Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, intestinal permeability, endotoxaemia, and tumour necrosis factor α in the pathogenesis of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

BACKGROUND Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth may contribute to the development of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, perhaps by increasing intestinal permeability and promoting the absorption of endotoxin or other enteric bacterial products. AIMS To investigate the prevalence of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, increased intestinal permeability, elevated endotoxin, and tumour necrosis factor α (TNF-α) levels in patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and in control subjects. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twenty two patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and 23 control subjects were studied. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth was assessed by a combined14C-d-xylose and lactulose breath test. Intestinal permeability was assessed by a dual lactulose-rhamnose sugar test. Serum endotoxin levels were determined using the limulus amoebocyte lysate assay and TNF-α levels using an ELISA. RESULTS Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth was present in 50% of patients with non-alcoholic steatosis and 22% of control subjects (p=0.048). Mean TNF-α levels in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis patients and control subjects were 14.2 and 7.5 pg/ml, respectively (p=0.001). Intestinal permeability and serum endotoxin levels were similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis have a higher prevalence of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, as assessed by the14C-d-xylose-lactulose breath test, and higher TNF-α levels in comparison with control subjects. This is not accompanied by increased intestinal permeability or elevated endotoxin levels.
Comparison Study on Changes of Antigenicities of Egg Ovalbumin Irradiated by Electron Beam or X-Ray

This study was conducted to compare the effects of two forms of radiation (electron and X-ray; generated by an electron beam accelerator) on the conformation and antigenic properties of hen’s egg albumin, ovalbumin (OVA), which was used as a model protein. OVA solutions (2.0 mg/mL) were individually irradiated by electron beam or X-ray at the absorbed doses of 0 (control), 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 kGy. No differences between the two forms of radiation on the structural properties of OVA were shown by spectrometric and electrophoretic analyses. The turbidity of OVA solution increased and the main OVA bands on polyacrylamide gels disappeared after irradiation, regardless of the radiation source. In competitive indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, OVA samples irradiated by electron beam or X-ray showed different immunological responses in reactions with monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies (immunoglobulin G) produced against non-irradiated OVA. The results indicate that electron beam irradiation and X-ray irradiation produced different patterns of structural changes to the OVA molecule.
Inhibition of Mycoplasma pneumoniae Hemadsorption and Adherence to Respiratory Epithelium by Antibodies to a Membrane Protein

Antiserum and purified immunoglobulin directed against Mycoplasma pneumoniae membrane protein P1 were examined for their influence on mycoplasma viability, metabolism, and cytadsorption. Anti-P1 immunoglobulin inhibited adherence of M. pneumoniae to hamster tracheal rings in vitro by up to 80% and inhibited hemadsorption by greater than 90%. Cytadsorption was also inhibited by anti-P1 Fab fragments. Anti-P1 antibodies had no effect on M. pneumoniae viability or metabolism. The data indicate that anti-P1 antibody obstructs the interaction of M. pneumoniae adhesin P1 with its host receptors.
On the performance of bisecting K-means and PDDP

problem is known as bisecting divisive clustering. Note that by recursively using a divisive bisecting clustering procedure, the dataset can be partitioned into any given number of clusters. Interestingly enough, the clusters so-obtained are structured as a hierarchical binary tree (or a binary taxonomy). This is the reason why the bisecting divisive approach is very attractive in many applications (e.g. in document-retrieval/indexing problems – see e.g. [17] and references cited therein). Among the divisive clustering algorithms which have been proposed in the literature in the last two decades ([13]), in this paper we will focus on two techniques: • the bisecting K-means algorithm; • the Principal Direction Divisive Partitioning (PDDP) algorithm.
TP53 mutations are frequent in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia cases negative for recurrent fusion genes and correlate with poor response to induction therapy

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a disease of either B-cell (80–85%) or T-cell (20–25%) derivation. Several molecular aberrations (i.e. BCR-ABL1, MLL/AFF1, SIL/TAL1 and E2A/PBX1 ) confer an overall poor outcome. [1][1],[2][2] However, a proportion of patients do not carry known genetic
Kinetic Stabilization of the α-Synuclein Protofibril by a Dopamine-α-Synuclein Adduct

The substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease (PD) is depleted of dopaminergic neurons and contains fibrillar Lewy bodies comprising primarily α-synuclein. We screened a library to identify drug-like molecules to probe the relation between neurodegeneration and α-synuclein fibrilization. All but one of 15 fibril inhibitors were catecholamines related to dopamine. The inhibitory activity of dopamine depended on its oxidative ligation to α-synuclein and was selective for the protofibril-to-fibril conversion, causing accumulation of the α-synuclein protofibril. Adduct formation provides an explanation for the dopaminergic selectivity of α-synuclein–associated neurotoxicity in PD and has implications for current and future PD therapeutic and diagnostic strategies.
Stability of the Integral Convolution of k-Uniformly Convex and k-Starlike Functions

