Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metabolomic Profiling of Fatty Acid and Amino Acid Metabolism in Youth With Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE We compared acylcarnitine (AcylCN) species, common amino acid and fat oxidation (FOX) byproducts, and plasma amino acids in normal weight (NW; n = 39), obese (OB; n = 64), and type 2 diabetic (n = 17) adolescents. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Fasting plasma was analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry, body composition by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry and computed tomography, and total-body lipolysis and substrate oxidation by [2H5]glycerol and indirect calorimetry, respectively. In vivo insulin sensitivity (IS) was assessed with a 3-h hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp. RESULTS Long-chain AcylCNs (C18:2-CN to C14:0-CN) were similar among the three groups. Medium- to short-chain AcylCNs (except C8 and C10) were significantly lower in type 2 diabetes compared with NW, and when compared with OB, C2-, C6-, and C10-CN were lower. Amino acid concentrations were lower in type 2 diabetes compared with NW. Fasting lipolysis and FOX were higher in OB and type 2 diabetes compared with NW, and the negative association of FOX to C10:1 disappeared after controlling for adiposity, Tanner stage, and sex. IS was lower in OB and type 2 diabetes with positive associations between IS and arginine, histidine, and serine after adjusting for adiposity, Tanner stage, and sex. CONCLUSIONS These metabolomics results, together with the increased rates of in vivo FOX, are not supportive of defective fatty acid or amino acid metabolism in obesity and type 2 diabetes in youth. Such observations are consistent with early adaptive metabolic plasticity in youth, which over time—with continued obesity and aging—may become dysfunctional, as observed in adults.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE FLAGELLAR APPARATUS OF NAEGLERIA

Flagellates of Naegleria gruberi have an interconnected flagellar apparatus consisting of nucleus, rhizoplast and accessory filaments, basal bodies, and flagella. The structures of these components have been found to be similar to those in other flagellates. The development of methods for obtaining the relatively synchronous transformation of populations of Naegleria amebae into flagellates has permitted a study of the development of the flagellar apparatus. No indications of rhizoplast, basal body, or flagellum structures could be detected in amebae. A basal body appears and assumes a position at the cell surface with its filaments perpendicular to the cell membrane. Axoneme filaments extend from the basal body filaments into a progressive evagination of the cell membrane which becomes the flagellum sheath. Continued elongation of the axoneme filaments leads to differentiation of a fully formed flagellum with a typical "9 + 2" organization, within 10 min after the appearance of basal bodies.
CloudSim: a toolkit for modeling and simulation of cloud computing environments and evaluation of resource provisioning algorithms

Cloud computing is a recent advancement wherein IT infrastructure and applications are provided as ‘services’ to end‐users under a usage‐based payment model. It can leverage virtualized services even on the fly based on requirements (workload patterns and QoS) varying with time. The application services hosted under Cloud computing model have complex provisioning, composition, configuration, and deployment requirements. Evaluating the performance of Cloud provisioning policies, application workload models, and resources performance models in a repeatable manner under varying system and user configurations and requirements is difficult to achieve. To overcome this challenge, we propose CloudSim: an extensible simulation toolkit that enables modeling and simulation of Cloud computing systems and application provisioning environments. The CloudSim toolkit supports both system and behavior modeling of Cloud system components such as data centers, virtual machines (VMs) and resource provisioning policies. It implements generic application provisioning techniques that can be extended with ease and limited effort. Currently, it supports modeling and simulation of Cloud computing environments consisting of both single and inter‐networked clouds (federation of clouds). Moreover, it exposes custom interfaces for implementing policies and provisioning techniques for allocation of VMs under inter‐networked Cloud computing scenarios. Several researchers from organizations, such as HP Labs in U.S.A. , are using CloudSim in their investigation on Cloud resource provisioning and energy‐efficient management of data center resources. The usefulness of CloudSim is demonstrated by a case study involving dynamic provisioning of application services in the hybrid federated clouds environment. The result of this case study proves that the federated Cloud computing model significantly improves the application QoS requirements under fluctuating resource and service demand patterns. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Meaning making in mothers’ and children's narratives of emotional events

Narrative coherence and the inclusion of mental state language are critical aspects of meaning making, especially about stressful events. Mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children with asthma independently narrated a time they were scared, frustrated, and happy. Although mothers’ narratives were generally more coherent and more saturated with mental state language than children's narratives, for both mothers and children narratives of negative events were more coherent and contained more mental state language than narratives of positive events overall, and narratives of scary events contained more mental state language than narratives of frustrating events. Coherence appears to be multifaceted, in that the three dimensions of coherence coded, context, chronology, and theme were not strongly interrelated within narratives of the same event, but use of mental state language, including cognitive-processing and emotion words, appears to be more integrated. Moreover, while thematic coherence seems to be a consistent individual narrative style across valence of event being narrated, mental state language appears to be a consistent style only across the two stressful event narratives. Finally, and quite surprisingly, there were virtually no relations between mothers’ and children's narrative meaning making.
Dissociations and Associations between Shape and Category Representations in the Two Visual Pathways

