Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scheduling Multiple Multithreaded Applications on Asymmetric and Symmetric Chip Multiprocessors

This paper evaluates new techniques to improve performance, fairness and jitter of workloads consisting of multiple multithreaded applications running on Chip MultiProcessors (CMP). Current thread assignment techniques which are tailored for single-thread applications result in sub-optimal usage of the multiprocessor resources, unfairness between applications and jitter in execution runtimes when dealing with multiple multithreaded applications running in parallel. Multithreaded applications contain serial phases (single thread) and parallel phases (many threads). In this paper, we propose a new thread assignment mechanism that takes into account the different requirements of each phase, granting higher priority to applications during their critical-serial phases. Analytic and experimental evaluation of the proposed thread assignment mechanism on both symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessors show throughput improvements by as much as 16%, improved fairness by as much as 26% and reduced jitter by as much as 88%.
Serum vascular endothelial growth factor as a possible marker for early ectopic pregnancy.

BACKGROUND This study evaluated serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) concentrations in women with normal intrauterine pregnancy (IUP), arrested IUP and ectopic pregnancy (EP). METHOD This was a prospective, case-control study evaluating serum VEGF concentrations among 45 early pregnant women who subsequently were found to have an EP, a normal IUP or an arrested IUP (15 women in each group). Patients were stratified according to serum VEGF concentrations above and below 200 pg/ml. RESULTS There was a significant difference in VEGF concentrations among women with EP, arrested IUP and normal IUP (306.1 +/- 26.5, 169.7 +/- 16.6 and 27.0 +/- 4.4 pg/ml respectively, P < 0.001). With a cut-off concentration of 200 pg/ml, serum VEGF could distinguish normal IUP from EP with a sensitivity of 88%, a specificity of 100% and a positive predictive value of 100%. Between EP and arrested IUP, the sensitivity was 87.5%, specificity 75% and positive predictive value of 77.8%. CONCLUSIONS VEGF is a potential marker for EP. Its concentrations in women with EP are higher than in those with normal and arrested IUP.
Object continuity enhances selective auditory attention

In complex scenes, the identity of an auditory object can build up across seconds. Given that attention operates on perceptual objects, this perceptual buildup may alter the efficacy of selective auditory attention over time. Here, we measured identification of a sequence of spoken target digits presented with distracter digits from other directions to investigate the dynamics of selective attention. Performance was better when the target location was fixed rather than changing between digits, even when listeners were cued as much as 1 s in advance about the position of each subsequent digit. Spatial continuity not only avoided well known costs associated with switching the focus of spatial attention, but also produced refinements in the spatial selectivity of attention across time. Continuity of target voice further enhanced this buildup of selective attention. Results suggest that when attention is sustained on one auditory object within a complex scene, attentional selectivity improves over time. Similar effects may come into play when attention is sustained on an object in a complex visual scene, especially in cases where visual object formation requires sustained attention.
Effect of single and compound knockouts of estrogen receptors α (ERα) and β (ERβ) on mouse reproductive phenotypes

The functions of estrogen receptors (ERs) in mouse ovary and genital tracts were investigated by generating null mutants for ERα (ERαKO), ERβ (ERβKO) and both ERs (ERαβKO). All ERαKO females are sterile, whereas ERβKO females are either infertile or exhibit variable degrees of subfertility. Mast cells present in adult ER αKO and ERαβKO ovaries could participate in the generation of hemorrhagic cysts. Folliculogenesis proceeds normally up to the large antral stage in both ERαKO and ERβKO adults, whereas large antral follicles of ER α +/- /ERβKO and ERαβKO adults are markedly deficient in granulosa cells. Similarly, prematurely developed follicles found in prepubertal ERαKO ovaries appear normal, but their ERαβKO counterparts display only few granulosa cell layers. Upon superovulation treatment, all prepubertal ERαKO females form numerous preovulatory follicles of which the vast majority do not ovulate. The same treatment fails to elicit the formation of preovulatory follicles in half of the ERβKO mice and in all ERα +/- /ERβKO mice. These and other results reveal a functional redundancy between ERα and ERβ for ovarian folliculogenesis, and strongly suggest that (1) ERβ plays an important role in mediating the stimulatory effects of estrogens on granulosa cell proliferation, (2) ERα is not required for follicle growth under wild type conditions, while it is indispensable for ovulation, and (3) ERα is also necessary for interstitial glandular cell development. Our data also indicate that ERβ exerts some function in ERαKO uterus and vagina. ERαβKO granulosa cells localized within degenerating follicles transform into cells displaying junctions that are unique to testicular Sertoli cells. From the distribution pattern of anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) in ERαβKO ovaries, it is unlikely that an elevated AMH level is the cause of Sertoli cell differentiation. Our results also show that cell proliferation in the prostate and urinary bladder of old ERβKO and ERαβKO males is apparently normal.
Perpetuation of the Lyme Disease Spirochete Borrelia lusitaniae by Lizards

