Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Architectural mechanisms to support three-dimensional lattice gas simulations

The search for efficient methods of computer simulation of fluid motion is a very important and difficult problem. The lattice gas method has recently emerged as a promising discrete particle simulation method well suited to parallel processing. Application-specific computers can deliver performance a thousand times that of existing supercomputers. A very high-performance scalable multiprocessor architecture, called ALGE, is proposed for the simulation of a realistic three-dimensional lattice gas model. Several new architectural mechanisms are introduced to resolve various issues of computation and communication in the application context. The synergy of these mechanisms results in 100’%o utilization of all the processors during the main computation loop; hence true linear speedup is achieved. A 1000-processor configuration of ALGE is expected to deliver over 20 billion node updates per second (NUPS), about 600 times the performance of CRAY-2. A prototype of the key processing element has been implemented.
An Approximation Lemma about the Cut Locus, with Applications in Optimal Transport Theory

A path in a Riemannian manifold can be approximated by a path meeting only finitely many times the cut locus of a given point. The proof of this property uses recent works of Itoh–Tanaka and Li–Nirenberg about the differential structure of the cut locus. We present applications in the regularity theory of optimal transport.
Predictive Factors for BRCA1 and BRCA2 Genetic Testing in an Asian Clinic-Based Population

Purpose The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has proposed guidelines for the genetic testing of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, based on studies in western populations. This current study assessed potential predictive factors for BRCA mutation probability, in an Asian population. Methods A total of 359 breast cancer patients, who presented with either a family history (FH) of breast and/or ovarian cancer or early onset breast cancer, were accrued at the National Cancer Center Singapore (NCCS). The relationships between clinico-pathological features and mutational status were calculated using the Chi-squared test and binary logistic regression analysis. Results Of 359 patients, 45 (12.5%) had deleterious or damaging missense mutations in BRCA1 and/or BRCA2. BRCA1 mutations were more likely to be found in ER-negative than ER-positive breast cancer patients (P=0.01). Moreover, ER-negative patients with BRCA mutations were diagnosed at an earlier age (40 vs. 48 years, P=0.008). Similarly, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients were more likely to have BRCA1 mutations (P=0.001) and that these patients were diagnosed at a relatively younger age than non-TNBC patients (38 vs. 46 years, P=0.028). Our analysis has confirmed that ER-negative status, TNBC status and a FH of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) are strong factors predicting the likelihood of having BRCA mutations. Conclusions Our study provides evidence that TNBC or ER-negative patients may benefit from BRCA genetic testing, particularly younger patients (<40 years) or those with a strong FH of HBOC, in Asian patients.
Family Disputes and their Relationship to Psychological Identity among a Sample of Adolescents

This study investigated the relationship of family disputes with psychological identity among a sample of 348 adolescents chosen from various first and second secondary classes, using a measure of family disputes domain (family problems, personal and psychological problems). The correlation coefficients were moderate and ranged between . 50 and . 83. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.87, 0.90 for the two domains, respectively. The multiple regression analysis of family disputes was used in the prediction of psychological identity for both males and females together and for each gender. To determine the differences between the males and females on each of the measures of family disputes and identity, t-tests were used. The results showed that the family disputes predicted the psychological identity (identity achievement, moratorium, identity foreclosure, and identity diffusion) for both males and females together and for each gender. The results also showed that 67% of the respondents were classified in one personality status. The dominant identity among adolescents was the achieving identity. The results indicated that there were significant differences across gender in the dimensions of family disputes; the personal problems and psychological identity.
The Effects Of Differential Item Functioning On Predictive Bias

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relation between measurement bias at the item level (differential item functioning, DIF) and predictive bias at the test score level. DIF was defined as a difference in the probability of getting a test item correct for examinees with the same ability but from different subgroups. Predictive bias was defined as a difference in subgroup regression intercepts and/or slopes in predicting a criterion. Data were simulated by computer. Two hypothetical subgroups (a reference group and a focal group) were used. The predictor was a composite score on a dimensionally complex test with 60 items. Sample size (35, 70, and 105 per group), validity coefficient (ρ = .3 or .5), and the mean difference on the predictor (0, .33, .66, and 1 standard deviation, SD) and the criterion (0 and .35 SD) were manipulated. The percentage of items showing DIF (0%, 15%, and 30%) and the effect size of DIF (small = .3, medium = .6, and large = .9) were also manipulated. Each of the 432 conditions in the 3 x 2 x 4 x 2 x 3 x 3 design was replicated 500 times. For each replication, a predictive bias analysis was conducted, and the detection of predictive bias against each subgroup was the dependent variable. The percentage of DIF and the effect size of DIF were hypothesized to influence the detection of predictive bias; hypotheses were also advanced about the influence of sample size and mean subgroup differences on the predictor and criterion. Results indicated that DIF was not related to the probability of detecting predictive bias against any subgroup. Results were inconsistent with the notion that measurement bias and predictive bias are mutually supportive, i.e., the presence (or absence) of one type of bias is evidence in support of the presence (or absence) of the other type of bias. Sample size and mean differences on the
Recovery from Sleep Deprivation Occurs during Propofol Anesthesia

