Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pathogenesis of Type 2 Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) in Renal and Hepatic Fibrosis

Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), particularly, type 2 EMT, is important in progressive renal and hepatic fibrosis. In this process, incompletely regenerated renal epithelia lose their epithelial characteristics and gain migratory mesenchymal qualities as myofibroblasts. In hepatic fibrosis (importantly, cirrhosis), the process also occurs in injured hepatocytes and hepatic progenitor cells (HPCs), as well as ductular reaction-related bile epithelia. Interestingly, the ductular reaction contributes partly to hepatocarcinogenesis of HPCs, and further, regenerating cholangiocytes after injury may be derived from hepatic stellate cells via mesenchymal to epithelia transition, a reverse phenomenon of type 2 EMT. Possible pathogenesis of type 2 EMT and its differences between renal and hepatic fibrosis are reviewed based on our experimental data.
UCX: An Open Source Framework for HPC Network APIs and Beyond

This paper presents Unified Communication X (UCX), a set of network APIs and their implementations for high throughput computing. UCX comes from the combined effort of national laboratories, industry, and academia to design and implement a high-performing and highly-scalable network stack for next generation applications and systems. UCX design provides the ability to tailor its APIs and network functionality to suit a wide variety of application domains and hardware. We envision these APIs to satisfy the networking needs of many programming models such as Message Passing Interface (MPI), OpenSHMEM, Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) languages, task-based paradigms and I/O bound applications. To evaluate the design we implement the APIs and protocols, and measure the performance of overhead-critical network primitives fundamental for implementing many parallel programming models and system libraries. Our results show that the latency, bandwidth, and message rate achieved by the portable UCX prototype is very close to that of the underlying driver. With UCX, we achieved a message exchange latency of 0.89 us, a bandwidth of 6138.5 MB/s, and a message rate of 14 million messages per second. As far as we know, this is the highest bandwidth and message rate achieved by any network stack (publicly known) on this hardware.
Improving LDPC performance via asymmetric sensing level placement on flash memory

Flash memory development through technology scaling and bit density has significant impact on the reliability of flash cells. Hence strong error correction code (ECC) schemes are highly recommended. With a strong error correction capability, low-density-parity code (LDPC) is now applied for the state-of-the-art flash memory. However, LDPC has long decoding latency when the raw bit error rates (RBER) are high. This is because it needs finegrained soft sensing between states to iteratively decode the raw data. In this work, we propose a smart sensing level placement scheme to reduce the LDPC decoding latency. The basic idea for the placement scheme is motivated by two asymmetric error characteristics of flash memory: the asymmetric errors at different states, and the asymmetric errors caused by voltage left-shifts and right-shifts. With understanding of these two types of error characteristics, the sensing levels are smartly placed to achieve reduced sensing levels while maintaining the error correction capability of LDPC. Experiment analysis shows that the proposed scheme achieves significant performance improvement.
Individualized Treatment of Genotype 1 Naïve Patients: An Italian Multicenter Field Practice Experience

Background Triple therapy including Telaprevir or Boceprevir still represents in many European countries the standard of care for patients with Hepatitis C Virus genotype 1 infection. The number of patients who received this treatment resulted generally lower than expected. We investigated, among naïve patients, number and characteristics of treatment candidates who were started on triple or dual therapy in comparison to those who were deferred. Patients and Methods 621 naïve treatment candidates were prospectively evaluated at each center. Factors associated with decision to defer or treat with dual or triple therapy were investigated by univariate and multivariate analyses. Rates of Sustained Virological Response and safety profile were analysed. Results Of candidates to treatment, 33% did not received it. It was mostly due to high risk of Interferon-induced decompensation. Of 397 patients who were started on treatment, 266 (67%) received triple, 131 dual. Among patient receiving treatment, unfavorable IL28B, severe liver damage and higher albumin were independently associated with the physician decision to administer triple therapy. Sustained Virological Response after dual therapy was 66.4%, after triple 73.7% (p = 0.14). 142 patients received Telaprevir. The choice of Telaprevir-based therapy was associated with higher Body Mass Index and advanced liver disease. Sustained Virological Response rates were 71.1% after Telaprevir and 76.6% after Boceprevir. Conclusions Individualizing treatment with available regimens allows to maximize Sustained Virological Response and to reduce the number of patients who remain untreated. High proportion of patients with severe liver damage urgently need Interferon free treatment.
Robust Analysis for the Investigation of Biodynamic Rotorcraft Pilot Couplings

