Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Need for Structure in Quantum Speedups

Is there a general theorem that tells us when we can hope for exponential speedups from quantum algorithms, and when we cannot? In this paper, we make two advances toward such a theorem, in the black-box model where most quantum algorithms operate. First, we show that for any problem that is invariant under permuting inputs and outputs (like the collision or the element distinctness problems), the quantum query complexity is at least the 9 th root of the classical randomized query complexity. This resolves a conjecture of Watrous from 2002. Second, inspired by recent work of O’Donnell et al. and Dinur et al., we conjecture that every bounded low-degree polynomial has a “highly influential” variable. Assuming this conjecture, we show that every T-query quantum algorithm can be simulated on most inputs by a poly(T)query classical algorithm, and that one essentially cannot hope to prove P 6 BQP relative to a random oracle.
Teres Ligament Patch Reduces Relevant Morbidity After Distal Pancreatectomy (the DISCOVER Randomized Controlled Trial)

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of teres ligament covering on pancreatic fistula rate after distal pancreatectomy (DP). Background: Postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF) represents the most significant complication after DP. Retrospective studies suggested a benefit of covering the resection margin by a teres ligament patch. Methods: This prospective randomized controlled study (DISCOVER trial) included 152 patients undergoing DP, between October 2010 and July 2014. Patients were randomized to undergo closure of the pancreatic cut margin without (control, n = 76) or with teres ligament coverage (teres, n = 76). The primary endpoint was the rate of POPF, and the secondary endpoints included postoperative morbidity and mortality, length of hospital stay, and readmission rate. Results: Both groups were comparable regarding epidemiology (age, sex, body mass index), operative parameters (operation time [OP] time, blood loss, method of pancreas transection, additional operative procedures), and histopathological findings. Overall inhospital mortality was 0.6% (1/152 patients). In the group of patients with teres ligament patch, the rate of reoperations (1.3% vs 13.0%; P = 0.009), and also the rate of readmission (13.1 vs 31.5%; P = 0.011) were significantly lower. Clinically relevant POPF rate (grade B/C) was 32.9% (control) versus 22.4% (teres, P = 0.20). Multivariable analysis showed teres ligament coverage to be a protective factor for clinically relevant POPF (P = 0.0146). Conclusions: Coverage of the pancreatic remnant after DP is associated with less reinterventions, reoperations, and need for readmission. Although the overall fistula rate is not reduced by the coverage procedure, it should be considered as a valid measure for complication prevention due to its clinical benefit.
Nonconvex Regularization-Based Sparse Recovery and Demixing With Application to Color Image Inpainting

This paper addresses the recovery and demixing problem of signals that are sparse in some general dictionary. Involved applications include source separation, image inpainting, super-resolution, and restoration of signals corrupted by clipping, saturation, impulsive noise, or narrowband interference. We employ the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{q}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-norm (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0 \le q < 1$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) for sparsity inducing and propose a constrained <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{q}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-minimization formulation for the recovery and demixing problem. This nonconvex formulation is approximately solved by two efficient first-order algorithms based on proximal coordinate descent and alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM), respectively. The new algorithms are convergent in the nonconvex case under some mild conditions and scale well for high-dimensional problems. A convergence condition of the new ADMM algorithm has been derived. Furthermore, the extension of the two algorithms for multichannels joint recovery has been presented, which can further exploit the joint sparsity pattern among multichannel signals. Various numerical experiments showed that the new algorithms can achieve considerable performance gain over the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-regularized algorithms.
Calreticulin Destabilizes Glucose Transporter-1 mRNA in Vascular Endothelial and Smooth Muscle Cells Under High-Glucose Conditions

