Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BLACR: TTP-Free Blacklistable Anonymous Credentials with Reputation

Anonymous authentication can give users the license to misbehave since there is no fear of retribution. As a deterrent, or means to revocation, various schemes for accountable anonymity feature some kind of (possibly distributed) trusted third party (TTP) with the power to identify or link misbehaving users. Recently, schemes such as BLAC and PEREA showed how anonymous revocation can be achieved without such TTPs—anonymous users can be revoked if they misbehave, and yet nobody can identify or link such users cryptographically. Despite being the state of the art in anonymous revocation, these schemes allow only a basic form of revocation amounting to ‘revoke anybody with d or more misbehaviors’ or ‘revoke anybody whose combined misbehavior score is too high’ (where misbehaviors are assigned a ‘severity’ score). We present BLACR, which significantly advances anonymous revocation in three ways: 1) It constitutes a first attempt to generalize reputation-based anonymous revocation, where negative or positive scores can be assigned to anonymous sessions across multiple categories. Servers can block users based on policies, which specify a boolean combination of reputations in these categories; 2) We present a weighted extension, which allows the total severity score to ramp up for multiple misbehaviors by the same user; and, 3) We make a significant improvement in authentication times through a technique we call express lane authentication, which makes reputation-based anonymous revocation practical.
National evaluation of the benefits and risks of greater structuring and coding of the electronic health record: exploratory qualitative investigation

Objective We aimed to explore stakeholder views, attitudes, needs, and expectations regarding likely benefits and risks resulting from increased structuring and coding of clinical information within electronic health records (EHRs). Materials and methods Qualitative investigation in primary and secondary care and research settings throughout the UK. Data were derived from interviews, expert discussion groups, observations, and relevant documents. Participants (n=70) included patients, healthcare professionals, health service commissioners, policy makers, managers, administrators, systems developers, researchers, and academics. Results Four main themes arose from our data: variations in documentation practice; patient care benefits; secondary uses of information; and informing and involving patients. We observed a lack of guidelines, co-ordination, and dissemination of best practice relating to the design and use of information structures. While we identified immediate benefits for direct care and secondary analysis, many healthcare professionals did not see the relevance of structured and/or coded data to clinical practice. The potential for structured information to increase patient understanding of their diagnosis and treatment contrasted with concerns regarding the appropriateness of coded information for patients. Conclusions The design and development of EHRs requires the capture of narrative information to reflect patient/clinician communication and computable data for administration and research purposes. Increased structuring and/or coding of EHRs therefore offers both benefits and risks. Documentation standards within clinical guidelines are likely to encourage comprehensive, accurate processing of data. As data structures may impact upon clinician/patient interactions, new models of documentation may be necessary if EHRs are to be read and authored by patients.
Halo assembly bias and its effects on galaxy clustering

The clustering of dark haloes depends not only on their mass but also on their assembly history, a dependence we term 'assembly bias'. Using a galaxy formation model grafted on to the Millennium Simulation of the ACDM cosmogony, we study how assembly bias affects galaxy clustering. We compare the original simulation to 'shuffled' versions where the galaxy populations are randomly swapped among haloes of similar mass, thus isolating the effects of correlations between assembly history and environment at fixed mass. Such correlations are ignored in the halo occupation distribution models often used populate dark matter simulations with galaxies, but they are significant in our more realistic simulation. Assembly bias enhances two-point correlations by 10 per cent for galaxies with Mb - 5 log h brighter than -17, but suppresses them by a similar amount for galaxies brighter than -20. When such samples are split by colour, assembly bias is 5 per cent stronger for red galaxies and 5 per cent weaker for blue ones. Halo central galaxies are differently affected by assembly bias than are galaxies of all types. It almost doubles the correlation amplitude for faint red central galaxies. Shuffling galaxies among haloes of fixed formation redshift or concentration in addition to fixed mass produces biases which are not much smaller than when mass alone is fixed. Assembly bias must reflect a correlation of environment with aspects of halo assembly which are not encoded in either of these parameters. It induces effects which could compromise precision measurements of cosmological parameters from large galaxy surveys.
Safety Profile of Transcranial Near-Infrared Laser Therapy Administered in Combination With Thrombolytic Therapy to Embolized Rabbits