Aircraft-Pilot Couplings, namely the adverse interaction of the pilot with the aeromechanics of aircraft, are potentially dangerous phenomena. The prediction of aircraft proneness to this type of phenomena is usually difficult prior to flight testing. Their occurrence in rotorcraft, called Rotorcraft-Pilot Couplings, received less attention until recent years. Robust stability analysis techniques borrowed from robust control theory are used in this work to develop a simple and versatile method for the investigation of the boundaries of pilot biodynamic feedthrough that guarantees the stability of the coupled system no matter how complex the vehicle model is. The proposed method is applied to the analysis of a detailed model of a medium weight helicopter, and results are discussed.
Coronary Artery Revascularization Evaluation—A Multicenter Registry With Seven Years of Follow‐Up

Background Data from randomized clinical trials comparing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) may not accurately reflect current clinical practice, in which there is off‐label usage of drug‐eluting stents (DES). We undertook a prospective registry of coronary revascularization by CABG on‐ and off‐pump and PCI with bare‐metal stents (BMSs), DESs, or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) to determine clinical outcomes. Methods and Results All patients undergoing isolated coronary revascularization in 8 community‐based hospitals were enrolled. Final follow‐up was obtained after 5 years by patient and/or physician contact and the Social Security Death Index. ST‐elevation myocardial infarction and salvage patients were excluded. Five or more years of follow‐up was obtained on 81.5% (3156) of the eligible patients—968 CABG patients (82.0%) and 2188 PCI patients (81.3%). Overall follow‐up was 63.5±27.9 months (median, 79.7 months). The incidence of initial major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) at follow‐up for CABG versus PCI was 29.2% versus 41.8% (P<0.001). Analysis of stent subgroups showed more events with BMSs (equivalent to PTCA alone) compared with DESs. All stents had more events than on‐ or off‐pump CABG groups. Using propensity score–matched groups, the odds ratio for CABG to PCI was 0.69 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.56 to 0.85; P<0.001) for mortality and 0.58 (95% CI, 0.45 to 0.75; P<0.001) for any MACE. Conclusions In the current era of DES and off‐pump surgery, in a community hospital setting, comparable patients undergoing coronary revascularization appear to benefit from improved long‐term survival and reduced MACE with CABG versus PCI.
A first orbital solution for the very massive 30 Dor main-sequence WN6h+O binary R145

We report the results of a spectroscopic and polarimetric study of the massive, hydrogen-rich WN6h stars R144 (HD 38282 = BAT99-118 = Brey 89) and R145 (HDE 269928 = BAT99-119 = Brey 90) in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Both stars have been suspected to be binaries by previous studies (R144: Schnurr et al.; R145: Moffat). We have combined radial-velocity (RV) data from these two studies with previously unpublished polarimetric data. For R145, we were able to establish, for the first time, an orbital period of 158.8 d, along with the full set of orbital parameters, including the inclination angle i, which was found to be i = 38° ± 9°. By applying a modified version of the shift-and-add method developed by Demers et al., we were able to isolate the spectral signature of the very faint line companion star. With the RV amplitudes of both components in R145, we were thus able to estimate their absolute masses. We find minimum masses M WR sin 3 i = 116 ± 33 M ⊙ and M o sin 3 i = 48 ± 20 M ⊙ for the WR and the O component, respectively. Thus, if the low-inclination angle were correct, resulting absolute masses of the components would be at least 300 and 125 M ⊙ , respectively. However, such high masses are not supported by brightness considerations when R145 is compared to systems with known very high masses such as NGC 3603-A1 or WR20a. An inclination angle close to 90° would remedy the situation, but is excluded by the currently available data. More and better data are thus required to firmly establish the nature of this puzzling, yet potentially very massive and important system. As to R144, however, the combined data sets are not sufficient to find any periodicity.
When Are You Coming Back? Presenteeism in U.K. Prison Officers

Presenteeism has negative implications for staff well-being and the safety of prisons, but little is known about its prevalence and causes. This mixed-methods study examines these issues among 1,682 U.K. officers. Most respondents (84%) reported working while sick at least sometimes, with 53% always doing so. Six linked themes were identified that underpinned presenteeism in the prison sector: punitive absence management systems, pressure from management, short-staffing and fear of letting colleagues down, job insecurity, fear of disbelief and shaming, and duty and professionalism. The implications of presenteeism for the health and job performance of prison officers are considered.
Cost-Sensitive Local Binary Feature Learning for Facial Age Estimation

In this paper, we propose a cost-sensitive local binary feature learning (CS-LBFL) method for facial age estimation. Unlike the conventional facial age estimation methods that employ hand-crafted descriptors or holistically learned descriptors for feature representation, our CS-LBFL method learns discriminative local features directly from raw pixels for face representation. Motivated by the fact that facial age estimation is a cost-sensitive computer vision problem and local binary features are more robust to illumination and expression variations than holistic features, we learn a series of hashing functions to project raw pixel values extracted from face patches into low-dimensional binary codes, where binary codes with similar chronological ages are projected as close as possible, and those with dissimilar chronological ages are projected as far as possible. Then, we pool and encode these local binary codes within each face image as a real-valued histogram feature for face representation. Moreover, we propose a cost-sensitive local binary multi-feature learning method to jointly learn multiple sets of hashing functions using face patches extracted from different scales to exploit complementary information. Our methods achieve competitive performance on four widely used face aging data sets.
Modeling and analysis of software rejuvenation in a server virtualized system

