Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antagonistic regulation of the second mitotic wave by Eyes absent-Sine oculis and Combgap coordinates proliferation and specification in the Drosophila retina

The transition from proliferation to specification is fundamental to the development of appropriately patterned tissues. In the developing Drosophila eye, Eyes absent (Eya) and Sine oculis (So) orchestrate the progression of progenitor cells from asynchronous cell division to G1 arrest and neuronal specification at the morphogenetic furrow. Here, we uncover a novel role for Eya and So in promoting cell cycle exit in the second mitotic wave (SMW), a synchronized, terminal cell division that occurs several hours after passage of the furrow. We show that Combgap (Cg), a zinc-finger transcription factor, antagonizes Eya-So function in the SMW. Based on the ability of Cg to attenuate Eya-So transcriptional output in vivo and in cultured cells and on meta analysis of their chromatin occupancy profiles, we speculate that Cg limits Eya-So activation of select target genes posterior to the furrow to ensure properly timed mitotic exit. Our work supports a model in which context-specific modulation of transcriptional activity enables Eya and So to promote both entry into and exit from the cell cycle in a distinct spatiotemporal sequence. Summary: Combgap acts as a novel negative regulator of Eya-So in transcriptional outputs that coordinate cell cycle exit with the transition to differentiation during Drosophila retinal development.
Measuring the Year Consumption of Alcohol: The Development of a Questionnaire

Most general alcohol consumption population surveys are meant to represent the year consumption, although they actually ask only for habitual drinking and/or frequencies and quantities of binge drinking in the past months. These surveys typically cover about half of the alcohol sales figures. In order to enhance sales coverage and to reduce seasonal bias, we developed a year consumption questionnaire on the basis of daily and weekly drinking adding 13 categories of less-than-weekly drinking occasions over the year. As a first test we offered the new questionnaire together with a traditional typical week questionnaire, in different modes to various groups adding up to a purposive high diversity sample of 101 drinking persons (56 women, 44 men, 16–69 years old, mean age 34 years). After correction for overlaps between weekly habits and less-than-weekly occasions, the new questionnaire produces considerably higher reports of annual consumption, compared with the typical-week-based estimates of year consumption. Limitations of the study are discussed.
Commentary: Ch'ien LT, Cannon NJ, Charamella LJ, et al. effect of adenine arabinoside on severe herpesvirus hominis infections in man: preliminary report. J Infect Dis 1973; 128:658-63.

In November 1973, The Journal of Infectious Diseases published an article by Larry Ch’ien et al. describing the first clinical trial in which adenine arabinoside (vidarabine) was used to treat severe and life-threatening herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections [1]. Although many physicians today do not know that adenine arabinoside ever existed, studies of this medication provided a foundation for the introduction of antiviral therapy for human diseases. It is appropriate to set the stage here for the status of the development of antiviral agents at that time. In 1973, the only approved antiviral agent available for the topical treatment of herpes simplex keratoconjunctivitis was 5-iodo-2′-deoxyuridine (idoxuridine; Stoxil; SmithKline). The approval of idoxuridine for the treatment of ocular disease caused by infection with HSV resulted from a series of clinical trials performed by Herb Kaufman, first at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD) and later at Louisiana State University School of Medicine (New Orleans, LA) [2, 3]. His work was preceded by the landmark demonstration of the antiviral activity of adenine arabinoside in studies performed during the early 1960s by Bill Prusoff, who is still a professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale University (New Haven, CT) [4]. At that time, however, no intravenous antiviral drugs were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of any life-threatening viral infection. In addition to studies of adenine ara-
GPU rigid skinning based on a refined skeletonization method

In this paper, we present a skeletal rigid skinning approach. First, we describe a skeleton extraction technique that produces refined skeletons appropriate for animation from decomposed character models. Then, to avoid the artifacts generated in previous skinning approaches and the associated high training costs, we develop an efficient and robust rigid skinning technique that applies blending patches around joints. To achieve real time animation, we have adapted all steps of our rigid skinning algorithm so that they are performed efficiently on the GPU. Finally, we present an evaluation of our methods against four criteria: efficiency, quality, scope, and robustness. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Synthesis of lossy coupling matrix for negative group delay filters

A novel systematic synthesis method for negative group delay(NGD)structure is proposed in this paper. Transfer functions are obtain from synthesised characteristics polynomials which provides higher design ﬂexibility. An optimum design condition is derived to reduce the number of resonators being equal to the highest degree of polynomial. Different synthesis examples are discussed with different orders and NGD responses. The exact agreement between the polynomial and coupling matrix based responses illustrate the proposed synthesis method.
Answers to All Your Questions about Peritoneal Urea Clearance and Nutrit Ion in Capd Patients

