Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pingmesh: A Large-Scale System for Data Center Network Latency Measurement and Analysis

Can we get network latency between any two servers at any time in large-scale data center networks? The collected latency data can then be used to address a series of challenges: telling if an application perceived latency issue is caused by the network or not, defining and tracking network service level agreement (SLA), and automatic network troubleshooting. We have developed the Pingmesh system for large-scale data center network latency measurement and analysis to answer the above question affirmatively. Pingmesh has been running in Microsoft data centers for more than four years, and it collects tens of terabytes of latency data per day. Pingmesh is widely used by not only network software developers and engineers, but also application and service developers and operators.
Occupational exposure to solvents and risk of lymphoma subtypes: results from the Epilymph case–control study

Background Several studies have suggested an association between occupational exposure to solvents and lymphoma risk. However, findings are inconsistent and the role of specific chemicals is not known. Objective To investigate the role of occupational exposure to organic solvents in the aetiology of B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (B-NHL) and its major subtypes, as well as Hodgkin's lymphoma and T-cell lymphoma. Methods 2348 lymphoma cases and 2462 controls participated in a case–control study in six European countries. A subset of cases were reviewed by a panel of pathologists to ensure diagnostic consistency. Exposure to solvents was assessed by industrial hygienists and occupational experts based on a detailed occupational questionnaire. Results Risk of follicular lymphoma significantly increased with three independent metrics of exposure to benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX) (combined p=4×10−7) and to styrene (p=1×10−5), and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) risk increased with exposure to solvents overall (p=4×10−6), BTX (p=5×10−5), gasoline (p=8×10−5) and other solvents (p=2×10−6). Risk of B-NHL for ever exposure to solvents was not elevated (OR=1.1, 95% CI 1.0 to 1.3), and that for CLL and follicular lymphoma was 1.3 (95% CI 1.1 to 1.6) and 1.3 (95% CI 1.0 to 1.7), respectively. Exposure to benzene accounted, at least partially, for the association observed with CLL risk. Hodgkin's lymphoma and T-cell lymphoma did not show an association with solvent exposure. Conclusion This analysis of a large European dataset confirms a role of occupational exposure to solvents in the aetiology of B-NHL, and particularly, CLL. It is suggested that benzene is most likely to be implicated, but we cannot exclude the possibility of a role for other solvents in relation to other lymphoma subtypes, such as follicular lymphoma. No association with risk of T-cell lymphoma and Hodgkin's lymphoma was shown.
Endovascular treatment of posterior circulation cerebral aneurysms by using Guglielmi detachable coils: a 10-year single-center experience with special regard to technical development.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to analyze the immediate and long-term angiographic and clinical results of endovascular treatment of posterior circulation aneurysms with special regard to technical development. MATERIALS Between 1993 and 2003, 46 patients with 47 aneurysms of the posterior circulation were referred to our institution for endovascular treatment. Mean angiographic follow-up was 1.7 years. Clinical follow-up was determined at hospital discharge and by using a questionnaire for long-term follow-up (mean, 3.3 years). To analyze technical development, patients treated before (group 1) and after (group 2) implementation of 3D Guglielmi detachable coils (3D GDCs) in 1999 were compared. Multivariate analysis was performed to determine factors predictive of clinical and technical outcome. RESULTS Overall, at initial treatment complete occlusion was achieved in 27 (57.4%) aneurysms, a neck remnant was present in 16 (34.0%) aneurysms, incomplete occlusion was achieved in 3 (6.4%) aneurysms, and in 1 (2.1%) case occlusion was not attempted. Procedure-related permanent morbidity was 4.3%, and the mortality rate was 0%. There was no rebleeding of treated aneurysms. Complete occlusion at initial treatment (P = .003) and recanalization rate (P = .008) correlated with aneurysm sac size. A statistically significant relationship between Hunt and Hess/World Federation of Neurologic Surgeons clinical grading scale score and clinical outcome (Glasgow Outcome Score) was found (P < .05). Subgroup analysis revealed that a higher initial obliteration rate of larger aneurysms was achieved in group 2 (3D GDC, 22 patients, 22 aneurysms) than in group 1 (23 patients, 24 aneurysms; P = .03). At angiographic follow-up, overall recanalization was 47.1% in group 2 and 47.6% in group 1. Aneurysm neck size was not found to be correlated with occlusion and recanalization rate. CONCLUSION In our series, GDC technology was an effective and safe technique for the treatment of posterior circulation aneurysms. Aneurysm sac size was predictive for occlusion rate and the Hunt and Hess/World Federation of Neurologic Surgeons grade for clinical outcome. The introduction of 3D GDCs into our practice significantly improved the initial occlusion rate but did not affect the incidence of recanalization.
Generating Test Suites for Timed Systems with Context Variables

