Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Apprentissage par renforcement, étude du cas continu

Le probleme aborde est comment concevoir des methodes permettant a des systemes artificiels d' >, c'est a dire de resoudre une tache sans etre explicitement programme pour cela, mais seulement a partir du schema d'apprentissage : essais -> erreur ou succes ii s'agit de definir des methodes, sous forme d'algorithmes, permettant la modification des parametres internes du systeme afin de definir des prises de decisions pertinentes. L'approche developpee est celle de > qui se definit naturellement sous la forme d'un probleme de controle optimal pour lequel les donnees de la dynamique d'etat sont a priori (au moins partiellement) inconnues du systeme. Cette these est une etude formelle du cas ou l'espace des etats possibles ainsi que le temps auquel les decisions sont prises sont des variable continues ; la preoccupation majeure de ce travail etant l'etude de la convergences des methodes employees. Nous decrivons le formalisme du controle optimal et presentons la methode de la programmation dynamique : definition de la fonction valeur et enonce l'equation de hamiltonjacobi-bellman associee. Nous introduisons les notions desolutions de viscosite et decrivons des methodes d'approximation numeriques a partir de schemas convergents. Puis nous donnons un theoreme de convergence d'algorithmes bases sur les schemas precedents -ce qui represente la contribution majeure de ce travail. Ce theoreme fournit une methode tres generale pour concevoir des algorithmes d'apprentissage par renforcement convergents. Enfin nous illustrons la methode avec divers exemples d'algorithmes varies portant sur des dynamiques d'etat deterministes ou stochastiques, selon des methodes dites directes ou indirectes et a partir de schemas bases sur des methodes aux differences finies ou aux elements finis.
An FPGA-based Smart Camera for Gesture Analysis for Healthcare Applications

Affective computing aims at analyzing users' affective states. Its applications include edutainment, HCI, and healthcare. Affective states may be conveyed through voice, facial expression, gesturing and physiological representations. This paper presents our attempt to develop a smart camera which can recognize simple head and hand gestures, for healthcare applications.
The globular domains of type VI collagen are related to the collagen‐binding domains of cartilage matrix protein and von Willebrand factor.

Type VI collagen is a transformation‐sensitive glycoprotein of the extracellular matrix of fibroblasts. We have isolated and sequenced several overlapping cDNA clones (4153 bp) which encode the entire alpha 2 subunit of chicken type VI collagen. The deduced amino acid sequence predicts that the alpha 2(VI) polypeptide consists of 1015 amino acid residues that are arranged in four domains: a hydrophobic signal peptide of 20 residues, an amino‐terminal globular domain of 228 residues, a collagenous segment of 335 residues and a carboxy‐terminal globular domain of 432 residues. The collagenous domain contains seven Arg‐Gly‐Asp tripeptide units, some of which are likely to be used as cell‐binding sites. The globular domains contain three homologous repeats with an average length of 180 amino acid residues. These repeats show a striking similarity to the collagen‐binding motifs found in von Willebrand factor and cartilage matrix protein. We therefore speculate that the globular domains of the alpha 2(VI) polypeptide may interact with collagenous structures.
Strategy and PowerPoint: An Inquiry into the Epistemic Culture and Machinery of Strategy Making

