Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probabilistic relational verification for cryptographic implementations

Relational program logics have been used for mechanizing formal proofs of various cryptographic constructions. With an eye towards scaling these successes towards end-to-end security proofs for implementations of distributed systems, we present RF*, a relational extension of F*, a general-purpose higher-order stateful programming language with a verification system based on refinement types. The distinguishing feature of F* is a relational Hoare logic for a higher-order, stateful, probabilistic language. Through careful language design, we adapt the F* typechecker to generate both classic and relational verification conditions, and to automatically discharge their proofs using an SMT solver. Thus, we are able to benefit from the existing features of F*, including its abstraction facilities for modular reasoning about program fragments. We evaluate RF* experimentally by programming a series of cryptographic constructions and protocols, and by verifying their security properties, ranging from information flow to unlinkability, integrity, and privacy. Moreover, we validate the design of RF* by formalizing in Coq a core probabilistic λ calculus and a relational refinement type system and proving the soundness of the latter against a denotational semantics of the probabilistic lambda λ calculus.
Cinemicrographic study of tissue cell cultures infected with Shigella flexneri.

HeLa S3 and Henle's intestinal epithelial cells infected with virulent and avirulent strains of Shigella flexneri bacilli were studied by phase contrast, time-lapse cinemicrography. Virulent Shigella bacilli were found to attach to the surface of the cells evoking vigorous ruffling movement of the cell membrane. This was followed by the formation of pinocytotic vesicles and incorporation of bacilli into cells. In contrast, avirulent bacilli never became attached to cultured cells. Intracellular Shigella bacilli moved conspicuously independent of the movement of cellular organella and were seen within microfibrillar protrusions from the surface of the host cell. The bacilli exhibited polarity while moving and this movement was inhibited or halted by tetracycline. The nature of the movement of intracellular Shigella bacilli is discussed.
In situ Evaluation of Different Remineralization Periods to Decrease Brushing Abrasion of Demineralized Enamel

The aim of the present in situ study was to evaluate the effect of different periods of intraoral remineralization to decrease the susceptibility of previously demineralized enamel against toothbrushing abrasion. Six human enamel specimens (A–F) were recessed in the buccal aspects of each of eight intraoral appliances which were worn for 21 days by 8 panelists. Demineralization of the samples was performed twice a day extraorally in the acidic beverage Sprite Light for 90 s. Subsequently, the enamel specimens were brushed at different times. Specimen A was brushed immediately after the demineralization. The remaining samples B–E were brushed after the intraoral appliances had been worn for various periods of remineralization: specimen B, 10 min; C, 20 min; D, 30 min and E, 60 min, respectively. Specimen F was only demineralized and remineralized, but not brushed. After 21 days, enamel wear was measured with a laser profilometer. The following values (mean ± standard deviation) were obtained: specimen A, 6.78±2.71 µm; B, 5.47±3.39 µm; C, 6.06±3.18 µm; D, 5.43±2.58 µm; E 4.78±2.57 µm, and F 0.66±1.11 µm. Analysis of variance revealed a significant influence of remineralization period on abrasive wear. However, even after a remineralization period of 60 min the wear was significantly increased as compared to the demineralized, but not brushed control. It is concluded that (1) abrasion resistance of softened enamel increases with remineralization period and (2) at least 60 min should elapse before toothbrushing after an erosive attack.
Spores of Clostridium difficile Clinical Isolates Display a Diverse Germination Response to Bile Salts

Clostridium difficile spores play a pivotal role in the transmission of infectious diarrhoea, but in order to cause disease spores must complete germination and return to vegetative cell growth. While the mechanisms of spore germination are well understood in Bacillus, knowledge of C. difficile germination remains limited. Previous studies have shown that bile salts and amino acids play an important role in regulating the germination response of C. difficile spores. Taurocholate, in combination with glycine, can stimulate germination, whereas chenodeoxycholate has been shown to inhibit spore germination in a C. difficile clinical isolate. Our recent studies of C. difficile sporulation characteristics have since pointed to substantial diversity among different clinical isolates. Consequently, in this study we investigated how the germination characteristics of different C. difficile isolates vary in response to bile salts. By analysing 29 isolates, including 16 belonging to the BI/NAP1/027 type, we show that considerable diversity exists in both the rate and extent of C. difficile germination in response to rich medium containing both taurocholate and glycine. Strikingly, we also show that although a potent inhibitor of germination for some isolates, chenodeoxycholate does not inhibit the germination, or outgrowth, of all C. difficile strains. Finally, we provide evidence that components of rich media may induce the germination of C. difficile spores, even in the absence of taurocholate. Taken together, these data suggest that the mechanisms of C. difficile spore germination in response to bile salts are complex and require further study. Furthermore, we stress the importance of studying multiple isolates in the future when analysing the nutrients or chemicals that either stimulate or inhibit C. difficile spore germination.
Coronary neutrophil extracellular trap burden and deoxyribonuclease activity in ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome are predictors of ST-segment resolution and infarct size.

