Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Randomized, controlled dose-optimization studies of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine for the treatment of uncomplicated multidrug-resistant falciparum malaria in Thailand.

BACKGROUND Dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DP) is a new and relatively inexpensive artemisinin-containing fixed-combination antimalarial treatment. An adult treatment course contained 6.4 mg/kg dihydroartemisinin (DHA), which is >40% lower than the level in most artemisinin-containing combinations. This raised the possibility that the efficacy of the current coformulation may not be optimal in the treatment of multidrug-resistant falciparum malaria. METHODS In 2 large randomized, controlled studies in Thailand, the recommended dose of DP was compared with a regimen with additional artemisinin derivative (12 mg/kg; DP+) and with mefloquine plus artesunate (MAS3). RESULTS A total of 731 patients were included: 201 in a hospital-based study and 530 in a community study. Day-28 cure rates in the hospital-based study were 100% (95% confidence interval [CI], 93.9%-100%) in the MAS3 and DP+ groups and 98.3% (95% CI, 91%-99.7%) in the DP group, with a single recrudescence on day 21. In the community study, polymerase chain reaction genotyping-adjusted cure rates on day 63 were 96.1% (95% CI, 92.6%-99.7%) in the DP group, 98.3% (95% CI, 96.1%-100%) in the DP+ group, and 94.9% (95% CI, 91.2%-98.6%) in the MAS3 group (P=.2). Adverse events were few, with an excess of mild abdominal pain in the DP group. CONCLUSIONS The current dosage of DP (6.4 mg/kg DHA and 51.2 mg/kg piperaquine phosphate) given over the course of 48 h is highly effective, safe, and well tolerated for the treatment of multidrug-resistant falciparum malaria, and its efficacy is not improved by the addition of more DHA.
DVP: A Novel High-Availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR) Protocol Traffic-Reduction Algorithm for a Substation Automation System Network

The high-availability seamless redundancy (HSR) protocol, a potential candidate for substation automation system (SAS) networks, provides duplicated frame copies of each sent frame, with zero fault-recovery time. This means that even in the case of node or link failure, the destination node will receive at least one copy of the sent frame. Consequently, there is no network operation down time. However, the forwarding process of the QuadBox node in HSR is not smart and relies solely on duplication and random forwarding of all received frames. Thus, if a unicast frame is sent in any closed-loop network, the frame copies will be spread through most of all the links in both directions until they reach the destination node, which inevitably results in significant, unnecessary network traffic. In this paper, we present an algorithm called the dual virtual paths (DVP) algorithm to solve such an HSR excessive traffic issue. The idea behind our DVP algorithm is to establish automatic DVP between each HSR node and all the other nodes in the network, except for the QuadBox node. These virtual paths will be used for DVP unicast traffic transmission, rather than using the standard HSR transmission process. Therefore, the DVP algorithm results in less traffic, because there is no duplication or random forwarding, contrary to standard HSR. For the sample networks selected in this paper, the DVP algorithm shows more than a 70% reduction in network traffic and about an 80% reduction in the discarded traffic compared to the standard HSR protocol.
Application of Dynamic Pass-Transistor Logic to an 8-Bit Multiplier

Dynamic pass-transistor logic (PTL), which combines pass-transistor logic with dynamic logic, is proposed for high-performance VLSI circuit design. The dynamic PTL holds the merits of fast evaluation characteristics as dynamic logic. Moreover, because a pre-charged scheme solves the weak logic ‘high’ problem of a static PTL, an additional level restoration circuit is not needed. An 8-bit multiplier is designed using dynamic PTL for the evaluation of its characteristics. The multiplier consists of a Booth’s partial product generator and a [4 : 2] compressor for a partial product reduction tree. For the comparison of performance, the multiplier is also designed using conventional static CMOS logic. An HSPICE simulation is carried out with the 0.25 μm CMOS device model parameters used in Samsung Electronics Co. From the simulation, the delay of multiplier is 206.2 psec, and the power consumption is 117.5 mW with a 3.3 V supply voltage, a 1 GHz operation and a 60 C temperature. The results show that the multiplier designed by using dynamic PTL improves the speed by 2.5 times but consumes more power by 21 %; hence, the power delay product is improved by 50 % compared with a static CMOS.
Neural Correlates of Associative Face Memory in the Anterior Inferior Temporal Cortex of Monkeys

