based on the complex exponential basis expansion channel model, a pilot embedded channel estimation scheme with low computational complexity and high data rate efficiency is proposed. An iterative edition exploiting recovered data to enhance the performance is also presented.
Fibrinolytic therapy in prosthetic valve thrombosis.

1. Nishimura RA, Otto CM, Bonow RO, Carabello BA, Erwin JP 3rd, Guyton RA, et al. AHA/ACC Guideline for the Management of Patients With Valvular Heart Disease: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines. J Am Coll Cardiol 2014 Mar 3. Epub ahead of print. 2. Özkan M, Gündüz S, Biteker M, Astarcıoğlu MA, Çevik C, Kaynak E, et al. Comparison of different TEE-guided thrombolytic regimens for prosthetic valve thrombosis: The TROIA Trial. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging 2013; 6: 206-16. [CrossRef]
Inescapable Stress Changes Walking Behavior in Flies - Learned Helplessness Revisited

Like other animals flies develop a state of learned helplessness in response to unescapable aversive events. To show this, two flies, one 'master', one 'yoked', are each confined to a dark, small chamber and exposed to the same sequence of mild electric shocks. Both receive these shocks when the master fly stops walking for more than a second. Behavior in the two animals is differently affected by the shocks. Yoked flies are transiently impaired in place learning and take longer than master flies to exit from the chamber towards light. After the treatment they walk more slowly and take fewer and shorter walking bouts. The low activity is attributed to the fly's experience that its escape response, an innate behavior to terminate the electric shocks, does not help anymore. Earlier studies using heat pulses instead of electric shocks had shown similar effects. This parallel supports the interpretation that it is the uncontrollability that induces the state.
Three-Dimensional Integration Technology Based on Wafer Bonding With Vertical Buried Interconnections

A three-dimensional (3-D) integration technology has been developed for the fabrication of a new 3-D shared-memory test chip. This 3-D technology is based on the wafer bonding and thinning method. Five key technologies for 3-D integration were developed, namely, the formation of vertical buried interconnections, metal microbump formations, stacked wafer thinning, wafer alignment, and wafer bonding. Deep trenches having a diameter of 2 mum and a depth of approximately 50 mum were formed in the silicon substrate using inductively coupled plasma etching to form vertical buried interconnections. These trenches were oxidized and filled with n+ polycrystalline silicon or tungsten. The 3-D devices and 3-D shared-memory test chips with three-stacked layers were fabricated by bonding the wafers with vertical buried interconnections after thinning. No characteristic degradation was observed in the fabricated 3-D devices. It was confirmed that fundamental memory operation and broadcast operation between the three memory layers could be successfully performed in the fabricated 3-D shared-memory test chip
Parallelized Dimensional Decomposition for Dynamic Stochastic Economic Models

This work is concerned with a generalized solution method for high-dimensional dynamic stochastic economic models. The introduced method utilizes dimensional decomposition with sparse grid approximation to formulate a massively parallelized computational framework. The algorithm is applied on high-dimensional economic models, with testing conducted at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Our results show that the method can effectively mitigate the so-called “curse of dimensionality”, allowing for computability of models with up to 200 continuous dimensions.
The Effect of Steroidal Extract of Nerium oleander on the Liver Tissue Structure of Albino Mice

Nerium oleander is an evergreen shrub of Apocynaceae family cultivated worldwide as an ornamental plant. All parts of the plant are toxic and contain a mixture of very toxic cardiac glycosides of cardenolides. albino mice were divided into four groups. group I was normal control group; and others represented three concentration from steroid component of Nerium oleander (0.003,0.006 and 0.012 mg/kg). Liver marker enzymes were assayed in serum. Levels of marker enzymes such as alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were increased significantly. Sections of livers were observed under microscope for the histopathological changes such as destruction of the liver architecture with increased inflammation was observed compared with control.
Airborne Repeat Pass Interferometry for Deformation Measurements