RATIONALE Mechanisms of coronary occlusion in ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome are poorly understood. We have previously reported that neutrophil (polymorphonuclear cells [PMNs]) accumulation in culprit lesion site (CLS) thrombus is a predictor of cardiovascular outcomes. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to characterize PMN activation at the CLS. We examined the relationships between CLS neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), bacterial components as triggers of NETosis, activity of endogenous deoxyribonuclease, ST-segment resolution, and infarct size. METHODS AND RESULTS We analyzed coronary thrombectomies from 111 patients with ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention. Thrombi were characterized by immunostaining, flow cytometry, bacterial profiling, and immunometric and enzymatic assays. Compared with femoral PMNs, CLS PMNs were highly activated and formed aggregates with platelets. Nucleosomes, double-stranded DNA, neutrophil elastase, myeloperoxidase, and myeloid-related protein 8/14 were increased in CLS plasma, and NETs contributed to the scaffolds of particulate coronary thrombi. Copy numbers of Streptococcus species correlated positively with dsDNA. Thrombus NET burden correlated positively with infarct size and negatively with ST-segment resolution, whereas CLS deoxyribonuclease activity correlated negatively with infarct size and positively with ST-segment resolution. Recombinant deoxyribonuclease accelerated the lysis of coronary thrombi ex vivo. CONCLUSIONS PMNs are highly activated in ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome and undergo NETosis at the CLS. Coronary NET burden and deoxyribonuclease activity are predictors of ST-segment resolution and myocardial infarct size.
Utility of Thoracic Computed Tomography after Blunt Trauma: When is Chest Radiograph Enough?

The purpose of this study was to identify the utility of thoracic computed tomography (TCT) in blunt trauma patients with a normal admission chest radiograph (CXR). A retrospective study was performed of 200 consecutive blunt trauma patients who received both CXR and TCT. One hundred and forty-three patients had a normal screening CXR; 36 of these patients (25%) had an abnormal TCT. TCT changed the management in only nine of these patients (6%): two required serial CXR for occult pneumothorax, four received additional imaging of the spine, and three were admitted to a monitored bed. Fifty-seven patients had an abnormal initial CXR. Of these, 41 (81%) had an abnormal TCT. TCT changed management in 21 (37%) of these patients: two aortic injuries identified, 12 aortic injuries excluded, two chest tubes placed, one patient taken to the Operating Room, and four patients required further diagnostic evaluation. TCT was significantly more likely to alter management in patients with an abnormal admission CXR (6% vs 37%, P < 0.001). TCT is of limited utility in patients with a normal admission CXR. A diagnostic strategy of obtaining TCT only in patients with abnormal CXR or high-risk mechanism of injury can result in significant cost savings without adversely affecting patient outcomes.
Parameter bounds under misspecified models

A class of parameter bounds emerges as a consequence of the covariance inequality, i.e. Cauchy-Schwarz inequality for expectations. The expectation operator forms an inner product space. Flexibility in the choice of expectation integrand and measure for integration exists, however, to establish a class of parameter bounds under a general form of model misspecifi-cation, i.e. distribution mismatch. The Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) primarily, and secondarily the Barankin, Hammersley-Chapman-Robbins, and Bhattacharyya bounds under misspecification are considered. Huber's sandwich covariance is easily established as the misspecified CRB, and a generalization of the Slepian-Bangs formula under misspecification is provided.
Influence of the hospital environment and presence of the physician on the white-coat effect

Objective: To determine the separate contribution of the physician and the hospital environment to differences between home (HBP) and office BP (OBP). Methods: For 3 consecutive days, 65 hypertensive patients measured their HBP. OBP was determined with the same device by the physician. A higher OBP than HBP was regarded as white-coat effect (WCE), whereas lower OBP than HBP was regarded masked effect. OBP was measured automatically before, during and after the presence of the physician. The physician effect was the BP rise caused by the entrance of physician. The WCE minus the physician effect was regarded the hospital's contribution to the BP differences (hospital effect). We assessed the magnitudes of the hospital effect and the physician effect in determining the WCE. Furthermore, we assessed the correlation of these BP phenomena with each other, and with clinical variables. Results: The WCE consisted of 4.6/−1.7 ± 9.9/10.9 mmHg hospital effect and of 4.4/3.4 ± 6.6/3.3 mmHg PE. The masked effect consisted of a substantially larger hospital effect (19.6/9.4 ± 12.7/9.5 mmHg) than physician effect (4.6/3.0 ± 6.4/3.9 mmHg). Physician effect did not correlate with systolic or diastolic WCE or masked effect (r = −0.05 to 0.08, P > 0.39). In regression analysis, age, baseline mean arterial pressure and BMI were not significantly associated with WCE (all P values >0.4). Conclusion: BP differences between home and office can largely be attributed to the hospital environment rather than to the entrance of the physician. The physician-related BP effect is not related to differences of HBP and OBP.
Maturation of the mouse oocyte in vitro. I. Sequence and timing of nuclear progression.

