Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ultraviolet‐B–Induced Cyclobutane‐pyrimidine Dimer Formation and Repair in Arctic Marine Macrophytes ¶

The significance of ultraviolet‐B radiation (UVBR: 280–315 nm)–induced DNA damage as a stress factor for Arctic marine macrophytes was examined in the Kongsfjord (Spitsbergen, 78°55.5′N, 11°56.0′E) in summer. UVBR penetration in the water column was monitored as accumulation of cyclobutane‐pyrimidine dimers (CPD) in bare DNA. This showed that UVBR transparency of the fjord was variable, with 1% depths ranging between 4 and 8 m. In addition, induction and repair kinetics of CPD were studied in several subtidal macrophytes obtained from the Kongsfjord (5–15 m). Surface exposure experiments demonstrated CPD accumulation in Palmaria palmata, Devaleraea ramentacea, Phycodrys rubens, Coccotylus truncatus and Odonthalia dentata. In artificial light, field collected material of P. palmata, D. ramentacea, P. rubens and Laminaria saccharina showed efficient CPD repair, with only 10% of the artificially induced CPD remaining after 5 h. No significant differences in repair rate were observed among these species. CPD repair was slower or absent in O. dentata, C. truncatus and Monostroma arcticum, indicating that fast repair mechanisms such as photolyase were not continuously expressed in these species. CPD repair rates were not directly related to the vertical distribution of algae in the water column and to the reported UV sensitivity of the examined species. Dosimeter incubations showed that maximal exposure to DNA damaging wavelengths was low for all examined species. Furthermore, most species collected below the 1% depth for DNA damage displayed efficient CPD repair, suggesting that UVBR‐induced CPD currently impose a minor threat for mature stages of these species growing in the Kongsfjord, Spitsbergen.
SPECIFIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HOST AND PARASITE GENOTYPES DO NOT ACT AS A CONSTRAINT ON THE EVOLUTION OF ANTIVIRAL RESISTANCE IN DROSOPHILA

Genetic correlations between parasite resistance and other traits can act as an evolutionary constraint and prevent a population from evolving increased resistance. For example, previous studies have found negative genetic correlations between host resistance and life‐history traits. In invertebrates, the level of resistance often depends on the combination of the host and parasite genotypes, and in this study, we have investigated whether such specific resistance also acts as an evolutionary constraint. We measured the resistance of different genotypes of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to different genotypes of a naturally occurring pathogen, the sigma virus. Using a multitrait analysis, we examine whether genetic covariances alter the potential to select for general resistance against all of the different viral genotypes. We found large amounts of heritable variation in resistance, and evidence for specific interactions between host and parasite, but these interactions resulted in little constraint on Drosophila evolving greater resistance.
Dependence structures for multivariate high-frequency data in finance

Stylized facts for univariate high-frequency data in finance are well known. They include scaling behaviour, volatility clustering, heavy tails and seasonalities. The multivariate problem, however, has scarcely been addressed up to now. In this paper, bivariate series of high-frequency FX spot data for major FX markets are investigated. First, as an indispensable prerequisite for further analysis, the problem of simultaneous deseasonalization of high-frequency data is addressed. In the following sections we analyse in detail the dependence structure as a function of the timescale. Particular emphasis is put on the tail behaviour, which is investigated by means of copulas.
A Multistate Asian-Language Tobacco Quitline: Addressing a Disparity in Access to Care.

OBJECTIVES We conducted a dissemination and implementation study to translate an intervention protocol for Asian-language smokers from an efficacy trial into an effective and sustainable multistate service. METHODS Three state tobacco programs (in California, Colorado, and Hawaii) promoted a multistate cessation quitline to 3 Asian-language-speaking communities: Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. The California quitline provided counseling centrally to facilitate implementation. Three more states joined the program during the study period (January 2010-July 2012). We assessed the provision of counseling, quitting outcomes, and dissemination of the program. RESULTS A total of 2004 smokers called for the service, with 88.3% opting for counseling. Among those opting for counseling, the 6-month abstinence rate (18.8%) was similar to results of the earlier efficacy trial (16.4%). CONCLUSIONS The intervention protocol, based on an efficacy trial, was successfully translated into a multistate service and further disseminated. This project paved the way for the establishment of a national quitline for Asian-language speakers, which serves as an important strategy to address disparities in access to care.
GENETIC CORRELATION OF AVERAGE SOMATIC CELL SCORE AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF LACTATION WITH MILK YIELD AND COMPOSITION IN HOLSTEIN COWS

