Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanism of proximal NaCl reabsorption in the proximal tubule of the mammalian kidney.

In the mammalian proximal tubule NaCl reabsorption occurs by both passive and active transport processes. Passive NaCl reabsorption occurs in the presence of a high luminal chloride and a low luminal bicarbonate concentration. These anion gradients provide the driving forces for diffusive Na and Cl movement. Na is driven by the lumen positive PD effected by the greater permeability of the tubular wall to Cl than to HCO3. Cl is driven by its high tubular concentration. Passive NaCl reabsorption accounts for only about 10% to 15% of total proximal NaCl transport. The remaining proximal NaCl is reabsorbed by active transport processes and occurs both in the presence or absence of anion gradients reabsorption. Two mechanisms of active NaCl reabsorption participate in active NaCl reabsorption along the proximal tubule. Firstly, active NaCl reabsorption is electrogenic. In the early proximal tubule Na enters to cell coupled to organic solute transport. This Na reabsorption generates a lumen negative PD and effects "coupled" electrogenic NaCl reabsorption. This mechanism is limited by the supply of organic solutes and is blunted by the greater Na than Cl permeability in the proximal tubule; it probably can account for no more than 10% of proximal NaCl reabsorption. In the terminal proximal tubule, the proximal straight tubule, the apical membrane appears to possess a channel for Na entry. This Na reabsorption also generates a lumen negative PD and effects "simple" electrogenic NaCl reabsorption. This mechanism is limited by the low transport capacity of this segment and probably accounts for no more than 5% to 10% of total proximal NaCl reabsorption. The great bulk of proximal NaCl reabsorption occurs along the entire proximal tubule by active, transcellular electroneutral NaCl reabsorption. The precise cellular transport mechanisms responsible for this process are only recently being defined. At the apical membrane parallel ion exchangers are responsible for NaCl entry into the cell. Na enters via the apical membrane Na-H antiporter. Cl most likely crosses the apical membrane by some combination of Cl-OH and Cl-HCO2 exchangers but not via a Cl-HCO3 exchanger. The relative contributions of Cl-OH and Cl-HCO2 exchange have not been defined. There are two important considerations in this question. First is the availbility of OH versus HCO2. Although there is an infinite supply of OH and a small equilibrium supply of HCO2, it is possible that the luminal concentration of HCO2 could be increased by an USL that raises the concentration of HCO2 to a degree sufficient to supply H2CO2 recycling for physiological transcellular Cl transport rates. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Feedback in Online Programs

Feedback is a key element in online programs. It keeps alive the flow of communication between the members of the virtual community, and it helps to improve the effectiveness of the program. In this study, we look into the sources for feedback and how they are used in an online master’s program. We present an analysis of feedback at three different levels: a) The feedback that results from instruction and is used in the teaching and learning process, b) the feedback that helps the program make improvements in the support services to the online community, and c) the feedback that is used by the college administration to assist decision making regarding its online offering.
Image representation in hypercolumnar structure by means of associative memory

We propose a pattern recognition system based on an architecture close to the one found in human visual cortex which is called Hypercolumns. We use this discrete parametric representation in connection with a sparsley coding associative memory. In principle the application of such a representation appears to be very well suited for data reduction and pattern recognition processes and is part of a neural instruction set [2].
Face Tracking and Recognition with the Use of Particle-Filtered Local Features

A consistent particle filtering-based framework for the purpose of parallel face tracking and recognition from video sequences is proposed. A novel approach to defining randomized, particle filtering-driven local face features for the purpose of recognition is proposed. The potential of cumulating classification decisions based on the proposed feature set definition is evaluated. By applying cumulation mechanisms to the classification results determined from single frames and with the use of particle-filtered features, good recognition rates are obtained at the minimal computational cost. The proposed framework can operate in real-time on a typical modern PC. Additionally, the application of cumulation mechanisms makes the framework resistant to brief visual distortions, such as occlusions, head rotations or face expressions. A high performance is also obtained on low resolution images (video frames). Since the framework is based on the particle filtering principle, it is easily tunable to various application requirements (security level, hardware constraints). Keywords—biometrics, face recognition, particle filtering, video
Mitral kapak darlığının ciddiyeti ile beyin natriüretik peptid serum düzeyi arasındaki ilişki