Liberation of mouse follicular oocytes into a chemically defined Krebs-Ringer salt solution with pyruvate is followed by resumption of meiosis and completion of the first maturation division. Examination of fixed whole mount preparations by light microscopy reveals that 90–95% of the germinal vesicles breakdown and proceed at least as far as metaphase I where about 5% arrest; the remainder go on to metaphase II. Three stages of chromatin condensation from the dictyate (germinal vesicle) stage are seen, first with filament shortening forming a chromatin lattice-work followed by condensation about the nuclear and nucleolar periphery and finally the appearance of discrete bivalents. Just prior to appearance of the spindle, the bivalents are circularly arranged and reach their maximum shortness. Spindle formation is followed by prometaphase I, metaphase I, anaphase I, telophase I with first polar body formation, the chromatin mass stage in which the chromatin assumes a half-moon shape, prometaphase II and finally metaphase II, the stage at which oocytes arrest both in vitro and in vivo. Examination at one-two hour intervals reveals first meiotic spindle formation beginning after three hours of culture and metaphase I first appearing at 4 and one-half hours. After nine hours of culture the majority of the oocytes are in metaphase I and anaphase I first appears at this time. There appears to be a six hour asynchrony in this division, some germinal vesicles requiring six hours to breakdown and the metaphase II stage accumulating between 11 and 17 hours of culture.
Instability of Return Prediction Models

This study examines evidence of instability in models of ex post predictable components in stock returns related to structural breaks in the coefficients of state variables such as the lagged dividend yield, short interest rate, term spread and default premium. We estimate linear models of excess returns for a set of international equity indices and test for stability of the estimated regression parameters. There is evidence of instability for the vast majority of countries. We then attempt to characterize the timing and nature of the breaks. Breaks do not generally appear to be uniform in time: different countries experience breaks at different times. We do identify a contemporaneous break for the US and UK indices in 1974. There is also some evidence of a break for a cluster of European nations during the 1978-1982 period. These breaks may relate to the oil price shock of 1974 and the formation of the European Monetary System in 1979. For the majority of intenational indices, the predictable component in stock returns appears to have diminished following the most recent break. We assess the adequecy of the break tests and model selection procedures in a set of Monte Carlo experiments.
Comparing automatic rich transcription for Portuguese, Spanish and English Broadcast News

This paper describes and evaluates a language independent approach for automatically enriching the speech recognition output with punctuation marks and capitalization information. The two tasks are treated as two classification problems, using a maximum entropy modeling approach, which achieves results within state-of-the-art. The language independence of the approach is attested with experiments conducted on Portuguese, Spanish and English Broadcast News corpora. This paper provides the first comparative study between the three languages, concerning these tasks.
Efficacy of Sucrose to Reduce Pain in Premature Infants during Eye Examinations for Retinopathy of Prematurity

BACKGROUND: Eye examinations for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) are painful to the neonate. The use of topical anesthetic for eye examinations to evaluate ROP is routine in our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), but does not completely suppress painful responses. Sweet solutions have been shown to reduce procedural pain in newborns. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether the addition of sucrose 24% to topical anesthetic improves procedural pain control during the ROP eye examination. METHODS: Neonates born at ⩽30 weeks' gestation were included in this placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover study. Patients were randomly assigned to receive treatment with either proparacaine HCl ophthalmic solution 0.5% plus 2 mL of sucrose 24% or proparacaine HCl ophthalmic solution 0.5% plus 2 mL of sterile water (placebo) prior to an eye examination. In a subsequent eye examination, each patient received the alternate treatment. Oral sucrose and sterile water were prepared in the pharmacy in identical syringes, and physicians, nurses, and pharmacists in the NICU were blinded to the treatment given. Pain was measured using the Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) scoring system, which measures both physical and physiologic measures of pain, and the scores were simultaneously assessed by 2 study nurses. PIPP scores were recorded 1 and 5 minutes before and after the eye examination and during initial placement of the eye speculum. The same ophthalmologist performed all eye examinations. Several different definitions of a pain response were investigated. RESULTS: Twenty-three infants were studied, with 12 receiving sucrose and 11 receiving placebo as the first treatment. For 3 of the 5 definitions of pain response, patients experienced significantly less pain at speculum insertion with sucrose than with placebo. After the ROP examination, pain responses were similar with either sucrose or placebo. CONCLUSIONS: Oral sucrose may reduce the immediate pain response in premature infants undergoing eye examination for ROP.
Scheduling parameter sweep applications on global Grids: a deadline and budget constrained cost–time optimization algorithm