PowerPoint has come to dominate organizational life in general and strategy making in particular. The technology is lauded by its proponents as a powerful tool for communication and excoriated by its critics as dangerously simplifying. This study takes a deeper look into how PowerPoint is mobilized in strategy making through an ethnographic study inside one organization. It treats PowerPoint as a technology embedded in the discursive practices of strategic knowledge production and suggests that these practices make up the epistemic or knowledge culture of the organization. Conceptualizing culture as composed of practices foregrounds the “machineries” of knowing. Results from a genre analysis of PowerPoint use suggest that it should not be characterized simply as effective or ineffective, as current PowerPoint controversies do. Instead, I show how the affordances of PowerPoint enabled the difficult task of collaborating to negotiate meaning in an uncertain environment, creating spaces for discussion, making recombinations possible, allowing for adjustments as ideas evolved, and providing access to a wide range of actors. These affordances also facilitated cartographic efforts to draw boundaries around the scope of a strategy by certifying certain ideas and allowing document owners to include or exclude certain slides or participants. These discursive practices---collaboration and cartography---are part of the “epistemic machinery” of strategy culture. This analysis demonstrates that strategy making is not only about analysis of industry structure, competitive positioning, or resources, as assumed in content-based strategy research, but it is also about how the production and use of PowerPoint documents that shape these ideas.
Toward an Early Diagnosis and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease. There has been a rapid increase in the knowledge of epidemiology, genetics, risk factors, and underlying neuropathological mechanisms, but still there is no cure for AD. Recent promising studies with functional imaging using positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging reveal that disease processes can be detected when very early subjective symptoms of AD are manifest. Recently the PET ligand PIB was reported to bind in vivo to β-amyloid in the brains of AD patients. Also cerebrospinal fluid markers including tau, phosphotau, and Aβ 1–42 are probably important early biological markers that will provide an early diagnosis of AD. An obvious impairment in central cholinergic transmitter function and its close relation to cognitive function led to the development of the acetylcholinesterase inhibitors that now are used as symptomatic therapy. A drug interfering with the glutaminergic brain transmitter system, the NMDA antagonist memantine, has recently been approved for the treatment of patients with severe AD. In order to stop or reverse disease progression, different AD treatment strategies are of great interest. Epidemiological studies support the hypothesis that long-term treatment with estrogen, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory drugs, and cholesterol-lowering agents could protect against the development of AD. Treatment with these drugs in manifest AD has been less promising. The use of nerve growth factors was limited by severe side effects. Much evidence supports the key role of β-amyloid in the pathogenesis of AD. Compounds such as amyloid β-sheet breakers, cholesterol-lowering drugs, estrogen, nicotine, zinc and copper chelators, inhibitors of β- and γ-secretases, and immunization to reduce the amyloid burden in transgenic mice over-expressing β-amyloid all have their advocates. The latter exciting strategy turned out to cause meningoencephalitis in 6% of AD patients so treated. One patient from the trial has died showing less β-amyloid burden in brain than expected and patients with serum β-amyloid plaque reactive antibodies had less cognitive decline after 1 year than AD patients without antibodies. There is a great optimism for early diagnosis and effective treatment of AD in the future.
Evidence for a direct antitumor mechanism of action of bovine lactoferricin.

BACKGROUND Bovine lactoferrin (LFB) and its pepsin-generated peptide lactoferricin (LfcinB) possess antitumor activities. The mechanism underlying the antitumor activities of LfcinB in vivo has not been elucidated. In this study the antitumor activities exerted by LFB, LfcinB and murine lactoferricin (LfcinM) on murine tumor cell lines and experimental tumors were investigated. MATEIALS AND METHODS: The protein and peptides were tested against Meth A fibrosarcoma, B16F10 melanoma and C26 colon carcinoma cells in vitro and their derived tumors in vivo, exploring the mechanisms of antitumor activity by way of histological and scanning electron microscopical studies. RESULTS LfcinB exerted significant cytotoxic activity against the three tumor cell lines in vitro and significantly reduced the size of solid Meth A tumors. Scanning electron micrographs revealed tumor cell membrane disruption and eventually cell lysis, while extensive hemorrhagic necrosis was apparent in tumor sections one day after LfcinB treatment. No species-specific antitumor effect of LfcinM was observed. CONCLUSION Our study demonstrated that LfcinB elicits an antitumor effect mediated through a direct mechanism of action not observed with LFB or LfcinM.
Design, implementation, and tracing of dynamic backpressure routing for ns-3

