Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Some were meant for C: the endurance of an unmanageable language

The C language leads a double life: as an application programming language of yesteryear, perpetuated by circumstance; and as a systems programming language which remains a weapon of choice decades after its creation. This essay is a C programmer's reaction to the call to abandon ship. It questions several aspects commonly held to define the experience of using C; these include unsafety, undefined behaviour, and the motivation of performance. It argues all these are in fact inessential; rather, it traces C's ultimate strength to a communicative design which cannot be understood within the usual conception of "a programming language", but can be seen as the antithesis of so-called "managed" languages. This communicativity is understood as facilitating the essential aspect of system-building: creating parts which interact with other remote parts---being "alongside" not "within", and of "alien" origin.
Elevated plasma homocysteine levels in patients treated with levodopa: association with vascular disease.

BACKGROUND Hyperhomocysteinemia is a risk factor for vascular disease and potentially for dementia and depression. The most common cause of elevated homocysteine levels is deficiency of folate or vitamin B(12). However, patients with Parkinson disease (PD) may have elevated homocysteine levels resulting from methylation of levodopa and dopamine by catechol O-methyltransferase, an enzyme that uses S-adenosylmethionine as a methyl donor and yields S-adenosylhomocysteine. Since S-adenosylhomocysteine is rapidly converted to homocysteine, levodopa therapy may put patients at increased risk for vascular disease by raising homocysteine levels. OBJECTIVES To determine whether elevations in plasma homocysteine levels caused by levodopa use are associated with increased prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD), and to determine what role folate and vitamin B(12) have in levodopa-induced hyperhomocysteinemia. DESIGN/METHODS Subjects included 235 patients with PD followed up in a movement disorders clinic. Of these, 201 had been treated with levodopa, and 34 had not. Blood samples were collected for the measurement of homocysteine, folate, cobalamin, and methylmalonic acid levels. A history of CAD (prior myocardial infarctions, coronary artery bypass grafting, or coronary angioplasty procedures) was prospectively elicited. We analyzed parametric data by means of 1-way analysis of variance or the t test, and categorical data by means of the Fisher exact test or chi(2) test. RESULTS Mean +/- SD plasma homocysteine levels were significantly higher in patients treated with levodopa (16.1 +/- 6.2 micro mol/L), compared with levodopa-naïve patients (12.2 +/- 4.2 micro mol/L; P<.001). We found no difference in the plasma concentration of folate, cobalamin, or methylmalonic acid between the 2 groups. Patients whose homocysteine levels were in the higher quartile (>or=17.7 micro mol/L) had increased prevalence of CAD (relative risk, 1.75; 95% confidence interval, 1.08-2.70;P=.04). CONCLUSIONS Levodopa therapy, rather than PD, is a cause of hyperhomocysteinemia in patients with PD. Deficiency of folate or vitamin B(12) levels does not explain the elevated homocysteine levels in these patients. To our knowledge, this is the first report that levodopa-related hyperhomocysteinemia is associated with increased risk for CAD. These findings have implications for the treatment of PD in patients at risk for vascular disease, and potentially for those at risk for dementia and depression.
Attention-Based Models for Speech Recognition

Recurrent sequence generators conditioned on input data through an attention mechanism have recently shown very good performance on a range of tasks including machine translation, handwriting synthesis [1,2] and image caption generation [3]. We extend the attention-mechanism with features needed for speech recognition. We show that while an adaptation of the model used for machine translation in [2] reaches a competitive 18.7% phoneme error rate (PER) on the TIMET phoneme recognition task, it can only be applied to utterances which are roughly as long as the ones it was trained on. We offer a qualitative explanation of this failure and propose a novel and generic method of adding location-awareness to the attention mechanism to alleviate this issue. The new method yields a model that is robust to long inputs and achieves 18% PER in single utterances and 20% in 10-times longer (repeated) utterances. Finally, we propose a change to the attention mechanism that prevents it from concentrating too much on single frames, which further reduces PER to 17.6% level.
Shared Interaction on a Wall-Sized Display in a Data Manipulation Task