Summary Genetic and non-genetic correlations of the average somatic cell score (SCS) at different stages of lactation (100, 150, 200, 305 and 365 days in milk) with lactation performance were estimated based on the first lactation records of Iranian Holstein calving during 2000 to 2009. (Co) variance components were estimated using derivative-free REML based on multiple traits animal models. The estimated genetic correlations between average of first 100 days in milk SCS (SCS100) and milk100, fat100, milk305, fat305 and protein305 were 0.14, 0.19, 0.11, 0.15 and 0.17, respectively. The corresponding environmental correlations were -0.13, -0.03, -0.18, -0.10 and -0.13, respectively. The estimated genetic correlations of the average SCS during the first 150 days in milk (SCS150) with milk100, fat100, milk305, fat305 and protein305 were 0.14, 0.19, 0.11, 0.15 and 0.17, respectively. The corresponding environmental correlations were -0.13, -0.03, -0.18, 0.10 and -0.13, respectively. The estimated genetic correlations of the average SCS during 305 days in milk with milk, fat and protein yield, and fat and protein percentages were 0.12, 0.11, 0.18, -0.05 and -0.08, respectively. The estimated genetic correlation between SCS100 or SCS150 with average SCS over longer stages of lactations (SCS305 and SCS365) was 0.99 ± 0.01. These results indicate that recording SCS data over shorter period of lactation is an alternative approach to reduce the costs of SCS data collection and therefore to expand the SCS recording in the country by increasing both the number of herds and cows involved.
Learning search tasks in queries and web pages via graph regularization

As the Internet grows explosively, search engines play a more and more important role for users in effectively accessing online information. Recently, it has been recognized that a query is often triggered by a search task that the user wants to accomplish. Similarly, many web pages are specifically designed to help accomplish a certain task. Therefore, learning hidden tasks behind queries and web pages can help search engines return the most useful web pages to users by task matching. For instance, the search task that triggers query "thinkpad T410 broken" is to maintain a computer, and it is desirable for a search engine to return the Lenovo troubleshooting page on the top of the list. However, existing search engine technologies mainly focus on topic detection or relevance ranking, which are not able to predict the task that triggers a query and the task a web page can accomplish. In this paper, we propose to simultaneously classify queries and web pages into the popular search tasks by exploiting their content together with click-through logs. Specifically, we construct a taskoriented heterogeneous graph among queries and web pages. Each pair of objects in the graph are linked together as long as they potentially share similar search tasks. A novel graph-based regularization algorithm is designed for search task prediction by leveraging the graph. Extensive experiments in real search log data demonstrate the effectiveness of our method over state-of-the-art classifiers, and the search performance can be significantly improved by using the task prediction results as additional information.
Predictable or Not? Individuals’ Risk Decisions Do Not Necessarily Predict Their Next Ones

This research examines the extent to which people may be free to make choices by testing their consistency in choosing risk options. In two experiments, participants were instructed to make the “same” type of risk decisions repeatedly. Experiment 1 showed that when the information for decision is positively framed in terms of gain, the participant’s choice in a particular decision could not be predicted by his or her choice in another decision (R2s<.02). Experiment 2 showed a statistically significant predictability when the information is negatively framed in terms of loss, although the predictability was still very low (R2s<.07). These findings indicate the existence of a large room of variations in which a person may freely choose.
Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood

Having a purpose in life has been cited consistently as an indicator of healthy aging for several reasons, including its potential for reducing mortality risk. In the current study, we sought to extend previous findings by examining whether purpose in life promotes longevity across the adult years, using data from the longitudinal Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) sample. Proportional-hazards models demonstrated that purposeful individuals lived longer than their counterparts did during the 14 years after the baseline assessment, even when controlling for other markers of psychological and affective well-being. Moreover, these longevity benefits did not appear to be conditional on the participants’ age, how long they lived during the follow-up period, or whether they had retired from the workforce. In other words, having a purpose in life appears to widely buffer against mortality risk across the adult years.
Hepatic steatosis is associated with higher incidence of liver metastasis in patients with metastatic breast cancer; an observational clinical study.

PURPOSE To investigate the relationship between hepatic steatosis (HS) (at the time of diagnosis) and hepatic metastasis (at the time of diagnosis and follow-up) in metastatic breast cancer (BC) patients by using computed tomography (CT). METHODS A total of 107 metastatic BC patients who had an abdominal CT were retrospectively enrolled in this study. Patients without HS (N=79) were regarded as the control group and those with HS constituted the HS study group (N-28). RESULTS Hepatic metastases at diagnosis and during follow-up were more common in patients with HS (p=0.018 and p=0.041, respectively) and in the premenopausal group (p<0.001 and p=0.004, respectively), whereas they were similar in patients with and without HS in the postmenopausal group (p=0.655 and p=0.656, respectively). Overall survival rates were similar in patients with and without HS (p=0.606). CONCLUSION Hepatic metastases at diagnosis and during follow-up were more frequent in patients with HS, especially in premenopausal patients. Survival was similar in both groups.
Statistics & Clustering Based Framework for Efficient XACML Policy Evaluation

