Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parallel subgraph listing in a large-scale graph

Subgraph listing is a fundamental operation to many graph and network analyses. The problem itself is computationally expensive and is well-studied in centralized processing algorithms. However, the centralized solutions cannot scale well to large graphs. Recently, several parallel approaches are introduced to handle the large graphs. Unfortunately, these parallel approaches still rely on the expensive join operations, thus cannot achieve high performance. In this paper, we design a novel parallel subgraph listing framework, named PSgL. The PSgL iteratively enumerates subgraph instances and solves the subgraph listing in a divide-and-conquer fashion. The framework completely relies on the graph traversal, and avoids the explicit join operation. Moreover, in order to improve its performance, we propose several solutions to balance the workload and reduce the size of intermediate results. Specially, we prove the problem of partial subgraph instance distribution for workload balance is NP-hard, and carefully design a set of heuristic strategies. To further reduce the enormous intermediate results, we introduce three independent mechanisms, which are automorphism breaking of the pattern graph, initial pattern vertex selection based on a cost model, and a pruning method based on a light-weight index. We have implemented the prototype of PSgL, and run comprehensive experiments of various graph listing operations on diverse large graphs. The experiments clearly demonstrate that PSgL is robust and can achieve performance gain over the state-of-the-art solutions up to 90%.
Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory and Everyday Memory during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Few studies have examined both episodic and semantic autobiographical memory (AM) performance during late childhood and early adolescence. Using the newly developed Children’s Autobiographical Interview (CAI), the present study examined the effects of age and sex on episodic and semantic AM and everyday memory in 182 children and adolescents. Results indicated that episodic and semantic AM both improved between 8 and 16 years of age; however, age-related changes were larger for episodic AM than for semantic AM. In addition, females were found to recall more episodic AM details, but not more semantic AM details, than males. Importantly, this sex difference in episodic AM recall was attenuated under conditions of high retrieval support (i.e., the use of probing questions). The ability to clearly visualize past events at the time of recollection was related to children’s episodic AM recall performance, particularly the retrieval of perceptual details. Finally, similar age and sex effects were found between episodic AM and everyday memory ability (e.g., memory for everyday activities). More specifically, older participants and females exhibited better episodic AM and everyday memory performance than younger participants and males. Overall, the present study provides important new insight into both episodic and semantic AM performance, as well as the relation between episodic AM and everyday memory, during late childhood and adolescence.
Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation Enalaprilat Inhibits Hydrogen Peroxide Production by Murine Mesangial Cells Exposed to High Glucose Concentrations

ide; protein kinase C; angiotensin converting enzyme; mesangial cell; diabetic nephropathy. Background. Oxidative stress is considered to play a role in the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are hypotensive drugs with a well-known effect in pre-Introduction venting the progression of chronic renal failure. Their mechanism of action is not clearly established. Several factors (growth hormone, insulin-like growth Methods. The effect of enalaprilat on hydrogen perox-factor-1, transforming growth factor-beta, tumour nec-ide (H 2 O 2) production by cultured murine mesangial rosis factor-alpha, interleukin-1 and others) play a role cells exposed to 5.5 (basal condition), 30 and 50 mM in the damaging effects of hyperglycaemia in chronic glucose concentrations was examined over 8 h. A fluo-renal failure of diabetic nephropathy [1,2]. rimetric method quantifying, in arbitrary units, the Hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2) and other reactive intracellular dichlorofluorescein (DCFH) oxidation to oxygen metabolites (ROM) such as superoxide anion the highly fluorescent compound 2'7'dichlorofluoresc-and hydroxyl radical are also mediators of tissue injury ein (DCF) from the non–fluorescent probe dichloro-[3]. These reactive species are associated with both fluorescein-diacetate (DCFH-DA) was employed (a immune and non-immune glomerular injury [4,5], method not previously reported for cultured mesangial chronic progression of renal disease [5,6] and also with cells). Experiments were repeated three times in quad-diabetic vascular complications [3,7]. However, little ruplicate wells. information exists regarding a possible role of mesang-Results. H 2 O 2 production by mesangial cells exposed ial cell in ROM production in diabetes mellitus. to 50 mM glucose was significantly increased after 1 Recently a significant lipid peroxide production in h, compared to cells exposed to 5.5 and 30 mM glucose. cultured rat glomeruli exposed to high glucose concen-This observation was not reproduced with 50 mM trations has been reported. The proposed biochemical mannitol. Addition of 100 ng/ml enalaprilat to cells pathway is a de novo synthesis of diacylglycerol with 50 mM glucose significantly inhibited H 2 O 2 pro-resulting from hyperglycaemia, leading to an activation duction during the 8 h of the assay. This response was of the protein kinase C (PKC) enzyme [8 ]. similar to that obtained with 100 ng/ml catalase. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors Increasing enalaprilat concentrations (10, 50 and are drugs with significant clinical benefits in the preven-100 ng/ml) also significantly decreased the constitutive tion of chronic renal failure in diabetic nephropathy H 2 O 2 generation in the presence of 5.5 mM glucose. [9]. …
Macrophages as IL-25/IL-33-Responsive Cells Play an Important Role in the Induction of Type 2 Immunity