In summary, SA and a number of other indices related to nutritional status have been identified as being strongly predictive of outcome in CAPD patients. Evidence connecting these indices to KTN urea, or even to protein intake, remains limited, however. Increased dialytic dose may well increase protein intake, but neither of these parameters have been shown prospectively to raise SA, total body nitrogen, or SGA status on a consistent basis. Studies addressing this issue, however, have been few and small, and more data are required. For now, we will likely continue to deal with malnutrition by attempting to raise small solute clearance and protein intake, but we should be aware that such measures will frequently be unsuccessful, and we must pay attention to other factors, particularly comorbidity. It is clear from this review that there are many unanswered questions relating to this topic and that, in particular, the effect of prospective increases in the dialytic dose needs to be further elucidated.
Schoolteachers' Awareness about Scholastic Performance and Nutritional Status of Egyptian Schoolchildren

Malnutrition disorders affect more than 30% of schoolchildren in Egypt. This problem appears to be largely attributable to poor dietary quality and micronutrient deficiencies, such as iron and vitamin A. Inadequate nutrition intake has important implications because malnutrition has been shown to negatively affect the cognitive development of primary schoolchildren. This study assesses the awareness of schoolteachers about the impact of malnutrition on the scholastic performance of primary schoolchildren living in Egypt. Two focus group discussions were conducted with Egyptian schoolteachers from the Quena and Kharbia Governorates. The study indicates that schoolteachers consider low body weight and thinness as the primary signs of malnutrition. They do not prioritize malnutrition as a factor for poor scholastic performance. They also suggest that unhealthful eating habits, especially a lack of breakfast, negatively affect children's interaction with schoolteachers and their ability to excel in their studies. Schoolteachers endorse a more reliable and nutritionally valuable school-feeding program as a way to increase the scholastic performance of their students. The teachers advocate developing integrated programs between the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and Population, teachers, children, and parents that provide nutrition education. A lack of awareness among teachers about the relationship of nutrition and cognitive function can lead to the misdiagnosis or delayed management of malnourished and scholastically challenged schoolchildren. This paper suggests that proper school-feeding programs and nutrition education programs, which integrate government ministries, teachers, children and parents, should be developed to improve the physical and cognitive health status of Egyptian schoolchildren.
HMM based handwritten text recognition using biometrical data acquisition pen

Development of new text and graphical input devices is considered to be important part of human-computer interaction by many researchers worldwide. The paper presents our experience with the text recognition methods that we have developed for a new designed electronic pen that produces signals corresponding to the movement of the pen on paper. Signals are described by a set of primitives and hidden Markov models are used for word recognition. Results of tests are discussed as well as other possible application areas of our electronic pen.
Algorithmes hybrides génériques pour la résolution de problèmes de satisfaction de contraintes

Nous presentons dans cet article un algorithme generique hybride permettant de combiner des methodes completes (programmation par contraintes) et incompletes (recherche locale) pour la resolution de problemes de satisfaction de contraintes. Ce schema algorithmique base sur la gestion de populations, utilise des techniques de propagation de contraintes integrant egalement des heuristiques de recherche locale. Les structures utilisees autorisent une interaction homogene entre les differentes methodes mises en oeuvre et permettent egalement de beneficier de leurs atouts respectifs. Nous proposons alors diverses strategies de combinaisons dont nous mettons en avant l'interet sur quelques exemples par le biais d'une implementation.
Consonant discrimination in the inferior colliculus of young and aged rats

Soverns, Christopher S. M.S.B.M. E. , Purdue University, May 2016. Consonant Discrimination in the Inferior Colliculus of Young and Aged Rats. Major Professor: Edward L. Bartlett. Complex acoustic stimuli are thoroughly encoded and processed along the primary auditory pathway to give reliable and relevant information about the environment, and elucidating the neural coding mechanisms is essential to informing clinical attempts to combat auditory dysfuntion. Receiving a uniquely diverse set of ascending and descending inputs, the inferior colliculus (IC) is a site of intricate temporal processing. In this work, natural and modified human speech is used to investigate discrimination of voice onset time (VOT) in the spiking output of IC neurons. A template-matching classification model is proposed in which single stimulus presentation responses are correlated with aggregate spiking trends. Single units are found, in general, to perform well above chance on a 4-VOT paradigm but are vulnerable to stochastic mistakes on a trial-by-trial basis. Integration of classifier outputs over a population of units is shown to reduce variability and increase performance on single stimulus presentations. An important goal of the proposed model is to free the classifier from an assumption of absolute time alignment between trials and templates. Although exact temporal alignment aids classification accuracy, populations of units are shown to perform even without such knowledge. As neural computations are further understood, it is important to monitor how these processes are impaired in a pathological state. Young adult animals are contrasted with aged animals to investigate age-related hearing loss. For VOT discrimination in the central nucleus of the IC, decline of performance with age is noted for stimuli which are spectrally more difficult for the rat auditory system, but this
The occurrence of breech presentation in Norway 1967‐1994