As server virtualization is used as an essential software infrastructure of various software services such as cloud computing, availability management of server virtualized system is becoming more significant. Although time-based software rejuvenation is useful to postpone/prevent failures due to software aging in a server virtualized system, the rejuvenation schedules for virtual machine (VM) and virtual machine monitor (VMM) need to be determined in a proper way for the VM availability, since VMM rejuvenation affects VMs running on the VMM. This paper presents analytic models using stochastic reward nets for three time-based rejuvenation techniques of VMM; (i) Cold-VM rejuvenation in which all VMs are shut down before the VMM rejuvenation, (ii) Warm-VM rejuvenation in which all VMs are suspended before the VMM rejuvenation and (iii) Migrate-VM rejuvenation in which all VMs are moved to the other host server during the VMM rejuvenation. We compare the three techniques in terms of steady-state availability and the number of transactions lost in a year. We find the optimal combination of rejuvenation trigger intervals for each rejuvenation technique by a gradient search method. The numerical analysis shows the interesting result that Warm-VM rejuvenation does not always outperform Cold-VM rejuvenation in terms of steady-state availability depending on rejuvenation trigger intervals. Migrate-VM rejuvenation is better than the other two as long as live VM migration rate is large enough and the other host server has a capacity to accept the migrated VM.
Conceptions of Research Publication among Iranian Doctoral Students of Applied Linguistics: Cherish the Wish to Publish or Rush to Perish

The competitive academic atmosphere of the higher education worldwide along with the current trend in producing research-oriented knowledge by universities has made research publication the first priority for doctoral students. In this study, we addressed the conceptions of purpose, process, and product of publishing research articles among Iranian doctoral students of applied linguistics. To this end, thirty students were interviewed and the data were analyzed using the grounded theory approach. The findings demonstrated that doctoral students publish papers to prepare a competitionwinning resume, significantly contribute to the ELT community, turn into life-long learners and problem-solvers, and fulfill their course requirements. Furthermore, with regard to the research publication process, they highlighted the role of mixed-methods in spotting real problems in context and getting their papers published in prestigious journals. Additionally, the students believed that publishing in international journals grants them the opportunity to gain international recognition, attract an international audience, receive expert quality feedback from professional reviewers, publish in journals specific in focus and scope, and avoid publishing in cheap predatory journals. Finally, the findings suggest that the doctoral students need more systematic coaching to successfully conduct and publish their research.
The impact of music and stretched time on pupillary responses and eye movements in slow-motion film scenes

This study investigated the effects of music and playback speed on arousal and visual perception in slow-motion scenes taken from commercial films. Slow-motion scenes are a ubiquitous film technique and highly popular. Yet the psychological effects of mediated time-stretching compared to real-time motion have not been empirically investigated. We hypothesised that music affects arousal and attentional processes. Furthermore, we as-sumed that playback speed influences viewers’ visual perception, resulting in a higher number of eye movements and larger gaze dispersion. Thirty-nine participants watched three film excerpts in a repeated-measures design in conditions with or without music and in slow motion vs. adapted real-time motion (both visual-only). Results show that music in slow-motion film scenes leads to higher arousal compared to no music as indicated by larger pupil diameters in the former. There was no systematic effect of music on visual perception in terms of eye movements. Playback speed influenced visual perception in eye movement parameters such that slow motion resulted in more and shorter fixations as well as more saccades compared to adapted real-time motion. Furthermore, in slow motion there was a higher gaze dispersion and a smaller centre bias, indicating that individuals attended to more detail in slow motion scenes.
1 < 2 and 2 < 3: Non-Linguistic Appreciations of Numerical Order

Ordinal understanding is involved in understanding social hierarchies, series of actions, and everyday events. Moreover, an appreciation of numerical order is critical to understanding number at a highly abstract, conceptual level. In this paper, we review findings concerning the development and expression of ordinal numerical knowledge in preverbal human infants in light of literature about the same cognitive abilities in non-human animals. We attempt to reconcile seemingly contradictory evidence, provide new directions for prospective research, and evaluate the shared basis of ordinal knowledge among non-verbal organisms. Our review of the research leads us to conclude that both infants and non-human animals are adapted to respond to monotonic progressions in numerical order, consonant with mathematical definitions of numerical order. Further, we suggest that patterns in the way that infants and non-human animals process numerical order can be accounted for by changes across development, the conditions under which representations are generated, or both.
Human cortical functions in auditory change detection evaluated with multiple brain research methods