In ground engineering the need for deformation measurements is urgent. SAR interferometry can be used to measure small (sub-wavelength) deformations. An experiment to investigate this for dike deformations was set up, using the C-band SAR system PHARUS (PHased ARray Universal SAR). This paper describes the progress made in the research. 1 MOTIVATION FOR THE EXPERIMENT During extremely high floods a river dike can lose its stability, which can lead to catastrophic inundation of the polder to be protected. Loss of stability is warned for by increasing deformations. For an early warning system, which should support decisions to evacuate, input of actual information on deformations is essential. Only remote sensing techniques can supply such information in an efficient way. Repeat pass airborne SAR interferometry, which is capable of monitoring mm-level deformations, is the technique investigated in this experiment. The spaceborne equivalent was not investigated because of the unpredictability of floodings, and the high rate at which dikes deform during floodings.
Declarative Framework for Semantical Interpretations of Structured Information - An Applicative Approach

We study the applicability of declarative models to encode and describe structured information by means of semantics. Specifically, we introduce D-SPACES, an implementation of constraint systems with space and extrusion operators. Constraint systems are algebraic models that allow for a semantic language-like representation of information in systems where the concept of space is a primary structural feature. We mainly give this information an epistemic and temporal interpretation and consider various agents as entities acting upon it. D-SPACES is coded as a c++ library providing implementations of constraint systems, space functions and extrusion functions. The interfaces to access each implementation are minimal and thoroughly documented. D-SPACES also provides property-checking methods as well as an implementation of a specific type of constraint systems (a boolean algebra). This last implementation serves as an entry point for quick access and proof of concept when using these models. Finally, we show the applicability of this framework with two examples; a scenario in the form of a social network where users post their beliefs and utter their opinions, and a semantical interpretation of a logical language to express time behaviors and properties.
Magnetofossils, the Magnetization of Sediments, and the Evolution of Magnetite Biomineralization

Magnetite (Fe_3O_4) is one of the most stable carriers of natural remanent magnetization (NRM) in sedimentary rocks, and paleomagnetic studies of magnetite-bearing sediments, such as deep-sea cores and pelagic limestones, have provided a detailed calibration between the biostratigraphic and magnetic polarity time scales. Despite this important role, there is as yet a very poor understanding of how ultrafine-grained (< 0.1 µm) magnetite is formed, transported, and preserved in marine environments. A major conceptual advance in our understanding of these processes is the recent discovery that biogenic magnetite, formed by magnetotactic bacteria and/or other magnetite-precipitating organisms, is responsible for much of the stable magnetic remanence in many marine sediments and sedimentary rocks. Since these magnetite particles are of biogenic origin, they are termed properly magnetofossils (Kirschvink & Chang 1984).
Making Search Engines Faster by Lowering the Cost of Querying Business Rules Through FPGAs

Business Rule Management Systems (BRMSs) are widely used in industry for a variety of tasks. Their main advantage is to codify in a succinct and queryable manner vast amounts of constantly evolving logic. In BRMSs, rules are typically captured as facts (tuples) over a collection of criteria, and checking them involves querying the collection of rules to find the best match. In this paper, we focus on a real-world use case from the airline industry: determining the minimum connection time (MCT) between flights. The MCT module is part of the flight search engine, and captures the ever changing constraints at each airport that determine the time to allocate between an arriving and a departing flight for a connection to be feasible. We explore how to use hardware acceleration to (i) improve the performance of the MCT module (lower latency, higher throughput); and (ii) reduce the amount of computing resources needed. A key aspect of the solution is the transformation of a collection of rules into a Non-deterministic Finite state Automaton efficiently implemented on FPGA. Experiments performed on-premises and in the cloud show several orders of magnitude improvement over the existing solution, and the potential to reduce by 40% the number of machines needed for the flight search engine.
Efficient nonrigid registration using ranked order statistics