In this paper we present a framework within ns-3 developed to support an emerging class of wireless routing protocols, called dynamic backpressure routing protocols. Specifically, we provide the design and implementation particularities introduced by dynamic backpressure routing within the ns-3 simulator. In addition, we describe the implementation of a fine-grained tracing methodology used to debug dynamic backpressure routing, as well as to obtain routing performance metrics. The tracing framework allows capturing global, per node, and even per packet routing information for evaluation and debugging. Finally, we show some evaluation results obtained from the post-processing of operational information obtained by means of this tracing methodology.
Mobile Cloud Computing: A multisite computation offloading

Mobile cloud computing is a promising approach to overcome limitations of mobile devices in terms of battery consumption and capability to execute computation-intensive applications. It consists in outsourcing some parts of computation-intensive applications to cloud servers, so that the overall energy consumption and execution time of application's running are optimized. In addition to classical public/private clouds, computations can also be offloaded to nearby clouds, called cloudlets, which may have different access delays, proximity to end users, computation capability and/or monetary cost. In such a heterogeneous context, the offloading decision becomes very complicated and time-consuming, especially when the number of surrogate sites and application units increase. In this paper, we propose a multisite offloading solution which uses the genetic algorithm to timely achieve the best-possible offloading outcome in a heterogeneous multisite context. Simulation results demonstrated that our proposal can outperform other existing multisite alternatives for different number of surrogate sites and various application sizes.
Role of matrix metalloproteinase‐9 in progression of mouse skin carcinogenesis

Invasion of malignant tumor cells is required for the formation of metastatic colonies. Uncontrolled expression of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)‐2 and MMP‐9 is a critical part of the invasive potential of tumor cells and is affected by the balance between the enzymes and the inhibitors secreted by the cell. Here we analyzed the expression and activity of the two gelatinases (MMP‐2 and MMP‐9) as well as the expression levels of the tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP2)‐, in different stages of carcinogenesis using mouse skin cell lines derived from tumors induced by chemical mutagens. Our results suggested that the expression of MMP‐9 was implicated in the progression to spindle cell carcinomas in mouse keratinocytes. MMP‐2 levels remained steady in all cell lines, whereas levels of TIMP‐2 were increased in normal and spindle cells. The AP‐1 DNA binding and transcriptional activity on the MMP‐9 promoter were increased in the malignant cell lines, indicating the requirement of this binding site for its activation. The results of this study clearly suggested the important role of MMP‐9, but not of MMP‐2, in the metastatic properties of mouse keratinocytes. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mechanical Transduction in Outer Hair Cells

The outer hair cells are responsible for the exquisite sensitivity, frequency selectivity and dynamic range of the cochlea. These cells are part of a mechanical feedback system involving the basilar membrane and tectorial membrane. Transverse displacement of the basilar membrane results in relative motion between the tectorial membrane and the reticular lamina, causing deflection of the stereocilia and modulation of the open probability of their transduction channels. The resulting current causes a change of membrane potential, which in turn produces mechanical force, that is fed back into the motion of the basilar membrane. Experiments were conducted to address mechanical transduction mechanisms in both the stereocilia and the basolateral cell membrane, as well as modes of coupling of the outer hair cell force to the organ of Corti.
Carcinoid tumor arising in a duplication cyst of the duodenum

Reported herein is a case of carcinoid tumor arising in a duplication cyst of the duodenum in a 34‐year‐old woman. Ultrasonography at a health check‐up revealed a 10 cm cystic mass located in the retroperitoneum adjacent to the third portion of the duodenum. Macroscopically, it had a smooth surface without communication with other organs and was filled with brownish necrotic fluid. More than half of the inner wall was occupied by a white, irregular, and solid nodule, which protruded into the lumen. The nodule was diagnosed as a carcinoid tumor invasive to the deep muscular layer. The non‐neoplastic cyst wall had bowel structures including mucosa, submucosa and double layers of smooth muscle, indicating that the lesion was a duodenal duplication cyst. Most of the mucosa was eroded by marked inflammation. The remaining mucosa consisted of various types of epithelium, the major type having the nature of primitive gastric mucosa. Of interest was the presence of hamartomatous components in the wall. Furthermore, the non‐neoplastic mucosal lining cells around the carcinoid tumor expressed neuroendocrine antigens and had minimal proliferative activity, suggesting that part of the cyst wall provided a microenvironment for accelerated differentiation of epithelial cells to an endocrine phenotype and transformation to neoplasia.
Object-Oriented Port Detection Based on Mean Shift Segmentation

