Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chapter 1 Systems Hematology : An Introduction

Hematologists have traditionally studied blood and its components by simplifying it into its components and functions. A variety of new techniques have generated large and complex datasets. Coupled to an appreciation of blood as a dynamic system, a new approach in systems hematology is needed. Systems hematology embraces the multi-scale complexity with a combination of mathematical, engineering, and computational tools for constructing and validating models of biological phenomena. The validity of mathematical modeling in hematopoiesis was established early by the pioneering work of Till and McCulloch. This volume seeks to introduce to the various scientists and physicians to the multi-faceted field of hematology by highlighting recent works in systems biology. Deterministic, stochastic, statistical, and network-based models have been used to better understand a range of topics in hematopoiesis, including blood cell production, the periodicity of cyclical neutropenia, stem cell production in response to cytokine administration, and the emergence of drug resistance. Future advances require technological improvements in computing power, imaging, and proteomics as well as greater collaboration between experimentalists and modelers. Altogether, systems hematology will improve our understanding of normal and abnormal hematopoiesis, better define stem cells and their daughter cells, and potentially lead to more effective therapies.
Exploring Threshold concepts in basic Statistics, using the Internet

Meyer and Land (2002) have introduced the notion of a threshold concept in student learning. By definition a threshold is an insight which is initially alien or counter-intuitive, is integrative in that it subsumes some previous knowledge and is transformative in that it leads to a different perspective of or within the discipline. The notion is suggested to be applicable in many disciplines. It is phrased in terms that the threshold nature of a concept is defined mainly by the student experience rather than simply an objective analytical process. Nonetheless past experience may lead teachers of statistics at tertiary level to surmise that threshold concepts in basic statistics will include the notion of patterns of spread or variation, randomness, sampling, the central limit theorem, and linear regression. Introductions to Bayes' theorem and interval estimation are further candidates. Hypothesis testing may present other difficulties. Some methods and results in an exploration of student perspectives will be presented. A class of over 465 students in their second semester course of undergraduate applied statistics (STA220) participated in a survey with a short list of 4 items via internet and PC lab access to a WebCT site supporting their current course. The 4 items addressed their experience in the earlier course (STA100), and were as follows: Explain in your own words the term random sample. The central limit theorem tells us something about the mean of a sample. State in your own words what the theorem implies. List three concepts you found very simple to learn about in STA100. List the three most difficult concepts that you learnt about in STA100. The motive for the exploration is the open question of whether or not two key concepts were clearly and articulately reported by the respondents, and whether there is initial supportive evidence for any particular concepts being experienced as threshold concepts by these students. As teaching effort aimed at plausible threshold concepts may lead to more successful student participation and learning, the diagnostic value of an internet resource that assists in collection of data may be substantial. Text editors may assist in the analysis of typed responses. Internet connections will allow for the quicker transfer of data and for rapid interchange of improved public domain material addressing concepts that appear to have threshold qualities
Model determination for directed acyclic graphs

Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) have become increasingly popular to communicate, model and manage complex systems efficiently. They also represent a major tool in probabilistic expert systems. We address the issue of model determination for DAGs, with respect to a given ordering of the variables, together with the corresponding parameter estimation, and show how this can be done in a simple way using available software for Bayesian data analysis, such as BUGS.
The Occurrence of Clostridium difficile in Different Animal Species in Egypt

Clostridium difficile is an anaerobic Gram-positive endospore forming bacterium that is the most substantial cause of nosocomial acquired infection in humans. In addition to the nosocomial dissemination, farm and companion animals are a possible source of human C. difficile infection either by direct or indirect contact, environmental contamination, or food infection. The present study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of C. difficile and its toxins in different animal species within the veterinary clinics in Egypt. A total of 249 fecal samples including apparently healthy and diseased animals were collected from 60 cows; 26 buffaloes; 24 sheep; 30 goats; 40 horses; 21 dogs and 30 cats. The samples were evaluated for the occurrence of C. difficile using culture method. All positive C. difficile isolates were screened for the presence of toxin A and B toxin genes. C. difficile was detected in both apparently and diseases animals even though in goats C. difficile could be detected neither in apparently healthy nor animals showing clinical signs. In addition, no Clostridium difficile has been recovered from apparently healthy Buffaloes and cat. Toxigenic C. difficile was detected from ten isolates in apparently healthy animals and eleven isolates from diseased animals. All isolates contained tcdB and tcdA. The occurrence of other toxicgenic C. difficile strains indicates the public health significance.
Training the eTeacher: a Challenge for the University of Milan