Amac: Mitral darligi (MD) olan hastalarda beyin natriu­retik peptid (BNP) duzeylerini degerlendiren pek cok calisma olmakla birlikte, sinus ritmindeki hastalarda MD ciddiyeti ile BNP arasindaki iliski ayrintili olarak incelen­memistir. Bu calismadaki amacimiz; romatizmal MD olgu­larinda serum BNP duzeylerini saptamak ve BNP duzey­lerinin MD\'nin anatomik ve fizyolojik ciddiyeti ile iliskisini belirlemektir. Gerec ve yontem: Calismaya 96 izole romatizmal MD olan hasta ve 40 kontrol grubu (grup 1) alinmistir. Ro­matizmal MD\'li hastalarin 45\'inde hafif (grup 2), 31\'inde orta derece (grup 3) ve 20\'sinde ciddi (grup 4) MD vardi. Bu hastalara ayrintili ekokardiyografi yapildi ve BNP icin kan alindi. Bulgular: BNP duzeyleri icin kontrol grubu ve MD arasin­da yapilan analizde, MD grubunun kontrol grubuna gore anlamli derecede daha yuksek BNP duzeylerine sahip ol­dugu izlendi. Ayrica MD alt gruplarinda yapilan analizde BNP degerleri grup 1\'den grup 4\'e dogru anlamli olarak artmistir. Korelasyon analizinde BNP degerleri ile mitral kapak alani ve sistolik pulmoner arter basinci arasinda iyi derecede iliski mevcutken; ortalama ve maksimum gradi­yentler ve sol atrium capi ile orta derecede iliski izlendi. Sonuc: Izole MD olgularinda serum BNP duzeyleri has­taligin ciddiyetini gosteren ekokardiyografi parametreleri ile iliskilidir. Natriuretik peptitler sinus ritmindeki bu hasta grubunda hastaligin ciddiyetinin bir belirteci olarak klinik ve ekokardiyografik degerlendirmeye ilave katki saglaya­bilir.
Do vertebral endplate signal changes (modic changes) hurt? A systematic review

Poster: "ECR 2010 / C-2418 / Do vertebral endplate signal changes (modic changes) hurt? A systematic review" by: "T. S. Jensen1, P. Kent1, J. Karppinen2, J. S. Sorensen1, J. Niinimaki3, C. Leboeuf-Yde1; 1Ringe/DK, 2Oulu/FI, 3Oys/FI"
Patti - Compiling Unification-Based Finite-State Automata into Machine Instructions for a Superscala

This thesis is about a method for speeding up natural-language analysis using a novel compilation technique. As its input, the compiler takes a unification-based linguistic formalism (non-deterministic finite-state automata, where transitions are labeled by attribute-value matrices according to a finite type logic with a simple-inheritance type hierarchy). As its output, the compiler generates machine instructions for the PowerPC chip, a pipelined RISC processor with superscalar instruction dispatch. Because of its fine-grained knowledge about the task, the compiler is able to perform optimizations that would be very difficult to achieve using traditional techniques. Examples include heuristics for Static Branch Prediction, data cache control and scheduling the machine instructions to benefit from superscalarity, so that certain unifications are executed in parallel. The system is evaluated by measuring the time it takes to extract noun groups in texts of some thousand words in length. On Apple PowerMacintosh machines, this task could be accomplished in fractions of a millisecond, theoretically corresponding to a speed of up to 21 million tokens per second. Hence, the generated code is so efficient that unification and pattern matching become neglectible factors in the overall performance of a natural-language system. Due to the achieved speed, the presented techniques could form the foundation technology of new, real-time NLP applications.
On the relevance of documents for semantic representation

The subject of this paper is the quality of semantic vector representation with random projection under various conditions. The main effect we are watching is the size of the context in which words are observed. We are also interested in the stability of such representations since they rely on random initialisation. In particular we investigate the possibility of stabilising terms representations through documents representations. The quality of semantic representation was tested by means of synonym finding task using the TOEFL test on the TASA corpus. It was found that small context windows produces the best semantic vectors with 59.4 % of the questions correctly answered. Processing the projection between terms and documents representations several times was found not to improve the stability of the representation. It was also found not to improve the average quality of representations.
Image Generation From Layout