ABSTRACT To determine whether the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia lusitaniae is associated with lizards, we compared the prevalence and genospecies of spirochetes present in rodent- and lizard-associated ticks at a site where this spirochete frequently infects questing ticks. Whereas questing nymphal Ixodes ricinus ticks were infected mainly by Borrelia afzelii, one-half of the infected adult ticks harbored B. lusitaniae at our study site. Lyme disease spirochetes were more prevalent in sand lizards (Lacerta agilis) and common wall lizards (Podarcis muralis) than in small rodents. Although subadult ticks feeding on rodents acquired mainly B. afzelii, subadult ticks feeding on lizards became infected by B. lusitaniae. Genetic analysis confirmed that the spirochetes isolated from ticks feeding on lizards are members of the B. lusitaniae genospecies and resemble type strain PotiB2. At our central European study site, lizards, which were previously considered zooprophylactic for the agent of Lyme disease, appear to perpetuate B. lusitaniae.
Found: The Missing Blue Opacity in Atmosphere Models of Cool Hydrogen White Dwarfs

We investigate the importance of the far red wing of the Lyα line of hydrogen in the atmospheres of cool white dwarfs of pure hydrogen composition. We find that this absorption process dominates all important sources of opacity in the blue part of the optical spectrum of these stars. Our successful fits to the spectra of cool DA/DC white dwarfs indicate that the far red wing of the Lyα line is the source of opacity that had been missing in the models. The observed sequence of cool white dwarfs in color-color diagrams is very well reproduced by our new pure hydrogen atmosphere models, suggesting that the atmospheric composition of the coolest DC white dwarfs must be revisited.
Linguistic Features Identify Alzheimer's Disease in Narrative Speech.

BACKGROUND Although memory impairment is the main symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD), language impairment can be an important marker. Relatively few studies of language in AD quantify the impairments in connected speech using computational techniques. OBJECTIVE We aim to demonstrate state-of-the-art accuracy in automatically identifying Alzheimer's disease from short narrative samples elicited with a picture description task, and to uncover the salient linguistic factors with a statistical factor analysis. METHODS Data are derived from the DementiaBank corpus, from which 167 patients diagnosed with "possible" or "probable" AD provide 240 narrative samples, and 97 controls provide an additional 233. We compute a number of linguistic variables from the transcripts, and acoustic variables from the associated audio files, and use these variables to train a machine learning classifier to distinguish between participants with AD and healthy controls. To examine the degree of heterogeneity of linguistic impairments in AD, we follow an exploratory factor analysis on these measures of speech and language with an oblique promax rotation, and provide interpretation for the resulting factors. RESULTS We obtain state-of-the-art classification accuracies of over 81% in distinguishing individuals with AD from those without based on short samples of their language on a picture description task. Four clear factors emerge: semantic impairment, acoustic abnormality, syntactic impairment, and information impairment. CONCLUSION Modern machine learning and linguistic analysis will be increasingly useful in assessment and clustering of suspected AD.
The Role of Online Translation Tools in Language Education

The aim of the pilot study is to draw attention to the importance of online translation tools as a contemporary didactic tool in the language and translation educational process. In the paper the following hypotheses were tested: (i) use of free online translation tools can contribute to the development of ICT competences ; (ii) use of modern translation tools contribute to the consistency and quality ; (iii) free online translation tools for under-resourced languages can be used as pedagogical tools. Two studies were conducted using the text of EU legislation (acquis communautaire). In the first study, evaluation of the German-Slovenian translation quality of legislation was performed between two groups: one group using traditional reference works and the other group using online electronic translation tools (the Slovenian multilingual terminology database and the bilingual corpus). In both translations, mistakes were analyzed and a paired samples t-test was conducted. In the second study, machine translation of English-Croatian legislative text using the Google Translate online translation service was analyzed. The human evaluation of the translation quality was calculated, and Fleiss’ kappa metric used to assess inter-rater reliability of agreement. The evaluation was enriched by analysis of different types of errors.
The effects of temporal asynchrony on the intelligibility of accelerated speech

When the audio and visual portions of a speech stimulus are presented synchronously, the resulting enhancement in intelligibility is generally much larger than the one obtained when the audio and visual stimuli are presented sequentially. However, perfect synchronization is not required to obtain a substantial audiovisual (AV) benefit: many studies have shown that AV integration is maximum when the audio signal is slightly delayed relative to the visual signal, and other studies have shown that substantial AV intelligibility enhancement typically extends over a 250+ ms range of AV delay values, from a 50 ms lag in the visual stimulus to a 200 ms lag in the audio stimulus. In this study, artificially accelerated speech stimuli were used to examine the impact that speaking rate has on the characteristics of this temporal integration window. The results indicate that maximal AV enhancement occurs over a progressively narrower range of delay values when the speaking rate increases. The results for the fastest speaking rates also show that peak AV enhancement occurred at a larger AV delay value (150ms) than has been reported in previous studies. However, there was no conclusive evidence to suggest that the audio delay value for peak AV enhancement systematically changed with the speaking rate of the stimulus.
Heterozygous null mutation of myelin P0 protein enhances susceptibility to autoimmune neuritis targeting P0 peptide