Non-rigid image registration techniques are widely used in medical imaging applications. Due to high computational complexities of these techniques, finding appropriate registration method to both reduce the computation burden and increase the registration accuracy has become an intense area of research. In this paper we propose a fast and accurate nonrigid registration method for intra-modality volumetric images. Our approach exploits the information provided by an order statistics based segmentation method, to find the important regions for registration and use an appropriate sampling scheme to target those areas and reduce the registration computation time. A unique advantage of the proposed method is its ability to identify the point of diminishing returns and stop the registration process. Our experiments on registration of real lung CT images, with expert annotated landmarks, show that the new method is both faster and more accurate than the state of the art techniques, particularly for registration of images with large deformations.
Retroviral infection in vivo requires an immune escape virulence factor encrypted in the envelope protein of oncoretroviruses

We previously delineated a highly conserved immunosuppressive (IS) domain within murine and primate retroviral envelope proteins (Envs). The envelope-mediated immunosuppression was manifested by the ability of the proteins, when expressed by allogeneic tumor cells normally rejected by engrafted mice, to allow these cells to escape, at least transiently, immune rejection. Using this approach, we identified key residues whose mutation specifically abolishes IS activity without affecting the “mechanical” fusogenic function of the entire envelope. Here, we genetically “switched off’ the envelope-mediated immunosuppression of an infectious retrovirus, the Friend murine leukemia virus, while preserving mutant envelope infectivity both ex vivo and in vivo, thus allowing us to test the functional importance of envelope-mediated immunosuppression in retrovirus physiology. Remarkably, we show, in vivo, that the non-IS mutant virus displays the same propagation kinetics as its WT counterpart in irradiated immunocompromised mice but that it is rapidly and totally cleared from normal immunocompetent mice, which become fully protected against a challenge with the WT retrovirus. Using cell depletion strategies, we further establish that envelope-mediated immunosuppression enables the retrovirus to escape innate (natural killer cells) and adaptive (CD8 T cells) antiviral effectors. Finally, we show that inactivated mutant virions induce higher humoral and cellular responses than their WT counterparts. In conclusion, our work demonstrates the critical role of Env-induced immunosuppression for retrovirus propagation in vivo and identifies a unique definite target for antiretroviral therapies and vaccine strategies, also characterized in the human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV) and xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) retroviruses, opening unprecedented prospects for the treatment of retroviral diseases.
Exploration of Novel Cellular and Serological Antigen Biomarkers in the ORFeome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis*

Increasing evidence demonstrates that antigen-specific cellular and humoral immunity plays an indispensable role in protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Antigen is a key element in the development of a successful diagnostic method and vaccine. However, few antigens are available, and a systemic study on M. tuberculosis ORFeome-based antigen screening is still lacking. In the current study, a genome-wide examination was conducted on high-throughput M. tuberculosis encoding proteins and novel antigens were identified via a comprehensive investigation of serological and antigen-specific cellular responses. The serological immunoglobulin G level of each protein was detected in pooled sera from 200 pulmonary tuberculosis patients by means of semi-quantitative Western blot. Of the 1,250 detected proteins, 29 were present at a higher level relative to the commercialized 38-kDa protein. Furthermore, the top 12 of the 29 proteins had not been previously reported, and their antigenicity was validated in serum from each individual patient. Results confirmed that the 12 proteins displayed nearly identical immunoglobulin G antibody levels in patients with pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Antigen-specific cellular interferon-γ secretion was also evaluated using a cell-based ELISPOT assay. Thirty-four of the proteins were able to induce positive interferon-γ production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells from pulmonary tuberculosis patients as judged by positive (commercial ESAT-6 antigen) and negative controls. The top 4 candidates out of the 34 proteins displayed good accuracy ranging from 50% to 80% compared with the commercial ESAT-6 antigen. Subsequent epitope examination confirmed that a pool of peptides, including a 25aa peptide from Rv1198, demonstrated significant tuberculosis-specific cellular interferon-γ production. Overall, the current study draws significant attention to novel M. tuberculosis antigens, many of which have not been previously reported. This discovery provides a large amount of useful information for the diagnosis of tuberculosis and the development of vaccines to provide protection against tuberculosis.
Perceiving texture gradients on an electrostatic friction display

