Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of the amount of body weight support on lower limb joints’ kinematics during treadmill walking at different gait speeds: Reference data on healthy adults to define trajectories for robot assistance

Several robotic devices have been developed for the rehabilitation of treadmill walking in patients with movement disorders due to injuries or diseases of the central nervous system. These robots induce coordinated multi-joint movements aimed at reproducing the physiological walking or stepping patterns. Control strategies developed for robotic locomotor training need a set of predefined lower limb joint angular trajectories as reference input for the control algorithm. Such trajectories are typically taken from normative database of overground unassisted walking. However, it has been demonstrated that gait speed and the amount of body weight support significantly influence joint trajectories during walking. Moreover, both the speed and the level of body weight support must be individually adjusted according to the rehabilitation phase and the residual locomotor abilities of the patient. In this work, 10 healthy participants (age range: 23–48 years) were asked to walk in movement analysis laboratory on a treadmill at five different speeds and four different levels of body weight support; besides, a trial with full body weight support, that is, with the subject suspended on air, was performed at two different cadences. The results confirm that lower limb kinematics during walking is affected by gait speed and by the amount of body weight support, and that on-air stepping is radically different from treadmill walking. Importantly, the results provide normative data in a numerical form to be used as reference trajectories for controlling robot-assisted body weight support walking training. An electronic addendum is provided to easily access to such reference data for different combinations of gait speeds and body weight support levels.
Prospective Teachersâ€™ Perceptions: A Critical Literacy Framework

The education of Aboriginal youth is, in some respects, in crisis. Aboriginal communities in Ontario are as a group currently experiencing marginalization within the education system. As such it is imperative that efforts be made to better understand the system to improve the success rate for Aboriginal youth. The Ontario First Nation, MA©tis and Inuit Education Policy Framework (2007) has committed to â€œimprove achievement among First Nation, MA©tis and Inuit students and to close the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal studentsâ€ . English and Language Arts teachers are compelled to consider how the policy discourse of the 2007 Aboriginal Policy Framework implicates upon the socio-political and socio-historical currency of literacy in their instruction. Consequently, this qualitative study examined one component of a large-scale project, in the tradition of grounded theory, including the implications of Aboriginal education policy discourse on literacy instruction as it applies to over 200 prospective teachers enrolled in a Teacher Education Program in Ontario, Canada. Participants identified two themes that they believed Aboriginal students would find most challenging, including: tension with provincial curriculum and, feelings of misrepresentation.
FOXA2 promotes the proliferation, migration and invasion, and epithelial mesenchymal transition in colon cancer

The present study determined the expression and biological functions of FOXA2 gene in colon cancer in tissues, cells and animals. A total of 66 patients with colon cancer were included in the present study. Using The Human Protein Atlas database, expression and distribution of FOXA2 in colon cancer tissues were analyzed. Using immunohistochemistry, the expression and distribution of FOXA2 in colon cancer cells were studied. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was performed to determine the expression of FOXA2 mRNA in colon cancer tissues. Following in vitro transfection with FOXA2 interference sequence (siR-FOXA2), the proliferation, cell cycle, migration and invasion of colon cancer HCT116 and HT29 cells were investigated using Cell Counting Kit-8 assay, flow cytometry, and Transwell assay, respectively. Furthermore, flow cytometry was used to determine apoptosis of HCT116 and HT29 cells. Western blotting was used to determine the expression of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) proteins, E-Cadherin and Vimentin. Laser scanning confocal microscopy was performed to observe the cytoskeleton in HCT116 and HT29 cells. Results indicated tumorigenesis of colon cancer cells in nude mice. In addition, the expression of FOXA2 in colon cancer tissues was elevated and associated with the metastasis and clinical staging of colon cancer. Notably, inhibition of FOXA2 reduced the proliferation of colon cancer cells in vitro and reduced expression of FOXA2 was able to decrease the migration and invasion abilities of colon cancer cells. Furthermore, FOXA2 promoted EMT, inhibited apoptosis and enhanced the invasion ability of colon cancer cells. Decreased expression of FOXA2 inhibited tumorigenesis of colon cancer cells in nude mice. To conclude, the present study demonstrated that the expression of FOXA2 in colon cancer tissues was elevated and associated with the metastasis and clinical staging of colon cancer. As an oncogene, FOXA2 may promote the proliferation, migration and invasion and EMT in colon cancer.
Biogeochemical Controls on Coastal Hypoxia.

