Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Parallel Ear Decomposition of Graphs with Application to Betweenness-Centrality

Parallel graph algorithms continue to attract a lotof research attention given their applications to several fields ofsciences and engineering. Efficient design and implementation ofgraph algorithms on modern manycore accelerators has to how-ever contend with a host of challenges including not being able toreach full memory system throughput and irregularity. Of late, focusing on real-world graphs, researchers are addressing thesechallenges by using decomposition and preprocessing techniquesguided by the structural properties of such graphs. In this direction, we present a new GPU algorithm forobtaining an ear decomposition of a graph. Our implementationof the proposed algorithm on an NVidia Tesla K40c improvesthe state-of-the-art by a factor of 2.3x on average on a collectionof real-world and synthetic graphs. The improved performanceof our algorithm is due to our proposed characterization thatidentifies edges of the graph as redundant for the purposes of anear decomposition. We then study an application of the ear decomposition of agraph in computing the betweenness-centrality values of nodesin the graph. We use an ear decomposition of the input graph tosystematically remove nodes of degree two. The actual computation of betweenness-centrality is done on the remaining nodesand the results are extended to nodes removed in the previousstep. We show that this approach improves the state-of-the-artfor computing betweenness-centrality on an NVidia K40c GPUby a factor of 1.9x on average over a collection of real-world graphs.
Parkinson disease, 10 years after its genetic revolution: Multiple clues to a complex disorder

Over the last 10 years, an unprecedented number of scientific reports have been published that relate to the pathogenesis of parkinsonism. Since the discovery in 1997 of the first heritable form of parkinsonism that could be linked to a mutation in a single gene, SNCA, many more genetic leads have followed (Parkin, DJ-1, PINK1, LRRK2, to name a few); these have provided us with many molecular clues to better explore the etiology of parkinsonism and have led to the dismantling of many previously held dogmas about Parkinson disease (PD). Epidemiologic studies have delineated an array of environmental modulators of susceptibility to parkinsonism, which can now be examined in the context of gene expression. Furthermore, in vivo imaging data and postmortem results have generated concepts that greatly expanded our appreciation for the phenotypic spectrum of parkinsonism from its presymptomatic to advanced stages. With this plethora of new information emerged the picture of a complex syndrome that raises many questions: How many forms of classic parkinsonism/Parkinson disease(s) are there? Where does the disease begin? What causes late-onset, “idiopathic” PD? What are the caveats related to genetic testing? What is the role of Lewy bodies? What will be the best disease model to accommodate the now known genetic and environmental contributors to parkinsonism? What will be the ideal markers and targets for earlier diagnosis and cause-directed therapy? In the following article we highlight some of the burning issues surrounding the understanding of classic parkinsonism, a complex puzzle of genes, environment, and an aging host.
The Value of Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) for Predicting Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background We carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the predictive roles of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer. Method A PubMed and Web of Science literature search was designed. Random or fixed effect models were adopted to estimate the summary odds ratio (OR). Heterogeneity and sensitivity analyses were performed to explore heterogeneity among studies and to assess the effects of study quality. Publication bias was evaluated using a funnel plot, Egger's test and Begg's test. We included studies where the predictive significance of TILs, and/or TILs subset on the pathologic complete response (pCR) were determined in NAC of breast cancer. Results A total of 13 published studies (including 3251 patients) were eligible. In pooled analysis, the detection of higher TILs numbers in pre-treatment biopsy was correlated with better pCR to NAC (OR = 3.93, 95% CI, 3.26–4.73). Moreover, TILs predicted higher pCR rates in triple negative (OR = 2.49, 95% CI: 1.61–3.83), HER2 positive (OR = 5.05, 95% CI: 2.86–8.92) breast cancer, but not in estrogen receptor (ER) positive (OR = 6.21, 95%CI: 0.86–45.15) patients. In multivariate analysis, TILs were still an independent marker for high pCR rate (OR = 1.41, 95% CI: 1.19–1.66). For TILs subset, higher levels of CD8+ and FOXP3+ T-lymphocytes in pre-treatment biopsy respectively predicted better pathological response to NAC (OR = 6.44, 95% CI: 2.52–16.46; OR = 2.94, 95% CI: 1.05–8.26). Only FOXP3+ lymphocytes in post-NAC breast tissue were a predictive marker for low pCR rate in univariate (OR = 0.41, 95% CI: 0.21–0.80) and multivariate (OR = 0.36, 95% CI: 0.13–0.95) analysis. Conclusion Higher TILs levels in pre-treatment biopsy indicated higher pCR rates for NAC. TILs subset played different roles in predicting response to NAC.
A Mathematical Model Evaluating the Timing of Early Diagnostic Testing in HIV-Exposed Infants in South Africa