BACKGROUND To study the occurrence of breech presentation and its association with demographic and geographic variables. METHOD Population based cohort study from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway comprising all singleton deliveries 1967-1994, a total of 1,592,064 deliveries. Of these, 45,921 in breech presentation. RESULTS From 1967 through 1994, the breech presentation proportion increased from 2.2% (95% CI 2.1-2.3) to 3.4% (95% CI 3.2-3.5). Breech presentation was associated with high maternal age and low birth order, as well as low gestational age and birthweight. The secular trend was mainly due to demographic changes in terms of increasing proportions of births with low birth order and high maternal age. Breech presentation was most frequent in urban areas. CONCLUSIONS Strong associations were observed between breech presentation and low birth order as well as high maternal age. The findings are compatible with both intrinsic as well as environmental mechanisms. A full understanding of the birth order effect necessitates further studies based on sibship data. Prevention of premature delivery would be an effective measure for reducing the breech presentation proportion.
X-radiation actions on the neuromuscular transmission.

The effects of high doses of X-radiation (100 kilorads) on the neuromuscular transmission of isolated sciatic nerve-sartorius muscle preparations of the frog, as evaluated by bioelectrical characteristics, were explored. Intracellular microelectrode recordings after X-irradiation showed that the resting, excitation and action potentials of nerve fibers approaching the synaptic terminal region of the motor end-plate became lessened, and also presented a slower velocity of impulse propagation, earlier than that observed in muscle cells. After forty minutes following the irradiation period, the neuromuscular transmission became blocked, although muscle fibers still responded to direct electrical stimulation. Records taken at the motor end-plate region of muscle cells, demonstrated the presence of postsynaptic miniature end-plate potentials (m.e.p.p.'s), the sequence of which fits closely into a random Poisson distribution. X-irradiation elicited an increase of the rate of m.e. p.p.'s and induced membrane changes over fine terminal nerve branches, leading into a failure to initiate and propagate action potentials. Only as time progressed, this nerve bioelectrical impairment was accompanied by a similar one in muscle cells, associated to the inability to develop contractile tension. The increase of m.e. p.p.'s frequency due to depolarization by a high K+ concentration, of presynaptic nerve membranes of control and irradiated preparations, was reversed by a high Mg+--Ca2+--free media. However, a concentration of Mg2+, which normally reduced quantal release of acetylcholine (ACh), without altering presynaptic nerve membrane potentials, failed to modify the spontaneous basal frequency of m.e. p.p.'s, both in irradiated and control preparations. The findings of the present study suggest that the presynaptic ACh synthesis, storage, and availability for ACh liberation are not early affected by X-rays, i.e. at a time when transmission from nerve to muscle had already failed. On the contrary, the most precocius membrane changes following X-irradiation, seem related to the mechanisms underlying nerve resting, excitation, and action potentials. The smallest presynaptic nerve terminal fibers close to the motor end-plate, are the most radiosensitive portion of the myoneural junction. Indeed, their bioelectric characteristics are early affected by X-rays, resulting in a failure to generate and propagate nerve impulses which lead to a blockade of neuromuscular transmission.
Die Netzwerkanalyse als Methode zur Untersuchung von Kooperationsstrukturen in der Weiterbildung

Die Organisationsform des Netzwerkes erfahrt gegenwartig als ein weitgehend hierarchiefreier und kommunikativer Raum horizontaler Verknupfung eine positive Zuschreibung. In nahezu allen sozialen und padagogischen Arbeitsfeldern wird Kooperation und Vernetzung ein bedeutendes Losungspotenzial fur Strukturprobleme zugeschrieben. Es gibt kaum ein padagogisches Handlungsfeld, in dem Netze nicht postuliert und entdeckt werden. Die Notwendigkeit von Vernetzung wird je nach Handlungsfeld unterschiedlich begrundet. Gemeinsam leitet sie sich jedoch aus folgenden Uberlegungen ab:
Does it have to be trees?: data-driven dependency parsing with incomplete and noisy training data

We present a novel approach to training data-driven dependency parsers on incomplete annotations. Our parsers are simple modifications of two well-known dependency parsers, the transition-based Malt parser and the graph-based MST parser. While previous work on parsing with incomplete data has typically couched the task in frameworks of unsupervised or semi-supervised machine learning, we essentially treat it as a supervised problem. In particular, we propose what we call agnostic parsers which hide all fragmentation in the training data from their supervised components. We present experimental results with training data that was obtained by means of annotation projection. Annotation projection is a resource-lean technique which allows us to transfer annotations from one language to another within a parallel corpus. However, the output tends to be noisy and incomplete due to cross-lingual non-parallelism and error-prone word alignments. This makes the projected annotations a suitable test bed for our fragment parsers. Our results show that (i) dependency parsers trained on large amounts of projected annotations achieve higher accuracy than the direct projections, and that (ii) our agnostic fragment parsers perform roughly on a par with the original parsers which are trained only on strictly filtered, complete trees. Finally, (iii) when our fragment parsers are trained on artificially fragmented but otherwise gold standard dependencies, the performance loss is moderate even with up to 50% of all edges removed.
Immunomodulators as efficient alternatives to in-feed antimicrobials in pig production?