Aquatic environments experiencing low-oxygen conditions have been described as hypoxic, suboxic, or anoxic zones; oxygen minimum zones; and, in the popular media, the misnomer "dead zones. " This review aims to elucidate important aspects underlying oxygen depletion in diverse coastal systems and provides a synthesis of general relationships between hypoxia and its controlling factors. After presenting a generic overview of the first-order processes, we review system-specific characteristics for selected estuaries where adjacent human settlements contribute to high nutrient loads, river-dominated shelves that receive large inputs of fresh water and anthropogenic nutrients, and upwelling regions where a supply of nutrient-rich, low-oxygen waters generates oxygen minimum zones without direct anthropogenic influence. We propose a nondimensional number that relates the hypoxia timescale and water residence time to guide the cross-system comparison. Our analysis reveals the basic principles underlying hypoxia generation in coastal systems and provides a framework for discussing future changes.
Genome-wide analysis of the spatiotemporal regulation of firing and dormant replication origins in human cells

Abstract In metazoan cells, only a limited number of mini chromosome maintenance (MCM) complexes are fired during S phase, while the majority remain dormant. Several methods have been used to map replication origins, but such methods cannot identify dormant origins. Herein, we determined MCM7-binding sites in human cells using ChIP-Seq, classified them into firing and dormant origins using origin data and analysed their association with various chromatin signatures. Firing origins, but not dormant origins, were well correlated with open chromatin regions and were enriched upstream of transcription start sites (TSSs) of transcribed genes. Aggregation plots of MCM7 signals revealed minimal difference in the efficacy of MCM loading between firing and dormant origins. We also analysed common fragile sites (CFSs) and found a low density of origins at these sites. Nevertheless, firing origins were enriched upstream of the TSSs. Based on the results, we propose a model in which excessive MCMs are actively loaded in a genome-wide manner, irrespective of chromatin status, but only a fraction are passively fired in chromatin areas with an accessible open structure, such as regions upstream of TSSs of transcribed genes. This plasticity in the specification of replication origins may minimize collisions between replication and transcription.
Explaining and Generalizing Back-Translation through Wake-Sleep

Back-translation has become a commonly employed heuristic for semi-supervised neural machine translation. The technique is both straightforward to apply and has led to state-of-the-art results. In this work, we offer a principled interpretation of back-translation as approximate inference in a generative model of bitext and show how the standard implementation of back-translation corresponds to a single iteration of the wake-sleep algorithm in our proposed model. Moreover, this interpretation suggests a natural iterative generalization, which we demonstrate leads to further improvement of up to 1.6 BLEU.
Elevating ATP‐binding cassette transporter G1 improves re‐endothelialization function of endothelial progenitor cells via Lyn/Akt/eNOS in diabetic mice

Endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) dysfunction contributes to diabetes‐induced delay in endothelium repair after vessel injury, prominently associated with diabetic cardiovascular complications such as neointima formation. ATP‐binding cassette transporter G1 (ABCG1) promotes cholesterol efflux to HDL, which may favorably affect EPC function. However, whether ABCG1 improves EPC function, especially in diabetes, remains unknown. Here we investigated the role of ABCG1 in EPCs by using Tie2‐mediated ABCG1 transgenic (Tie2‐ABCG1Tg)mice. Mice were injected with streptozotocin to induce diabetes mellitus. As compared with wild‐type (WT) mice, in Tie2‐ABCG1Tg mice, diabetes‐impaired EPC migration and tube formation were reversed. In vitro gain‐of‐function and loss‐of‐function studies further revealed that ABCG1‐overexpressing EPCs showed increased migration and tube formation and differentiation via the Lck/Yes‐related novel protein tyrosine kinase /Akt/endothelial NO synthase pathway by enhancing cellular cholesterol efflux. Finally, type 1 and type 2 diabetic mouse models with arterial injury were intravenously injected with labeled EPCs from WT or Tie2‐ABCG1Tg mice. Re‐endothelialization in diabetic mice was improved to a greater extent by injection of ABCG1‐overexpressing than WT EPCs. Our study demonstrated that ABCG1 in EPCs improved repair after vascular injury in diabetes by increasing EPC function such as migration, tube formation and differentiation, and subsequent re‐endothelialization. ABCG1 might be a promising therapeutic target for diabetes‐associated vascular diseases. —Shi, Y. , Lv, X. , Liu, Y. , Li, B. , Liu, M. , Yan, M. , Liu, Y. , Li, Q. , Zhang, X. , He, S. , Zhu, M. , He, J., Zhu, Y. , Zhu, Y. , Ai, D. Elevating ATP‐binding cassette transporter G1 improves re‐endothelialization function of endothelial progenitor cells via Lyn/Akt/eNOS in diabetic mice. FASEB J. 32, 6525–6536 (2018). www.fasebj. org
Estimated Impact of Screening on Gonorrhea Epidemiology in the United States: Insights From a Mathematical Model

The burden of gonorrhea infections in the United States is high. There are marked disparities by race/ethnicity and sexual orientation. We quantified the impact of screening and treatment on gonorrhea rates in the US population aged 15 to 39 years for the period 2000 to 2015 and estimated the impact that alternative screening strategies might have had over the same period. Methods We developed a national-level transmission model that divides the population by race/ethnicity, preferred gender of sex partners, age, gender, and sexual activity level. We compared our fitted model (“base case”) to 4 alternative strategies: (i) no screening, (ii) full adherence to current screening guidelines, (iii) annual universal screening, or (iv) enhanced screening in groups with the highest infection burden. Main outcomes were incidence, infections averted, and incidence rate ratios by race/ethnicity. Mean values and 95% credible intervals were calculated from 1000 draws from parameter posterior distributions. Results The calibrated model reproduced observed trends in gonorrhea, including disparities in infection burden by race/ethnicity. We estimated that screening for gonorrhea from 2000 to 2015 averted 30% (95% credible intervals, 18–44%) of total infections that would otherwise have occurred. All alternative active screening strategies were estimated to further reduce, but not eliminate, gonorrhea infections relative to the base case, with differential impacts on the subpopulations of interest. Conclusions Our model results suggest that screening has reduced gonorrhea incidence in the US population. Additional reductions in infection burden may have been possible over this period with increased screening, but elimination was unlikely.
Species coexistence through simultaneous fluctuation-dependent mechanisms

Significance Fluctuating environmental conditions are thought to be important for the maintenance of species diversity, and yet our understanding of the relative contribution of different fluctuation-dependent coexistence mechanisms (the temporal storage effect and relative nonlinearity of competition) in real systems is limited. Using experiments and simulations, we show that both mechanisms consistently affect coexistence and that, contrary to long-held assumptions, the effect of relative nonlinearity can be larger in magnitude. These results may be general in that the simultaneous emergence of both mechanisms rests on two factors common to nearly all ecological systems, from the human gut to the soil microbiome: variable environmental conditions and saturating population growth rates. Understanding the origins and maintenance of biodiversity remains one of biology’s grand challenges. From theory and observational evidence, we know that variability in environmental conditions through time is likely critical to the coexistence of competing species. Nevertheless, experimental tests of fluctuation-driven coexistence are rare and have typically focused on just one of two potential mechanisms, the temporal storage effect, to the neglect of the theoretically equally plausible mechanism known as relative nonlinearity of competition. We combined experiments and simulations in a system of nectar yeasts to quantify the relative contribution of the two mechanisms to coexistence. Resource competition models parameterized from single-species assays predicted the outcomes of mixed-culture competition experiments with 83% accuracy. Model simulations revealed that both mechanisms have measurable effects on coexistence and that relative nonlinearity can be equal or greater in magnitude to the temporal storage effect. In addition, we show that their effect on coexistence can be both antagonistic and complementary. These results falsify the common assumption that relative nonlinearity is of negligible importance, and in doing so reveal the importance of testing coexistence mechanisms in combination.
Designing QoE experiments to evaluate peer-to-peer streaming applications