Despite significant recent progress on generative models, controlled generation of images depicting multiple and complex object layouts is still a difficult problem. Among the core challenges are the diversity of appearance a given object may possess and, as a result, exponential set of images consistent with a specified layout. To address these challenges, we propose a novel approach for layout-based image generation; we call it Layout2Im. Given the coarse spatial layout (bounding boxes + object categories), our model can generate a set of realistic images which have the correct objects in the desired locations. The representation of each object is disentangled into a specified/certain part (category) and an unspecified/uncertain part (appearance). The category is encoded using a word embedding and the appearance is distilled into a low-dimensional vector sampled from a normal distribution. Individual object representations are composed together using convolutional LSTM, to obtain an encoding of the complete layout, and then decoded to an image. Several loss terms are introduced to encourage accurate and diverse generation. The proposed Layout2Im model significantly outperforms the previous state of the art, boosting the best reported inception score by 24.66% and 28.57% on the very challenging COCO-Stuff and Visual Genome datasets, respectively. Extensive experiments also demonstrate our method’s ability to generate complex and diverse images with multiple objects.
El papel del Outsourcing de TI como impulso a la innovación y gestión de servicios en España

Su exito requiere de una gestion eficaz de factores clave tales como la definicion y gestion del contrato, su detalle y duracion, los acuerdos de niveles de servicio, las penalizaciones, la eleccion del proveedor que se considere socio tecnologico, el establecimiento de garantias, la comparticion del riesgo y la posibilidad de renovacion tecnologica e innovacion. El Outsourcing de TI ha pasado pues de ser un proceso tactico de ahorro de costes a un proceso estrategico de posicionamiento de la compania.
Adaptive precision pooling of model neuron activities predicts efficiency of human visual learning

When performing a perceptual task, precision pooling occurs when an organism’s decisions are based on the activities of a small set of highly informative neurons. The Adaptive Precision Pooling Hypothesis links perceptual learning and decision making by stating that improvements in performance occur when an organism starts to base its decisions on the responses of neurons that are more informative for a task than the responses that the organism had previously used. We trained human subjects on a visual slant discrimination task and found their performances to be suboptimal relative to an ideal probabilistic observer. Why were subjects suboptimal learners? Our computer simulation results suggest a possible explanation, namely that there are few neurons providing highly reliable information for the perceptual task, and that learning involves searching for these rare, informative neurons during the course of training. This explanation can account for several characteristics of human visual learning, including the fact that people often show large differences in their learning performances with some individuals showing no performance improvements, other individuals showing gradual improvements during the course of training, and still others showing abrupt improvements. The approach described here potentially provides a unifying framework for several theories of perceptual learning including theories stating that learning is due to adaptations of the weightings of read-out connections from early visual representations, external noise filtering or internal noise reduction, increases in the efficiency with which learners encode task-relevant information, and attentional selection of specific neural populations which should undergo adaptation.
Understanding and improving Web page load times on modern networks

This thesis first presents a measurement toolkit, Mahimahi, that records websites and replays them under emulated network conditions. Mahimahi improves on prior record-andreplay frameworks by emulating the multi-origin nature of Web pages, isolating its network traffic, and enabling evaluations of a larger set of target applications beyond browsers. Using Mahimahi, we perform a case study comparing current multiplexing protocols, HTTP/1.1 and SPDY, and a protocol in development, QUIC, to a hypothetical optimal protocol. We find that all three protocols are significantly suboptimal and their gaps from the optimal only increase with higher link speeds and RTTs. The reason for these trends is the same for each protocol: inherent source-level dependencies between objects on a Web page and browser limits on the number of parallel flows lead to serialized HTTP requests and prevent links from being fully occupied. To mitigate the effect of these dependencies, we built Cumulus, a user-deployable combination of a content-distribution network and a cloud browser that improves page load times when the user is at a significant delay from a Web page’s servers. Cumulus contains a “Mini-CDN”—a transparent proxy running on the user’s machine—and a “Puppet”: a headless browser run by the user on a well-connected public cloud. When the user loads a Web page, the Mini-CDN forwards the user’s request to the Puppet, which loads the entire page and pushes all of the page’s objects to the Mini-CDN, which caches them locally. Cumulus benefits from the finding that dependency resolution, the process of learning which objects make up a Web page, accounts for a considerable amount of user-perceived wait time. By moving this task to the Puppet, Cumulus can accelerate page loads without modifying existing Web browsers or servers. We find that on cellular, in-flight Wi-Fi, and transcontinental networks, Cumulus accelerated the page loads of Google’s Chrome browser by 1.13–2.36×. Performance was 1.19–2.13× faster than Opera Turbo, and 0.99– 1.66× faster than Chrome with Google’s Data Compression Proxy. Thesis Supervisor: Hari Balakrishnan Title: Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Surgical Wound Infection