In animal production, alternative strategies to in-feed growth-promoting antibiotics are being developed to increase the resistance of piglets to disease, especially during the weaning transition where they are highly sensitive to digestive disorders. The incorporation in feed of substances able to modulate immune functions, and thus to stimulate host defence, is a strategy which has gained increasing interest in animal research in past decade. This review will focus on main components known to have immunomodulatory properties, and which have been the subject of in vivo nutritional investigations in pig: yeast derivates, different plant extracts and animal by-products. Yeast derivates (βglucans and mannans) are known to interact with immune cells, particularly phagocytic cells. However, inconsistent results have been observed when they have been fed to piglets, which questions their ability to target through the oral route the sensitive immune cells. The literature dealing with effects of different plant extracts on pig immunity offers some promising results, but is still too scarce and disparate to ascertain positive effects. To date, the most promising alternative is probably represented by spray-dried animal plasma, whose positive effects on piglet immunity and health would be mainly provided by specific antibodies, but also through non-specific competition of some plasma
Selective Attention for Action: New Evidence from Visual Search Studies

At any given time, only a small portion of information available in the visual environment can be selected and identified for conscious processing. Optimally, this selection should be based on the information necessary for control of current and planned behaviour and is most often described as selective attention. In this chapter, we discuss the models accounting for the selectivity of visual input from the perspective of functional connection between perception and action. This conception reflects the general idea that perceived events and planned actions share a common realm and view the attentional processes as selection-for-action. Some recent experimental evidence in line with such a selection-for-action view will be presented and some speculations about the underlying neural network will be made. Stimulus-driven and user-driven control of visual attention It is widely assumed that two types of processing guide visual attention. First, some objects attract our attention instantaneously, in a bottom-up manner. Such stimulus-driven control occurs when some internal attributes of the stimulus attract the attendonal system and the attention is captured reflexively because a particular stimulus is salient in a given context. In contrast, in top-down or cognitively driven processing, the attention is guided voluntarily, based on the behavioural goals of the person. In this chapter, we focus on top-down modulation of the attentional system. For instance, Yantis and Jonides (1990) demonstrated elegantly the power of voluntary processes over reflexive attentional capture. They showed that if participants know with certainty the location of a target and have sufficient time to focus attention on that target, the distractors are at least temporarily unable to capture the attention. Furthermore, Folk, Remington, and Johnston (1992) claim that attentional capture does not occur due to the properties of the stimulus or distractors per se, but is determined by the relationship between distractor properties and target-finding properties. They suggest that the involuntary attentional capture is subject to top-down control and occurs if, and only if, distractors have a property that the participant is using to find
Image Stitching method based on Projective interpolation

Parallax error and ghosting are serious problems in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) image stitching. These problems occur even more obviously when stitching together large-parallax images. In this paper, an image stitching method based on projective interpolation is proposed. First, we estimate the homography matrix from the UAV images, obtain its inverse matrix. Second, the two matrices are decomposed and interpolated into sub-matrices. Then these sub-matrices are composed into two new matrices. Finally, the image stitching is ﬁnished by warping images using the new matrices. The proposed method disperses the parallax into the two images to help reduce the parallax error. Moreover, the method introduces a seam cutting technique to preserve the geometric structure and further improve local alignment. We conducted three experiments that compared the proposed method with other state-of-the-art methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method can eﬀectively reduce parallax error, eliminate ghosting, and achieve an overall good stitching result.
Expression of claudin‐5 in dermal vascular endothelia

Abstract: Claudins and occludin are integral membrane proteins at tight junctions (TJs). We examined subcellular localization of claudin‐5 and occludin in dermal vascular endothelia. Immunofluorescence staining showed that claudin‐5 was expressed at the cell–cell border of dermal vascular endothelia in mouse skin. However, in some dermal vessels, claudin‐5 expression was markedly decreased or absent in amount by double‐immunofluorescence stainings with PECAM‐1 and PAL‐E. In contrast, occludin was not detected in dermal vessels. Freeze‐fracture and immunoreplica electron microscopy on primary‐cultured human dermal endothelial cells showed that claudin‐5 was localized at tight junctions. These findings confirmed that TJs in dermal vascular endothelial cells are composed of claudin‐5.