Abstract For a constant k ∈ [0, ∞) a normalized function f, analytic in the unit disk, is said to be k-uniformly convex if Re (1 + zf″(z)/f′(z)) > k|zf″(z)/f′(z)| at any point in the unit disk. The class of k-uniformly convex functions is denoted k-ucv (cf. [Kanas, Wiśniowska, J. Comput. Appl. Math. 105: 327–336, 1999]). The function g is said to be k-starlike if g(z) = zf′(z) and f ∈ k-ucv. For analytic functions f, g, where f(z) = z + a 2 z 2 + ⋯ and g(z) = z + b 2 z 2 + ⋯, the integral convolution is defined as follows: In this note a problem of stability of the integral convolution of k-uniformly convex and k-starlike functions is investigated.
Reduction in the Incidence of Acute Myocardial Infarction Associated With a Citywide Smoking Ordinance

Background— Secondhand smoke exposure increases the risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). One study (Helena, Mont) examined the issue and found a decrease in AMI associated with a smoke-free ordinance. We sought to determine the impact of a smoke-free ordinance on AMI admission rates in another geographically isolated community (Pueblo, Colo). Methods and Results— We assessed AMI hospitalizations in Pueblo during a 3-year period, 1.5 years before and 1.5 years after implementation of a smoke-free ordinance. We compared the AMI hospitalization rates among individuals residing within city limits, the area where the ordinance applied, versus those outside city limits. We also compared AMI rates during this time period with another geographically isolated but proximal community, El Paso County, Colo, that did not have an ordinance. A total of 855 patients were hospitalized with a diagnosis of primary AMI in Pueblo between January 1, 2002, and December 31, 2004. A reduction in AMI hospitalizations was observed in the period after the ordinance among Pueblo city limit residents (relative risk [RR]=0.73, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.63 to 0.85). No significant changes in AMI rates were observed among residents outside city limits (RR=0.85, 95% CI 0.63 to 1.16) or in El Paso County during the same period (RR=0.97, 95% CI 0.89 to 1.06). The reduction in AMI rate within Pueblo differed significantly from changes in the external control group (El Paso County) even after adjustment for seasonal trends (P<0.001). Conclusions— A public ordinance reducing exposure to secondhand smoke was associated with a decrease in AMI hospitalizations in Pueblo, Colo, which supports previous data from a smaller study.
Tear fi lm stability : A review

Tear film stability can be assessed via a number of tools designed for clinical as well as research purposes. These techniques can give us insights into the tear film, and allow assessment of conditions that can lead to dry eye symptoms, and in severe cases, to significant ocular surface damage and deterioration of vision. Understanding what drives tear film instability and its assessment is also crucial for evaluating existing and new therapies. This review examines various techniques that are used to assess tear film instability: evaluation of tear break-up time and non-invasive break-time; topographic and interferometric techniques; confocal microscopic methods; aberrometry; and visual function tests. It also describes possible contributions of different tear film components; namely meibomian lipids, ocular mucins and proteins, and factors such as age, contact lens wear, ocular surgery and environmental stimuli, that may influence tear film instability. 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Can DREs Provide Long-Lasting Security? The Case of Return-Oriented Programming and the AVC Advantage

A secure voting machine design must withstand new attacks devised throughout its multi-decade service lifetime. In this paper, we give a case study of the longterm security of a voting machine, the Sequoia AVC Advantage, whose design dates back to the early 80s. The AVC Advantage was designed with promising security features: its software is stored entirely in read-only memory and the hardware refuses to execute instructions fetched from RAM. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that an attacker can induce the AVC Advantage to misbehave in arbitrary ways--including changing the outcome of an election--by means of a memory cartridge containing a specially-formatted payload. Our attack makes essential use of a recently-invented exploitation technique called return-oriented programming, adapted here to the Z80 processor. In return-oriented programming, short snippets of benign code already present in the system are combined to yield malicious behavior. Our results demonstrate the relevance of recent ideas from systems security to voting machine research, and vice versa. We had no access either to source code or documentation beyond that available on Sequoia's web site. We have created a complete vote-stealing demonstration exploit and verified that it works correctly on the actual hardware.
Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head?

Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion. We propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a person’s belief about whether willpower is a limited resource. Study 1 found that individual differences in lay theories about willpower moderate ego-depletion effects: People who viewed the capacity for self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting experience. Study 2 replicated the effect, manipulating lay theories about willpower. Study 3 addressed questions about the mechanism underlying the effect. Study 4, a longitudinal field study, found that theories about willpower predict change in eating behavior, procrastination, and self-regulated goal striving in depleting circumstances. Taken together, the findings suggest that reduced self-control after a depleting task or during demanding periods may reflect people’s beliefs about the availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion.
An Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm Based on the Nearest Neighbor Node Choosing Rules and the Crossover Operator

The ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO) has a powerful capacity to find out solutions to combinatorial optimization problems, but it still has two defects, namely, it is slow in convergence speed and is prone to falling in the local optimal solution. Against the deficiencies of this algorithm, in this study we proposed an ACO based on basic ACO algorithm based on well-distributed on the initiation, the nearest neighbor node choosing rules and with crossover operator. In the initiation of the algorithm, the convergence speed of the ACO is increased by distributing the ant colony evenly in all the cities and adopting the nearest neighbor choosing node rule and making crossover computation among better individual ants at the end of each round of cycle when each ant chooses the next city. The experiment results indicate that the ACO proposed in this study is valid.
Phakic Posterior Chamber Intraocular Lenses

In an attempt to reduce the incidence of potential problems with phakic anterior chamber intraocular lenses, especially such sequelae as lens contact with the corneal endothelium and pupil ovalization, Fyodorov and coworkers introduced a phakic posterior chamber intraocular lens (PPCIOL) made of silicone, to be inserted between the iris and the crystalline lens. Fyodorov performed the first implantation of this silicone design IOL in a phakic eye to correct high-degree myopia in August 1986. The first models were, in fact, pupil-fixated lenses (mushroom lenses; Fig 1). To our knowledge, they were implanted in the Soviet Union from 1986 to 1990. These lenses were designed to be fixated in the ciliary sulcus but, as the optic had the shape of a collar-button with a small diameter (3.2 mm in the first model) and protruded into the anterior chamber, the pupil could not constrict anterior to the lens optic. The optic and haptics were connected by a bridge through the pupillary opening. This Fyodorov IOL was modified by Chiron-Adatomed (Munich, Germany) under the guidance of Zuev and Fechner (Fig 2). The Chiron-
Determinant Sums for Undirected Hamiltonicity

We present a Monte Carlo algorithm for Hamilton city detection in an $n$-vertex undirected graph running in $O^*(1.657^{n})$ time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first super polynomial improvement on the worst case runtime for the problem since the $O^*(2^n)$ bound established for TSP almost fifty years ago (Bellman 1962, Held and Karp 1962). It answers in part the first open problem in Woe ginger's 2003 survey on exact algorithms for NP-hard problems. For bipartite graphs, we improve the bound to $O^*(1.414^{n})$ time. Both the bipartite and the general algorithm can be implemented to use space polynomial in $n$. We combine several recently resurrected ideas to get the results. Our main technical contribution is a new reduction inspired by the algebraic sieving method for $k$-Path (Koutis ICALP 2008, Williams IPL 2009). We introduce the Labeled Cycle Cover Sum in which we are set to count weighted arc labeled cycle covers over a finite field of characteristic two. We reduce Hamiltonicity to Labeled Cycle Cover Sum and apply the determinant summation technique for Exact Set Covers (Bj\"orklund STACS 2010) to evaluate it.
Association of SNP Haplotypes at the Myostatin Gene with Muscular Hypertrophy in Sheep

: The myostatin gene of seven important meat (Beltex (Australia), BeltexxHuyang (Fl), Meat and Multi-Prolific Chinese Merino Fine Wool, Meat Chinese Merino Fine Wool and Dorper (South Africa)) and non-meat (Huyang and Kazak) sheep breeds was analyzed to study the genetic basis of muscular hypertrophy (double muscling) phenotype in sheep. SNPs, four in regulatory regions and several in the introns in the myostatin gene, were identified, and the former four SNPs were used for further studies. Twelve haplotypes were predicted by PHASE program, of which four main haplotypes (1, 3, 7, 9) were present in 90% of the 364 sheep in the study. Haplotypes 1-4 were mainly present in meat breeds while haplotypes 7 and 9 dominated the non-meat breeds. The association between haplotypes and average daily gain (ADG) was analyzed among 116 sheep with production data, Haplo2 (CGAA) and Haplo8 (TGAA) were identified to have significant (p<0.05) effect on ADG by the model (JMP 5.1 software) taking into account the effects of breed, family background, haplotype, birth weight and sex. ADG of these haplotype groups also correlated well (r = 0.82) with hypertrophic phenotype scores. In conclusion, the mutations -956 (T→C), -41 (C→A) and 6223 (G→A) involved in Haplo2 and 8 may be associated with the double-muscling trait by influencing myostatin function and be suitable markers in selecting meat sheep.
Speech recognition with speech synthesis models by marginalising over decision tree leaves