Mice with a heterozygous null mutation in myelin protein zero (P0+/–) develop late‐onset clinical paralysis associated with inflammatory pathology in the peripheral nerves. Although the development of this illness is known to require T cells and macrophages, little is understood regarding the immunological defect in the mice. Here we report that young P0+/– mice, free from clinical manifestations, have a defect in central tolerance to P0, and are more prone to induction of experimental autoimmune neuritis (EAN) by sensitization against P0180–199 peptide. Notably, we found that the P0 gene is transcribed in the thymus of wild‐type and the P0+/– mice in an amount proportional to the gene dosage. We then replaced the thymus of wild‐type mice with that of the P0‐deficient mice and vice versa. Immunization of these mice with P0180–199 revealed that a lower thymic P0 transcript would be associated with the higher recall T cell response to P0180–199, thus accounting for the higher susceptibility of the P0+/– mice to P0‐induced EAN. These results imply that a heterozygous mutation in an autoantigen could cause defective central tolerance to the autoantigen. As such, autoimmune T cells may play some role in "genetic" diseases caused by a heterozygous gene defect.
Attitudes and Perceptions of Dual PharmD/MBA Degree Program Students

Objectives. To understand pharmacy students’ reasons for pursuing a dual PharmD/MBA degree and their perceptions of the impact a dual degree will have on their careers. Methods. This was a cross-sectional survey of registered students in the University at Buffalo PharmD/MBA program. An electronic survey was developed through collaboration with the UB School of Management and administered in January 2015. Results. A total of 23/24 (96% response rate) students who were enrolled in the PharmD/MBA curriculum responded to the survey. Respondents identified employment opportunities following graduation and career advancement as the most influential determinants in deciding to pursue an MBA degree. All respondents (100%) felt the job marketplace for pharmacy graduates is becoming increasingly difficult, 96% believe they will earn a higher midpoint salary with a PharmD/MBA, and 82% would recommend a PharmD/MBA to first year pharmacy students. Conclusion. Students are increasingly perceptive of the challenges in the current job marketplace and are taking advantage of a dual PharmD/MBA degree.
Long‐Term Course of Adult Patients with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

Abstract: A response to treatment and long‐term course of 14 adults with delayed sleep phase syndrome were investigated with the use of their hospital records and mailed questionnaires. Six patients treated with chronotherapy showed full recovery just after the treatment. In three of them the delay of sleep phase relapsed one year afterwards. Four of five patients treated with pharmacotherapy alone showed partial recovery. Six of nine patients followed for periods of longer than three years after treatment showed good prognoses, though all of them still had a mild phase delay and had to shorten their sleep time in order to work full‐time. The three others had poor prognoses and one of them was under psychiatric treatment for affective instability. These findings suggest that a long‐term follow‐up is needed to judge the effect of the treatment.
Hierarchical Posterior Sampling for Continuous-State Random Fields

The posterior sampling problem computes a random sample from a posterior distribution. Typically this problem is solved through Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo / Simulated Annealing, however these can be computationally challenging and slow to converge. In this paper we use a little-known property of multiscale statistical models to formulate a posterior sampler, exact in the case of Markov random fields, and approximate for other distributions. The proposed approach benefits from and builds upon past work on multiscale model inference and approximation, yielding a fast approach to sampling continuousstate images.
Improvements on Learning Tetris with Cross Entropy

For playing the game of Tetris well, training a controller by the cross-entropy method seems to be a viable way (Szita and Lȍrincz, 2006; Thiery and Scherrer, 2009). We consider this method to tune an evaluation-based one-piece controller as suggested by Szita and Lȍrincz and we introduce some improvements. In this context, we discuss the influence of the noise, and we perform experiments with several sets of features such as those introduced by Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis (1996), by Dellacherie (Fahey, 2003), and some original features. This approach leads to a controller that outperforms the previous known results. On the original game of Tetris, we show that with probability 0.95 it achieves at least 910, 000 ± 5% lines per game on average. On a simplified version of Tetris considered by most research works, it achieves 35, 000, 000 ± 20% lines per game on average. We used this approach when we took part with the program BCTS in the 2008 Tetris domain Reinforcement Learning Competition and won the competition.
Using Distributed Circuits to Model Power Capacitor Behavior