The aim of this paper is to illustrate several models for training eTeachers that the University of Milan has designed in the last few years. The discussion seeks to present the context, the educational demands, and the consequent methodological features of such models. We will not touch upon aspects related to the evaluation of the courses and their ex post facto repercussions in the training project, since these processes are still in progress. Such themes will be discussed in future work.
AUCOMA - Adaptive Nutzerzentrierte Organisation von Musikarchiven

Automatische Strukturierung kann den Zugriff auf Musikarchive, speziell die Exploration und Organisation, wesentlich erleichtern. Noch hilfreicher wäre eine Darstellung, die sich an die Art und Weise, wie der Nutzer Musiksammlungen strukturiert, anpasst und somit für ihn intuitiv nachvollziehbar ist. Wir stellen hier ein prototypisches System vor, welches ein personalisiertes Ähnlichkeitsmaß anhand der Nutzerinteraktion mit einer Musiksammlung lernt. Zunächst wird dazu eine wachsende Selbstorganisierende Karte (SOM) trainiert, die nutzerunabhängig ähnliche Musikstücke gruppiert. Der Nutzer kann anschließend die Position von Musikstücken in der Karte durch einfache Drag&Drop-Aktionen verändern. Jede Bewegung verursacht eine automatische Anpassung des der Karte zugrunde liegenden Ähnlichkeitsmaßes, wodurch auch andere Stücke ihre Position ändern können.
The Devil ’ s in the Detail : Visualising analogical thought in retail location decision-making

Retailers use analogues (similar stores) routinely in the process of site assessment, either as a basic method of sales forecasting in its own right, or as a check on more complex quantitative models. In earlier stages of our research, we identified ‘intuitive’ or qualitative causal knowledge structures derived from cognitive mapping interviews with UK retail directors to classify new sites according to their degree of likeness on these same attributes. Here, we focus on how the analogies identified by our qualitative system can be visualised effectively for use in location analysis. The paper discusses the role of analogy in retail location decision-making and the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of visualisation. We evaluate the visual aspects of the system developed in the course of our research with reference to users’ qualitative responses. The central issue appears to be the value users place on the system being able to summarise analogues simply on key dimensions at a general level, as well as its ability to ‘drill down’ to detail so that analogue representativeness can be established.
A Multi-Detailed Spatial Immersive Display

A spatial immersive display that demonstrated non-uniform pixel density is introduced. The nonuniformity is determined by using the following concept — “detailed images for important parts, rough images for the others. ” To realize a system based on the concept, we used multiple projectors arranged non-uniformly. First, we created a immersive display system using four screens with four projectors. Then, we prepared a motion ride to compel the user to gaze at a part of the front screen, and to estimate their viewpoint and posture without their wearing any tracking devices. Finally, we added two more projectors to provide detailed images at the center of the front screen. After geometric and color calibration using a digital still camera, seamless images of multiple detail were observed on the front screen.
Listener tracking stereo for object based audio reproduction

This paper introduces a method to provide accurate localisation of audio objects with a stereo reproduction system when the listener is away from the sweet spot. To this end, a formulation is presented which allows to compensate the loudspeaker input feeds so that the soundwaves which propagate from both loudspeakers arrive with the same amplitude and phase independently of the listener position. In order to render audio objects, conventional panning techniques are used, which are also adapted depending on the listener position. The formulation has been implemented in a real time system and an initial set of measurements show that the proposed system is able to pan different objects accurately inside the loudspeaker span. The measurements also show that the panning of virtual audio sources outside of the loudspeaker span is limited to spatial positions close to the loudspeakers. PACS No:43.38. Vk, 43.60. Fg, 43.66. Lj
Single Stage Generalized Raking Weight Adjustment in the Current Population Survey ∗

This research concerns the adaptation to the Current Population Survey (CPS) of single-stage weight adjustment techniques developed in a 2010 Census research report by Slud and Thibaudeau. Those techniques involved weight optimization with respect to a loss function in the spirit of Deville and Särndal (1992, JASA), subject to population-control constraints, with additive penalty terms for discrepancies between weight-adjusted survey totals and corresponding known or base-weighted estimated totals for certain survey attributes, and with an additional nonlinear penalty term designed to force weights not to be too different from the design weights scaled to the population total. The novel elements of the current research include: defining several appropriate additive quadratic penalty terms corresponding to the current multistage CPS nonresponse adjustment; developing a methodology to define penalty multipliers by tracking properties of the current CPS weights across weighting stages; enforcing weight compression by a penalty term in place of the current CPS approach based on cell collapsing; and implementing the method on CPS data for detailed comparison with the weights as currently adjusted in CPS.
Modeling visual search: Evolving the selective attention for identification model (SAIM)