Computational Grids and peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks enable the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed resources for solving large‐scale problems in science, engineering, and commerce. The management and composition of resources and services for scheduling applications, however, becomes a complex undertaking. We have proposed a computational economy framework for regulating the supply of and demand for resources and allocating them for applications based on the users' quality‐of‐service requirements. The framework requires economy‐driven deadline‐ and budget‐constrained (DBC) scheduling algorithms for allocating resources to application jobs in such a way that the users' requirements are met. In this paper, we propose a new scheduling algorithm, called the DBC cost–time optimization scheduling algorithm, that aims not only to optimize cost, but also time when possible. The performance of the cost–time optimization scheduling algorithm has been evaluated through extensive simulation and empirical studies for deploying parameter sweep applications on global Grids. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Neurophysiological substrates of stroke patients with motor imagery-based brain-computer interface training

We investigated the efficacy of motor imagery-based Brain Computer Interface (MI-based BCI) training for eight stroke patients with severe upper extremity paralysis using longitudinal clinical assessments. The results were compared with those of a control group (n = 7) that only received FES (Functional Electrical Stimulation) treatment besides conventional therapies. During rehabilitation training, changes in the motor function of the upper extremity and in the neurophysiologic electroencephalographic (EEG) were observed for two groups. After 8 weeks of training, a significant improvement in the motor function of the upper extremity for the BCI group was confirmed (p < 0.05 for ARAT), simultaneously with the activation of bilateral cerebral hemispheres. Additionally, event-related desynchronization (ERD) of the affected sensorimotor cortexes (SMCs) was significantly enhanced when compared to the pretraining course, which was only observed in the BCI group (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the activation of affected SMC and parietal lobe were determined to contribute to motor function recovery (p < 0.05). In brief, our findings demonstrate that MI-based BCI training can enhance the motor function of the upper extremity for stroke patients by inducing the optimal cerebral motor functional reorganization.
Oral versus Nasal Route for Placing Feeding Tubes: No Effect on Hypoxemia and Bradycardia in Infants with Apnea of Prematurity

Background: Raised upper airway resistance may be involved in apnea of prematurity (AOP). Objectives: To determine the effects of an oral versus a nasal gastric tube on episodes of hypoxemia and bradycardia in infants with AOP. Methods: In a randomized controlled cross-over trial, 32 infants (median gestational age 29 (range 24–31) weeks, postmenstrual age at study 32 (range 30–35) weeks) with the need for tube feeding and symptoms of AOP underwent a 24-hour recording of breathing movements, nasal airflow, heart rate, pulse oximeter saturation and pulse waveforms. A 5-Fr feeding tube was placed orally or nasally for 12 h each, the position selected first was randomly assigned. When the feeding tube was placed nasally, always the smaller nostril was selected. Each infant acted as his/her own control. Recordings were analyzed for the summed rate of bradycardia and desaturation (heart rate <2/3 of baseline, saturation ≤80%). Results: The route of placing the feeding tube had no significant effect on the summed rate of bradycardia and desaturation (nasal route: median 1.6, CI 0.8–1.9; oral route: median 1.0, CI 0.9–1.6, p = 0.25). Conclusion: We could not confirm an advantage of placing a feeding tube orally in these infants with AOP, as the oral route did not improve their symptoms of AOP. Possible explanations include: (i) the increase in nasal airway resistance by the 5-Fr nasogastric tube, inserted into the smaller nostril, is too small to have any effect on AOP; (ii) any benefit of the oral route is neutralized by the negative effects of an enhanced vagal stimulation, or (iii) study duration was too short to detect a difference in AOP.
Bat Algorithm with Self-adaptive Mutation: A Comparative Study on Numerical Optimization Problems

mimic the collective intelligent behavior found in swarms of insects and animals. Many algorithms have been proposed that simulate these intelligent swarm models to solve a wide range of scientific and engineering problems. The Bat algorithm is one of the most recent swarm intelligence based algorithms that simulates the intelligent hunting behavior of the bats found in nature. In this paper, we present an improved self-adaptive Bat algorithm (BA-SAM) for the problem of global numerical optimization over continuous domains. We have introduced two improved solution search equations — the BA/Normal/1 and BA/Cauchy/1 schemes. We have also used a selection probability to control the frequency of employing BA/Normal/1 and BA/Cauchy/1, which leads to a new self-adaptive search mechanism for the Bat algorithm. Experiments are conducted on both unimodal and multimodal continuous benchmark functions. The results demonstrate the improved performance of the BA-SAM algorithm in comparison to the original Bat algorithm and another recently introduced improved variant of the Bat algorithm.