There has been increasing interest in the use of unsupervised adaptation for the personalisation of text-to-speech (TTS) voices, particularly in the context of speech-to-speech translation. This requires that we are able to generate adaptation transforms from the output of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. An approach that utilises unified ASR and TTS models would seem to offer an ideal mechanism for the application of unsupervised adaptation to TTS since transforms could be shared between ASR and TTS. Such unified models should use a common set of parameters. A major barrier to such parameter sharing is the use of differing contexts in ASR and TTS. In this paper we propose a simple approach that generates ASR models from a trained set of TTS models by marginalising over the TTS contexts that are not used by ASR. We present preliminary results of our proposed method on a large vocabulary speech recognition task and provide insights into future directions of this work.
Through Wall Radar Classification of Human Micro-Doppler Using Singular Value Decomposition Analysis

The ability to detect the presence as well as classify the activities of individuals behind visually obscuring structures is of significant benefit to police, security and emergency services in many situations. This paper presents the analysis from a series of experimental results generated using a through-the-wall (TTW) Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) C-Band radar system named Soprano. The objective of this analysis was to classify whether an individual was carrying an item in both hands or not using micro-Doppler information from a FMCW sensor. The radar was deployed at a standoff distance, of approximately 0.5 m, outside a residential building and used to detect multiple people walking within a room. Through the application of digital filtering, it was shown that significant suppression of the primary wall reflection is possible, significantly enhancing the target signal to clutter ratio. Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) signal processing techniques were then applied to the micro-Doppler signatures from different individuals. Features from the SVD information have been used to classify whether the person was carrying an item or walking free handed. Excellent performance of the classifier was achieved in this challenging scenario with accuracies up to 94%, suggesting that future through wall radar sensors may have the ability to reliably recognize many different types of activities in TTW scenarios using these techniques.
Assessment of Safety and Functional Efficacy of Stem Cell-Based Therapeutic Approaches Using Retinal Degenerative Animal Models

Dysfunction and death of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and or photoreceptors can lead to irreversible vision loss. The eye represents an ideal microenvironment for stem cell-based therapy. It is considered an “immune privileged” site, and the number of cells needed for therapy is relatively low for the area of focused vision (macula). Further, surgical placement of stem cell-derived grafts (RPE, retinal progenitors, and photoreceptor precursors) into the vitreous cavity or subretinal space has been well established. For preclinical tests, assessments of stem cell-derived graft survival and functionality are conducted in animal models by various noninvasive approaches and imaging modalities. In vivo experiments conducted in animal models based on replacing photoreceptors and/or RPE cells have shown survival and functionality of the transplanted cells, rescue of the host retina, and improvement of visual function. Based on the positive results obtained from these animal experiments, human clinical trials are being initiated. Despite such progress in stem cell research, ethical, regulatory, safety, and technical difficulties still remain a challenge for the transformation of this technique into a standard clinical approach. In this review, the current status of preclinical safety and efficacy studies for retinal cell replacement therapies conducted in animal models will be discussed.
Logical vs. physical file system backup

As file systems grow in size, ensuring that data is safely stored becomes more and more difficult. Historically, file system backup strategies have focused on logical backup where files are written in their entirety to the backup media. An alternative is physical backup where the disk blocks that make up the file system are written to the backup media. This paper compares logical and physical backup strategies in large file systems. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches, and conclude by showing that while both can achieve good performance, physical backup and restore can achieve much higher throughput while consuming less CPU. In addition, physical backup and restore is much more capable of scaling its performance as more devices are added to a system.
Neuronal mechanisms underlying differences in spatial resolution between darks and lights in human vision

Artists and astronomers noticed centuries ago that humans perceive dark features in an image differently from light ones; however, the neuronal mechanisms underlying these dark/light asymmetries remained unknown. Based on computational modeling of neuronal responses, we have previously proposed that such perceptual dark/light asymmetries originate from a luminance/response saturation within the ON retinal pathway. Consistent with this prediction, here we show that stimulus conditions that increase ON luminance/response saturation (e.g., dark backgrounds) or its effect on light stimuli (e.g., optical blur) impair the perceptual discrimination and salience of light targets more than dark targets in human vision. We also show that, in cat visual cortex, the magnitude of the ON luminance/response saturation remains relatively constant under a wide range of luminance conditions that are common indoors, and only shifts away from the lowest luminance contrasts under low mesopic light. Finally, we show that the ON luminance/response saturation affects visual salience mostly when the high spatial frequencies of the image are reduced by poor illumination or optical blur. Because both low luminance and optical blur are risk factors in myopia, our results suggest a possible neuronal mechanism linking myopia progression with the function of the ON visual pathway.