In this paper, we propose a new method for port detection using remote sensing image. This technique is a combination of image segmentation and object-oriented detection. We use mean shift method to initially segment the remote sensing image. Based on the initial segmentation map we build the spatial adjacency relation of the regions. Significant department has been observed in object-oriented detection. Generally, ports have inherent characteristic of half close region of seawater. Convex polygon created by centers of land region along the coastline. The land region is controlled within a certain range. Port detection is implemented according to water areas within the convex polygon. The advantages of this method are the robustness and its affine invariance with respect to translation, scaling, rotation and skewing. The effectiveness of this algorithm is demonstrated using two remote sensing images.
New insight into butyrate metabolism

Butyrate is a C4 acid produced by microbial fermentation of carbohydrates and protein in the large intestine of all animal species. The factor of prime importance for the production rate of butyrate in the lower gut is type and levels of non-digestible carbohydrates entering the large intestine. It was previously believed that 85–90% of the butyrate produced in the gut was cleared when passing the gut epithelium, but recent studies with catheterised pigs have shown that the concentration of butyrate in the portal vein is strongly influenced by the production rate in the large intestine. Increased gut production of butyrate further raises the circulating level of butyrate. For good reason it is not possible with current technologies to perform direct measurements of the variation in the butyrate concentration in the portal vein of human subjects, but short-chain fatty acid levels in portal blood from sudden-death victims, subjects undergoing emergency surgery or planned surgery have indicated a higher gut production and absolute and relative concentration of butyrate in non-fasted as compared with fasted human subjects. However, despite an expected higher gut production of butyrate when feeding a high-fibre rye-bread-based diet as compared with a low-fibre wheat-bread-based diet, there was no difference in absolute or relative levels of butyrate in the peripheral blood of human subjects.
Fast evolutionary solution finding for optimization using opposite gradient movement

In this paper, a hybrid algorithm of gradient movement is proposed. On a surface of continuous function, every random point has a gradient value of the function that minimize and convergence to zero when it is a neighborhood with the optimum solution. Each iteration calculates the gradient of function at every point and chooses a minimum gradient point with a shortest distance from the optimum solution to find a new closer candidate to be an optimum point. The comparative experiments were made between CA_PSO, PSO, CACO, and SGA. Results show the proposed algorithm with gradient movement techniques outperforms other.
Epidemiology of Chagas disease in Andrés Eloy Blanco, Lara, Venezuela: triatomine infestation and human seroprevalence

Se realizo un despistaje serologico y recoleccion de vectores en cuatro comunidades rurales del municipio Andres Eloy Blanco, Estado Lara, Venezuela. La muestra fue escogida en forma sistematica y aleatoria basada en conglomerados familiares. Se muestrearon 869 habitantes para determinar anticuerpos anti-Trypanosoma cruzi y anti-Leishmania sp. por inmunofluorescencia indirecta, aceptando como positivo diluciones > a 1:32 para anticuerpos anti-T. cruzi no reactivos para antigenos de Leishmania sp. , obteniendo una frecuencia de anticuerpos en la muestra de 6,9% (n = 60); de los cuales 46,66% son femeninos, 53,33% masculinos y 60% mayores de 40 anos. Se observo que 5 (8,33%) de los seropositivos eran menores de 10 anos y 10 (16,66%) menores de 20 anos. Rhodnius prolixus y Panstrongylus geniculatus fueron los triatominos capturados, con indice de infestacion de 1,9 y 10,54%, indice de colonizacion, del 0 y 18,18% en las viviendas infestadas e indice de infeccion a T. cruzi del 20 y 5,07%, respectivamente. Los resultados sugieren que existe una transmision activa de la enfermedad de Chagas en el Municipio Andres Eloy Blanco en las ultimas dos decadas y que P. geniculatus esta substituyendo a R. prolixus como vector de la enfermedad de Chagas.
Hyperventilation and cold-pressor stress echocardiography combined with automated functional imaging non-invasively detected vasospastic angina

