Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ATLaS: A Native Extension of SQL for Data Mining

A lack of power and extensibility in their query languages has seriously limited the generality of DBMSs and hampered their ability to support new application domains. Considerable efforts by database researchers and commercial DBMS vendors have led to major extensions; yet there remain important applications—particularly data mining—that are not supported well in SQL-3. Thus, there is a pressing need for more general mechanisms for extending SQL and dealing with new application areas, particularly database-centric data mining. To satisfy this need, we allow database users to add new table functions and stream-oriented aggregate functions by defining them in SQL—rather than in external procedural languages as O-R DBMSs currently do. This simple extension turns SQL into a powerful database language, which can express a wide range of applications, including recursive queries, ROLAP aggregates, time-series queries, stream-oriented processing, and data mining functions. In addition to adding great power and flexibility to SQL, these extensions are conducive to performance and data independence. The paper also discusses the system we have developed to support these SQL extensions, and the architecture and techniques used in its realization.
A hybrid ARQ scheme using LDPC codes with stochastic decoding

Stochastic decoding is a hardware and energy-efficient approach to implement iterative decoders. We use this decoding method in an Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) scheme to improve the performance of Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) decoders. We show that, aside from the simplicity in hardware implementations, stochastic decoding results in improved error rate performance and requires fewer retransmissions than other iterative decoding algorithms when used in a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) system. We present an analysis of the error rate improvement and decoding latency of the HARQ scheme using stochastic decoding. We also provide a criterion to efficiently allocate the available decoding cycles to the decoding attempts in the HARQ system in order to achieve lower error rates and less decoding latency.
Fruit and vegetable consumption and self-reported functional health in men and women in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer–Norfolk (EPIC–Norfolk): a population-based cross-sectional study

Abstract Objectives To investigate the association between fruit and vegetable consumption and self-reported physical and mental functional health measured by an anglicised short-form 36-item questionnaire (UK SF-36). Design Population-based cross-sectional study. Setting General community in Norfolk, UK. Subjects A total of 16 792 men and women aged 40–79 years recruited from general practice population registers as part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC)–Norfolk study, who completed food-frequency questionnaires in 1993–1997 and Health and Life Experiences Questionnaires 18 months later, were enrolled in the study. Results Mean SF-36 physical component summary scores increased significantly with increasing total fruit and vegetable consumption in both men and women (P < 0.0001 for trend). Men and women in the top quartile of consumption compared with the bottom quartile had a significantly higher likelihood of reporting good physical health (defined as a score ≥ 55); odds ratio (OR) 1.30, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11–1.53 for men and OR 1.28, 95% CI 1.11–1.48 for women, after controlling for age, body mass index, smoking, education, social class, prevalent illness and total energy intake. Exclusion of current smokers and people with prevalent illness did not alter the associations. Conclusion Higher fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with better self-reported physical functional health within a general population. Increasing daily intake by two portions of fruit and vegetables was associated with an 11% higher likelihood of good functional health. Since the current average consumption of fruit and vegetables in the UK is about three portions, the recommended ‘five a day’ strategy may have additional benefit for functional as well as other health outcomes in the population.
Improving the artificial diet for adult of seven spotted ladybird beetle Coccinella septempunctata L. (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) with orthogonal design

Abstract In this study, an orthogonal array design with 16 factors at two levels (216) was performed to develop an artificial diet rearing the adults of seven spotted ladybird beetle Coccinella septempunctata. The parameters of weight gain and survival rate of adults, preoviposition period, fecundity and hatching rate of diet-fed adults were monitored. The 16 factors were included: pork liver, infant formula, sucrose, olive oil, yolk, corn oil, yeast powder, cholesterol, casein, casein hydrolysate, vitamin powder, 65% juvenile hormone III, protein powder, vitamin E, honey and pumpkin. Results indicated that pork liver, sucrose, yolk, yeast powder, juvenile hormone, pumpkin and honey were the main ingredients of the artificial diet contributing to weight gain and survival rate of adults, preoviposition period, fecundity and hatching rate. A follow-up fed with a selection of improved formulas confirmed the validity of the optimization as predicted by the orthogonal array analysis, indicating the usefulness of this method for selecting artificial diets for C. septempunctata. The weight gain and fecundity of adults reared on the improved artificial diet were 87.46 and 62.70% of those reared on Aphis craccivora; the survival rate and hatch rate were similar between the diet-fed and aphid-fed, while the preoviposition period was significantly shorter for C. septempunctata fed on the diet than on A. craccivora. The latter formula was superior to any formerly developed formulas and may thus have potential for the improved artificial diet mass rearing of C. septempunctata.
Pulmonary disease following respirator therapy of hyaline-membrane disease. Bronchopulmonary dysplasia.