To investigate the neural basis of the associative aspects of facial identification, we recorded neuronal activity from the ventral, anterior inferior temporal cortex (AITv) of macaque monkeys during the performance of an asymmetrical paired-association (APA) task that required associative pairing between an abstract pattern and five different facial views of a single person. In the APA task, after one element of a pair (either an abstract pattern or a face) was presented as a sample cue, the reward-seeking monkey correctly identified the other element of the pair among various repeatedly presented test stimuli (faces or patterns) that were temporally separated by interstimulus delays. The results revealed that a substantial number of AITv neurons responded both to faces and abstract patterns, and the majority of these neurons responded selectively to a particular associative pair. It was demonstrated that in addition to the view-invariant identity of faces used in the APA task, the population of AITv neurons was also able to represent the associative pairing between faces and abstract patterns, which was acquired by training in the APA task. It also appeared that the effect of associative pairing was not so strong that the abstract pattern could be treated in a manner similar to a series of faces belonging to a unique identity. Together, these findings indicate that the AITv plays a crucial role in both facial identification and semantic associations with facial identities.
The DNA End-Binding Protein Ku Regulates Silencing at the Internal HML and HMR Loci in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Heterochromatin resides near yeast telomeres and at the cryptic mating-type loci, HML and HMR, where it silences transcription of the α- and a-mating-type genes, respectively. Ku is a conserved DNA end-binding protein that binds telomeres and regulates silencing in yeast. The role of Ku in silencing is thought to be limited to telomeric silencing. Here, we tested whether Ku contributes to silencing at HML or HMR. Mutant analysis revealed that yKu70 and Sir1 act collectively to silence the mating-type genes at HML and HMR. In addition, loss of yKu70 function leads to expression of different reporter genes inserted at HMR. Quantitative chromatin-immunoprecipitation experiments revealed that yKu70 binds to HML and HMR and that binding of Ku to these internal loci is dependent on Sir4. The interaction between yKu70 and Sir4 was characterized further and found to be dependent on Sir2 but not on Sir1, Sir3, or yKu80. These observations reveal that, in addition to its ability to bind telomeric DNA ends and aid in the silencing of genes at telomeres, Ku binds to internal silent loci via protein–protein interactions and contributes to the efficient silencing of these loci.
Differential Earnings Management to Avoid Earnings Declines And Losses Across Publicly and Privately-Held Banks

There is a documented empirical regularity that publicly-held firms report fewer small losses and fewer small declines in earnings than expected. This paper betters our understanding of this observed phenomenon by testing for this regularity on a sample of public and private banks during 1987-1998. We argue that the incentives to manage the earnings stream to achieve simple benchmarks such as positive earnings and increases in earnings should be higher for publicly-held banks. Consistent with our predictions we find that private banks with earnings near zero are significantly more likely to report losses than public banks with earnings near zero even after controlling for bank size, cash flows, and differences in the types of loans written. Similarly, private banks with changes in earnings that are near zero are significantly more likely than public banks to report a decline in earnings than an increase. In addition, we also find that the length of the string of consecutive earnings increases, even after controlling for the length of the string of consecutive increases in cash flows, is greater for public banks. These three tests all suggest that public banks face a greater incentive than private banks to achieve simple earnings benchmarks.
Public Perceptions Of Genetically Modified Foods: Americans Know Not What They Eat

Biotechnology stands to be a defining technology in the future of food and agriculture. Proponents argue that science and industry are poised to bring consumers a wide variety of products that have potential for meeting basic food needs, as well as delivering a wide-range of health, environmental and economic benefits. Opponents counter that the potential exists for unintended consequences, ranging from ecological disruption to adverse human health implications, and that these risks are not fully understood. Fundamental questions exist, however, regarding the general public's position on food products derived with the use of biotechnology. To address these questions, the Food Policy Institute addressed consumers using computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) system, a public phone survey of a sample selection of 1203 U.S. residents was administered between March and April 2001. The questionnaire was developed to address perceived gaps in the current literature on American consumer awareness, acceptance, and perceptions of food biotechnology and to serve as the basis for a set of longitudinal studies that will be able to track public opinion over time.
Rapid and dynamic transcriptome regulation by RNA editing and RNA modifications

Advances in next-generation sequencing and mass spectrometry have revealed widespread messenger RNA modifications and RNA editing, with dramatic effects on mammalian transcriptomes. Factors introducing, deleting, or interpreting specific modifications have been identified, and analogous with epigenetic terminology, have been designated “writers,” “erasers,” and “readers. ” Such modifications in the transcriptome are referred to as epitranscriptomic changes and represent a fascinating new layer of gene expression regulation that has only recently been appreciated. Here, we outline how RNA editing and RNA modification can rapidly affect gene expression, making both processes as well suited to respond to cellular stress and to regulate the transcriptome during development or circadian periods.
Understanding the Impact of Omega-3 Rich Diet on the Gut Microbiota