Background: Some neurophysiologic similarities between sleep and anesthesia suggest that an anesthetized state may reverse effects of sleep deprivation. The effect of anesthesia on sleep homeostasis, however, is unknown. To test the hypothesis that recovery from sleep deprivation occurs during anesthesia, the authors followed 24 h of sleep deprivation in the rat with a 6-h period of either ad libitum sleep or propofol anesthesia, and compared subsequent sleep characteristics. Methods: With animal care committee approval, electroencephalographic/electromyographic electrodes and intrajugular cannulae were implanted in 32 rats. After a 7-day recovery and 24-h baseline electroencephalographic/electromyographic recording period, rats were sleep deprived for 24 h by the disk-over-water method. Rats then underwent 6 h of either propofol anesthesia (n = 16) or ad libitum sleep with intralipid administration (n = 16), followed by electroencephalographic/electromyographic monitoring for 72 h. Results: In control rats, increases above baseline in non–rapid eye movement sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, and non–rapid eye movement delta power persisted for 12 h after 24 h of sleep deprivation. Recovery from sleep deprivation in anesthetized rats was similar in timing to that of controls. No delayed rebound effects were observed in either group for 72 h after deprivation. Conclusion: These data show that a recovery process similar to that occurring during naturally occurring sleep also takes place during anesthesia and suggest that sleep and anesthesia share common regulatory mechanisms. Such interactions between sleep and anesthesia may allow anesthesiologists to better understand a potentially important source of variability in anesthetic action and raise the possibility that anesthetics may facilitate sleep in environments where sleep deprivation is common.
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research Multidimensional Well-Being at the Top : Evidence for Germany

This paper employs a multidimensional approach for the measurement of well-being at the top of the distribution using German SOEP micro data. Besides income as traditional indicator for material wellbeing, we include health as a proxy for nonmaterial quality of life as well as self-reported satisfaction with life as dimensions. We find that one third of the German population is well-off in at least one dimension but only one percent in all three dimensions simultaneously. While the distribution of income has become more concentrated at the top, the concentration at the top of the multidimensional well-being distribution has decreased over time. Moreover, health as well as life satisfaction contribute quite substantially to multidimensional wellbeing at the top which has important policy implications. JEL Classification: D31, D63, I31
Towards Fluorescence In Vivo Hybridization (FIVH) Detection of H. pylori in Gastric Mucosa Using Advanced LNA Probes

In recent years, there have been several attempts to improve the diagnosis of infection caused by Helicobacter pylori. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a commonly used technique to detect H. pylori infection but it requires biopsies from the stomach. Thus, the development of an in vivo FISH-based method (FIVH) that directly detects and allows the visualization of the bacterium within the human body would significantly reduce the time of analysis, allowing the diagnosis to be performed during endoscopy. In a previous study we designed and synthesized a phosphorothioate locked nucleic acid (LNA)/ 2’ O-methyl RNA (2’OMe) probe using standard phosphoramidite chemistry and FISH hybridization was then successfully performed both on adhered and suspended bacteria at 37°C. In this work we simplified, shortened and adapted FISH to work at gastric pH values, meaning that the hybridization step now takes only 30 minutes and, in addition to the buffer, uses only urea and probe at non-toxic concentrations. Importantly, the sensitivity and specificity of the FISH method was maintained in the range of conditions tested, even at low stringency conditions (e.g., low pH). In conclusion, this methodology is a promising approach that might be used in vivo in the future in combination with a confocal laser endomicroscope for H. pylori visualization.
Effect of Exercise Intensity on Spontaneous Physical Activity Energy Expenditure in Overweight Boys: A Crossover Study