Wall-sized displays support small groups of users working together on large amounts of data. Observational studies of such settings have shown that users adopt a range of collaboration styles, from loosely to closely coupled. Shared interaction techniques, in which multiple users perform a command collaboratively, have also been introduced to support co-located collaborative work. In this paper, we operationalize five collaborative situations with increasing levels of coupling, and test the effects of providing shared interaction support for a data manipulation task in each situation. The results show the benefits of shared interaction for close collaboration: it encourages collaborative manipulation, it is more efficient and preferred by users, and it reduces physical navigation and fatigue. We also identify the time costs caused by disruption and communication in loose collaboration and analyze the trade-offs between parallelization and close collaboration. These findings inform the design of shared interaction techniques to support collaboration on wall-sized displays.
Two Birds With One Stone: Towards Secure and Interference-Free D2D Transmissions via Constellation Rotation

This paper studies the cooperative device-to-device (D2D) transmissions in cellular networks, where two D2D users communicate bidirectionally with each other and simultaneously serve as relays to assist the two-way transmissions between two cellular users. For this scenario, both cellular and D2D links share the same spectrum, thus creating mutual interference. In addition to that, a security problem also exists since the cellular users want to keep their messages secret from the D2D users and vice versa. To address these two issues, a security-embedded interference avoidance scheme is proposed in this paper. By exploiting the constellation rotation technique, the proposed scheme can create interference-free links for both D2D and cellular communications, thereby significantly improving the system error performance. Moreover, our scheme also provides an inherent secrecy protection at the physical layer, which makes the information exchange between cellular users and that between D2D users confidential from each other.
Title A cross-sectional study of subclinical Plasmodium falciparum infection in HIV-1 infected and uninfected populations in Mozambique , South-Eastern Africa Permalink

Background: Plasmodium falciparum and HIV-1 infection cause substantial morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Increasing evidence suggests these two pathogens interact negatively when infecting the same individual. Methods: A cross-sectional study among HIV-1 infected and uninfected populations was recruited in Mocuba and Maputo, Mozambique to determine the prevalence of sub-clinical malarial parasitaemia using light microscopy and a nested PCR assay. Results: The prevalence of sub-clinical P. falciparum parasitaemia was low in Maputo, whether determined by microscopy (0.4%) or PCR (1.9%), but substantially higher in Mocuba (7.6 and 14.7%, respectively). Nested PCR detected nearly 70% more cases of sub-clinical parasitaemia than microscopy, but differences occur by locality. HIV-1 infected persons were more likely to be sub-clinically parasitaemic than HIV-1 uninfected individuals recruited from the same geographic areas. Trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole use did not substantially reduce sub-clinical parasitaemia. Conclusions: Dried blood spots are a convenient and sensitive technique for detecting sub-clinical infection with P. falciparum by nested PCR. Prevalence of P. falciparum is substantially lower in Maputo where malaria control programmes have been more active than in the rural town of Mocuba. In Mocuba, among those presenting for HIV-1 counseling and testing, the prevalence of P. falciparum is substantially higher in those who test positive for HIV-1 than those without HIV-1 infection. The clinical implications of sub-clinical P. falciparum infection among HIV-1 infected persons warrant additional study.
Hungry like the wolf: A word‐pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths

Purpose. This study used statistical text analysis to examine the features of crime narratives provided by psychopathic homicide offenders. Psychopathic speech was predictedtoreflectaninstrumental/predatoryworldview,uniquesocioemotionalneeds, and a poverty of affect. Methods. Two text analysis tools were used to examine the crime narratives of 14 psychopathicand38non-psychopathichomicideoffenders.Psychopathywasdetermined using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The Wmatrix linguistic analysis tool (Rayson, 2008) was used to examine parts of speech and semantic content while the Dictionary of Affect and Language (DAL) tool (Whissell & Dewson, 1986) was used to examine the emotional characteristics of the narratives. Results. Psychopaths (relative to their counterparts) included more rational causeand-effect descriptors (e.g., ‘because’, ‘since’), focused on material needs (food, drink, money), and contained fewer references to social needs (family, religion/spirituality). Psychopaths’ speech contained a higher frequency of disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) indicating that describing such a powerful, ‘emotional’ event to another person was relatively difficult for them. Finally, psychopaths used more past tense and less present tense verbs in their narrative, indicating a greater psychological detachment from the incident, and their language was less emotionally intense and pleasant. Conclusions. These language differences, presumably beyond conscious control, support the notion that psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level.
Production of volatile fatty acids by hydrolysing sludge from Sjölunda WWTP

The biological nutrient removal (BNR) processes at Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) require easily degradable carbon, such as volatile fatty acids (VFAs), to work efficiently. Because of economical, and environmental reasons it is desired to utilize the organic content in the incoming wastewater instead of using an external carbon source. This study investigated the potential of producing VFAs through biological hydrolysis of primary sludge (PS), and activated sludge (AS) from Sjolunda WWTP in Malmo, Sweden. Batchwise hydrolysis at 14.5 °C was conducted in beakers of 4 L to find initial VFA production rates over the first two days of hydrolysis. Three factors that could affect the hydrolysis rate in PS were investigated: volatile solids (VS) content of the sludge, seeding with partially hydrolysed sludge, and addition of reject water coming from the dewatering of anaerobically digested sludge. Hydrolysis of AS gave high release of ammonium (NH4+) and phosphate (PO43-), and is thus not beneficial to use for VFA production at Sjolunda WWTP. PS hydrolysis released lower amounts of NH4+ and PO43- and could thus be beneficial to use. Minimum, average, and maximum initial VFA production rates for the PS mixtures were found to be 0.3, 1.0 and 2.1 mg CODVFA/(g VS × h) respectively. The one experiment with seeding showed a decreased VFA production. Two batches of PS with reject water added were hydrolysed. The first batch showed an increase in VFA production while the second showed a decrease. VFA production per mass VS was found to be independent of VS concentration in the hydrolysed sludge. Sludge mass flow, wastewater flows, and concentrations from Sjolunda WWTP were used to evaluate the potential of removing nutrients through BNR with the produced VFAs as carbon source. With the mean VFA production rate of 1.0 mg CODVFA/(g VS × h) acquired from the experiments, approximately 4 % of the incoming nitrogen and phosphorus could potentially be removed with BNR. (Less)
Incremental Semantically Grounded Learning from Demonstration

Much recent work in robot learning from demonstration has focused on automatically segmenting continuous task demonstrations into simpler, reusable primitives. However, strong assumptions are often made about how these primitives can be sequenced, limiting the potential for data reuse. We introduce a novel method for discovering semantically grounded primitives and incrementally building and improving a finite-state representation of a task in which various contingencies can arise. Specifically, a Beta Process Autoregressive Hidden Markov Model is used to automatically segment demonstrations into motion categories, which are then further subdivided into semantically grounded states in a finite-state automaton. During replay of the task, a data-driven approach is used to collect additional data where they are most needed through interactive corrections, which are then used to improve the finite-state automaton. Together, this allows for intelligent sequencing of primitives to create novel, adaptive behavior that can be incrementally improved as needed. We demonstrate the utility of this technique on a furniture assembly task using the PR2 mobile manipulator.
Kallikrein Gene Transfer Induces Angiogenesis and Further Improves Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in the Early Period After Cerebral Ischemia/Reperfusion in Rats