The dorsal and ventral visual pathways represent both visual and conceptual object properties. Yet the relative contribution of these two factors in the representational content of visual areas is unclear. Indeed, research investigating brain category representations rarely dissociate visual and semantic properties of objects. We present a human event-related fMRI study with a two-factorial stimulus set with 54 images that explicitly dissociates shape from category to investigate their independent contribution as well as their interactions through representational similarity analyses. Results reveal a contribution from each dimension in both streams, with a transition from shape to category along the posterior-to-anterior anatomical axis. The nature of category representations differs in the two pathways: ventral areas represent object animacy and dorsal areas represent object action properties. Furthermore, information about shape evolved from low-level pixel-based to high-level perceived shape following a posterior-to-anterior gradient similar to the shape-to-category emergence. To conclude, results show that representations of shape and category independently coexist, but at the same time they are closely related throughout the visual hierarchy. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Research investigating visual cortex conceptual category representations rarely takes into account visual properties of objects. In this report, we explicitly dissociate shape from category and investigate independent contributions and interactions of these two highly correlated dimensions.
The Influence of Color Information on the Recognition of Color Diagnostic and Noncolor Diagnostic Objects

ABSTRACT In the present study, the authors explore in detail the level of visual object recognition at which perceptual color information improves the recognition of color diagnostic and noncolor diagnostic objects. To address this issue, 3 object recognition tasks with different cognitive demands were designed: (a) an object verification task; (b) a category verification task; and (c) a name verification task. The authors found that perceptual color information improved color diagnostic object recognition mainly in tasks for which access to the semantic knowledge about the object was necessary to perform the task; that is, in category and name verification. In contrast, the authors found that perceptual color information facilitates noncolor diagnostic object recognition when access to the object's structural description from long-term memory was necessary—that is, object verification. In summary, the present study shows that the role of perceptual color information in object recognition is dependent on color diagnosticity.
Phase transition beneath the superconducting dome in BaFe2(As1−xPx)2

We present a theory for the large suppression of the superfluid density ρs in BaFe2(As1−xPx)2 in the vicinity of a putative spin-density wave quantum critical point at a P doping, x = xc. We argue that the transition becomes weakly first order in the vicinity of xc, and disorder induces puddles of superconducting and antiferromagnetic regions at short length scales; thus, the system becomes an electronic microemulsion. We propose that frustrated Josephson couplings between the superconducting grains suppress ρs. In addition, the presence of “normal” quasiparticles at the interface of the frustrated Josephson junctions will give rise to a highly nontrivial feature in the low-frequency response in a narrow vicinity around xc. We propose a number of experiments to test our theory.
Exploring the Application of Hybrid Evolutionary Computation Techniques to Physical Activity Recognition

This paper focuses on the problem of physical activity recognition, i.e., the development of a system which is able to learn patterns from data in order to be able to detect which physical activity (e.g. running, walking, ascending stairs, etc.) a certain user is performing. While this field is broadly explored in the literature, there are few works that face the problem with evolutionary computation techniques. In this case, we propose a hybrid system which combines particle swarm optimization for clustering features and genetic programming combined with evolutionary strategies for evolving a population of classifiers, shaped in the form of decision trees. This system would run the segmentation, feature extraction and classification stages of the activity recognition chain. For this paper, we have used the PAMAP2 dataset with a basic preprocessing. This dataset is publicly available at UCI ML repository. Then, we have evaluated the proposed system using three different modes: a user-independent, a user-specific and a combined one. The results in terms of classification accuracy were poor for the first and the last mode, but it performed significantly well for the user-specific case. This paper aims to describe work in progress, to share early results an discuss them. There are many things that could be improved in this proposed system, but overall results were interesting especially because no manual data transformation took place.
Ev I D E N C E F R O M in D I V I D U a L De V E L O P M E N T Ac C O U N T S

To escape from poverty requires assets, be they human, physical, social, or financial. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are designed to help the poor build assets. Withdrawals from IDAs are matched if used for home purchase, post-secondary education, or self-employment. Participants also receive financial education and support from IDA s t a ff. This paper discusses evidence from the A m e rican Dre a m Demonstration (ADD) on a series of questions.
The Co-evolution of Capabilities and Transaction Costs: Explaining the Institutional Structure of Production