Type 2 immunity is essential for host protection against nematode infection but is detrimental in allergic inflammation or asthma. There is a major research focus on the effector molecules and specific cell types involved in the initiation of type 2 immunity. Recent work has implicated an important role of epithelial-derived cytokines, IL-25 and IL-33, acting on innate immune cells that are believed to be the initial sources of type 2 cytokines IL-4/IL-5/IL-13. The identities of the cell types that mediate the effects of IL-25/IL-33, however, remain to be fully elucidated. In the present study, we demonstrate that macrophages as IL-25/IL-33-responsive cells play an important role in inducing type 2 immunity using both in vitro and in vivo approaches. Macrophages produced type 2 cytokines IL-5 and IL-13 in response to the stimulation of IL-25/IL-33 in vitro, or were the IL-13-producing cells in mice administrated with exogenous IL-33 or infected with Heligmosomoides bakeri. In addition, IL-33 induced alternative activation of macrophages primarily through autocrine IL-13 activating the IL-4Rα-STAT6 pathway. Moreover, depletion of macrophages attenuated the IL-25/IL-33-induced type 2 immunity in mice, while adoptive transfer of IL-33-activated macrophages into mice with a chronic Heligmosomoides bakeri infection induced worm expulsion accompanied by a potent type 2 protective immune response. Thus, macrophages represent a unique population of the innate immune cells pivotal to type 2 immunity and a potential therapeutic target in controlling type 2 immunity-mediated inflammatory pathologies.
Nutrition problems in an obesogenic environment

Many claims about nutrition and weight loss stem from small, short‐term studies, incorrect interpretations or distortions of evidence. Our knowledge of what people eat is poor; difficulties include accurate assessment of consumption, the complex composition of foods and individual variations in nutrient bioavailability. When advice appears to be ineffective, poor compliance is a likely explanation. There is no simple solution to obesity, and no fast way to create the energy deficit required for sustainable loss of fat — weight loss requires long‐term commitment to permanently change eating and exercise habits. Valid advice is to reduce overall energy intake, include more vegetables, fruits and wholegrain products and fewer foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt. While mindful of the need to encourage individuals to make changes, the medical profession needs to lead the charge to advocate for changes to our obesogenic environment.
Learning Constrained Generalizable Policies by Demonstration

—Many practical tasks in robotic systems, such as cleaning windows, writing or grasping, are inherently constrained. Learning policies subject to constraints is a challenging problem. We propose a locally weighted constrained projection learning method (LWCPL) that ﬁrst estimates the constraint and then exploits this estimate across multiple observations of the constrained motion to learn an unconstrained policy. The generalization is achieved by projecting the unconstrained policy onto a new, previously unseen, constraint. We do not require any prior knowledge about the task or the policy, so we can use generic regressors to model the task and the policy. However, any prior beliefs about the structure of the motion can be expressed by choosing task-speciﬁc regressors. In particular, we can use robot kinematics and motion priors to improve the accuracy. Our evaluation results show that LWCPL outperform the state of the art method in accuracy of learning the constraints as well as the unconstrained policy, even in noisy conditions. We have validated our method by learning a wiping task from human demonstration on ﬂat surfaces and reproducing it on an unknown curved surface using a force/torque based controller to achieve tool alignment. We show that, despite of the differences between the training and validation scenarios, we learn a policy that still provides the desired wiping motion.
Process analysis in disturbed environment during oscillatory metabolism of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae exhibits sustained oscillations under noise-free controlled conditions in continuous cultures. The regular periodicity of the oscillations and synchrony between different metabolic variables may be described by mathematical models and model-based control. Large bioreactors, however, are prone to disturbances or noise in the feed stream, which may alter the oscillatory behaviour. This aspect has been investigated. Time-dependent Gaussian noise was applied to the substrate feed rate, and it was seen through simulations that while periodicity in the cell mass concentration was lost, other variables were less severely affected. A corollary observation was that the earlier synchrony among different variables, some intra-cellular and some extra-cellular, remained neither complete nor constant, indicating that intra-cellular processes are affected by external disturbances. Thus, deterministic models and control policies based on them may not be suitable in realistic industrial conditions, where intelligent heuristic approaches are more appropriate.
Effects of heat stress on bovine preimplantation embryos produced in vitro