Surgical wound infections prompt antagonistic patient results, including delayed hospitalization and demise. Wound infection happens with every entry point, however demonstrated procedures exist to diminish the hazard of surgical injury diseases. Specifically, enhanced adherence to prove that based deterrent measures identified with fitting antimicrobial prophylaxis can diminish the rate of surgical wound infection. Various patient-related and technique related components impact the danger of surgical injury disease, and henceforth counteractive action requires a package approach, with deliberate consideration regarding numerous hazard factors, to diminish the hazard of bacterial pollution and enhance the patient's defences. Forceful surgical debridement and successful antimicrobial treatment are expected to enhance the treatment of surgical wound infections.
Developing the Bench: Building An Effective Homeland Security Undergraduate Program

Abstract : The current Homeland Security (HLS) workforce is aging, and the future need is growing. Academia has a significant role in the development of HLS future leaders. This thesis uses a meta-analysis to define what academia's role should include. The meta-analysis utilized a template of common HLS rubric, then used systematic study of existing core curriculum, topics in frequently used HLS texts, opinions of HLS leaders, opinions of Emergency Managers, and the opinions of community college students. The study of existing curriculum reflects the topical choices of current academic program directors, from which one could draw conclusions based on popular adoption. The topics in commonly used texts were categorized with the rubric template, and then scored by frequency. The three surveys consisted of a prioritization of the rubric template topics from very important to very unimportant. HLS leaders were queried to capture the leader's future view of workforce educational needs. Emergency Managers were queried to capture what the current practitioners view as important. And community college students were queried to identify what future students view as important in further education. The net result of the meta-analysis is a recommendation of nine specific topical areas, of interest to current or potential HLS undergraduate programs.
Low Back Pain and Obesity in Primary Health Care, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Objective: To assess the prevalence of obesity and its association with low bark pain in patients attending health rare centres. Methods: A case-control study of 2460 Arab patients attending urban and rural health centres in Riyadh region was conducted during Jan-Feb 1993. Twelve health centres participated in the study. All patients attending the health centres with low bark pain (cases) were compared with patients free from bark pain (non-cases) Results: The mean ages were 34 years for males and 32 years for females. Only 17.6% cases can be considered as non-obese compared with 42.6% non-obese among non-cases. The mean body mass index (BMI) of cases was 306 ± 6.1 kg/m 2 compared with 26.7 ± 5.8 kg/m 2 of non-cases (p < 0.01)
Contributions to unsupervised and supervised learning with applications in digital image processing

This Thesis covers a broad period of research activities with a commonthread: learning processes and its application to image processing. The twomain categories of learning algorithms, supervised and unsupervised, have beentouched across these years. The main body of initial works was devoted tounsupervised learning neural architectures, specially the Self Organizing Map.Our aim was to study its convergence properties from empirical and analyticalviewpoints.From the digital image processing point of view, we have focused on twobasic problems: Color Quantization and filter design. Both problems have beenaddressed from the context of Vector Quantization performed by CompetitiveNeural Networks. Processing of non-stationary data is an interesting paradigmthat has not been explored with Competitive Neural Networks. We have statesthe problem of Non-stationary Clustering and related Adaptive Vector Quantizationin the context of image sequence processing, where we naturally havea Frame Based Adaptive Vector Quantization. This approach deals with theproblem as a sequence of stationary almost-independent Clustering problems.We have also developed some new computational algorithms for Vector Quantizationdesign.The works on supervised learning have been sparsely distributed in time anddirection. First we worked on the use of Self Organizing Map for the independentmodeling of skin and no-skin color distributions for color based face localization.Second, we have collaborated in the realization of a supervised learning systemfor tissue segmentation in Magnetic Resonance Imaging data. Third, we haveworked on the development, implementation and experimentation with HighOrder Boltzmann Machines, which are a very different learning architecture.Finally, we have been working on the application of Sparse Bayesian Learningto a new kind of classification systems based on Dendritic Computing. This lastresearch line is an open research track at the time of writing this Thesis.
Engenharia reversa de sistemas interactivos desenvolvidos em Java2/Swing