Distributed circuit modeling of stacked and spiral capacitors is described. The modeling, executed on a spreadsheet, allows what-if analysis of the effects of changes in capacitor specifications such as metal film resistivity and changes in geometric dimensions on dissipation factor, equivalent lumped capacitance, film current density, film voltage and power distribution profile. The system provides a complete range of data including equivalent series resistance and complex impedance. The effects of varying degrees of edge disconnection are provided in the model system. It provides a tool not only for power circuit designers, but for manufacturers concerned with design optimization and understanding of the effects of varying degrees of in-use degradation. In this study, a simple capacitor model with varying degrees of edge disconnection is explored. The results correspond to common experience whereby degraded capacitors exhibit large increases in dissipation factor with little change in nominal capacitance. The results predict the existence of hot spots in a capacitor degraded by partial edge disconnection.
The role of experience and sleep in visual learning : behavioral and brain imaging investigation

Identifying and recognizing visual objects are crucial skills that enable to interact with the environment adequately. Most of the time, these processes are rapid and effortless. However, recognition is the final outcome of complex processes, including the creation of representations of visual objects and their consolidation into memory, which mechanisms and neural correlates remain largely unknown. The present work reports four studies, aiming at better understanding visual learning, and testing more specifically the role of experience and sleep on visual learning. In particular, this works highlights a crucial role for the hippocampus in visual representation formation, for both 3D-objects and faces. This work also shows evidence that sleep may play a critical role in the consolidation of memory traces for faces, making human’s brain more resistant to misleading information. By combining behavioral and neuroimaging approaches, this thesis provides new insights into the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying visual learning.
Temperature-dependent germination and endo-beta -mannanase activity in sesame seeds

O efeito da temperatura sobre a germinacao e a atividade de endo-b-mananase em sementes de Sesamum indicum foi investigada. A temperatura minima de germinacao (Tmin) esta localizada entre 12,8°C e 13,2°C enquanto a temperatura maxima (Tmax) encontra-se entre 45,5°C e 46°C. As germinabilidades (G%) nao foram significativamente diferentes da viabilidade estimada (88%) entre 18,8°C e 43,2°C. O teste de Mann-Whitney apontou o intervalo de 31,9°C a 35,1°C como sendo a faixa de temperatura otima (Tot). Quando sementes incubadas a temperaturas proximas ou abaixo de Tmin e proximas ou acima de Tmax foram transferidas para 30°C, aquelas submetidas a baixas temperaturas atingiram germinabilidade elevada. Por outro lado, quanto maior a temperatura de pre-incubacao acima de Tmax, menor a germinabilidade alcancada. O principal monossacarideo encontrado na parede celular do endosperma das sementes foi manose. Somente em temperatura supra-otima foi observada elevacao na atividade de endo-b-mananase na regiao micropilar do endosperma anterior a germinacao.
Prediction of glomerular filtration rate from serum concentration of cystatin C: comparison of two analytical methods.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to compare two methods used to measure serum cystatin C (Cys) and their accuracy to predict glomerular filtration rate (GFR). METHODS Three hundred and sixty-seven adult chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with different functional impairments participated in this study. GFR was determined as the renal clearance of 99mTc-DTPA. Serum concentrations of cystatin C (SCys) were determined with an immunonephelometric method and with an immunoturbidimetric method. RESULTS A very high linear correlation was found between the two measurements of SCys (r=0.929). The mean difference of SCysTurb-SCysNeph was 0.02±0.43 mg/L (not significant). A high logarithmic correlation was also found between SCys and GFR (r was 0.919 for SCysNeph and 0.937 for SCysTurb). By means of multiple regression analysis, we developed formulae to predict GFR from SCysNeph, SCysTurb and SCr. For comparison, GFR was predicted using published formulae. A good agreement was found between predicted GFR and measured GFR. The results showed that the accuracy of SCysNeph, SCysTurb and SCr and of the different prediction formulae were quite similar. CONCLUSIONS The immunoturbidimetric method seems adequate to measure SCys and to predict GFR and its impairment in CKD, at least similar to the immunonephelometric method. The accuracy of SCys and of derived formulae was not higher than that of SCr and SCr-based formulae.
Obstacle Optimization for Panic Flow - Reducing the Tangential Momentum Increases the Escape Speed

A disastrous form of pedestrian behavior is a stampede occurring in an event involving a large crowd in a panic situation. To deal with such stampedes, the possibility to increase the outflow by suitably placing a pillar or some other shaped obstacles in front of the exit has been demonstrated. We present a social force based genetic algorithm to optimize the best design of architectural entities to deal with large crowds. Unlike existing literature, our simulation results indicate that appropriately placing two pillars on both sides but not in front of the door can maximize the escape efficiency. Human experiments using 80 participants correspond well with the simulations. We observed a peculiar property named tangential momentum, the escape speed and the tangential momentum are found to be negatively correlated. The idea to reduce the tangential momentum has practical implications in crowd architectural design.