Summer heat stress decreases the pregnancy rate in cattle and has been thought to be associated with the early embryonic death caused by the elevation of maternal body temperature. In vitro cultures have been widely used for the evaluation of effects of heat stress on oocytes, fertilization, preimplantation, and embryonic development. Susceptibility to heat stress is present in developmental stages from oocytes to cleavage-stage (before embryonic gene activation, EGA) embryos, leading to a consequent decrease in developmental competence. On the other hand, advanced-stage embryos such as morula or blastocysts have acquired thermotolerance. The mechanism for the developmental stage-dependent change in thermotolerance is considered to be the accumulation of antioxidants in embryos in response to heat-inducible production of reactive oxygen species. The supplementation of antioxidants to the culture media has been known to neutralize the detrimental effects of heat stress. Besides, EGA could be involved in acquisition of thermotolerance in later stages of embryos. Morulae or blastocysts can repair heat-induced unfolded proteins or prevent DNA damage occurring in processes such as apoptosis. Therefore, embryo transfer (ET) that can bypass the heat-sensitive stage could be a good solution to improve the pregnancy rate under heat stress. However, frozen-thawed ET could not improve the pregnancy rate as expected. Frozen-thawed blastocysts were more sensitive to heat stress and showed less proliferation upon heat exposure, compared to fresh blastocysts. Therefore, further research is required to improve the reduction in pregnancy rates due to summer heat stress.
Estimation of Stress Induces By Malaria Parasite Infection and Effect of Anti-malaria Drugs on Stress Index, Lipid Profile in Uncomplicated Acute Malaria Infected Adult Individuals

Malaria infection is accompanied by increased production of reactive oxygen species which indicates the environment for oxidative stress. Oxidative stress in malaria may originate from several sources including intracellular parasitized erythrocytes and extra-erythrocytes as a result of haemolysis and host response. The aim of this study is to estimate level of stress induces by malaria parasite infection and effect of anti malaria drugs on stress index in uncomplicated acute malaria infected adult individuals. 202 confirmed malaria infected patients were recruited for the study between the ages of 15 – 64 years of both sexes at the general outpatient clinic of the Federal Medical Centre, Ido-Ekiti, Nigeria. 129(63.9%) were males and 73(36.1%) were females. Mean± SD of cortisol, MDA, glucose and HDL in pre anti-malaria drug treatment of age group A were higher compared to other age groups; there is significant difference (p < 0.05) observed in cortisol and glucose. Plasmodium falciparum malaria infection is accompanied by increased production of reactive oxygen species which indicates the environment for oxidative stress. The level of stress induced by malaria parasite is corresponded to the severity of infection and age differences; this could be due to the number of exposure to mosquito bites which increases with age and also increase the level of immunity against malaria infection.
Capecitabine combined with gemcitabine (CapGem) as first‐line treatment in patients with advanced/metastatic biliary tract carcinoma

Biliary tract carcinoma is an aggressive cancer, with median survival rarely exceeding 6 months. There is currently no established palliative standard of care. A Phase II trial was conducted to study a combination of oral capecitabine and gemcitabine (CapGem) as first‐line therapy in patients with advanced and/or metastatic biliary carcinoma.
Clinical Outcomes of Single Incision Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy in the Anglophone Caribbean: A Multi Centre Audit of Regional Hospitals

Introduction: There has been no report on Single-Incision Laparoscopic Surgery (SILS) cholecystectomy outcomes since it was first performed in the Anglophone Caribbean in 2009. Methods: A retrospective audit evaluated the clinical outcomes of SILS cholecystectomies at regional hospitals in the 17 Anglophone Caribbean countries. Any cholecystectomy using a laparoscopic approach in which all instruments were passed through one access incision was considered a SILS cholecystectomy. The following data were collected: patient demographics, indications for operation, intraoperative details, surgeon details, surgical techniques, specialized equipment, conversions, morbidity and mortality. Descriptive statistics were generated using SPSS 12.0. Results: There were 85 SILS cholecystectomies in women at a mean age of 37.4 ± 8.5 years with a mean BMI of 30.9 ± 2.8. There were 59 elective and 26 emergent cases. Specialized access platforms were used in the first 35 cases and reusable instruments were passed directly across fascia in the latter 50 cases. The mean operative time was 62.9 ± 17.9 minutes. There was no mortality, 2 conversions to multi-trocar laparoscopy and 5 minor complications. Ambulatory procedures were performed in 43/71 (60.6%) patients scheduled for elective operations. Conclusion: In the Caribbean setting, SILS cholecystectomy is a feasible and safe alternative to conventional multi-trocar laparoscopic cholecystectomy for gallbladder disease.
Defining T-Cell-Mediated Immune Responses in Rotavirus-Infected Juvenile Rhesus Macaques

