Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Multi-Individual Pharmacokinetic Model Framework for Interpreting Time Trends of Persistent Chemicals in Human Populations: Application to a Postban Situation

Background Human milk and blood are monitored to detect time trends of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in humans. It is current practice to use log-linear regression to fit time series of averaged cross-sectional biomonitoring data, here referred to as cross-sectional trend data (CSTD). Objective The goals of our study are to clarify the interpretation of half-lives derived from fitting exponential functions to declining CSTD and to provide a method of estimating human elimination half-lives from CSTD collected in a postban situation. Methods We developed a multi-individual pharmacokinetic model framework and present analytical solutions for a postban period. For this case, the framework quantitatively describes the relationships among the half-life for reduction of body burdens of POPs derived from CSTD, the half-life describing decline in daily intake, and the half-life of elimination from the human body. Results The half-life derived from exponential fitting of CSTD collected under postban conditions describes the exposure trend and is independent of human elimination kinetics. We use a case study of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) to show that CSTD can be combined with exposure data obtained from total diet studies to estimate elimination kinetics of POPs for humans under background exposure conditions. Conclusions CSTD provide quantitative information about trends in human exposure and can be combined with exposure studies to estimate elimination kinetics. The full utility of these data has not been exploited so far. An efficient and informative monitoring strategy for banned POPs in humans would coordinate sampling of consistent sets of CSTD from young adults with total diet studies.
Plastic Deformation with Reversible Peak Broadening in Nanocrystalline Nickel

Plastic deformation in coarse-grained metals is governed by dislocation-mediated processes. These processes lead to the accumulation of a residual dislocation network, producing inhomogeneous strain and an irreversible broadening of the Bragg peaks in x-ray diffraction. We show that during plastic deformation of electrodeposited nanocrystalline nickel, the peak broadening is reversible upon unloading; hence, the deformation process does not build up a residual dislocation network. The results were obtained during in situ peak profile analysis using the Swiss Light Source. This in situ technique, based on well-known peak profile analysis methods, can be used to address the relationship between microstructure and mechanical properties in nanostructured materials.
Learning by Investing, Embodiment, and Speed of Convergence

This paper sets up a dynamic general equilibrium model to study how the composition of technical progress affects the asymptotic speed of convergence. The following questions are addressed: Will endogenizing a fraction of the productivity increases as coming from learning by investing help to generate a low asymptotic speed of convergence in accordance with the empirical evidence? Does it matter whether learning originates in gross or net investment? The answers to both questions turn out to be: yes, a lot. The third question addressed is: Does the speed of convergence significantly depend on the degree to which learning by investing takes the embodied form rather than the disembodied form? The answer turns out to be: no. These results point to a speed of convergence on the small side of 2% per year and possibly tending to a lower level in the future due to the rising importance of investment-specific learning in the wake of the computer revolution as the empirical evidence suggests.
A Waypoint Service Approach to Connect Heterogeneous Internet Address Spaces

The rapid growth of the Internet has made IP addresses a scarce resource. To get around this problem, today and in the foreseeable future, networks will be deployed with reusable-IP addresses (a.k.a. private-IP addresses) or IPv6 addresses. The Internet is therefore evolving into a collection of networks of heterogeneous address spaces. Such development jeopardizes the fundamental bi-directional connectivity property of the Internet. The problem is that, without IP addresses, non-IP hosts (i.e. reusable-IP or IPv6 hosts) cannot be directly addressed by IP hosts, making it impossible for IP hosts to initiate connections to them. To solve this problem, we propose a network layer waypoint (3rd-party network agent) service called AVES. The key idea is to virtualizenon-IP hosts by a set of IP addresses assigned to waypoints. The waypoints then act as relays to connect IP hosts to non-IP hosts. This scheme allows every IP host to simultaneously connect to as many non-IP hosts as the number of waypoint IP addresses. Therefore high connectivity is achieved by AVES even when a small number of IP addresses are used. Unlike other known solutions, AVES can provide general connectivity and does not require any change to existing IP hosts or IP network routers for easy deployment. We have implemented and deployed an AVES prototype system at CMU. A wide range of applications have been shown to work seamlessly with AVES. Details of our implementation’s design, performance and limitations are discussed.
Coordination of Vehicle Motion and Energy Management Control Systems for Wheel Motor Driven Vehicles

This paper shows how smooth coordination of vehicle motion controller and energy management can be achieved when control allocation is used for over-actuated ground vehicles. The ground vehicle studied here is equipped with four electric wheel motors, four disc brakes, and front and rear steering. This gives a total of ten input signals to control the desired vehicle motion in longitudinal-, lateral-, and yaw-direction. Simulations show that the desired input signals from energy management and steering can be fulfilled, but when needed the actual input signals for the motion actuators are smoothly diverted from the desired input signals due to vehicle stability reasons and/or saturation of the actuators.
Milk and Protein Intake by Pregnant Women Affects Growth of Foetus