Background. Recently, the importance of the gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of several disorders has gained clinical interests. Among exogenous factors affecting gut microbiome, diet appears to have the largest effect. Fatty acids, especially omega-3 polyunsaturated, ameliorate a range of several diseases, including cardiometabolic and inflammatory and cancer. Fatty acids associated beneficial effects may be mediated, to an important extent, through changes in gut microbiota composition. We sought to understand the changes of the gut microbiota in response to an omega-3 rich diet. Case Presentation. This case study investigated changes of gut microbiota with an omega-3 rich diet. Fecal samples were collected from a 45-year-old male who consumed 600 mg of omega-3 daily for 14 days. After the intervention, species diversity was decreased, but several butyrate-producing bacteria increased. There was an important decrease in Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Akkermansia spp. Gut microbiota changes were reverted after the 14-day washout. Conclusion. Some of the health-related benefits of omega-3 may be due, in part, to increases in butyrate-producing bacteria. These findings may shed light on the mechanisms explaining the effects of omega-3 in several chronic diseases and may also serve as an existing foundation for tailoring personalized medical treatments.
When Do Women Use Afdc & Food Stamps? The Dynamics of Eligibility vs. Participation

This paper investigates dynamic patterns in the relationship between eligibility and participation in the AFDC and food stamp programs, using monthly longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The results indicate that the majority of eligibility spells are relatively short, do not result in program participation, and end with increases in income. Participation is most likely to occur among women with lower current and future earning opportunities, and is also affected by locational and policy parameters. Those who elect to participate in these programs tend to start receiving benefits almost immediately upon becoming eligible. with little evidence of delayed program entry. A substantial number of women exit these programs before their eligibility ends; among at least some of these women it seems likely that there are unreported changes in income occurring. In 1989, if all eligible single-parents families had participated in AFDC and food stamps, benefit payments would have been $13.5 billion higher.
Web Browser as an Application Platform

For better or worse, the web browser has become a widely used target platform for software applications. Desktop-style applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, calendars, games and instant messaging systems that were earlier written for specific operating systems, CPU architectures or devices are now written for the World Wide Web, to be used from a web browser. In this paper we summarize our experiences in using the web browser as a target platform for real applications. As a concrete example, we use the Sun¿ Labs Lively Kernel, a system that implements an exceptionally interactive web programming environment running in a web browser without any plug-in components. Based on this work, we analyze the limitations, challenges and opportunities related to the web browser as an application platform.
An image watermarking algorithm based on DWT DCT and SVD

With the development of network and multimedia technologies, multimedia copyright protection and content authentication have become serious problems that need to be solved urgently. Digital watermarking technology provides a strong solution for it. DWT and DCT are two most popular tools used in watermarking algorithm. With the increasing use of SVD, the digital watermarking technology in transform domain has been greatly developed. Based on DWT, DCT and SVD, we propose a new watermarking algorithm for digital image. Experimental results show that this algorithm combines the advantages of these three transforms. It can satisfy the imperceptibility and robustness very well. Furthermore, the algorithm is robust to the common image process such as JPEG compression, noise, filtering, cutting, rotation, and contrast enhance. Applying the Arnold transform to the watermark improves the robustness greatly. Compared with the SVD and the DCT+SVD algorithms, the proposed algorithm has stronger robustness and faster speed in embedding and extracting.
Inventories and Optimal Monetary Policy

We introduce inventories into a standard New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to study the effect on the design of optimal monetary policy. The possibility of inventory investment changes the transmission mechanism in the model by decoupling production from final consumption. This allows for a higher degree of consumption smoothing since firms can add excess production to their inventory holdings. We consider both Ramsey optimal monetary policy and a monetary policy that maximizes consumer welfare over a set of simple interest rate feedback rules. We find that in contrast to a model without inventories, Ramsey-optimal monetary policy in a model with inventories deviates from complete inflation stabilization. In the standard model, nominal price rigidity is a deadweight loss on the economy, which an optimizing policymaker attempts to remove. With inventories, a planner can reduce consumption volatility and raise welfare by accumulating inventories and letting prices change as an equilibrating mechanism. We find also find that the application of simple rules comes very close to replicating Ramsey optimal outcomes.
Complex-Morphology Metal-Based Nanostructures: Fabrication, Characterization, and Applications