Objective Evaluate the effect of different exercise intensities on spontaneous physical activity energy expenditure in overweight adolescents. Methods A crossover study was developed with a control session, followed by moderate and vigorous exercise sessions, with six days of monitoring each. Twenty-four adolescents, 11–13 years old, male and overweight were selected. Spontaneous physical activity energy expenditure was assessed by accelerometers. Linear mixed effects models were used to evaluate the differences per session across time. Results Energy expenditure during the 1st hour was different between all three sessions, with averages of 82, 286 and 343 kcal to the control, moderate and vigorous sessions, respectively (p <0.001). The same pattern of difference in energy expenditure between the sessions remained after 24 hours (704 vs 970 vs 1056 kcal, p <0.001). However, energy expenditure during the six days indicates compensation from second to the sixth day, although small differences remained at the end of the 6-day period (5102 vs 5193 vs 5271 kcal, p <0.001). Conclusions A single aerobic session seems to modify the spontaneous physical activities in overweight adolescents but still keeping the vigorous session with higher total energy expenditure during the follow-up period. Despite the observed compensatory effect, the greater energy expenditure observed in both moderate and vigorous exercise sessions indicates that physical activity should be recommended to promote an increased energy expenditure in adolescents. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT 02272088
Birthweight, Maternal Weight Trajectories and Global DNA Methylation of LINE-1 Repetitive Elements

Low birthweight, premature birth, intrauterine growth retardation, and maternal malnutrition have been related to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, and neuropsychiatric disorders later in life. Conversely, high birthweight has been linked to future risk of cancer. Global DNA methylation estimated by the methylation of repetitive sequences in the genome is an indicator of susceptibility to chronic diseases. We used data and biospecimens from an epigenetic birth cohort to explore the association between trajectories of fetal and maternal weight and LINE-1 methylation in 319 mother-child dyads. Newborns with low or high birthweight had significantly lower LINE-1 methylation levels in their cord blood compared to normal weight infants after adjusting for gestational age, sex of the child, maternal age at delivery, and maternal smoking during pregnancy (p = 0.007 and p = 0.036, respectively), but the magnitude of the difference was small. Infants born prematurely also had lower LINE-1 methylation levels in cord blood compared to term infants, and this difference, though small, was statistically significant (p = 0.004). We did not find important associations between maternal prepregnancy BMI or gestational weight gain and global methylation of the cord blood or fetal placental tissue. In conclusion, we found significant differences in cord blood LINE-1 methylation among newborns with low and high birthweight as well as among prematurely born infants. Future studies may elucidate whether chromosomal instabilities or other functional consequences of these changes contribute to the increased risk of chronic diseases among individuals with these characteristics.
Delta-net: Real-time Network Verification Using Atoms

Real-time network verification promises to automatically detect violations of network-wide reachability invariants on the data plane. To be useful in practice, these violations need to be detected in the order of milliseconds, without raising false alarms. To date, most real-time data plane checkers address this problem by exploiting at least one of the following two observations: (i) only small parts of the network tend to be affected by typical changes to the data plane, and (ii) many different packets tend to share the same forwarding behaviour in the entire network. This paper shows how to effectively exploit a third characteristic of the problem, namely: similarity among forwarding behaviour of packets through parts of the network, rather than its entirety. We propose the first provably amortized quasi-linear algorithm to do so. We implement our algorithm in a new real-time data plane checker, Delta-net. Our experiments with SDN-IP, a globally deployed ONOS software-defined networking application, and several hundred million IP prefix rules generated using topologies and BGP updates from real-world deployed networks, show that Delta-net checks a rule insertion or removal in approximately 40 microseconds on average, a more than 10X improvement over the state-of-the-art. We also show that Delta-net eliminates an inherent bottleneck in the state-of-the-art that restricts its use in answering Datalog-style "what if" queries.
Effects of Fractalkine Receptor Variants on Common Carotid Artery Intima-Media Thickness

Background and Purpose— Fractalkine receptor (CX3CR1) plays a key role during atherogenesis. CX3CR1 has 2 common coding polymorphisms, namely V249I and T280M, that have been associated with interindividual differences in susceptibility to atherosclerosis. In the present study, we investigated the possible association between CX3CR1variants and intima-media thickness (IMT). Methods— We genotyped 1256 samples from the Progression of Lesions in the Intima of the Carotid (PLIC) study (a prospective population-based study) for the presence of the V249 and the M280 variants of CX3CR1. Results— Significantly reduced IMT was observed in subjects with the MM280 genotype (0.57±0.12 mm) compared with subjects with the TT (0.65±0.14 mm) or the TM (0.65±0.13 mm) genotype. No difference in IMT was observed within carrier of the II249, VI249, or VV249 genotype. Subjects with combined genotype VI249/MM280 and II249/MM280 showed a reduced IMT. Conclusions— The presence of the M280 polymorphism of the fractalkine receptor is associated with a decreased common carotid artery IMT, whereas the presence of the I249 polymorphism does not play a major role on the progression of carotid atherosclerosis.
Outlier Detection from Network Data with Subnetwork Interpretation