Model-based testing has been widely used for testing critical and reactive systems. Some aspects of reactive systems are treated by extended models that captures the notion of data flow on the system as well as its interactions with the environment. Other aspects are captured by conventional timed models that allow for the continuous evolution of time variables. Devising formal methods to automatically generate test suites for systems that comprise both these has remained a challenge. In this work we use a new Timed Input/Output Context Automata (TIOCA) as a formal model for timed systems with context variables. We propose and prove the correctness of a new strategy to discretize TIOCA models, thus obtaining related grid automata. Grid automata allow us to automatically generate test cases based on test purposes, the latter being special TIOCA that specifically model those system properties to be tested. We also discuss how to extract test suites from the synchronous product of a TIOCA and an associated test purpose. Further, we show how to use test suites in order to automatically verify whether given implementations conform to the specification and, also, reflect the desired properties.
Activin A directs striatal projection neuron differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells

The efficient generation of striatal neurons from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) is fundamental for realising their promise in disease modelling, pharmaceutical drug screening and cell therapy for Huntington's disease. GABAergic medium-sized spiny neurons (MSNs) are the principal projection neurons of the striatum and specifically degenerate in the early phase of Huntington's disease. Here we report that activin A induces lateral ganglionic eminence (LGE) characteristics in nascent neural progenitors derived from hESCs and hiPSCs in a sonic hedgehog-independent manner. Correct specification of striatal phenotype was further demonstrated by the induction of the striatal transcription factors CTIP2, GSX2 and FOXP2. Crucially, these human LGE progenitors readily differentiate into postmitotic neurons expressing the striatal projection neuron signature marker DARPP32, both in culture and following transplantation in the adult striatum in a rat model of Huntington's disease. Activin-induced neurons also exhibit appropriate striatal-like electrophysiology in vitro. Together, our findings demonstrate a novel route for efficient differentiation of GABAergic striatal MSNs from human pluripotent stem cells. Highlighted article: Striatal projection neurons, which degenerate in Huntington's disease, can be generated in vitro using activin A treatment, in a manner independent of sonic hedgehog signalling.
Common Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms in DNA Double-Strand Break Repair Genes and Breast Cancer Risk

The proteins involved in homologous recombination are instrumental in the error-free repair of dsDNA breakages, and common germ-line variations in these genes are, therefore, potential candidates for involvement in breast cancer development and progression. We carried out a search for common, low-penetrance susceptibility alleles by tagging the common variation in 13 genes in this pathway in a two-stage case-control study. We genotyped 100 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), tagging the 655 common SNPs in these genes, in up to 4,470 cases and 4,560 controls from the SEARCH study. None of these tagging SNPs was associated with breast cancer risk, with the exception of XRCC2 rs3218536, R188H, which showed some evidence of a protective association for the rare allele [per allele odds ratio, 0.89; 95% confidence intervals (95% CI), 0.80-0.99; P trend = 0.03]. Further analyses showed that this effect was confined to a risk of progesterone receptor positive tumors (per rare allele odds ratio, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.66-0.91; P trend = 0.002). Several other SNPs also showed receptor status-specific susceptibility and evidence of roles in long-term survival, with the rare allele of BRIP1 rs2191249 showing evidence of association with a poorer prognosis (hazard ratio per minor allele, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.07-1.36; P trend = 0.002). In summary, there was little evidence of breast cancer susceptibility with any of the SNPs studied, but larger studies would be needed to confirm subgroup effects. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(12):3482–9)
“Stealth” tumors