Background and Purpose— Transcranial near-infrared laser therapy (TLT) is currently under investigation in a pivotal clinical trial that excludes thrombolytic therapy. To determine if combining tissue plasminogen activator (tPA; Alteplase) and TLT is safe, this study assessed the safety profile of TLT administered alone and in combination with Alteplase. The purpose for this study is to determine if the combination of TLT and thrombolysis should be investigated further in a human clinical trial. Methods— We determined whether postembolization treatment with TLT in the absence or presence of tPA would affect measures of hemorrhage or survival after large clot embolism-induced strokes in New Zealand white rabbits. Results— TLT did not significantly alter hemorrhage incidence after embolization, but there was a trend for a modest reduction of hemorrhage volume (by 65%) in the TLT-treated group compared with controls. Intravenous administration of tPA, using an optimized dosing regimen, significantly increased hemorrhage incidence by 160%. The tPA-induced increase in hemorrhage incidence was not significantly affected by TLT, although there was a 30% decrease in hemorrhage incidence in combination-treated rabbits. There was no effect of TLT on hemorrhage volume measured in tPA-treated rabbits and no effect of any treatment on 24-hour survival rate. Conclusion— In the embolism model, TLT administration did not affect the tPA-induced increase in hemorrhage incidence. TLT may be administered safely either alone or in combination with tPA because neither treatment affected hemorrhage incidence or volume. Our results support the study of TLT in combination with Alteplase in patients with stroke.
Correlating microbial community profiles with geochemical data in highly stratified sediments from the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge

Microbial communities and their associated metabolic activity in marine sediments have a profound impact on global biogeochemical cycles. Their composition and structure are attributed to geochemical and physical factors, but finding direct correlations has remained a challenge. Here we show a significant statistical relationship between variation in geochemical composition and prokaryotic community structure within deep-sea sediments. We obtained comprehensive geochemical data from two gravity cores near the hydrothermal vent field Loki’s Castle at the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge, in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea. Geochemical properties in the rift valley sediments exhibited strong centimeter-scale stratigraphic variability. Microbial populations were profiled by pyrosequencing from 15 sediment horizons (59,364 16S rRNA gene tags), quantitatively assessed by qPCR, and phylogenetically analyzed. Although the same taxa were generally present in all samples, their relative abundances varied substantially among horizons and fluctuated between Bacteria- and Archaea-dominated communities. By independently summarizing covariance structures of the relative abundance data and geochemical data, using principal components analysis, we found a significant correlation between changes in geochemical composition and changes in community structure. Differences in organic carbon and mineralogy shaped the relative abundance of microbial taxa. We used correlations to build hypotheses about energy metabolisms, particularly of the Deep Sea Archaeal Group, specific Deltaproteobacteria, and sediment lineages of potentially anaerobic Marine Group I Archaea. We demonstrate that total prokaryotic community structure can be directly correlated to geochemistry within these sediments, thus enhancing our understanding of biogeochemical cycling and our ability to predict metabolisms of uncultured microbes in deep-sea sediments.
Active Learning for Post-Editing Based Incrementally Retrained MT

Machine translation, in particular statistical machine translation (SMT), is making big inroads into the localisation and translation industry. In typical workflows (S)MT output is checked and (where required) manually post-edited by human translators. Recently, a significant amount of research has concentrated on capturing human post-editing outputs as early as possible to incrementally update/modify SMT models to avoid repeat mistakes. Typically in these approaches, MT and post-edits happen sequentially and chronologically, following the way unseen data (the translation job) is presented. In this paper, we add to the existing literature addressing the question whether and if so, to what extent, this process can be improved upon by Active Learning, where input is not presented chronologically but dynamically selected according to criteria that maximise performance with respect to (whatever is) the remaining data. We explore novel (source side-only) selection criteria and show performance increases of 0.67-2.65 points TER absolute on average on typical industry data sets compared to sequential PEbased incrementally retrained SMT.
Molecular Biomarkers in Fragile X Syndrome

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common inherited form of intellectual disability (ID) and a known monogenic cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is a trinucleotide repeat disorder, in which more than 200 CGG repeats in the 5’ untranslated region (UTR) of the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene causes methylation of the promoter with consequent silencing of the gene, ultimately leading to the loss of the encoded fragile X mental retardation 1 protein, FMRP. FMRP is an RNA binding protein that plays a primary role as a repressor of translation of various mRNAs, many of which are involved in the maintenance and development of neuronal synaptic function and plasticity. In addition to intellectual disability, patients with FXS face several behavioral challenges, including anxiety, hyperactivity, seizures, repetitive behavior, and problems with executive and language performance. Currently, there is no cure or approved medication for the treatment of the underlying causes of FXS, but in the past few years, our knowledge about the proteins and pathways that are dysregulated by the loss of FMRP has increased, leading to clinical trials and to the path of developing molecular biomarkers for identifying potential targets for therapies. In this paper, we review candidate molecular biomarkers that have been identified in preclinical studies in the FXS mouse animal model and are now under validation for human applications or have already made their way to clinical trials.
AUTORITARISMO DE DERECHAS Y ADOLESCENCIA