This paper proposes that transaction costs and capabilities are fundamentally intertwined in the determination of vertical scope, and identifies the key mechanisms of their co-evolution. Specifically, we argue that capability differences are a necessary condition for vertical specialization; and that transaction cost reductions only lead to specialization when capabilities along the value chain are heterogeneous. Furthermore, we argue that there are four evolutionary mechanisms that shape vertical scope over time. First, the selection process, itself driven by capability differences, dynamically shapes vertical scope; second, transaction costs are endogenously changed by firms that try to re-shape the transactional environment to increase their profit and market share; third, changes in vertical scope affect the nature of the capability development process, i.e., the way in which firms improve their operations over time; and finally, the changes in the capability development process re-shape the capability pool in the industry, changing the roster of qualified participants. These dynamics of capability and transaction cost co-evolution are illustrated through two contrasting examples: The mortgage banking industry in the US, which shows the shift from integrated to dis-integrated production; and the Swiss watch manufacturing industry, which went from dis-integration to integration.
The relation of HLA genotype to hepatitis C viral load and markers of liver fibrosis in HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected women.

BACKGROUND Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I and II genotype is associated with clearance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, but little is known regarding its relation with HCV viral load or risk of liver disease in patients with persistent HCV infection. METHODS High-resolution HLA class I and II genotyping was conducted in a prospective cohort of 519 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-seropositive and 100 HIV-seronegative women with persistent HCV infection. The end points were baseline HCV viral load and 2 noninvasive indexes of liver disease, fibrosis-4 (FIB-4), and the aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio index (APRI), measured at baseline and prospectively. RESULTS DQB1*0301 was associated with low baseline HCV load (β = -.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], -.6 to -.3; P < .00001), as well as with low odds of FIB-4-defined (odds ratio [OR], .5; 95% CI, .2-.9; P = .02) and APRI-defined liver fibrosis (OR, .5; 95% CI, .3-1.0; P = .06) at baseline and/or during follow-up. Most additional associations with HCV viral load also involved HLA class II alleles. Additional associations with FIB-4 and APRI primarily involved class I alleles, for example, the relation of B*1503 with APRI-defined fibrosis had an OR of 2.0 (95% CI, 1.0-3.7; P = .04). CONCLUSIONS HLA genotype may influence HCV viral load and risk of liver disease, including DQB1*0301, which was associated with HCV clearance in prior studies.
A second-order bound with excess losses

We study online aggregation of the predictions of experts, and first show new second-order regret bounds in the standard setting, which are obtained via a version of the Prod algorithm (and also a version of the polynomially weighted average algorithm) with multiple learning rates. These bounds are in terms of excess losses, the differences between the instantaneous losses suffered by the algorithm and the ones of a given expert. We then demonstrate the interest of these bounds in the context of experts that report their confidences as a number in the interval [0; 1] using a generic reduction to the standard setting. We conclude by two other applications in the standard setting, which improve the known bounds in case of small excess losses and show a bounded regret against i.i. d. sequences of losses.
Epidemiology and Prognosis of Coagulase-Negative Staphylococcal Endocarditis: Impact of Vancomycin Minimum Inhibitory Concentration

This study describes coagulase-negative staphylococcal (CoNS) infective endocarditis (IE) epidemiology at our institution, the antibiotic susceptibility profile, and the influence of vancomycin minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) on patient outcomes. One hundred and three adults with definite IE admitted to an 850-bed tertiary care hospital in Barcelona from 1995-2008 were prospectively included in the cohort. We observed that CoNS IE was an important cause of community-acquired and healthcare-associated IE; one-third of patients involved native valves. Staphylococcus epidermidis was the most frequent species, methicillin-resistant in 52% of patients. CoNS frozen isolates were available in 88 patients. Vancomycin MICs of 2.0 μg/mL were common; almost all cases were found among S. epidermidis isolates and did not increase over time. Eighty-five patients were treated either with cloxacillin or vancomycin: 38 patients (Group 1) were treated with cloxacillin, and 47 received vancomycin; of these 47, 27 had CoNS isolates with a vancomycin MIC <2.0 μg/mL (Group 2), 20 had isolates with a vancomycin MIC ≥2.0 μg/mL (Group 3). One-year mortality was 21%, 48%, and 65% in Groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively (P=0.003). After adjusting for confounders and taking Group 2 as a reference, methicillin-susceptibility was associated with lower 1-year mortality (OR 0.12, 95% CI 0.02-0.55), and vancomycin MIC ≥2.0 μg/mL showed a trend to higher 1-year mortality (OR 3.7, 95% CI 0.9-15.2; P=0.069). Other independent variables associated with 1-year mortality were heart failure (OR 6.2, 95% CI 1.5-25.2) and pacemaker lead IE (OR 0.1, 95%CI 0.02-0.51). In conclusion, methicillin-resistant S.epidermidis was the leading cause of CoNS IE, and patients receiving vancomycin had higher mortality rates than those receiving cloxacillin; mortality was higher among patients having isolates with vancomycin MICs ≥2.0 μg/mL.
The X-ray emission from Nova V382 Velorum - I. The hard component observed with BeppoSAX