The study assessed the effects of the daily intake of milk and protein by pregnant women on foetal growth and determined the growth pattern and velocity of growth. A total of 504 ultrasound observations from 156 respondents were collected following a cross-sectional design in the last trimester of pregnancy; majority of them were in the last month of pregnancy. De facto and purposive sampling was done, and direct interviews of affluent pregnant women were conducted. Kruskal-Wallis test shows that majority of the respondents had tendency to consume 155.65 to 465.17 mL of milk per day, resulting in better and higher foetal growth. Most respondents consumed about 50-70 g of protein per day, and the foetal growth measurements, such as abdomen-circumference, femur length, biparietal diameter, and head-circumference, on an average, were higher in the same group. Quadratic regression model exhibited that all the traits of growth pattern in Model 1 (low milk and protein intake) appeared to have more mode of decline, in contrast to Model 2 (more milk and protein intake), which shows better growth. In addition, velocity of growth pattern was obtained through the first derivative of quadratic regression of growth pattern. Moreover, 95% confidence interval calculated for regression line slope of Model 1 and Model 2 showed that the estimation point (2 B2) of Model 1 does not lay into 95% CI of Model 2; so, statistical significance assorted and also the same trend conversely hold for Model 2. The rate of growth was highly influenced by maternal milk and protein intake. These findings suggest that contribution of common nutrients or other nutritional factors present in milk and protein promote the growth of foetus.
Effect of Pre-Shelling Treatment on Physical and Mechanical Properties of Cashew Nut

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of roasting in hot oil on physical and mechanical properties of large (26-35mm), medium (23-25mm) and small (18-22mm) cashew nuts at moisture content of 7.00% w.b. The physical properties considered were length, width, thickness, geometric mean diameter, sphericity, true density, bulk density, porosity, mass, and coefficient of friction. The mechanical properties considered were, rupture force, deformation at rupture point, energy used for rupture and young modulus determined from compression test carried out in three major direction of loadings. It was observed that all the dimensional characteristics, mass and densities of cashew nuts before roasting were significantly different (P < 0.05) from after roasting. The pre-treatment has significant effect on coefficient of friction of cashew nut which has higher values on mild-steel and wood than other materials. The compression test results showed that the rupture force decreases with decrease in nut size for the three loading directions, however the transverse loading requires higher force than longitudinal and lateral loading for the three nut sizes. For large and medium size nuts, the highest rupture energy was needed in transverse loading direction, followed by lateral loading direction. The compression along the longitudinal direction has the least deformation for the three nut sizes. For the three nut sizes, the highest Young Modulus was exhibited in longitudinal loading direction followed by transverse loading direction.
Directing exocrine secretory vesicles to the apical membrane by actin cables generated by the formin mDia1

The final stage in exocrine secretion involves translocation of vesicles from their storage areas to the apical membrane. We show that actin-coated secretory vesicles of the exocrine pancreas travel this distance over bundles of specialized actin cables emanating from the apical plasma membrane. These bundles are stable structures that require constant G-actin incorporation and are distinct from the actin web that surrounds the exocrine lumen. The murine mammalian Diaphanous-related formin 1 (mDia1) was identified as a generator of these cables. The active form of mDia1 localized to the apical membrane, and introduction of an active form of mDia1 led to a marked increase in bundle density along the lumen perimeter. Compromising formation of the cables does not prevent secretion, but results in disorganized trafficking and fusion between secretory vesicles. Similar apical secretory tracks were also found in the submandibular salivary glands. Together with previous results that identified a role for Diaphanous in apical secretion in tubular organs of Drosophila, the role of Diaphanous formins at the final stages of secretion appears to be highly conserved.
Eurographics Symposium on Point-based Graphics (2007) Topological Methods for the Analysis of High Dimensional Data Sets and 3d Object Recognition

We present a computational method for extracting simple descriptions of high dimensional data sets in the form of simplicial complexes. Our method, called Mapper, is based on the idea of partial clustering of the data guided by a set of functions defined on the data. The proposed method is not dependent on any particular clustering algorithm, i.e. any clustering algorithm may be used with Mapper. We implement this method and present a few sample applications in which simple descriptions of the data present important information about its structure.
Molecular cloning and localization of a CEACAM2 isoform, CEACAM2‐L, expressed in spermatids in mouse testis