Quality of Experience (QoE) refers to subjective criteria for evaluating multimedia content. Methods have been devised to study the design of Voice over IP systems and video codecs. In recent years, due to more abundant network bandwidth, it has become quite popular to watch video streamed over the Internet, whether by clientserver method or through a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. In this paper, we describe our experience in conducting QoE studies of P2P streaming using a chunk-level model. Instead of considering fine-grained network service impairments such as bit errors, packet losses or delays, we focus on chunk level delays. We carry out some preliminary QoE experiments on low-bit rate, low-frame rate and low-resolution video (3L-video) sequences. We apply the chunk-level model to help improve the design of the P2P streaming algorithms, and the design of video players that playback network streamed video.
Analyzing Performance of BiCGStab with Hierarchical Matrix on GPU Clusters

ppohBEM is an open-source software package implementing the boundary element method. One of its main software tasks is the solution of the dense linear system of equations, for which, ppohBEM relies on another software package called HACApK. To reduce the cost of solving the linear system, HACApK hierarchically compresses the coefficient matrix using adaptive cross approximation. This hierarchical compression greatly reduces the storage and time complexities of the solver and enables the solution of large-scale boundary value problems. To extend the capability of ppohBEM, in this paper, we carefully port the HACApK’s linear solver onto GPU clusters. Though the potential of the GPUs has been widely accepted in high-performance computing, it is still a challenge to utilize the GPUs for a solver, like HACApK’s, that requires fine-grained computation and global communication. First, to utilize the GPUs, we integrate the batched GPU kernel that was recently released in the MAGMA software package. We discuss several techniques to improve the performance of the batched kernel. We then study various techniques to address the inter-GPU communication and study their effects on state-ofthe-art GPU clusters. We believe that the techniques studied in this paper are of interest to a wide range of software packages running on GPUs, especially with the increasingly complex node architectures and the growing costs of the communication. We also hope that our efforts to integrate the GPU kernel or to setup the inter-GPU communication will influence the design of the future-generation batched kernels or the communication layer within a software stack.
Prototyping a digital neural network System-on-Chip using an Altera Excalibur device

We present an implementation of an N-of-M code based sparse distributed memory using an Altera Excalibur device. Unlike a conventional memory, a sparse distributed memory responds not only to an exact input match, but also to any input within a specified Hamming distance of a particular input code. Therefore, it is very robust in noisy environments. The success of this prototype proves the feasibility of realising an N-of-M Kanerva memory in a system-on-a-programmable-chip, which is a good starting point for our research. In addition, it provides us with valuable design experience with the Altera Excalibur device.
Therapeutic potentials of superoxide dismutase

Superoxide dismutases (SODs) constitute a very important antioxidant defense against oxidative stress in the body. The enzyme acts as a good therapeutic agent against reactive oxygen species-mediated diseases. The present review describes the therapeutic effects of SOD in various physiological and pathological conditions such as cancer, inflammatory diseases, cystic fibrosis, ischemia, aging, rheumatoid arthritis, neurodegenerative diseases, and diabetes. However, the enzyme has certain limitations in clinical applications. Therefore, SOD conjugates and mimetics have been developed to increase its therapeutic efficiency. Here, an overview is provided of some in vivo therapeutic effects observed with SOD.
Novel Thiazolidinone/Thiazolo[3,2-a]Benzimidazolone-Isatin Conjugates as Apoptotic Anti-proliferative Agents Towards Breast Cancer: One-Pot Synthesis and In Vitro Biological Evaluation