Due to their peculiar qualities, metal-based nanostructures have been extensively used in applications such as catalysis, electronics, photography, and information storage, among others. New applications for metals in areas such as photonics, sensing, imaging, and medicine are also being developed. Significantly, most of these applications require the use of metals in the form of nanostructures with specific controlled properties. The properties of nanoscale metals are determined by a set of physical parameters that include size, shape, composition, and structure. In recent years, many research fields have focused on the synthesis of nanoscale-sized metallic materials with complex shape and composition in order to optimize the optical and electrical response of devices containing metallic nanostructures. The present paper aims to overview the most recent results—in terms of fabrication methodologies, characterization of the physico-chemical properties and applications—of complex-morphology metal-based nanostructures. The paper strongly focuses on the correlation between the complex morphology and the structures’ properties, showing how the morphological complexity (and its nanoscale control) can often give access to a wide range of innovative properties exploitable for innovative functional device production. We begin with an overview of the basic concepts on the correlation between structural and optical parameters of nanoscale metallic materials with complex shape and composition, and the possible solutions offered by nanotechnology in a large range of applications (catalysis, electronics, photonics, sensing). The aim is to assess the state of the art, and then show the innovative contributions that can be proposed in this research field. We subsequently report on innovative, versatile and low-cost synthesis techniques, suitable for providing a good control on the size, surface density, composition and geometry of the metallic nanostructures. The main purpose of this study is the fabrication of functional nanoscale-sized materials, whose properties can be tailored (in a wide range) simply by controlling the structural characteristics. The modulation of the structural parameters is required to tune the plasmonic properties of the nanostructures for applications such as biosensors, opto-electronic or photovoltaic devices and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates. The structural characterization of the obtained nanoscale materials is employed in order to define how the synthesis parameters affect the structural characteristics of the resulting metallic nanostructures. Then, macroscopic measurements are used to probe their electrical and optical properties. Phenomenological growth models are drafted to explain the processes involved in the growth and evolution of such composite systems. After the synthesis and characterization of the metallic nanostructures, we study the effects of the incorporation of the complex morphologies on the optical and electrical responses of each specific device.
Performance evaluation of elitist-mutated multi-objective particle swarm optimization for integrated water resources management

Optimal allocation of water resources for various stakeholders often involves considerable complexity with several conflicting goals, which often leads to multi-objective optimization. In aid of effective decision-making to the water managers, apart from developing effective multi-objective mathematical models, there is a greater necessity of providing efficient Pareto optimal solutions to the real world problems. This study proposes a swarm-intelligence-based multi-objective technique, namely the elitist-mutated multi-objective particle swarm optimization technique (EM-MOPSO), for arriving at efficient Pareto optimal solutions to the multi-objective water resource management problems. The EM-MOPSO technique is applied to a case study of the multi-objective reservoir operation problem. The model performance is evaluated by comparing with results of a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) model, and it is found that the EM-MOPSO method results in better performance. The developed method can be used as an effective aid for multi-objective decision-making in integrated water resource management.
Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution

Foundations of Language shows one of the most fundamental new thinkings in linguistics since Noam Chomskyis Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965. Foundations of Language opens up vivid new perspectives on every major aspect of language and communication: grammar vocabulary, learning, origins of language, and the relationship of language and thought to the real world. It puts linguistics at the centre of the search for understanding human nature and human cognition. In my opinion, the author presents in this book a broad survey in linguistics, introducing his personal perspective in the field of theoretical linguistics. Ray Jackendoff proposes a new holistic theory of the relation between the sounds, structure, and meaning of language and their relation to the mind and the brain. Jackendoff goes on to defend a radical conception of how the brain stores and processes language, and how grammar relies on parallel generative systems that are integrated through interface components. The interdisciplinary approach of Foundations of Language makes the book specially up to date, recognizing the interaction of psychology, neuroscience, biology, and philosophy, setting a groundbreaking agenda for close co-operation of these knowledge areas. According to the author, this book has been written with three concentric audiences in mind, being the most central, of course, linguistics of all specialities and all persuasions. The next ring includes those disciplines that look to linguistics for theoretical models: psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language acquisition and computational linguistics. The outer ring includes all those having some professional concern with languages, including psychologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers of language and philosophers of mind, and, perhaps, evolutionary biologists. The general structure of the book has been designed to be read and re-read by anyone seriously interested in the state of the art of research on language. The book is divided into three parts:
International Journal of Modern Physics a C World Scientific Publishing Company

I review recent developments in lattice QCD. I first give an overview of its formalism, and then discuss lattice discretizations of fermions. We then turn to a description of the quenched approximation and why it is disappearing as a vehicle for QCD phenomenology. I describe recent claims for progress in simulations which include dynamical fermions and the interesting theoretical problems they raise. I conclude with brief descriptions of the calculations of matrix elements in heavy flavor systems and for kaons.