Recently, we have presented a connectionist model of human visual attention, termed SAIM (Selective Attention for Identification Model) [1]. SAIM’s behaviour is dominated by interactions between processing units within and between modules compete to control access to stored representations for object recognition. SAIM provides a qualitative account of a range of psychological phenomena on both normal and disordered attention. Simulations on normal attention match psychological data on: twoobject costs on selection, effects of object familiarity on selection, global precedence, spatial cueing both within and between objects, and inhibition of return. When simulated lesions were conducted, SAIM also demonstrated both unilateral neglect and spatial extinction, depending on the type and extent of the lesion. Different lesions also produced view-centred and object-centred neglect, capturing the finding that both forms of neglect can occur within a single patient. In essence, SAIM suggested that attentional effects in human behaviour result from competitive interactions in visual selection for object recognition, whilst neurological disorders of
Do Online Shoppers Attend Farmers’ Markets?

Online shopping is changing ways in which offline markets operate. As the online shopping for fresh produce takes off, it is important to investigate its effects on existing physical market outlets. The main objective for this study is to explain how often online shoppers attend farmers’ markets. The study uses data that was collected in 2016 from a sample of 1,205 consumers residing in the south region of the United States who made at least two online purchases within six months prior to participating in this study. This study employed a multinomial Logit model and Stata was used to run the regression. Results show that the majority of these online shoppers never attended a farmers’ market. The relative probabilities for the online shoppers to “never” attend farmers’ markets, attend “occasionally”, and “frequently” are 0.54, 0.28, and 0.18 respectively. We found that the lack of awareness, inconvenient place and/or time, and low interests are major reasons for nonattendance. This study suggests that farmers’ markets could greatly benefit by developing marketing strategies targeting online shoppers.
Titles for Cross-lingual Linking of Focal News Events

In this paper, we discuss the methods and results from our participation in the Cross-Lingual Indian News Story Search (CL! NSS) track at Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation (2013). We describe a method that leverages the structure of news articles, especially the title, to achieve good performance on the focal news event linking task. We achieved the best performance among all teams in the NDCG@1 task, and were ranked second and third, respectively, in the NDCG@5 and NDCG@10 tasks. Contrary to popular belief, we find that imposing date constraints did not improve precision.
Evaluating in-house Online Assignment Submission System (OAS) in an e-learning environment: a case study

The in-house developed Web-based Online Assignment Submission (OAS) system is a robust web-based online assignment submission system for students and tutors at Wawasan Open University. With respect to the demands of its fairly diverse and mobile student population and to the constraints of submission of students’ assignments, the first inhouse built OAS was developed in late 2007. It was created especially to facilitate students’ online assignment submission anywhere, anytime and make it for possible tutors to download students’ Tutor-Marked Assignment (TMA) and upload marked assignments together with online feedback to individual students. The OAS has been through developmental changes several times since it first debuted in July 2008. Such developmental changes have yet to be evaluated from the end-user perspective. The intention of the system was to better facilitate end-users experiences compared to previous or existing systems. This study looks into students’ and tutors’ responses regarding perceived efficiency, helpfulness, control and learnability of in-house built OAS. A survey questionnaire was distributed to students and tutors to obtain data. The findings of this study suggest both that participants were generally quite positive in their overall impression of the four tested components. Tutors responses were found to be more positive than students in terms of the efficiency component. This study also verified the perceived positive features of OAS and identified some concerns about features that need to be further improved such as inflexibility to revise mistakes and length of time it takes to upload files. Findings of this study can help to provide guidelines for similar future system development to an OAS in an e-learning institution. Keywordse-learning; Online Assignment Submission System, course management tool, ODL tools & technologies
Fitness-Dependent Effect of Acute Aerobic Exercise on Executive Function

Cognitive gains are reported to be induced by acute aerobic exercise, but the role of fitness in the effect of acute aerobic exercise on executive function remains unknown. Therefore, we aimed to examine the effect of fitness on acute exercise-induced changes in executive function from neural mechanism approach. Twenty-four female college students were assigned to high-fitness or low-fitness groups based on their cardiovascular fitness level, and then underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing N-back tasks before and after 30 min of acute exercise. The behavioral results revealed significant interaction effects of group by time in the 0-back and 1-back tasks, but not in the 2-back task. The accuracy was significantly higher in the high-fitness group than in the low-fitness group before exercise in the 1-back and 2-back tasks. At the neural level, significant interaction effects of group by time were observed in all tasks. The 0-back and 1-back tasks activated the right cerebellum while the 2-back task activated subcortical regions. Our findings suggest that fitness moderates the effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive function, and provide the first neural evidence to support the influence of fitness on exercise-induced cognitive performance.
Hydrogen Dynamics in Trichodesmium Colonies and Their Potential Role in Mineral Iron Acquisition