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) family, a subgroup of the immunoglobulin (Ig) superfamily, is divided into two sub‐families: the CEA‐related cell adhesion molecules (CEACAM) and the pregnancy‐specific glycoproteins. The isoform CEACAM2 is expressed in mouse testis; in this study, we identified a novel isoform of Ceacam2, Ceacam2‐Long (Ceacam2‐L). CEACAM2‐L is different from CEACAM2 in that it has much longer cytoplasmic tail region. Ceacam2‐L starts to appear faintly in mouse testis after 3 weeks of postnatal development, and its expression level increased after 5 weeks. Immunoblot analysis confirmed the expression of CEACAM2‐L in the seminiferous epithelium of mouse testis. Immunohistochemical data showed that CEACAM2‐L was not observed on spermatogonia, spermatocytes, round spermatids, or Sertoli cells, but was seen at the plasma membrane of elongating spermatids in contact with extended cytoplasmic processes of Sertoli cells. CEACAM2‐L was not detected at the head region of elongating spermatids, where the apical ectoplasmic specialization is constructed. These data suggest that CEACAM2‐L might be a novel adhesion molecule contributing to cell‐to‐cell adhesion between elongating spermatids and Sertoli cells within the seminiferous epithelium. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 79: 843–852, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Differential modulation of a common memory retrieval network revealed by positron emission tomography

Functional neuroimaging is uniquely placed to examine the dynamic nature of normal human memory, the distributed brain networks that support it, and how they are modulated. Memory has traditionally been classified into context‐specific memories personally experienced (“episodic memory”) and impersonal non–context‐specific memories (“semantic memory”). However, we suggest that another useful distinction is whether events are personally relevant or not. Typically the factors of personal relevance and temporal context are confounded, and it is as yet not clear the precise influence of either on how memories are stored or retrieved. Here we focus on the retrieval of real‐world memories unconfounding personal relevance and temporal context during positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. Memories differed along two dimensions: They were personally relevant (or not) and had temporal specificity (or not). Recollection of each of the resultant four memory subtypes—autobiographical events, public events, autobiographical facts, and general knowledge—was associated with activation of a common network of brain regions. Within this system, however, enhanced activity was observed for retrieval of personally relevant, time‐specific memories in left hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and left temporal pole. Bilateral temporoparietal junctions were activated preferentially for personal memories, regardless of time specificity. Finally, left parahippocampal gyrus, left anterolateral temporal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex were involved in memory retrieval irrespective of person or time. Our findings suggest that specializations in memory retrieval result from associations between subsets of regions within a common network. We believe that these findings throw new light on an old debate surrounding episodic and declarative theories of memory and the precise involvement of the hippocampus. Hippocampus 1999;9:54–61. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild

A blockchain is a distributed ledger for recording transactions, maintained by many nodes without central authority through a distributed cryptographic protocol. All nodes validate the information to be appended to the blockchain, and a consensus protocol ensures that the nodes agree on a unique order in which entries are appended. Consensus protocols for tolerating Byzantine faults have received renewed attention because they also address blockchain systems. This work discusses the process of assessing and gaining confidence in the resilience of a consensus protocols exposed to faults and adversarial nodes. We advocate to follow the established practice in cryptography and computer security, relying on public reviews, detailed models, and formal proofs; the designers of several practical systems appear to be unaware of this. Moreover, we review the consensus protocols in some prominent permissioned blockchain platforms with respect to their fault models and resilience against attacks. The protocol comparison covers Hyperledger Fabric, Tendermint, Symbiont, R3~Corda, Iroha, Kadena, Chain, Quorum, MultiChain, Sawtooth Lake, Ripple, Stellar, and IOTA.
A Tale of Two Erasure Codes in HDFS

Distributed storage systems are increasingly transitioning to the use of erasure codes since they offer higher reliability at significantly lower storage costs than data replication. However, these codes tradeoff recovery performance as they require multiple disk reads and network transfers for reconstructing an unavailable data block. As a result, most existing systems use an erasure code either optimized for storage overhead or recovery performance. In this paper, we present HACFS, a new erasure-coded storage system that instead uses two different erasure codes and dynamically adapts to workload changes. It uses a fast code to optimize for recovery performance and a compact code to reduce the storage overhead. A novel conversion mechanism is used to efficiently upcode and downcode data blocks between fast and compact codes. We show that HACFS design techniques are generic and successfully apply it to two different code families: Product and LRC codes. We have implemented HACFS as an extension to the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and experimentally evaluate it with five different workloads from production clusters. The HACFS system always maintains a low storage overhead and significantly improves the recovery performance as compared to three popular single-code storage systems. It reduces the degraded read latency by up to 46%, and the reconstruction time and disk/network traffic by up to 45%.
Evolutionary Algorithm for Protein Structure Prediction