SUMMARY Aims: The aims of this study were to find out whether kallikrein could induce angiogenesis and affect the cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the early period after cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (CI/R). Methods: The adenovirus carried human tissue kallikrein (HTK) gene was administrated into the periinfarction region after CI/R. At 12, 24, and 72 h after treatments, neurological deficits were evaluated; expression of HTK and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) were detected by immunohistochemistry staining; the infarction volume was measured; and rCBF was examined by 14C‐iodoantipyrine microtracing technique. Results: The expression of VEGF was enhanced significantly in pAdCMV‐HTK group than controls over all time points (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the rCBF in pAdCMV‐HTK group increased markedly than controls at 24 and 72 h after treatment (P < 0.05), and the improved neurological deficit was accompanied by reduced infarction volume in pAdCMV‐HTK group 24 and 72 h posttreatment. Conclusion: In the early period after CI/R, kallikrein could induce the angiogenesis and improve rCBF in periinfarction region, and further reduce the infarction volume and improve the neurological deficits.
IL-10R Blockade during Chronic Schistosomiasis Mansoni Results in the Loss of B Cells from the Liver and the Development of Severe Pulmonary Disease

In schistosomiasis patients, parasite eggs trapped in hepatic sinusoids become foci for CD4+ T cell-orchestrated granulomatous cellular infiltrates. Since the immune response is unable to clear the infection, the liver is subjected to ongoing cycles of focal inflammation and healing that lead to vascular obstruction and tissue fibrosis. This is mitigated by regulatory mechanisms that develop over time and which minimize the inflammatory response to newly deposited eggs. Exploring changes in the hepatic inflammatory infiltrate over time in infected mice, we found an accumulation of schistosome egg antigen-specific IgG1-secreting plasma cells during chronic infection. This population was significantly diminished by blockade of the receptor for IL-10, a cytokine implicated in plasma cell development. Strikingly, IL-10R blockade precipitated the development of portal hypertension and the accumulation of parasite eggs in the lungs and heart. This did not reflect more aggressive Th2 cell responsiveness, increased hepatic fibrosis, or the emergence of Th1 or Th17 responses. Rather, a role for antibody in the prevention of severe disease was suggested by the finding that pulmonary involvement was also apparent in mice unable to secrete class switched antibody. A major effect of anti-IL-10R treatment was the loss of a myeloid population that stained positively for surface IgG1, and which exhibited characteristics of regulatory/anti-inflammatory macrophages. This finding suggests that antibody may promote protective effects within the liver through local interactions with macrophages. In summary, our data describe a role for IL-10-dependent B cell responses in the regulation of tissue damage during a chronic helminth infection.
Intravital assessment of body composition of cows in various production periods using urea dilution procedures

Changes in the body condition of cows are directly linked with changes in body weight and composition, and also influence their health status and productivity. In order to assess body composition, an urea dilution method was used. The method depends on the calculation of urea space resulting from differences in urea concentrations in blood before and after the infusion of the urea solution. The method is quick, not dangerous for animals and the analyses are relatively simple. The aim of this study was an attempt of an assessment of body composition of cows in the range of protein, lipid and water content in various production stages with changing condition. The research was conducted on 24 cows divided into three groups: beginning of lactation, middle of lactation, end of lactation. The present study confirmed the thesis that various production stages are accompanied by changes in body composition and condition of the cows and the changes may be determined with a high accuracy using urea method.
Effects of Sex and Event Type on Head Impact in Collegiate Soccer

Background: The effects of head impact in sports are of growing interest for clinicians, scientists, and athletes. Soccer is the most popular sport worldwide, but the burden of head impact in collegiate soccer is still unknown. Purpose: To quantify head impact associated with practicing and playing collegiate soccer using wearable accelerometers. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study. Methods: Mastoid patch accelerometers were used to quantify head impact in soccer, examining differences in head impact as a function of sex and event type (practice vs game). Seven female and 14 male collegiate soccer players wore mastoid patch accelerometers that measured head impacts during team events. Data were summarized for each athletic exposure, and statistical analyses evaluated the mean number of impacts, mean peak linear acceleration, mean peak rotational acceleration, and cumulative linear and rotational acceleration, each grouped by sex and event type. Results: There were no differences in the frequency or severity of head impacts between men’s and women’s soccer practices. For men’s soccer, games resulted in 285% more head impacts than practices, but there were no event-type differences in mean impact severity. Men’s soccer games resulted in more head impacts than practices across nearly all measured impact severities, which also resulted in men’s soccer games producing a greater cumulative impact burden. Conclusion: Similar to other sports, men’s soccer games have a greater impact burden when compared with practices, and this effect is driven by the quantity rather than severity of head impacts. In contrast, there were no differences in the quantity or severity of head impacts in men’s and women’s soccer practices. These data could prompt discussions of practical concern to collegiate soccer, such as understanding sex differences in head impact and whether games disproportionately contribute to an athlete’s head impact burden.
Gibberellin regulates Arabidopsis floral development via suppression of DELLA protein function