The relationship between the Right-Wing Authoritarianism and some social-political opinions plus some life experiences of 359 adolescents attending high schools in Turin has been studied. The Right-Wing Authoritarianism correlates with the lacking of life direct experiences, with the lacking of relationships in peer groups. Likewise high level of religiousness, right-wing ideas and indifferentism are correlated with RightWing Authoritarianism. The role of the mass media and of the cultural level is very important.
Lessons learned from autonomous sciencecraft experiment

An Autonomous Science Agent has been flying onboard the Earth Observing One Spacecraft since 2003. This software enables the spacecraft to autonomously detect and responds to science events occurring on the Earth such as volcanoes, flooding, and snow melt. The package includes AI-based software systems that perform science data analysis, deliberative planning, and run-time robust execution. This software is in routine use to fly the EO-1 mission. In this paper we briefly review the agent architecture and discuss lessons learned from this multi-year flight effort pertinent to deployment of software agents to critical applications.
Comparison of Medicult and Sage Media for In Vitro Maturation of Immature Oocytes Obtained during Cesarean Deliveries

Background: The success of in vitro maturation (IVM) of oocytes depends on many factors. Culture medium is one crucial part of the technique, but evidence-based selection of the medium is difficult because very few trials are available on this subject. In this study we compared two widely available commercial media, namely Medicult (Origo, Malov, Denmark) and Sage medium (Cooper Surgical, Trumbull, CT, USA) for IVM of human oocytes. Methods: One thousand and fifteen immature oocytes were collected by needle aspiration from ninety-three women, who underwent cesarean deliveries during a five-month period at a University Hospital in Thailand. Sibling oocytes were allocated to either Medicult (509 oocytes) or Sage IVM medium (506 oocytes) and assessed for maturation after 36 hours in culture. Mature oocytes were inseminated by intracytoplasmic sperm injection and cultured up to 144 hours. χ2-tests were used to compare maturation, fertilization, cleavage and blastocyst formation rates between the two groups. Results: There was no statistical difference (p>0.05) in maturation (65.0 vs. 64.2 %), fertilization (69.9 vs. 65.2 %), cleavage (61.7 vs. 61.2 %), or blastocyst formation (48.1 vs. 46.7 %) between oocytes in the two groups. Conclusions: Despite the unfavorable hormonal milieu, immature oocytes obtained during pregnancies are developmentally competent. Given equal efficacy, the choice of Medicult or Sage IVM medium depends on availability, cost, and ease of use. This approach is an attractive alternative to conventional oocyte donation and may be used to generate mature oocytes for stem cell research.
Idleness is Not Sloth

Many people have observed that computer systems spend much of their time idle, and various schemes have been proposed to use this idle time productively. The commonest approach is to off-load activity from busy periods to less-busy ones in order to improve system responsiveness. In addition, speculative work can be performed in idle periods in the hopes that it will be needed later at times of higher utilization, or non-renewable resource like battery power can be conserved by disabling unused resources. We found opportunities to exploit idle time in our work on storage systems, and after a few attempts to tackle specific instances of it in ad hoc ways, began to investigate general mechanisms that could be applied to this problem. Our results include a taxonomy of idle-time detection algorithms, metrics for evaluating them, and an evaluation of a number of idleness predictors that we generated from our taxonomy.
Improving wound healing and preventing surgical site complications of closed surgical incisions: a possible role of Incisional Negative Pressure Wound Therapy. A systematic review of the literature

Advances in preoperative care, surgical techniques and technologies have enabled surgeons to achieve primary closure in a high percentage of surgical procedures. However, often, underlying patient comorbidities in addition to surgical‐related factors make the management of surgical wounds primary closure challenging because of the higher risk of developing complications. To date, extensive evidence exists, which demonstrate the benefits of negative pressure dressing in the treatment of open wounds; recently, Incisional Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (INPWT) technology as delivered by Prevena™ (KCI USA, Inc., San Antonio, TX) and Pico (Smith & Nephew Inc, Andover, MA) systems has been the focus of a new investigation on possible prophylactic measures to prevent complications via application immediately after surgery in high‐risk, clean, closed surgical incisions. A systematic review was performed to evaluate INPWT's effect on surgical sites healing by primary intention. The primary outcomes of interest are an understanding of INPWT functioning and mechanisms of action, extrapolated from animal and biomedical engineering studies and incidence of complications (infection, dehiscence, seroma, hematoma, skin and fat necrosis, skin and fascial dehiscence or blistering) and other variables influenced by applying INPWT (re‐operation and re‐hospitalization rates, time to dry wound, cost saving) extrapolated from human studies. A search was conducted for published articles in various databases including PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus Database from 2006 to March 2014. Supplemental searches were performed using reference lists and conference proceedings. Studies selection was based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria and data extraction regarding study quality, model investigated, epidemiological and clinical characteristics and type of surgery, and the outcomes were applied to all the articles included. 1 biomedical engineering study, 2 animal studies, 15 human studies for a total of 6 randomized controlled trials, 5 prospective cohort studies, 7 retrospective analyses, were included. Human studies investigated the outcomes of 1042 incisions on 1003 patients. The literature shows a decrease in the incidence of infection, sero‐haematoma formation and on the re‐operation rates when using INPWT. Lower level of evidence was found on dehiscence, decreased in some studies, and was inconsistent to make a conclusion. Because of limited studies, it is difficult to make any assertions on the other variables, suggesting a requirement for further studies for proper recommendations on INPWT.
Progress curve analysis of qRT‐PCR reactions using the logistic growth equation