A 47-year-old male presented with chest discomfort while sleeping. The patient was suspected of having vasospastic angina (VSA) and underwent hyperventilation and cold-pressor stress echocardiography. No chest pain, ECG changes or decreased wall motion was found. However, automated function imaging (AFI) showed decreased peak systolic strain at the apex and postsystolic shortening at both the apex and inferior wall, which was not found before the test. The provocation test revealed 99% stenosis in the right coronary artery #2 at a dose of 50 μg acetylcholine and 90% stenosis in the left coronary artery #8 at a dose of 100 μg. The patient was thus diagnosed as having VSA. The present case demonstrates the usefulness of AFI combined with hyperventilation and cold-pressor stress echocardiography as a screening examination for VSA.
Relation between Proximity of Streets in Urban Network and Parameters of Neural Network for Traffic Volume Prediction

Deep learning has become very popular as a method to predict short-term traffic volumes on road networks, especially highway networks, based on real-time observation. Various studies have confirmed that the performance of deep learning in predicting traffic volumes is better than that of previous machine learning models and statistical models. Although it is natural to consider that the traffic conditions on road networks are highly dependent on network structures such as the connection relationship between roads, to date it is not clear whether the estimated parameters of neural networks are related to the proximities of roads in networks. This study was conducted with the objective of predicting traffic volumes in urban street networks, which are more complex than highway networks, and investigated the relation between proximity of streets and estimated weight parameters of a neural network. The results obtained confirm that the proximity of streets is significant in traffic volume prediction, although some streets have a strong relation with distant streets.
Direct inhibition of EGF receptor activation in vascular endothelial cells by gefitinib (‘Iressa’, ZD1839)

The development of gefitinib (‘Iressa’, ZD1839) by targeting the EGFR tyrosine kinase is a recent therapeutic highlight. We have reported that gefitinib is antiangiogenic in vitro, as well as in vivo. In this study, we asked if the anti‐angiogenic action of gefitinib is due to a direct effect on activation of vascular endothelial cells by EGF. EGF, as well as VEGF, caused pronounced angiogene‐sis in an avascular area of the mouse cornea, and i.p. administration of gefitinib almost completely blocked the response to EGF, but not to VEGF. Immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated phosphorylation of EGFR by EGF in the neovasculature, and gefitinib markedly reduced this effect. Gefitinib also inhibited downstream activation of ERK 1/2 via EGFR in cultured microvascular endothelial (HMVE) cells. These findings suggest that the anti‐angiogenic effect of gefitinib in the vascular endothelial cells of neo‐vasculature is partly attributable to direct inhibition of EGFR activation, and that endothelial cells in malignant tumors play a critical role in the cancer therapeutic efficacy of gefitinib.
Wafer-scale fabrication of self-actuated piezoelectric nanoelectromechanical resonators based on lead zirconate titanate (PZT)

In this paper we report an unprecedented level of integration of self-actuated nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) resonators based on a 150 nm thick lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin film at the wafer-scale. A top-down approach combining ultraviolet (UV) lithography with other standard planar processing technologies allows us to achieve high-throughput manufacturing. Multilayer stack cantilevers with different geometries have been implemented with measured fundamental resonant frequencies in the megahertz range and Q-factor values ranging from ~130 in air up to ~900 in a vacuum at room temperature. A refined finite element model taking into account the exact configuration of the piezoelectric stack is proposed and demonstrates the importance of considering the dependence of the beam’s cross-section upon the axial coordinate. We extensively investigate both experimentally and theoretically the transduction efficiency of the implemented piezoelectric layer and report for the first time at this integration level a piezoelectric constant of d31=15 ? > fm V−1. Finally, we discuss the current limitations to achieve piezoelectric detection.