Resumo A manutenção e evolução de sistemas interactivos dá origem a problemas importantes que afectam a sua eficiência e eficácia. Neste trabalho pretende-se combinar programação funcional, programação estratégica, code slicing e modelos com semântica formal na tentativa de fortalecer a tese de que a aplicação destas metodologias e tecnologias, em conjunção com um processo de engenharia reversa de código fonte, permite melhorar significativamente o suporte à manutenção de sistemas interactivos.
AMERİKA BİRLEŞİK DEVLETLERİ’NDEKİ OKUL LİDER ADAYLARININ ÖRGÜTSEL SİSTEM VE KAYNAK YÖNETİMİ ÜZERİNE GÖRÜŞLERİ

Bu calisma, Amerika’daki okul lider adaylarinin orgutsel sistem liderligi faaliyetlerini yurutmeye ne kadar hazir olduklarini ve hangi farkli etkenlerin liderlik performansini nasil etkiledigi arastiriyor. Okullarda bulunan kaynaklarin etkili yonetimi ve tum ogrencilerin akademik basarisini saglamak icin, okul liderlerine organizasyon ve kaynak yonetimi hakkinda bilgi ve beceriler kazandirmak gunumuzde cok onem tasimaktadir. Organizasyon sistemlerinin etkili yonetimi sayesinde egitim ve ogretim sorunlarinin daha kolay ve hizli bir sekilde cozuldugu gozlenmektedir. Bu calismada niceliksel korelasyonel arastirma yontemi, farkli faktorlerin Amerika’da ki okul lider adaylarinin kaynak ve operasyonel yonetimi ile ilgili algilamalarini nasil etkiledigini analiz etmek icin kullanilmistir. Arastirmanin en sasirtici sonuclarindan biri gelecekteki okul liderleri, guvenli ve yuksek performansli ogrenme ortami icin organizasyonel sistemleri ve kaynaklari yonetmeye hazir olduklarini belirttiler. Fakat diger yandan, Amerika’da okul lider adaylarinin onemli bir miktari, okullarda buyuk sistematik degisiklikler yapmaya ve karmasik orgutsel problemleri cozmeye hazir olmadiklarini ifade ettiler. Sonuclar ayni zamanda, regresyon modeline dokuz ongorucu degisken dahil edildiginde, katilimcilarin toplam orgutsel sistem liderligi skoruyla yalnizca yas ve gelecekteki liderlik planlari, arasinda anlamli bir korelasyon bulundugunu gostermektedir
Late paleozoic faunal and floral successions in the Paraná Basin, Southeastern Brazil

O presente trabalho inclue uma analise de distribuicao e composicao da megaflora e mega-fauna marinha (moluscos e braquiopodes) do Grupo Tubarao j tendo em vista o arcabouco bioestratigrafico (palinologico) disponivel para o Paleozoico Superior da Bacia do Parana, Brasil. A sequencia estratigrafica examinada abrange, possivelmente, o intervalo Neocarbonifero-Eopermiano. A sucessao de megafloras do Grupo Tubarao inicia-se com assembleias contendo formas "nordicas", passando a outras em que as glossopterideas sao mais frequentes, ou mesmo predominantes, na parte superior da sequencia investigada. A megafauna de invertebrados marinhos, por sua vez, abrange, inicialmente, assembleias com proporcao relativamente alta de formas cosmopolitas, associadas a generos gondvânicos, as quais se seguem assembleias de carater mais tipicamente gondvânico. Analisam-se, ainda, criticamente, as evidencias disponiveis para o reconhecimento do limite Carbonifero-Permiano no Brasil e America do Sul.