The adoption of XACML as the standard for specifying access control policies for various applications, especially web services is vastly increasing. A policy evaluation engine can easily become a bottleneck when enforcing large policies. In this paper we propose an adaptive approach for XACML policy optimization. We proposed a clustering technique that categorizes policies and rules within a policy set and policy respectively in respect to target subjects. Furthermore, we propose a usage based framework that computes access request statistics to dynamically optimize the ordering of policies within a policy set and rules within a policy. Reordering is applied to categorized policies and rules from our proposed clustering technique. To evaluate the performance of our framework, we conducted extensive experiments on XACML policies. We evaluated separately the improvement due to categorization and to reordering techniques, in order to assess the policy sets targeted by our techniques. The experimental results show that our approach is orders of magnitude more efficient than the standard Sun PDP.
Once Daily Enoxaparin for Outpatient Treatment of Acute Venous Thromboembolism: A Case-control Study

We studied the efficacy and safety of an investigational enoxaparin regimen, 1.5 mg/kg once daily, as a bridge to warfarin for the outpatient treatment of acute venous thromboembolism. We undertook a case-control design. We enrolled 40 acute venous thromboembolism cases prospectively and matched them by age, gender, and location of venous thromboembolism to 80 previously treated controls. All controls had received enoxaparin 1 mg/kg twice daily. The primary end point was recurrent venous thromboembolism. We followed the cases for 30 days. We discontinued enoxaparin after we achieved the target international normalized ratio between 2.0 and 3.0. One case (2.9%) and three controls (3.8%) had recurrent venous thromboembolic events (P = 1.00). There were no major bleeding complications in the case group, compared to 3 (3.8%) in the control group (P = .55). Once daily enoxaparin, 1.5 mg/kg, as a bridge to warfarin was as effective with a similar safety profile as twice daily enoxaparin, 1mg/kg, for initial treatment of acute venous thromboembolism in the outpatient setting. This case-control study provides the rationale for undertaking a randomized controlled trial comparing enoxaparin 1.5 mg/kg once daily versus enoxaparin 1.0 mg/kg twice daily as a bridge to warfarin in outpatients with acute venous thromboembolism.
Mechanism of Generation of Body Surface Electrocardiographic P‐Waves in Normal, Middle, and Lower Sinus Rhythms

We used comprehensive electrophysiological/anatomical digital computer models of atrial excitation and the human torso to study the mechanism of generation of body surface P-waves in normal sinus rhythm, and in middle and lower sinus rhythm. Simulated atrial surface isochrone maps for normal sinus rhythm support the validity of the atrial excitation model. The results suggest that the presence of specialized internodal tracts containing fast-conducting fibers is not essential to account for propagation of excitation in apparent preferential directions from the sinoatrial (SA) node to the atrioventricular node. However, in the absence of fast conducting fibers, a slowly conducting segment in the intercaval region is necessary to achieve proper excitation of the interatrial septum. P-wave notches occur in the absence of specialized fast conducting atrial tracts and anisotropies due to fiber orientation. These notches are due to the atrial geometry and the separate contributions of the right atrium, left atrium, and interatrial septum to the P-waves, and become more pronounced as the pacemaker site shifts downward in the SA node. Thus, slight changes in the origin of excitation, which result in subtle changes in the atrial excitation isochrones, produce significant and complex changes in the simulated body surface P-waves. Circ Res 48: 168-182, 1980
Boundless memory allocations for memory safety and high availability

Spatial memory errors (like buffer overflows) are still a major threat for applications written in C. Most recent work focuses on memory safety - when a memory error is detected at runtime, the application is aborted. Our goal is not only to increase the memory safety of applications but also to increase the application's availability. Therefore, we need to tolerate spatial memory errors at runtime. We have implemented a compiler extension, Boundless, that automatically adds the tolerance feature to C applications at compile time. We show that this can increase the availability of applications. Our measurements also indicate that Boundless has a lower performance overhead than SoftBound, a state-of-the-art approach to detect spatial memory errors. Our performance gains result from a novel way to represent pointers. Nevertheless, Boundless is compatible with existing C code. Additionally, Boundless provides a trade-off to reduce the runtime overhead even further: We introduce vulnerability specific patching for spatial memory errors to tolerate only known vulnerabilities. Vulnerability specific patching has an even lower runtime overhead than full tolerance.
The Nature of Belief-Directed Exploratory Choice in Human Decision-Making