Background:Antiretroviral therapy is often initiated too late to impact early HIV-related infant mortality. Earlier treatment requires an earlier diagnosis, and the currently recommended 6-week HIV polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test needs reconsideration. This study aims to identify (1) optimal testing intervals to maximize the number of perinatal HIV infections diagnosed and (2) programmatic issues that impact diagnosis. Methods:A mathematical model was developed to simulate antiretroviral prophylaxis uptake and health outcomes in 240,000 HIV-exposed South African infants. The model considered routine early testing with 1 PCR (at birth, 6, 10, or 14 weeks of age) and with 2 PCR tests (at birth and at 6, 10, or 14 weeks of age). Results:A single 6-week test would diagnose the same number of perinatal HIV infections as birth testing (P = 0.92) but fewer infections than a 10-week test (P < 0.01). Ten-week testing identifies the highest number of perinatally infected infants (P < 0.01 compared with a single test at all other ages) but does not save additional life years compared with birth testing (P = 0.27). Performing 2 PCR tests (at birth and 10 weeks) would identify the highest number of perinatal infections (P < 0.01 versus a second 6- or 14-week test). However, 25% of perinatal HIV infections would remain undiagnosed, largely because of failure to return PCR test results to caregivers. Conclusions:Six weeks may no longer be the optimal age to diagnose perinatal HIV infections. Two early PCR tests (at birth and 10 weeks) would likely be the ideal diagnostic algorithm, but must be coupled with improved program coverage.
Platelet values during normal pregnancy

Blood samples were obtained from 26 healthy women at regular intervals throughout pregnancy and analysed using a Coulter Counter Model S Plus III. The mean values for the various haematological indices at each stage o f gestation were first calculated; the platelet count showed a small decrease throughout pregnancy as did haemoglobin concentration while there was an apparent increase in mean platelet volume, platelet distribution width and white cell count. However, analysis of the trends within patients did not always reflect these mean changes; there was considerable variation in platelet count within individuals and the apparent fall in the group as a whole was accounted for by a considerable fall in a few individuals. The assumption that the trends in platelet values determined from groups of patients will indicate how individual pregnant women behave is misleading.
Cultural Themes in Brazilian and U.S. Auto Ads: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Abstract Do Brazilian and U.S. advertisers employ different themes in print advertisements? If so, what can we conclude about cross-cultural differences in values? In our study of automobile ads that appeared in the business magazines of Brazil and of the U.S. during the 1970s, we found that (1) urban themes were used more frequently in Brazilian ads than in U.S. ads, (2) leisure themes were used more frequently in U.S. ads than in Brazilian ads, (3) work themes appeared as frequently in Brazilian ads as in U.S. ads, and (4) work themes appeared more frequently in U.S. ads as the 1970s progressed. Thus, our study suggests that values differ between the business subculture of Brazil and that of the United States. Importantly, our latter two findings disaffirm the theories of many historians and sociologists. Because the application of historical and sociological theories may produce erroneous advertising decisions, we advise advertisers to research carefully each national market before using a “standardize.
Observations on the shear damage to different animal cells in a concentric cylinder viscometer.

A clear distinction is made between damage to the population of cells and damage to individual cells on exposure to shear stress. Work on mechanical damage to animal cells in suspension is reported for six different cell lines. Precisely controlled shears of 1 Pa, 10 Pa, and 100 Pa were generated in a viscometer and distortions in morphology of the cells-for instance, the formation of transient pores, cytoplasmic extrusions, and ghost-cell membranes-are presented with photographic evidence. Low shears are shown to be just as damaging as the higher shears, although the type of damage is different. It follows that bioreactors should be operated at intermediate shear levels for optimal yield. A mechanism to account for the unexpected stability of animal cells at intermediate levels of shear is presented.
Systematic analysis of energy and delay impact of very deep submicron process variability effects in embedded SRAM modules

Variability is becoming a serious problem in process technology for nanometer technology nodes. The increasing difficulty in controlling the uniformity of critical process parameters (e.g. doping levels) in the smaller devices, makes the electrical properties of such scaled devices much less predictable than in the past. In this paper, we study how these technology effects influence the energy and delay of a SRAM module. Despite the implications in the correct operation of the module, in practically all cases the affected memory implementations become also slower while consuming on average more energy than nominally. This is partly counter-intuitive and no existing literature describes this in a systematic generic way for SRAMs. In this paper, we identify and illustrate the different mechanisms behind this unexpected behavior and quantify the impact of these effects for on-chip SRAMs at the 65 nm technology node.
Genetic and environmental risk factors for Parkinson’s disease in a Chinese population