N2-fixing cyanobacteria mediate H2 fluxes through the opposing processes of H2 evolution, which is a by-product of the N2 fixation reaction, and H2 uptake, which is driven by uptake hydrogenases. Here, we used microelectrodes to characterize H2 and O2 dynamics in single natural colonies of the globally important N2 fixer Trichodesmium collected from the Gulf of Eilat. We observed gradually changing H2 dynamics over the course of the day, including both net H2 evolution and net H2 uptake, as well as large differences in H2 fluxes between individual colonies. Net H2 uptake was observed in colonies amended with H2 in both light and dark. Net H2 evolution was recorded in the light only, reflecting light-dependent N2 fixation coupled to H2 evolution. Both net H2 evolution and H2 uptake rates were higher before 2 pm than later in the day. These pronounced H2 dynamics in the morning coincided with strong net O2 uptake and the previously reported diel peak in N2 fixation. Later in the afternoon, when photosynthesis rates determined by O2 measurements were highest, and N2 fixation rates decrease according to previous studies, the H2 dynamics were also less pronounced. Thus, the observed diel variations in H2 dynamics reflect diel changes in the rates of O2 consumption and N2 fixation. Remarkably, the presence of H2 strongly stimulated the uptake of mineral iron by natural colonies. The magnitude of this effect was dependent on the time of day, with the strongest response in incubations that started before 2 pm, i.e., the period that covered the time of highest uptake hydrogenase activity. Based on these findings, we propose that by providing an electron source for mineral iron reduction in N2-fixing cells, H2 may contribute to iron uptake in Trichodesmium colonies.
Efficacy and Brain Imaging Correlates of an Immersive Motor Imagery BCI-Driven VR System for Upper Limb Motor Rehabilitation: A Clinical Case Report

To maximize brain plasticity after stroke, a plethora of rehabilitation strategies have been explored. These include the use of intensive motor training, motor-imagery (MI), and action-observation (AO). Growing evidence of the positive impact of virtual reality (VR) techniques on recovery following stroke has been shown. However, most VR tools are designed to exploit active movement, and hence patients with low level of motor control cannot fully benefit from them. Consequently, the idea of directly training the central nervous system has been promoted by utilizing MI with electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). To date, detailed information on which VR strategies lead to successful functional recovery is still largely missing and very little is known on how to optimally integrate EEG-based BCIs and VR paradigms for stroke rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of an EEG-based BCI-VR system using a MI paradigm for post-stroke upper limb rehabilitation on functional assessments, and related changes in MI ability and brain imaging. To achieve this, a 60 years old male chronic stroke patient was recruited. The patient underwent a 3-week intervention in a clinical environment, resulting in 10 BCI-VR training sessions. The patient was assessed before and after intervention, as well as on a one-month follow-up, in terms of clinical scales and brain imaging using functional MRI (fMRI). Consistent with prior research, we found important improvements in upper extremity scores (Fugl-Meyer) and identified increases in brain activation measured by fMRI that suggest neuroplastic changes in brain motor networks. This study expands on the current body of evidence, as more data are needed on the effect of this type of interventions not only on functional improvement but also on the effect of the intervention on plasticity through brain imaging.
Neural Cell Responses Upon Exposure to Human Endogenous Retroviruses

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are ancient retroviral elements, which invaded the human germ line several million years ago. Subsequent retrotransposition events amplified these sequences, resulting in approximately 8% of the human genome being composed of HERV sequences today. These genetic elements, normally dormant within human genomes, can be (re)-activated by environmental factors such as infections with other viruses, leading to the expression of viral proteins and, in some instances, even to viral particle production. Several studies have shown that the expression of these retroviral elements correlates with the onset and progression of neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Further studies provided evidence on additional roles for HERVs in schizophrenia (SCZ). Since these diseases are still not well understood, HERVs might constitute a new category of pathogenic components that could significantly change our understanding of these pathologies. Moreover, knowledge about their mode of action might also help to develop novel and more powerful approaches for the treatment of these complex diseases. Therefore, the main scope of this review is a description of the current knowledge on the involvement of HERV-W and HERV-K in neurological disease specifically focusing on the effects they exert on neural cells of the central nervous system.