Two experiments tested young adults' ability to discriminate the direction of friction-defined textural gradients rendered by the Senseg FeelScreen™. Gradients were particularly effective when they spanned the low end of the intensity range. This trend likely reflects saturation of the device's rendering capabilities at high intensities, as confirmed by measurements with a manual linear tribometer. The results show promise for use of gradients rendered with variable friction displays to aid non-visual navigation on tablets.
Novel structural features drive DNA binding properties of Cmr, a CRP family protein in TB complex mycobacteria

Abstract Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) encodes two CRP/FNR family transcription factors (TF) that contribute to virulence, Cmr (Rv1675c) and CRPMt (Rv3676). Prior studies identified distinct chromosomal binding profiles for each TF despite their recognizing overlapping DNA motifs. The present study shows that Cmr binding specificity is determined by discriminator nucleotides at motif positions 4 and 13. X-ray crystallography and targeted mutational analyses identified an arginine-rich loop that expands Cmr’s DNA interactions beyond the classical helix-turn-helix contacts common to all CRP/FNR family members and facilitates binding to imperfect DNA sequences. Cmr binding to DNA results in a pronounced asymmetric bending of the DNA and its high level of cooperativity is consistent with DNA-facilitated dimerization. A unique N-terminal extension inserts between the DNA binding and dimerization domains, partially occluding the site where the canonical cAMP binding pocket is found. However, an unstructured region of this N-terminus may help modulate Cmr activity in response to cellular signals. Cmr’s multiple levels of DNA interaction likely enhance its ability to integrate diverse gene regulatory signals, while its novel structural features establish Cmr as an atypical CRP/FNR family member.
The atlas calorimeter simulation FastCaloSim

The FastCaloSim calorimeter simulation was developed to provide a reasonably accurate but still fast simulation of the ATLAS calorimeter system. Parametrizations of electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeter showers are used to deposit particle energies in the detailed calorimeter structure. In the present document a short overview of the fast calorimeter simulation principle is presented. This is followed by a comparison of individual particle signatures and event properties to the full Geant 4 based ATLAS detector simulation as well as to data collected by the ATLAS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of√8 = 7 TeV in early 2010.
What are the clinical and radiological characteristics of spinal injuries from physical abuse: a systematic review

Aim Systematic review of ‘What are the clinical and radiological characteristics of inflicted spinal injury? ’ Methods Literature search of 20 electronic databases, websites, references and bibliographies (1950–2009) using selected keywords. Critical appraisal: by two trained reviewers, (a third review, if discrepant). Inclusion criteria: primary studies of inflicted spinal injury in children <18 years, alive at presentation, with a high surety of diagnosis of abuse and sufficient detail to analyse. Results 19 studies of 25 children were included. Twelve children (median age 5 months) had cervical injury. In seven cases, the clinical signs of spinal injury were masked by respiratory symptoms and impaired levels of consciousness; six of these children had coexistent inflicted head trauma. Twelve children had thoraco-lumbar injury (median age 13.5 months), 10/12 had lesions at T11–L2, and 9/12 had fracture dislocations. All children had focal signs: 10/12 had lumbar kyphosis or thoraco-lumbar swelling, and two had focal neurology. One child had cervical, thoracic and sacral injuries. Conclusions Spinal injury is a potentially devastating inflicted injury in infants and young children. The published evidence base is limited. However, this case series leads us to recommend that any clinical or radiological indication of spinal injury warrants an MRI. In children undergoing brain MRI for abusive head trauma, consideration should be given to including an MRI of the spine. All skeletal surveys in children with suspected abuse should include lateral views of the cervical and thoraco-lumbar spine. Further prospective comparative studies would define the discriminating features of inflicted spinal injuries.