An epidemiological study of the environmental and genetic factors as well as the possible interplay between them was conducted among 215 patients with Parkinson’s disease and 313 controls in a Chinese population in Hong Kong. In univariate analysis, a regular tea drinking habit was found to be a protective factor, which had not been reported before. Smoking (a protective factor), family history, duration of pesticide exposure (in years) in farming and pesticide exposure during farming in women (both risk factors) have been reported previously. In multivariate analysis, current smoking reached borderline significance at the 5% level and the variables, years exposed to pesticides and family history were significant at the 10% level. By contrast with the common occurrence of polymorphism of the CYP2D6 gene (a gene involved with xenobiotic metabolism) in white people, it is very rare in China and is not thought to be a significant factor contributing to Parkinson’s disease in Chinese people.
Professionalization and Bureaucratization

Analysis of structural and attitudinal aspects of professionalization, and of the organizational settings in which many professional occupations exist, suggests that there is generally an inverse relationship between professionalization and bureaucratization, although there is considerable variation within the relationship. The data further suggest that the structural and attitudinal aspects of professionalization do not necessarily vary together. The organizations in which professionals work also differ in their degrees of bureaucratization. It is suggested that the presence of professionals in an organization affects the structure of the organization, while at the same time, the organizational structure can affect the professionalization process.
Forearm SXA densitometry in 1,122 Polish women--a cohort study.

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to estimate forearm bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) using singleenergy X-ray absorptiometry (SXA) in a group of Polish women that included both pre- and post-menopausal subjects. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study was carried out in a cohort of 1,122 otherwise healthy women with no history of previous fractures. RESULTS We showed a gradual decline of BMD and BMC with age, and the presence of suspected correlations of densitometric results with age and selected anthropometric parameters. CONCLUSIONS Our study confirmed the utility of densitometric screening using forearm SXA measurements. These measurements discriminated clearly between pre- and post-menopausal subjects. Densitometric results correlated negatively with age and age at menopause, but positively with anthropometric indices related to body and skeletal size. Age was the greatest factor in terms of impact on bone loss.
Interlacing Families IV: Bipartite Ramanujan Graphs of All Sizes

We prove that there exist bipartite Ramanujan graphs of every degree and every number of vertices. The proof is based on analyzing the expected characteristic polynomial of a union of random perfect matchings, and involves three ingredients: (1) a formula for the expected characteristic polynomial of the sum of a regular graph with a random permutation of another regular graph, (2) a proof that this expected polynomial is real rooted and that the family of polynomials considered in this sum is an interlacing family, and (3) strong bounds on the roots of the expected characteristic polynomial of a union of random perfect matchings, established using the framework of finite free convolutions introduced recently by the authors.
Ischemic preconditioning in pigs: a graded phenomenon: its relation to adenosine and bradykinin.

BACKGROUND A threshold concept for ischemic preconditioning (IPc) has been proposed. It is unclear, however, whether IPc, above a certain threshold, is an all-or-nothing or a graded phenomenon. METHODS AND RESULTS In 71 enflurane-anesthetized swine, severe left anterior descending coronary artery hypoperfusion for 90 minutes followed by 2 hours of reperfusion resulted in an infarct size (IS, by triphenyltetrazolium chloride) of 16.7+/-3.4% (SEM) of the area at risk. IPc by 2 minutes of low-flow ischemia and 15 minutes of reperfusion before the 90-minute target ischemia did not reduce IS (21.9+/-7.0%). IS was decreased to 9.0+/-2.6% (P<0.05) by 3 minutes of IPc and reduced further to 1.9+/-0.9% (P<0.05) by 10 minutes of IPc. The interstitial adenosine concentration (microdialysis, high-performance liquid chromatography) was unchanged with 2 and 3 minutes of IPc but increased with 10 minutes of IPc (by 573+/-144%). The interstitial bradykinin concentration (microdialysis, radioimmunoassay) remained unchanged with 2 minutes of IPc but increased to a similar extent with 3 minutes (by 198+/-32%) and 10 minutes (by 224+/-30%) of IPc. The IS reduction by 3 minutes of IPc was abolished by blockade of the bradykinin B2 receptor with intracoronary HOE 140 (16.6+/-4.3%) but not with intracoronary infusion of adenosine deaminase (8.4+/-2.5%, P<0.05). HOE 140, however, did not affect the IS reduction (3.5+/- 1.1%, P<0.05) by 10 minutes of IPc. Combined infusion of HOE 140 and adenosine deaminase abolished the IS reduction by 10 minutes of IPc (15.4+/-6.7%). CONCLUSIONS IS reduction by IPc is a graded phenomenon. Whereas bradykinin is essential during preconditioning ischemia of shorter duration, adenosine is more important during preconditioning ischemia of longer duration.
Optimal power and rate allocation in the degraded Gaussian relay channel with energy harvesting nodes