ALTHOUGH hyaline-membrane disease, the respiratory-distress syndrome of the newborn infant, has been the object of increased clinical and research interest in the past ten years, little attention has been paid to its possible sequelae.1 , 2 It is stated that most of these infants who survive the first three days of life will recover completely, and by seven to ten days of life will have normal lungs radiographically.3 , 4 Recent experience with critically ill infants at the Stanford Premature Infant Research Center demonstrates that intensive therapy may modify the acute syndrome so as to permit the development of a previously unrecorded abnormality of .
One contribution of 14 to a Theme Issue ‘ Contemporary and future studies in plant speciation , morphological / floral evolution and polyploidy : honouring the scientific

The evolution of self-fertilization from outcrossing has occurred on numerous occasions in flowering plants. This shift in mating system profoundly influences the morphology, ecology, genetics and evolution of selfing lineages. As a result, there has been sustained interest in understanding the mechanisms driving the evolution of selfing and its environmental context. Recently, patterns of molecular variation have been used to make inferences about the selective mechanisms associated with mating system transitions. However, these inferences can be complicated by the action of linked selection following the transition. Here, using multilocus simulations and comparative molecular data from related selfers and outcrossers, we demonstrate that there is little evidence for strong bottlenecks associated with initial transitions to selfing, and our simulation results cast doubt on whether it is possible to infer the role of bottlenecks associated with reproductive assurance in the evolution of selfing. They indicate that the effects of background selection on the loss of diversity and efficacy of selection occur rapidly following the shift to high selfing. Future comparative studies that integrate explicit ecological and genomic details are necessary for quantifying the independent and joint effects of selection and demography on transitions to selfing and the loss of genetic diversity.
In Vitro Comparison of Biological Effects of Coe-Pak and Reso-Pac Periodontal Dressings

ABSTRACT Objectives The purpose of the present study was to compare the cytotoxicity of Reso-Pac and Coe-Pak periodontal dressing. Material and Methods According to ISO-10993-12:2012, 1-, 3- and 7-day extracts of the two periodontal dressings were prepared in cell culture medium and exposed to the two cultured cell lines. Cell viability and proliferation at 24 h and 72 h following exposure were evaluated using quantitative MTT assay. Results The results showed a significant (P < 0.05) reduction in the viability of cells exposed to the 3- and 7-day Coe-Pak extracts at 24 h and 72 h compared to the control group (no exposure to the extract). Reso-Pac extracts slightly decreased cell viability compared to the control group. Understudy materials showed greater cytotoxicity against human osteoblast-like compared to the human gingival fibroblast cells. No significant (P > 0.05) difference was found in the viability of cells exposed to undiluted (100%) one-day extract and diluted (50%) extract of both understudy materials at 24 h and 72 h after exposure. Conclusions Based on the results, Reso-Pac periodontal dressing has less cytotoxicity than Coe-Pak.
Mesenchymal Stem Cells Promote Mammosphere Formation and Decrease E-Cadherin in Normal and Malignant Breast Cells

Introduction Normal and malignant breast tissue contains a rare population of multi-potent cells with the capacity to self-renew, referred to as stem cells, or tumor initiating cells (TIC). These cells can be enriched by growth as “mammospheres” in three-dimensional cultures. Objective We tested the hypothesis that human bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), which are known to support tumor growth and metastasis, increase mammosphere formation. Results We found that MSC increased human mammary epithelial cell (HMEC) mammosphere formation in a dose-dependent manner. A similar increase in sphere formation was seen in human inflammatory (SUM149) and non-inflammatory breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7) but not in primary inflammatory breast cancer cells (MDA-IBC-3). We determined that increased mammosphere formation can be mediated by secreted factors as MSC conditioned media from MSC spheroids significantly increased HMEC, MCF-7 and SUM149 mammosphere formation by 6.4 to 21-fold. Mammospheres grown in MSC conditioned media had lower levels of the cell adhesion protein, E-cadherin, and increased expression of N-cadherin in SUM149 and HMEC cells, characteristic of a pro-invasive mesenchymal phenotype. Co-injection with MSC in vivo resulted in a reduced latency time to develop detectable MCF-7 and MDA-IBC-3 tumors and increased the growth of MDA-IBC-3 tumors. Furthermore, E-cadherin expression was decreased in MDA-IBC-3 xenografts with co-injection of MSC. Conclusions MSC increase the efficiency of primary mammosphere formation in normal and malignant breast cells and decrease E-cadherin expression, a biologic event associated with breast cancer progression and resistance to therapy.
The Brain’s Learning and Control Architecture