In connection with our research program on the development of new isatin-based anticancer candidates, herein we report the synthesis of two novel series of thiazolidinone-isatin conjugates (4a–n) and thiazolo[3,2-a]benzimidazolone-isatin conjugates (7a–d), and in vitro evaluation of their antiproliferative activity towards two breast cancer cell lines; triple negative MDA-MB-231, and MCF-7. Compounds 4m and 7b emerged as the most active congeners against MDA-MB-231 cells (IC50 = 7.6 ± 0.5 and 13.2 ± 1.1 µM, respectively). Compounds 4m and 7b were able to provoke apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 cells, evidenced by the up-regulation of Bax and down-regulation of Bcl-2, besides boosting caspase-3 levels. Hybrid 4m induced a fourfold increase in the percentage of cells at Sub-G1, with concurrent arrest in G2-M phase by 2.5-folds. Furthermore, hybrid 4m resulted in a sixfold increase in the percentage of annexin V-FITC positive apoptotic MDA-MB-231 cells as compared with the control. Moreover, the cytotoxic activities of the active conjugates were assessed towards two nontumorigenic cell lines (breast MCF-10A and lung WI-38) where both conjugates 4m and 7b displayed mean tumor selectivity index: 9.6 and 13.9, respectively. Finally, several ADME descriptors were predicted for the active conjugates via a theoretical kinetic study.
A coprocessor for real-time motion estimation in HD video coding

This paper presents a motion estimation coprocessor, supporting real-time high definition (HD) video coding. The proposed coprocessor employs a 2D data-reusing processing element array and a multi-standard cost comparator for distortion computation of variable size block. An instruction-set suitable for performing various ME algorithms is developed, providing the flexibility needed for different coding standards and various applications. In 0. 13μm CMOS technology, the coprocessor is implemented with 303K gates at operating frequency of 550MHz. A performance comparison to the reference architectures reveals that only the proposed processor can provide the processing capacity for 1920×1080, 60 fps video sequences at 33×33 search window.
A 97 , 033607 ( 2018 ) PT-symmetric gain and loss in a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate

PT -symmetric quantum mechanics allows finding stationary states in mean-field systems with balanced gain and loss of particles. In this work we apply this method to rotating Bose-Einstein condensates with contact interaction which are known to support ground states with vortices. Due to the particle exchange with the environment transport phenomena through ultracold gases with vortices can be studied. We find that even strongly interacting rotating systems support stable PT -symmetric ground states, sustaining a current parallel and perpendicular to the vortex cores. The vortices move through the nonuniform particle density and leave or enter the condensate through its borders creating the required net current.
Lateral and vertical power transistors in GaN and Ga
 2
 O
 3

Vertical silicon carbide transistors and lateral gallium nitride (GaN) transistors for power-electronic applications currently target applications with different voltage and power ratings. Meanwhile, research and development activities continue on vertical GaN transistors and new gallium oxide (Ga 2 O 3 ) transistors. What are their perspectives in the application and how do they compete against each other and against established transistor technologies? This study discusses the specific characteristics of lateral and vertical GaN and Ga 2 O 3 transistors to assess their strengths and weaknesses.
Fast network congestion detection and avoidance using P4

Along with exciting visions for 5G communications and the Tactile Internet, the networking requirement of attaining extremely low end-to-end latency has appeared. While network devices are typically equipped with buffers to counteract packet loss caused by short-lived traffic bursts, the more those buffers get filled, the more delay is added to every packet passing through. In this paper, we develop congestion avoidance methods that harness the power of fully programmable data-planes. The corresponding programmable switches, through languages such as P4, can be programmed to gather and react to important packet meta-data, such as queue load, while the data packets are being processed. In particular, we enable P4 switches to (1) track processing and queuing delays of latency-critical flows and (2) react immediately in the data-plane to congestion by rerouting the affected flows. Through a proof-of-concept implementation in emulation and on real hardware, we demonstrate that a data-plane approach reduces average and maximum delay, as well as jitter, when compared to non-programmable approaches.