Energy Harvesting (EH) is a novel technique to prolong the lifetime of the wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks or Ad-Hoc networks, by providing an unlimited source of energy for their nodes. In this sense, it has emerged as a promising technique for Green Communications, recently. On the other hand, cooperative communication with the help of relay nodes improves the performance of wireless communication networks by increasing the system throughput or the reliability as well as the range and efficient energy utilization. In order to investigate the cooperation in EH nodes, in this paper, we consider the problem of optimal power and rate allocation in the degraded full-duplex Gaussian relay channel in which source and relay can harvest energy from their environments. We consider the general stochastic energy arrivals at the source and the relay with known EH times and amounts at the transmitters before the start of transmission. This problem has a min-max optimization form that along with the constraints is not easy to solve. We propose a method based on a mathematical theorem proposed by Terkelsen [1] to transform it to a solvable convex optimization form. Also, we consider some special cases for the harvesting profile of the source and the relay nodes and find their solutions efficiently.
Neurovascular and Immuno-Imaging: From Mechanisms to Therapies. Proceedings of the Inaugural Symposium

Breakthrough advances in intravital imaging have launched a new era for the study of dynamic interactions at the neurovascular interface in health and disease. The first Neurovascular and Immuno-Imaging Symposium was held at the Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco in March, 2015. This highly interactive symposium brought together a group of leading researchers who discussed how recent studies have unraveled fundamental biological mechanisms in diverse scientific fields such as neuroscience, immunology, and vascular biology, both under physiological and pathological conditions. These Proceedings highlight how advances in imaging technologies and their applications revolutionized our understanding of the communication between brain, immune, and vascular systems and identified novel targets for therapeutic intervention in neurological diseases.
The Future of Spotify : Assessing Spotify ’ s Position by Analysing the Competition

This paper investigates the position of Spotify within the digital music market. The digital music market has drastically changed the way in which consumers listen to music and how artists earn their money, despite the importance of this market, little academic research has been done. By conducting a Porter’s Five Forces analysis, combined with a comprehensive analysis of each of the significant competitors of Spotify, its position is assessed and an insight in the future of this position is determined. A thorough analysis of Spotify and its competitors can provide useful insights which can contribute to the knowledge about the young and volatile market which is digital music streaming. The research suggests that Spotify has strong competition in both the on-demand streaming market, as well as outside the streaming market because of alternative methods of listening to music. Next to this, the likeliness of a new strong entrant is low. The most threatening alternative to on-demand music streaming is Youtube. Labels and artists seem to look favourably upon on-demand music streaming service and are closing mutually beneficial deals, the power of suppliers is therefore not working negatively for Spotify. Overall the position of Spotify seems solid and, given no real changes in the landscape occur, will continue to be solid. Resulting in the conclusion that is is likely that Spotify stays the market leader.
Chromosome Inversions, Local Adaptation and Speciation

We study the evolution of inversions that capture locally adapted alleles when two populations are exchanging migrants or hybridizing. By suppressing recombination between the loci, a new inversion can spread. Neither drift nor coadaptation between the alleles (epistasis) is needed, so this local adaptation mechanism may apply to a broader range of genetic and demographic situations than alternative hypotheses that have been widely discussed. The mechanism can explain many features observed in inversion systems. It will drive an inversion to high frequency if there is no countervailing force, which could explain fixed differences observed between populations and species. An inversion can be stabilized at an intermediate frequency if it also happens to capture one or more deleterious recessive mutations, which could explain polymorphisms that are common in some species. This polymorphism can cycle in frequency with the changing selective advantage of the locally favored alleles. The mechanism can establish underdominant inversions that decrease heterokaryotype fitness by several percent if the cause of fitness loss is structural, while if the cause is genic there is no limit to the strength of underdominance that can result. The mechanism is expected to cause loci responsible for adaptive species-specific differences to map to inversions, as seen in recent QTL studies. We discuss data that support the hypothesis, review other mechanisms for inversion evolution, and suggest possible tests.
Lily-LOM: An Efficient System for Matching Large Ontologies with Non-Partitioned Method

Since the high time and space complexity, most existing ontology matching systems are not well scalable to solve the large ontology matching problem. Moreover, the popular divide-and-conquer matching solution faces two disadvantages: First, partitioning ontology is a complicate process; Second, it will lead to loss of semantic information during matching. To avoid these drawbacks, this paper presents an efficient large ontology matching system Lily-LOM, which uses a non-partitioned method. Lily-LOM is based on two kinds of reduction anchors, i.e. positive and negative reduction anchors, to reduce the time complexity problem. Some empirical strategies for reducing the space complexity are also discussed. The experiments show that Lily-LOM is effective.