The present thesis examined in human subjects the brain mechanisms involved in the detection of unattended auditory changes. According to previous results, the auditory change-detection mechanism consists of several anatomical and functional units which are activated within the first 200 ms after the onset of sound change. In order to investigate this mechanism with high temporal and spatial resolution, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and the new method of recording the event-related optical signal were used. Naatanen’s model of auditory change detection assumes that change detection is based on a memory representation of the past auditory events, which contain information about the physical characteristics (e.g., frequency) and abstract relations of sounds (e.g., ascending vs. descending tone pair). Furthermore, the model assumes that change detection occurs independently of attentional resources and may lead to a switch of attention to the change occurring in unattended sounds. The results of the present studies were in concordance with these assumptions: First, it was shown that the memory system underlying auditory change detection operates also on categorical speech information. Second, the relation of the change-detection mechanism and volitional control functions was further clarified by showing that the subject’s foreknowledge of sound changes does not affect the functioning of the change-detection mechanism. Third, anatomical information about the temporal-frontal lobe network of brain areas involved in auditory change detection was provided. (The exact location of the brain areas in the frontal lobe involved in change detection was not known previously.) Furthermore, it was shown that the temporal-frontal lobe network was activated in an order that is congruent with the assumption that a temporal-lobe change-detection process triggers subsequent processes in the frontal lobe associated with the initiation of an attention switch. Finally, based on the present results, an updated version of Naatanen’s model was proposed.
Numerische Mathematik Existence of H-matrix approximants to the inverse FE-matrix of elliptic operators with L ∞-coefficients

This article deals with the existence of blockwise low-rank approximants — so-called H-matrices — to inverses of FEM matrices in the case of uniformly elliptic operators with L∞-coefficients. Unlike operators arising from boundary element methods for which the H-matrix theory has been extensively developed, the inverses of these operators do not benefit from the smoothness of the kernel function. However, it will be shown that the corresponding Green functions can be approximated by degenerate functions giving rise to the existence of blockwise low-rank approximants of FEM inverses. Numerical examples confirm the correctness of our estimates. As a side-product we analyse the H-matrix property of the inverse of the FE mass matrix.
A Clinicopathological Study of Odontogenic Cysts and Tumors in Hamadan, Iran

Statement of the Problem: Odontogenic cysts and tumors are the most frequent osseous destructive lesions of the jaws; however, there is little information regarding the relative frequency of these lesions among the Iranian population. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the distribution of clinically and histologically- diagnosed odontogenic cysts and tumors during a period of 13 years in Hamadan, and also its correlation with age, gender, and the site of the lesion. Materials and Method: A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 413 oral and maxillofacial specimens during 1996 to 2008.The age and the gender of patients, as well as the site of lesion were recorded. The data were analyzed using SPSS software. Results: Totally, 70 specimens were recorded as odontogenic cysts and 11 specimens were diagnosed as odontogenic tumors. The most frequent odontogenic cysts were dentigerous cysts (27.2%), followed by radicular cysts (18.6%) and odontogenic keratocysts (18.6%). In addition, cysts were more frequent in male than female individuals. Ameloblastoma was the most frequent odontogenic tumor (64%). Conclusion: Odontogenic cysts were in correlation with age, gender and location. These results showed that dentigerous cyst and odontogenic keratocyst were more frequent than other studies. More investigations should be performed to determine the frequency of odontogenic tumors in Iran.
Craniovertebral Junction Instability: A Review of Facts about Facets

Craniovertebral junction surgery involves an appropriate philosophical, biomechanical and anatomical understanding apart from high degree of technical skill and ability of controlling venous and arterial bleeding. The author presents his 30-year experience with treating complex craniovertebral junction instability related surgical issues. The facets of atlas and axis form the primary site of movements at the craniovertebral junction. All craniovertebral junction instability is essentially localized to the atlantoaxial facet joint. Direct manipulation and fixation of the facets forms the basis of treatment for instability.
A blocking RFID anti-collision protocol for quick tag identification

In RFID systems, the reader identifies tags through communication over a shared wireless channel. When multiple tags transmit their IDs simultaneously, their signals collide, increasing the identification delay. Therefore, many previous anti-collision protocols, including an adaptive query splitting protocol (AQS) and an adaptive binary splitting protocol (ABS), focused on solving this problem. This paper proposes one blocking protocol, blocking ABS protocol (BA), based on ABS. BA not only inherits the essence of ABS which uses the information of recognized tags obtained from the last process of tag identification, but also adopts a blocking technique which prevents recognized tags from being collided by unrecognized tags. Finally, the simulation results show that BA outperforms ABS.