Detecting a small number of outliers from a set of data observations is always challenging. This problem is more difficult in the setting of multiple network samples, where computing the anomalous degree of a network sample is generally not sufficient. In fact, explaining why a given network is exceptional, expressed in the form of subnetwork, is also equally important. We develop a novel algorithm to address these two key problems. We treat each network sample as a potential outlier and identify subnetworks that help discriminate it from nearby samples. The algorithm is developed in the framework of network regression combined with the constraints on both network topology and L1-norm shrinkage to perform subnetwork discovery. Our method thus goes beyond subspace/subgraph discovery. We also show that the developed method converges to a global optimum. Empirical evaluation on various real-world network datasets demonstrates the advantages of our algorithm over various baseline methods.
IT Driven Banking Services in Sri Lanka: Customer Acceptance and Service Quality

This research investigates the factors associated with the customer acceptance of information technology driven banking services (ITDBS) in Sri Lanka. Structured and unstructured interviews with over 180 customers and 23 bank managers and a questionnaire survey were employed as primary data collection methods in this study. The results indicate that although ATM services are extensively used, the usage of other IT driven services such as online banking, mobile banking, internet payment gateway and telephone banking is almost insignificant. Although this study was initially conceptualized with the view to developing a model that explains the customer adoption of ITDBS, the aim of research was later altered to examine the factors behind non-acceptance of these services (apart from the ATMs). Accordingly a comprehensive model that identifies the factors behind the customer reluctance to use ITDBS in Sri Lanka is developed. This customer reluctance model demonstrates that there are number of significant factors for Sri Lankan customers to refrain from using such ITDBS. Some of them can be attributed to customer behaviour ad perception, on one side, and to the banks as the service provider, on the other. However, the service providers have the ultimate responsibility to get the support of customers to adopt a service that they initiate. This model may be an eye opener for banking professionals who design, develop and market new IT driven banking services. Researchers can use the model to further investigate and understand issues related to adoption of these very important IT applications in Sri Lanka.
Environment and health aspects of pesticides use in Indian agriculture

In the recent past, pesticide related issues have been extensively highlighted in the media including research journals and attracted wider debate and sharp focus among the interested groups in India. Indiscriminate and excessive application of synthetic pesticides damaged not only the environment and agriculture but also have entered into the food chain thereby affecting health and development. The main intention of the introduction of pesticides was to prevent and control insect pests and diseases in the field crops and of course, initially the use of pesticides reduced pest attack a nd paved the way for increasing the crop yield as expected. Simultaneously, increased use of chemical pesticides has resulted in contaminating the environment and the long-term implications on the society are found multidimensional. In India pests cause cr op loss of more than RS 6000 crores annually, of which 33 per cent are by weeds, 26 per cent by diseases, 20 per cent by insects, 10 per cent by birds and rodents and the remaining (11 per cent)is due to other reasons. The magnitude of the problem would grow further as more and more (newer) pests and diseases likely to attack crops and the need to use pesticides in different forms will be necessitated in the years to come.
A cross-cultural study of identity : toward a definition of Africanity.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Identity: Toward a Theory of Africanity (May 1981) Herman H. Lewis a.k. a. Hameed El-Amin, B.A., Morehouse College, M. S. , University of Massachusetts, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed By: Castellano Turner The most empirically ignored and controversial of all concepts which purport to explain African-American identity is Africanity— the psychocultural referent of attitudes, values, behaviors, and beliefs based on the role of African heritage. Africanity can be used to explain the unique cultural , social and behavioral characteristics of African-Americans. The purpose of this research was to examine the identity structure of African-Americans in comparison with Africans and Caucasians in order to establish a measure of Africanity. Africanity is expressed through the varied and distinct forms of particular cultural and behavioral characteristics of African peoples. This ontology is expressed in two primary operational orders as defined by Nobles, 1972. 1) People are part of the rhythm of nature and 2) the survival of one s people is the paramount ethic in life. Twenty-eight original items and twenty-three items from a Spirituality scale were found to distinguish the three groups on paired group
Does Imperfect Debugging Affect Software Reliability Growth?

This paper discusses the improvement of conventional software reliability growth models by elimination of the unreasonable assumption that errors or faults in a program can be perfectly removed when they are detected. The results show that exponential-type soft- ware reliability growth models that deal with error- counting data could be used even if the perfect debugging assumption were not held, in which case the interpretation of the model parameters should be changed. An analysis of real project data is presented.