Breast cancers (BCs) comprise heterogeneous subtypes of various prognoses. An active anti-tumor immune profile usually correlated with a better survival. Two current major challenges of BC research are to understand the inter-relations between BC and anti-tumor immunity, and to identify candidates whose targeting would contribute to enhance anti-tumor efficiency.
Ureterovaginal fistulas: The role of endoscopy and a percutaneous approach

Purpose: The aim of the study was to evaluate the minimal invasive approach and endourological techniques in managing the iatrogenic ureterovaginal fistula. The etiology and the diagnostic tools were also looked at. Patients and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on 20 patients with ureterovaginal fistulas. The main causes for these were gynecological and obstetrical procedures. In all cases, the diagnosis was based on clinical presentation, intravenous pyelography, and cystoscopy. Various therapeutic methods were used. Eleven patients were treated by the endoscopic placement of a ureteral stent and 13 patients (including four with failed initial ureteral stent insertion) received ureteral reimplantation. Of these, two patients were treated by the Boari flap method, six by Psoas hitch, four by simple ureteric reimplant, and one by transureteroureterostomy. Results: Of the 11 patients treated by the endoscopic placement of a ureteral stent, 7 (64%) were successfully managed with this treatment alone. The remaining 4 (36%) also had open surgery. A total of 13 patients (including the 4 initially treated with endoscopic placement) underwent successful ureteric reimplantation. Routine cystoscopy revealed that 2 of the 20 patients (10%) had a concurrent vesicovaginal fistula. Conclusion: A ureterovaginal fistula is a rare but a relatively frequent complication of pelvic surgery. We recommend a minimal invasive approach including ureteric stent insertion as primary management and routine cystoscopy to rule out an association of a vesicovaginal fistula.
Two New Guaiane Sesquiterpenoids from Daphne holosericea (Diels) Hamaya

Two new sesquiterpenoids with guaiane skeletons—holosericin A (1) and holosericin B (2)—were isolated from the medicinal plant Daphne holosericea (Diels) Hamawa (Thymelaeceae). Their structures were elucidated by 1D and 2D-NMR spectroscopy, as well as HR-ESI-MS data. Compounds 1 and 2 were evaluated for inhibitory activities against acetylcholinesterase and compound 2 showed a moderate activity with 31% inhibition.
Preoperative Diagnostic for Periprosthetic Joint Infection Prior to Total Knee Revision Arthroplasty

Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) after total knee arthroplasty remains a challenging problem. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of diagnostic knee aspiration and serum inflammatory markers in diagnostic of a PJI after total knee arthroplasty. Within 2011 and 2012, 46 patients received a one- or two-stage revision arthroplasty of the knee joint. These patients received a total number of 77 operations. A preoperative aspiration was performed in each case. We analyzed the microbiological and histological examinations of the samples from the aspiration and from the revision operation and additionally estimated serum inflammatory markers. The diagnostic aspiration had a specificity of 0.87, a sensitivity of 0.39, a positive predictive value of 0.67 and a negative predictive value of 0.68. For C-reactive protein the specificity was 0.61 and the sensitivity was 0.48, the serum white blood cell count had a specificity of 0.98 and a sensitivity of 0.23. Our data queries whether diagnostic joint aspiration or serum inflammatory markers are sufficient to verify or exclude a PJI.
Dual requirement for Pax6 in retinal progenitor cells