Many brain-imaging studies are designed with the goal of isolating brain regions responsible for a specific mental function. The results, which reveal islands of activity scattered about the brain, can give the impression that the brain is just a disorganized collection of specialized processing centers. However, examination of how brain activity changes as a new skill is learned reveals a structured learning architecture composed of three hierarchically organized systems, each with a distinct role in learning and each characterized by a distinct pattern of learning-dependent plasticity. These systems are a representation system, which supports associative learning; a cognitive control network, which allocates attention during the execution of newly learned behaviors; and a metacognitive system, which guides the establishment of new behavioral routines, monitors the quality of ongoing behaviors, and oversees the transitions from one behavior to another. The combined involvement of these systems allows humans to learn rapidly and to flexibly transfer existing knowledge to novel contexts.
Learning End-to-End Goal-Oriented Dialog

Traditional dialog systems used in goal-oriented applications require a lot of domain-specific handcrafting, which hinders scaling up to new domains. End-to-end dialog systems, in which all components are trained from the dialogs themselves, escape this limitation. But the encouraging success recently obtained in chit-chat dialog may not carry over to goal-oriented settings. This paper proposes a testbed to break down the strengths and shortcomings of end-to-end dialog systems in goal-oriented applications. Set in the context of restaurant reservation, our tasks require manipulating sentences and symbols, so as to properly conduct conversations, issue API calls and use the outputs of such calls. We show that an end-to-end dialog system based on Memory Networks can reach promising, yet imperfect, performance and learn to perform non-trivial operations. We confirm those results by comparing our system to a hand-crafted slot-filling baseline on data from the second Dialog State Tracking Challenge (Henderson et al., 2014a). We show similar result patterns on data extracted from an online concierge service.
Development of a New Measurement Tool for Individualism and Collectivism

A new measurement tool for individualism and collectivism has been developed to address critical methodological issues in this field of social psychology. This new measure, the Auckland Individualism and Collectivism Scale (AICS), defines three dimensions of individualism: (a) responsibility (acknowledging one's responsibility for one's actions), (b) uniqueness (distinction of the self from the other), and (c) competitiveness (striving for personal goals is one's prime interest). The scale also defines two dimensions of collectivism: (a) advice (seeking advice from people close to one, before taking decisions) and (b) harmony (seeking to avoid conflict). The AICS avoids the need for measuring horizontal and vertical dimensions of collectivism and individualism and the confounding effect of familialism on the collectivism—individualism constructs.
Robust Adaptive Segmentation of Range Images

We propose a novel image segmentation technique using the robust, adaptive least kth order squares (ALKS) estimator which minimizes the kth order statistics of the squares of residuals. The optimal value of k is determined from the data, and the procedure detects the homogeneous surface patch representing the relative majority of the pixels. The ALKS shows a better tolerance to structured outliers than other recently proposed similar techniques. The performance of the new, fully autonomous, range image segmentation algorithm is compared to several other methods.
Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Reveals Gray and White Matter Disease, and T2 Mapping Detects White Matter Disease in the Brain in Feline Alpha-Mannosidosis

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Methods to locate and identify brain pathology are critical for monitoring disease progression and for evaluating the efficacy of therapeutic intervention. The purpose of this study was to detect cell swelling, abnormal myelin, and astrogliosis in the feline model of the lysosomal storage disease α-mannosidosis (AMD) by using diffusion and T2 mapping. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Average apparent diffusion coefficient (ADCav) and T2 were measured by imaging the brains of five 16-week-old cats with feline AMD on a 4.7T magnet. ADCav and T2 data from affected cats were compared with data from age-matched normal cats. Brains were collected from both affected and normal cats following imaging, and histology was compared with quantitative imaging data. RESULTS: Gray matter from AMD cats demonstrated a 13%–15% decrease in ADCav compared with that in normal cats. White matter from AMD cats exhibited an 11%–16% decrease in ADCav and a 5%–12% increase in T2 values compared with those in normal control cats. Histologic evidence of neuronal and glial swelling, abnormal myelin, and astrogliosis was consistent with changes in ADCav and T2. CONCLUSION: ADCav and T2 data can be used to quantify differences in the gray and white matter in the feline AMD brain and may serve as surrogate markers of neuronal swelling, abnormal myelin, and astrogliosis associated with this disease. These studies may be helpful in assessing the efficacy of experimental therapies for central nervous system disease associated with lysosomal storage diseases.
An Optimal Quadratic Approach to Monolingual Paraphrase Alignment

We model the problem of monolingual textual alignment as a Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) which simultaneously maximizes the global lexicosemantic and syntactic similarities of two sentence-level texts. Because QAP is an NP-complete problem, we propose a branch-and-bound approach to efficiently find an optimal solution. When compared with other methods and studies, our results are competitive.
Current Topic : Fungal Infections Vol . 16 , No . 1 Eur