The phytohormone gibberellin (GA) regulates the development and fertility of Arabidopsis flowers. The mature flowers of GA-deficient mutant plants typically exhibit reduced elongation growth of petals and stamens. In addition, GA-deficiency blocks anther development, resulting in male sterility. Previous analyses have shown that GA promotes the elongation of plant organs by opposing the function of the DELLA proteins, a family of nuclear growth repressors. However, it was not clear that the DELLA proteins are involved in the GA-regulation of stamen and anther development. We show that GA regulates cell elongation rather than cell division during Arabidopsis stamen filament elongation. In addition, GA regulates the cellular developmental pathway of anthers leading from microspore to mature pollen grain. Genetic analysis shows that the Arabidopsis DELLA proteins RGA and RGL2 jointly repress petal, stamen and anther development in GA-deficient plants, and that this function is enhanced by RGL1 activity. GA thus promotes Arabidopsis petal, stamen and anther development by opposing the function of the DELLA proteins RGA, RGL1 and RGL2.
Risk factors, outcomes and genotypes of carbapenem-nonsusceptible Klebsiella pneumoniae bloodstream infection: a three-year retrospective study in a large tertiary hospital in Northern China

Abstract Objective: To investigate the independent risk factors, outcomes and genotypes associated with carbapenem-non-susceptible K. pneumoniae bloodstream infections (BSIs) in northern China from 2014 to 2016. Methods: Over a three-year period, a total of 289 K. pneumoniae BSI patients were identified. Medical records were extracted to obtain the clinical information. Polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) were performed to analyse the multilocus sequence typing (MLST) types, Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) and metallo-β-lactamases (MBL) genes, for replicon typing of the 10 randomly selected carbapenem-non-susceptible K. pneumoniae. Results: A total of 59 carbapenem-non-susceptible K. pneumoniae strains were identified. Resistance rates to imipenem, meropenem, ertapenem and amikacin were low. Multivariate analyses showed that a central venous catheter odds ratio (OR) of 4.021 (CI 1.002–16.134); mechanical ventilation of 7.587 (2.856–20.156); Pitt bacteraemia score of 1.481 (CI 1.218–1.800); hospitalization prior to culture of 1.026 (CI 1.001–1.053); and some antibiotic use 30 days prior to K. pneumoniae bacteremia, including carbapenem of 9.123 (CI 2.995–27.791), aminoglycoside of 34.079 (2.091–555.396), and tigecycline of 5.065 (CI 1.261–20.339) were associated with carbapenem-non-susceptible K. pneumoniae bacteremia. Sequence type 11 (ST11) was the most predominant MLST type, which accounted for 50% of the isolates. Eighty per cent of the isolates harbored the KPC-2 gene. The overall 28-day mortality rates of carbapenem-non-susceptible and carbapenem-susceptible K. pneumoniae were 54.24% and 19.56%, respectively. Conclusion: Central venous catheter, mechanical ventilation, high Pitt bacteraemia score, hospitalization prior to culture, and prior antibiotic use (carbapenem, aminoglycoside and tigecycline) were identified as independent risk factors for carbapenem-non-susceptible K. pneumoniae BSI, which was mostly caused by KPC-2 in northern China.