We present an alternate approach for analyzing data from real‐time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT‐PCR) experiments by fitting individual fluorescence vs. cycle number (F vs. C) curves to the logistic growth equation. The best fit parameters determined by nonlinear least squares were used to compute the second derivative of the logistic equation and the cycle threshold, Ct, was determined from the maximum value of the second derivative. This Ct value was subsequently used to determine ΔΔCt and the amplification efficiency, En, thereby completing the analysis on a qRT‐PCR data set. The robustness of the logistic approach was verified by testing ∼600 F vs. C curves using both new and previously published data sets. In most cases, comparisons were made between the logistic estimates and those from the standard curve and comparative Ct methods. Deviations between the logistic and standard curve method ranged between 3–10% for Ct estimates, 2–10% for ΔΔCt estimates, and 1–11% for En estimates. The correlations between Ct estimates from the logistic and standard curve methods were very high, often >0.95. When compared with five other established methods of qRT‐PCR data analysis to predict initial concentrations of two genes encompassing a total of 500 F vs. C curves, the logistic estimates were of comparable accuracy. This reliable performance of the logistic approach comes without the need to construct standard curves which can be a laborious undertaking. Also, no a priori assumptions for En are necessary while some other methods assume equal En values for the reference and target genes, an assumption that is not universally valid. In addition, by accurately describing the data in the plateau region of the F vs. C curve, the logistic method overcomes the limitations of the sigmoidal curve fitting method. The streamlined nature of the logistic approach makes it ideal for complete automation on a variety of computing environments thereby completely eliminating user bias. The simplicity, robustness, and ease of computer implementation of the logistic approach should make it an attractive alternative for rapidly analyzing qRT‐PCR data. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog. , 2011
Broad-band photometric colors and effective temperature calibrations for late-type giants. I. Z = 0.02

We investigate the effects of metallicity on the broad-band photometric colors of late-type giants, and make a comparison of synthetic colors with observed photometric properties of late-type giants over a wide range of effective temperatures (T-eff = 3500- 4800K) and gravities (log g = 0.0-2.5), at [M/H] = -1.0 and -2.0. The influence of metallicity on the synthetic photometric colors is small at effective temperatures above similar to 3800K, but the effects grow larger at lower T-eff,T- due to the changing effciency of molecule formation which reduces molecular opacities at lower [M/H]. To make a detailed comparison of the synthetic and observed photometric colors of late type giants in the T-eff-color and color-color planes (which is done at two metallicities, [M/H] = -1.0 and -2.0), we derive a set of new T-eff-log g-color relations based on synthetic photometric colors, at [M/H] = -0.5, -1.0, -1.5, and -2.0. These relations are based on the T-eff- log g scales that we derive employing literature data for 178 late-type giants in 10 Galactic globular clusters (with metallicities of the individual stars between [M/H] = -0.7 and -2.5), and synthetic colors produced with the PHOENIX, MARCS and ATLAS stellar atmosphere codes. Combined with the T-eff- log g-color relations at [M/H] = 0.0 (Kucinskas et al. 2005), the set of new relations covers metallicities [M/H] = 0.0. -2.0 ([M/H] = 0.5), effective temperatures T-eff = 3500. 4800 K (T-eff = 100K), and gravities log g = - 0.5. 3.0. The new T-eff- log g-color relations are in good agreement with published T-eff-color relations based on observed properties of late-type giants, both at [M/H] = -1.0 and -2.0. The differences in all T-eff- color planes are typically well within similar to 100K. We find, however, that effective temperatures predicted by the scales based on synthetic colors tend to be slightly higher than those resulting from the T-eff- color relations based on observations, with the offsets up to similar to 100 K. This is clearly seen both at [M/H] = -1.0 and -2.0, especially in the T-eff-(B - V) and T-eff-(V - K) planes. The consistency between T-eff- log g-color scales based on synthetic colors calculated with different stellar atmosphere codes is very good, with typical differences being well within. Delta T-eff similar to 70 K at [M/H] = - 1.0 and. T-eff similar to 40 K at [M/H] = -2.0. (Less)