Throughout the developing central nervous system, pre-patterning of the ventricular zone into discrete neural progenitor domains is one of the predominant strategies used to produce neuronal diversity in a spatially coordinated manner. In the retina, neurogenesis proceeds in an intricate chronological and spatial sequence, yet it remains unclear whether retinal progenitor cells (RPCs) display intrinsic heterogeneity at any given time point. Here, we performed a detailed study of RPC fate upon temporally and spatially confined inactivation of Pax6. Timed genetic removal of Pax6 appeared to unmask a cryptic divergence of RPCs into qualitatively divergent progenitor pools. In the more peripheral RPCs under normal circumstances, Pax6 seemed to prevent premature activation of a photoreceptor-differentiation pathway by suppressing expression of the transcription factor Crx. More centrally, Pax6 contributed to the execution of the comprehensive potential of RPCs: Pax6 ablation resulted in the exclusive generation of amacrine interneurons. Together, these data suggest an intricate dual role for Pax6 in retinal neurogenesis, while pointing to the cryptic divergence of RPCs into distinct progenitor pools.
Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase Is a Regulator of Alcohol Consumption and Excitatory Synaptic Plasticity in the Nucleus Accumbens Shell

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) is a receptor tyrosine kinase recently implicated in biochemical, physiological, and behavioral responses to ethanol. Thus, manipulation of ALK signaling may represent a novel approach to treating alcohol use disorder (AUD). Ethanol induces adaptations in glutamatergic synapses onto nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh) medium spiny neurons (MSNs), and putative targets for treating AUD may be validated for further development by assessing how their manipulation modulates accumbal glutamatergic synaptic transmission and plasticity. Here, we report that Alk knockout (AlkKO) mice consumed greater doses of ethanol, relative to wild-type (AlkWT) mice, in an operant self-administration model. Using ex vivo electrophysiology to examine excitatory synaptic transmission and plasticity at NAcSh MSNs that express dopamine D1 receptors (D1MSNs), we found that the amplitude of spontaneous excitatory post-synaptic currents (EPSCs) in NAcSh D1MSNs was elevated in AlkKO mice and in the presence of an ALK inhibitor, TAE684. Furthermore, when ALK was absent or inhibited, glutamatergic synaptic plasticity – long-term depression of evoked EPSCs – in D1MSNs was attenuated. Thus, loss of ALK activity in mice is associated with elevated ethanol consumption and enhanced excitatory transmission in NAcSh D1MSNs. These findings add to the mounting evidence of a relationship between excitatory synaptic transmission onto NAcSh D1MSNs and ethanol consumption, point toward ALK as one important molecular mediator of this interaction, and further validate ALK as a target for therapeutic intervention in the treatment of AUD.
Quasi-Cyclic Low-Density Parity-Check Codes Based on Progressive Cycle Growth Algorithm

Short cycles in the Tanner graph of a given LDPC code has negative effect on the performance of iterative decoding. To improve the performance, we presented an approach for constructing Quasi-Cyclic Low-Density Parity-Check (QC-LDPC) codes whose associated Tanner graph has large girth and a small amount of short cycles. Each column block of the parity check matrix was designed by adding circulant permutation sub-matrices one after another, provided the current parity check matrix has minimal number of short cycles. The condition for the proposed QC-LDPC codes to have girth at least 6 was also analyzed. Regular and irregular QC-LDPC codes with various lengths and rates can be constructed. Simulations show that the proposed QC-LDPC codes have less short cycles and better performance than existing progressive edge growth based QC-LDPC codes.
Constrained Co-clustering of Gene Expression Data

In many applications, the expert interpretation of co-clustering is easier than for mono-dimensional clustering. Co-clustering aims at computing a bi-partition that is a collection of co-clusters: each co-cluster is a group of objects associated to a group of attributes and these associations can support interpretations. Many constrained clustering algorithms have been proposed to exploit the domain knowledge and to improve partition relevancy in the mono-dimensional case (e.g., using the so-called must-link and cannot-link constraints). Here, we consider constrained co-clustering not only for extended must-link and cannot-link constraints (i.e., both objects and attributes can be involved), but also for interval constraints that enforce properties of co-clusters when considering ordered domains. We propose an iterative co-clustering algorithm which exploits user-defined constraints while minimizing the sum-squared residues, i.e., an objective function introduced for gene expression data clustering by Cho et al (2004). We illustrate the added value of our approach in two applications that concern gene expression data analysis.
Hyper-parameter Optimisation of Gaussian Process Reinforcement Learning for Statistical Dialogue Management