ABSTRACT The appearance of virus-specific CD4+ and/or CD8+ T lymphocytes in peripheral blood of captive juvenile rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) was observed following rotavirus infection. These cell-mediated immune responses were measured following experimental or natural infection after rotavirus was isolated from stool specimens of asymptomatic animals. The virus isolated was a new strain of simian rotavirus that we named TUCH (for Tulane University and Cincinnati Children's Hospital). Restimulation of peripheral T lymphocytes by inactivated double- or triple-layered TUCH rotavirus particles containing either VP6 or VP4 and VP7 on their respective surfaces resulted in increased quantities of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and IL-12 in cell culture supernatants. Recall responses to rotavirus by CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes were associated with accumulation of intracellular IL-6 and gamma interferon. Antigen presentation of TUCH rotavirus to lymphocytes was mediated via differentiated cultures of monocyte-derived dendritic (HLA-DR+) cells. This is the first report demonstrating cell-mediated immune responses to rotavirus in nonhuman primates. Further exploration of rhesus macaques in vaccine trials with human rotavirus vaccine candidates is the major objective of future studies.
Transcoronary concentration gradients of circulating microRNAs in heart failure

Circulating levels of microRNAs (miRNAs) are emergent promising biomarkers for cardiovascular disease. Altered expression of miRNAs has been related to heart failure (HF) and cardiac remodelling. We measured the concentration gradients across the coronary circulation to assess their usefulness to diagnose HF of different aetiologies.
The Bright Side of Hematopoiesis: Regulatory Roles of ARID3a/Bright in Human and Mouse Hematopoiesis

ARID3a/Bright is a DNA-binding protein that was originally discovered for its ability to increase immunoglobulin transcription in antigen-activated B cells. It interacts with DNA as a dimer through its ARID, or A/T-rich interacting domain. In association with other proteins, ARID3a increased transcription of the immunoglobulin heavy chain and led to improved chromatin accessibility of the heavy chain enhancer. Constitutive expression of ARID3a in B lineage cells resulted in autoantibody production, suggesting its regulation is important. Abnormal ARID3a expression has also been associated with increased proliferative capacity and malignancy. Roles for ARID3a in addition to interactions with the immunoglobulin locus were suggested by transgenic and knockout mouse models. Over-expression of ARID3a resulted in skewing of mature B cell subsets and altered gene expression patterns of follicular B cells, whereas loss of function resulted in loss of B1 lineage B cells and defects in hematopoiesis. More recent studies showed that loss of ARID3a in adult somatic cells promoted developmental plasticity, alterations in gene expression patterns, and lineage fate decisions. Together, these data suggest new regulatory roles for ARID3a. The genes influenced by ARID3a are likely to play pivotal roles in lineage decisions, highlighting the importance of this understudied transcription factor.
Pain sensitivity is reduced in borderline personality disorder, but not in posttraumatic stress disorder and bulimia nervosa

Background. Several studies revealed reduced pain sensitivity in patients suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD) under baseline and stress conditions. To establish whether these findings are specific for BPD, we compared pain thresholds in patients with BPD, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bulimia nervosa, and healthy controls. Methods. The study included 76 female subjects: 16 patients with BPD, 16 patients with PTSD, 20 patients with bulimia nervosa and 24 healthy controls. Heat and cold pain thresholds were assessed under baseline and stress conditions, using a contact thermode. Mental stress was induced by the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task. Results. Under baseline conditions, pain thresholds in patients with BPD were significantly higher compared to healthy controls. Patients with PTSD and bulimia nervosa did not show significant differences in pain thresholds compared to healthy controls. Under stress conditions, the difference between BPD patients and healthy controls became even more prominent, whereas the results in the other patient groups remained insignificant. Conclusions. Our results support the hypothesis that reduced pain sensitivity is a prominent feature of BPD, which may differentiate this disorder from other stress-related psychiatric conditions.
Determinants of Cost Efficiency and Productivity Growth of the Indonesian Insurance Industry

This paper provides new empirical evidences on determinants of cost efficiency and productivity performance of life and property-casualty insurance firms in Indonesia. Data envelopment analysis DEA method is used to investigate the cost efficiency and Total Factor Productivity TFP among a balanced panel of 118 insurance firms 35 life insurance and 83 property-casualty insurance over the period of 2006-2008. Results show that on average, insurers were operating at a low level of cost efficiency. However, by constructing the Malmquist Indices, this research finds a positive productivity change for the two types of insurance firms due to an increasing use of technological advances. Furthermore, the paper estimates the influence of some environmental variables on the cost efficiency using a multiple regression analysis. New findings indicate significant negative effects among types of insurance, size, and solvency on the firm's cost efficiency. Meanwhile, market share and ownership structure have positive but insignificant effects on the firms' efficiency. These findings are additional empirical evidences for the efficiency analysis of life and property-casualty insurance in a developing country.