In non-stationary environments, there is a conflict between exploiting currently favored options and gaining information by exploring lesser-known options that in the past have proven less rewarding. Optimal decision-making in such tasks requires considering future states of the environment (i.e., planning) and properly updating beliefs about the state of the environment after observing outcomes associated with choices. Optimal belief-updating is reflective in that beliefs can change without directly observing environmental change. For example, after 10 s elapse, one might correctly believe that a traffic light last observed to be red is now more likely to be green. To understand human decision-making when rewards associated with choice options change over time, we develop a variant of the classic “bandit” task that is both rich enough to encompass relevant phenomena and sufficiently tractable to allow for ideal actor analysis of sequential choice behavior. We evaluate whether people update beliefs about the state of environment in a reflexive (i.e., only in response to observed changes in reward structure) or reflective manner. In contrast to purely “random” accounts of exploratory behavior, model-based analyses of the subjects’ choices and latencies indicate that people are reflective belief updaters. However, unlike the Ideal Actor model, our analyses indicate that people’s choice behavior does not reflect consideration of future environmental states. Thus, although people update beliefs in a reflective manner consistent with the Ideal Actor, they do not engage in optimal long-term planning, but instead myopically choose the option on every trial that is believed to have the highest immediate payoff.
Early Adherence to Antiretroviral Medication as a Predictor of Long-Term HIV Virological Suppression: Five-Year Follow Up of an Observational Cohort

Objective Previous studies have demonstrated a cross-sectional relationship between antiretroviral adherence and HIV virological suppression. We assessed the predictive value of baseline adherence in determining long-term virological failure. Design We assessed baseline adherence via an adherence questionnaire between administered to all consenting patients attending antiretroviral clinics in Khayelitsha township, South Africa, between May 2002 and March 2004. Virological status was ascertained after five years of follow up and multivariate analysis used to model associations of baseline variables and medication adherence with time to viral suppression or failure. Results Our adherence cohort comprised 207 patients, among whom 72% were female. Median age was 30 years and median CD4 count at initiation was 55 cells/mm3. We found no statistically significant differences between baseline characteristics and early adherence groups. Multivariate analysis adjusting for baseline CD4 and age found that patients with suboptimal baseline adherence had a hazard ratio of 2.82 (95% CI 1.19–6.66, p = 0.018) for progression to virological failure compared to those whose baseline adherence was considered optimal. Conclusions Our longitudinal study provides further confirmation of adherence as a primary determinant of subsequent confirmed virological failure, and serves as a reminder of the importance of initial early investments in adherence counseling and support as an effective way to maximize long-term treatment success.
Key pre-distribution using partially balanced designs in wireless sensor networks

We propose two deterministic key predistribution schemes in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), in which sensor nodes are deployed randomly. Both the schemes are based on Partially Balanced Incomplete Block Designs (PBIBD). An important feature of our scheme is that every pair of nodes can communicate directly, making communication faster and efficient. The number of keys per node is of the order of √N, where N is the number of nodes in the network. Our second design has the added advantage that we can introduce new nodes in the network keeping the key pool fixed. We study the resiliency of the network under node compromise and show that our designs give better results than the existing ones.
KrF Pulsed Laser Ablation of Thin Films Made from Fluorinated Heterocyclic Poly(Naphthyl-Imide)s

Abstract Among the many aspects of laser ablation, development of conical structures induced by excimer laser radiation on polyimide surfaces has been thoroughly investigated. Because the mechanisms that produce these surface textures are not fully understood, two theories, photochemical bond breaking and thermal reaction, have been introduced. Here we present the first study of ultraviolet laser ablation behavior of thin films made from fluorinated poly(naphthyl-imide)s containing oxadiazole rings and the investigation of the mechanism of cone-like structure formation at two laser fluences, 57 and 240 mJ/cm2. The morphology of thin films before and after laser ablation was studied by using various spectroscopy techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, time-resolved emission and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and contact angle measurements. All of the data suggest impurities shielded at low fluence radiation (57 mJ/cm2) and a radiation hardening process at high value fluence (240 mJ/cm2), which are proposed as the main mechanisms for laser ablation of our polyimide films, and we bring evidence to support them.
Detection of Duplicate Defect Reports Using Natural Language Processing

Defect reports are generated from various testing and development activities in software engineering. Sometimes two reports are submitted that describe the same problem, leading to duplicate reports. These reports are mostly written in structured natural language, and as such, it is hard to compare two reports for similarity with formal methods. In order to identify duplicates, we investigate using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to support the identification. A prototype tool is developed and evaluated in a case study analyzing defect reports at Sony Ericsson mobile communications. The evaluation shows that about 2/3 of the duplicates can possibly be found using the NLP techniques. Different variants of the techniques provide only minor result differences, indicating a robust technology. User testing shows that the overall attitude towards the technique is positive and that it has a growth potential.