Gaussian processes reinforcement learning provides an appealing framework for training the dialogue policy as it takes into account correlations of the objective function given different dialogue belief states, which can significantly speed up the learning. These correlations are modelled by the kernel function which may depend on hyper-parameters. So far, for real-world dialogue systems the hyperparameters have been hand-tuned, relying on the designer to adjust the correlations, or simple non-parametrised kernel functions have been used instead. Here, we examine different kernel structures and show that it is possible to optimise the hyperparameters from data yielding improved performance of the resulting dialogue policy. We confirm this in a real user trial.
Stopping Rule-Driven Channel Access in Multi-Channel Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we propose a stopping rule-driven channel access scheme for a secondary user pair in multichannel cognitive radio networks (CRNs), aiming to achieve a desired tradeoff between channel sensing and channel access. In the proposed approach, we first formulate the sensing-access tradeoff problem as a 1-stage look-ahead stopping problem. We then derive two stopping conditions, namely power-limited stopping and bandwidth-limited stopping, whereby a desired tradeoff between sensing overhead and throughput increase can be achieved. Once a stopping condition is reached, a secondary user pair stops sensing and starts accessing previously sensed free channels for packet transmission. Simulation results show that, in the case of perfect sensing, the proposed approach outperforms a greedy approach by at least 80% in terms of throughput. Imperfect sensing and its impact are also addressed and evaluated.
Pedunculopontine Nucleus Area Oscillations during Stance, Stepping and Freezing in Parkinson’s Disease

The pedunculopontine area (PPNa) including the pedunculopontine and cuneiform nuclei, belongs to the mesencephalic locomotor region. Little is known about the oscillatory mechanisms underlying the function of this region in postural and gait control. We examined the modulations of the oscillatory activity of the PPNa and cortex during stepping, a surrogate of gait, and stance in seven Parkinson’s disease patients who received bilateral PPNa implantation for disabling freezing of gait (FOG). In the days following the surgery, we recorded behavioural data together with the local field potentials of the PPNa during sitting, standing and stepping-in-place, under two dopaminergic medication conditions (OFF and ON levodopa). Our results showed that OFF levodopa, all subjects had FOG during step-in-place trials, while ON levodopa, stepping was effective (mean duration of FOG decreasing from 61.7±36.1% to 7.3±10.1% of trial duration). ON levodopa, there was an increase in PPNa alpha (5–12 Hz) oscillatory activity and a decrease in beta (13–35 Hz) and gamma (65–90 Hz) bands activity. PPNa activity was not modulated during quiet standing and sitting. Our results confirm the role of the PPNa in the regulation of gait and suggest that, in Parkinson disease, gait difficulties could be related to an imbalance between low and higher frequencies.
The right ventricle in pulmonary hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a term used to classify a variety of conditions that share in common an injury to the pulmonary vasculature that produces elevations in pulmonary arterial pressure. However, it is the integrity of right ventricular function, rather than the degree of vascular injury, that is the major determinant of symptoms and survival in PAH. The article will review the normal structure and function of the right ventricle and summarize the impact of PAH and its treatments on right ventricular function.
An Integraged Architecture for Generating Parenthetical Constructions

The aim of this research is to provide a principled account of the generation of embedded constructions (called parentheticals) and to implement the results in a natural language generation system. Parenthetical constructions are frequently used in texts written in a good writing style and have an important role in text understanding. We propose a framework to model the rhetorical properties of parentheticals based on a corpus study and develop a unified natural language generation architecture which integrates syntax, semantics, rhetorical and document structure into a complex representation, which can be easily extended to handle parentheticals.