The safety of amphotericin B colloidal dispersion (ABCD) was tested in five open-label Phase VII clinical trials in 572 selected patients who had a fungal infection secondary to a severe underlying disease. In 442 cases ABCD was administered after therapy with amphotericin B, which had been withdrawn in 192 of them because of toxicity. One hundred and forty patients had pre-existing nephrotoxicity. ABCD doses of up to 6 mg/kg/day resulted in no differences in serum creatinine levels, even in patients with pre-existing renal failure. ABCD therapy resulted in no difference in liver function as measured by SGOT, alkaline phosphatase and total bilirubin levels in serum. Apart from thrombocytopenia, there was no significant alteration in hematological or other biochemical parameters in the blood. Adverse events attributable to ABCD requiring discontinuation of therapy occurred in 70 patients (12.2%). The most frequent of these were infusion-related adverse events, which occurred in 5.4% of patients. As a consequence, the maximum tolerated dose was set at 7.5 mg/kg/day. These studies show clearly that ABCD can be administered safely to patients without the risk of renal toxicity, even when renal impairment has already developed following therapy with conventional amphotericin B deoxycholate.
Measuring allostatic load in the workforce: a systematic review

The Allostatic Load Index (ALI) has been used to establish associations between stress and health-related outcomes. This review summarizes the measurement and methodological challenges of allostatic load in occupational settings. Databases of Medline, PubPsych, and Cochrane were searched to systematically explore studies measuring ALI in working adults following the PRISMA statement. Study characteristics, biomarkers and methods were tabulated. Methodological quality was evaluated using a standardized checklist. Sixteen articles (2003–2013) met the inclusion criteria, with a total of 39 (range 6–17) different variables used to calculate ALI. Substantial heterogeneity was observed in the number and type of biomarkers used, the analytic techniques applied and study quality. Particularly, primary mediators were not regularly included in ALI calculation. Consensus on methods to measure ALI in working populations is limited. Research should include longitudinal studies using multi-systemic variables to measure employees at risk for biological wear and tear.
The kinase Eg2 is a component of the Xenopus oocyte progesterone‐activated signaling pathway

Quiescent Xenopus oocytes are activated by progesterone, which binds to an unidentified surface‐associated receptor. Progesterone activates a poorly understood signaling pathway that results in the translational activation of mRNA encoding Mos, a MAP kinase kinase kinase necessary for the activation of MAP kinase and MPF, the resumption of meiosis, and maturation of the oocyte into the sperm‐responsive egg. We have designed a screen to identify early signaling proteins based on the premise that some of these proteins would be phosphorylated or otherwise modified within minutes of progesterone addition. This screen has revealed Eg2, a Ser/Thr kinase. We find that Eg2 is phosphorylated soon after progesterone stimulation and provide evidence that it functions in the signaling pathway. Overexpression of Eg2 via mRNA microinjection shortens the time between progesterone stimulation and the appearance of new Mos protein, accelerates activation of MAP kinase and advances entry into the meiotic cell cycle. Finally, overexpression of Eg2 dramatically reduces the concentration of progesterone needed to trigger oocyte activation. These results argue that the kinase Eg2 is a component of the progesterone‐activated signaling pathway that releases frog oocytes from cell cycle arrest.
Evolution of the Vertebrate Pax4/6 Class of Genes with Focus on Its Novel Member, the Pax10 Gene

The members of the paired box (Pax) family regulate key developmental pathways in many metazoans as tissue-specific transcription factors. Vertebrate genomes typically possess nine Pax genes (Pax1–9), which are derived from four proto-Pax genes in the vertebrate ancestor that were later expanded through the so-called two-round (2R) whole-genome duplication. A recent study proposed that pax6a genes of a subset of teleost fishes (namely, acanthopterygians) are remnants of a paralog generated in the 2R genome duplication, to be renamed pax6.3, and reported one more group of vertebrate Pax genes (Pax6.2), most closely related to the Pax4/6 class. We propose to designate this new member Pax10 instead and reconstruct the evolutionary history of the Pax4/6/10 class with solid phylogenetic evidence. Our synteny analysis showed that Pax4, -6, and -10 originated in the 2R genome duplications early in vertebrate evolution. The phylogenetic analyses of relationships between teleost pax6a and other Pax4, -6, and -10 genes, however, do not support the proposed hypothesis of an ancient origin of the acanthopterygian pax6a genes in the 2R genome duplication. Instead, we confirmed the traditional scenario that the acanthopterygian pax6a is derived from the more recent teleost-specific genome duplication. Notably, Pax6 is present in all vertebrates surveyed to date, whereas Pax4 and -10 were lost multiple times in independent vertebrate lineages, likely because of their restricted expression patterns: Among Pax6-positive domains, Pax10 has retained expression in the adult retina alone, which we documented through in situ hybridization and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction experiments on zebrafish, Xenopus, and anole lizard.