We present BeppoSAX observations of Nova Velorum 1999 (V382 Vel), carried out in a broad X-ray band covering 0.1–300 keV only 15 d after the discovery and again after 6 months. The nova was detected at day 15 with the BeppoSAX instruments which measured a flux Fx≃1.8×10−11 erg cm−2 s−1 in the 0.1–10 keV range and a 2σ upper limit Fx<6.7×10−12 erg cm−2 s−1 in the 15–60 keV range. We attribute the emission to shocked nebular ejecta at a plasma temperature kT≃6 keV. At six months no bright component emerged in the 15–60 keV range, but a bright central supersoft X-ray source appeared. The hot nebular component previously detected had cooled to a plasma temperature kT<1 keV. There was strong intrinsic absorption of the ejecta in the first observation and not in the second, because the column density of neutral hydrogen decreased from N(H)≃1.7×1023 to N(H)≃1021 cm−2 (close to the interstellar value). The unabsorbed X-ray flux also decreased from Fx=4.3×10−11 to Fx≃10−12 erg cm−2 s−1.
Semidirect product of CCR and CAR algebras and asymptotic states in quantum electrodynamics

A C*-algebra containing the CCR and CAR algebras as its subalgebras and naturally described as the semidirect product of these algebras is discussed. A particular example of this structure is considered as a model for the algebra of asymptotic fields in quantum electrodynamics in which Gauss’ law is respected. The appearance in this algebra of a phase variable related to electromagnetic potential leads to the universal charge quantization. Translationally covariant representations of this algebra with energy-momentum spectrum in the future lightcone are investigated. It is shown that vacuum representations are necessarily nonregular with respect to total electromagnetic field. However, a class of translationally covariant, irreducible representations is constructed explicitly, which remain as close as possible to the vacuum, but are regular at the same time. The spectrum of energy-momentum fills the whole future lightcone, but there are no vectors with energy-momentum lying on a mass hyperboloid or in the.
An Overview of Clinical Studies on Fiber Post Systems

Intraradicular posts are useful adjuncts in the restoration of endodontically treated teeth. These systems have undergone a significant evolution in recent years, and fiber-reinforced systems have started to be incorporated into routine clinical care more frequently. Despite the high number of laboratory studies pertaining to the characteristics of fiber posts, clinical studies evaluating their general success rates are rather limited. Since clinical investigations are reliable means to achieve information about the general behavior pattern of materials or techniques, assessment of this data will be beneficial to have a better understanding of fiber-reinforced intraradicular post systems. The purpose of this paper was to make a summary of clinical studies regarding various fiber posts. A PubMed search was conducted and articles dating back to 1990 were retrieved. The paper provides an overview of clinical studies on fiber posts specifically in the last decade as well as commentary analysis.
Volatility in the knowledge economy

Summary.We seek to explain the economic volatility of the last 6 years, in particular the rapid expansion and contraction of the knowledge sectors. Our hypothesis is that these sectors amplify the business cycle due to their increasing returns to scale, growing faster than others in an upswing and contracting faster in a downswing. To test this hypothesis we postulate a general equilibrium model with two sectors: one with increasing returns that are external to the firm and endogenously determined - the knowledge sector - and the other with constant returns to scale. We introduce a new measure of volatility of output, a ‘real beta’, and derive a ‘resolving’ equation, from which we prove that the increasing return sectors exhibit more volatility then other sectors. We validate the main results on US macro economic data of real GDP by industry (2-3 digits SIC codes) of the 1977-2001 period, and provide policy conclusions.
ODYS: A Massively-Parallel Search Engine Using a DB-IR Tightly-Integrated Parallel DBMS

Recently, parallel search engines have been implemented based on scalable distributed file systems such as Google File System. However, we claim that building a massively-parallel search engine using a parallel DBMS can be an attractive alternative since it supports a higher-level (i.e., SQL-level) interface than that of a distributed file system for easy and less error-prone application development while providing scalability. In this paper, we propose a new approach of building a massively-parallel search engine using a DB-IR tightly-integrated parallel DBMS and demonstrate its commercial-level scalability and performance. In addition, we present a hybrid (i.e., analytic and experimental) performance model for the parallel search engine. We have built a five-node parallel search engine according to the proposed architecture using a DB-IR tightly-integrated DBMS. Through extensive experiments, we show the correctness of the model by comparing the projected output with the experimental results of the five-node engine. Our model demonstrates that ODYS is capable of handling 1 billion queries per day (81 queries/sec) for 30 billion web pages by using only 43,472 nodes with an average query response time of 211 ms, which is equivalent to or better than those of commercial search engines. We also show that, by using twice as many (86,944) nodes, ODYS can provide an average query response time of 162 ms, which is significantly lower than those of commercial search engines.