A protein is characterized by its 3D structure,which defines its biological function. In this paper, we present a scatter search algorithm for predicting 3D structures of proteins based on torsion angles representation. Given the protein¿s sequence of amino acids, our algorithm produces a 3D structure that aims to minimize the energy function associated with the structure. Scatter search is an evolutionary approach that is based on a population of candidate solutions. We evaluate our algorithm on proteins taken from a protein data bank. The results show that our algorithm is able to produce 3D structures with good sub-optimal energy values. Also, the root mean square deviations of these structures from the reference proteins are promising within limits imposed by the assumptions made.
Taking a trip to the shelf: Behavioral decisions are mediated by the proximity to foraging habitats in the black‐legged kittiwake

Abstract For marine top predators like seabirds, the oceans represent a multitude of habitats regarding oceanographic conditions and food availability. Worldwide, these marine habitats are being altered by changes in climate and increased anthropogenic impact. This is causing a growing concern on how seabird populations might adapt to these changes. Understanding how seabird populations respond to fluctuating environmental conditions and to what extent behavioral flexibility can buffer variations in food availability can help predict how seabirds may cope with changes in the marine environment. Such knowledge is important to implement proper long‐term conservation measures intended to protect marine predators. We explored behavioral flexibility in choice of foraging habitat of chick‐rearing black‐legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla during multiple years. By comparing foraging behavior of individuals from two colonies with large differences in oceanographic conditions and distances to predictable feeding areas at the Norwegian shelf break, we investigated how foraging decisions are related to intrinsic and extrinsic factors. We found that proximity to the shelf break determined which factors drove the decision to forage there. At the colony near the shelf break, time of departure from the colony and wind speed were most important in driving the choice of habitat. At the colony farther from the shelf break, the decision to forage there was driven by adult body condition. Birds furthermore adjusted foraging behavior metrics according to time of the day, weather conditions, body condition, and the age of the chicks. The study shows that kittiwakes have high degree of flexibility in their behavioral response to a variable marine environment, which might help them buffer changes in prey distribution around the colonies. The flexibility is, however, dependent on the availability of foraging habitats near the colony.
Prasugrel versus clopidogrel for acute coronary syndromes.

n engl j med 368;2 nejm.org january 10, 2013 188 monitoring in the transition to the withdrawal phase. Details about our study design were published earlier,2 and the Antipsychotic Discontinuation in Alzheimer’s Disease trial findings are consistent with those of the initial pilot study of haloperidol.3 Consensus guidelines recommend a range of approaches in patients with dementia, and research to support these recommendations is expanding. Recent clinical guidelines focus on inappropriate medication use4; our study did not address this issue but rather involved patients who needed treatment and had a response to treatment. Our study design was consistent with the time frame for discontinuation of antipsychotic agents specified in U.S. nursing-home regulations; data from controlled trials of discontinuation of these agents are very limited. Our findings indicate that if the patient has a response without adverse events, careful observation and monitoring is important if medication is withdrawn because of the potential increased risk of relapse. Reasoned decisions about starting, continuing, and discontinuing specific treatments should be personalized for each patient to improve his or her health and quality of life. D.P. Devanand, M.D.
Ethnicity, self reported psychiatric illness, and intake of psychotropic drugs in five ethnic groups in Sweden

STUDY OBJECTIVE This study hypothesises that the presumed increased risk of self reported longstanding psychiatric illness and intake of psychotropic drugs among Iranian, Chilean, Turkish, and Kurdish adults, when these groups are compared with Polish adults, can be explained by living alone, poor acculturation, unemployment, and low sense of coherence. DESIGN Data from a national sample of immigrants/refugees, who were between the ages of 20–44 years old, upon their arrival in Sweden between 1980 and 1989. Unconditional logistic regression was used in the statistical modelling. SETTING Sweden. PARTICIPANTS 1059 female and 921 male migrants from Iran, Chile, Turkey, Kurdistan and Poland and a random sample of 3001 Swedes, all between the ages of 27–60 years, were interviewed in 1996 by Statistics Sweden. MAIN RESULTS Compared with Swedes, all immigrants had an increased risk of self reported longstanding psychiatric illness and for intake of psychotropic drugs, with results for the Kurds being non-significant. Compared with Poles, Iranian and Chilean migrants had an increased risk of psychiatric illness, when seen in relation to a model in which adjustment was made for sex and age. The difference became non-significant for Chileans when marital status was taken into account. After including civil status and knowledge of the Swedish language, the increased risks for intake of psychotropic drugs for Chileans and Iranians disappeared. Living alone, poor knowledge of the Swedish language, non-employment, and low sense of coherence were strong risk factors for self reported longstanding psychiatric illness and for intake of psychotropic drugs. Iranian, Chilean, Turkish and Kurdish immigrants more frequently reported living in segregated neighbourhoods and having a greater desire to leave Sweden than their Polish counterparts. CONCLUSION Evidence substantiates a strong association between ethnicity and self reported longstanding psychiatric illness, as well as intake of psychotropic drugs. This association is weakened by marital status, acculturation status, employment status, and sense of coherence.