Substrate autoregulation of glucose transporter-1 (GLUT-1) mRNA and protein expression provides vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells a sensitive mechanism to adapt their rate of glucose transport in response to changing glycemic conditions. Hyperglycemia-induced downregulation of glucose transport is particularly important in protecting these cells against an excessive influx of glucose and consequently increased intracellular protein glycation and generation of free radicals; both are detrimental in the development of vascular disease in diabetes. We aimed to investigate the molecular mechanism of high glucose–induced downregulation of GLUT-1 mRNA expression in primary bovine aortic vascular endothelial (VEC) and smooth muscle (VSMC) cell cultures. Using RNA mobility shift, UV cross-linking, and in vitro degradation assays, followed by mass-spectrometric analysis, we identified calreticulin as a specific destabilizing trans-acting factor that binds to a 10-nucleotide cis-acting element (CAE2181-2190) in the 3′-untranslated region of GLUT-1 mRNA. Pure calreticulin accelerated the rate of GLUT-1 mRNA-probe degradation in vitro, whereas overexpression of calreticulin in vascular cells decreased significantly the total cell content of GLUT-1 mRNA and protein. The expression of calreticulin was augmented in vascular cells exposed to high glucose in comparison with low-glucose conditions. Similarly, increased expression of calreticulin was observed in aortae of diabetic Psammomys obesus in comparison with normoglycemic controls. These data suggest that CAE2181-2190–calreticulin complex, which is formed in VSMC and VEC exposed to hyperglycemic conditions, renders GLUT-1 mRNA susceptible to degradation. This interaction underlies the process of downregulation of glucose transport in vascular cells under high-glucose conditions.
Plasma-induced charging damage in ultrathin (3 nm) nitrided oxides

Plasma-induced charging damage in various 3 nm-thick gate oxides (i.e. pure oxides and N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides) was investigated by subjecting both nMOS and pMOS antenna devices to a photoresist ashing step after metal pad definition. Gate leakage current measurements indicated that large leakage current occurs at both the wafer center and the wafer edge for pMOS devices, while it occurs only at the wafer center for nMOS devices. These interesting observations could be explained by the polarity dependence of ultra-thin oxides in terms of charge-to-breakdown characteristics. More importantly, our experimental results demonstrated that stress-induced leakage current (SILC) caused by plasma damage is significantly suppressed in N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides, compared to pure oxides, especially for pMOS devices. Finally, nitrided-oxide is also found to be more robust when subjected to high temperature stressing.
The 2016 Southeastern U.S. Drought: An Extreme Departure From Centennial Wetting and Cooling

The fall 2016 drought in the southeastern United States (SE U.S.) appeared exceptional based on its widespread impacts, but the current monitoring framework that only extends from 1979 to present does not readily facilitate evaluation of soil‐moisture anomalies in a centennial context. A new method to extend monthly gridded soil‐moisture estimates back to 1895 is developed, indicating that since 1895, October–November 2016 soil moisture (0–200 cm) in the SE U.S. was likely the second lowest on record, behind 1954. This severe drought developed rapidly and was brought on by low September–November precipitation and record‐high September–November daily maximum temperatures (Tmax). Record‐high Tmax drove record‐high atmospheric moisture demand, accounting for 28% of the October–November 2016 soil‐moisture anomaly. Drought and heat in fall 2016 contrasted with 20th century wetting and cooling in the region but resembled conditions more common from 1895–1956. Dynamically, the exceptional drying in fall 2016 was driven by anomalous ridging over the central United States that reduced south‐southwesterly moisture transports into the SE U.S. by approximately 75%. These circulation anomalies were partly promoted by a moderate La Niña and warmth in the tropical Atlantic, but these processes accounted for very little of the SE U.S. drying in fall 2016, implying a large role for internal atmospheric variability. The extended analysis back to 1895 indicates that SE U.S. droughts as strong as the 2016 event are more likely than indicated from a shorter 60 year perspective and continued multidecadal swings in precipitation may combine with future warming to further enhance the likelihood of such events.
The Success Story of LDL Cholesterol Lowering

During the past 3 decades, we have witnessed an impressive development in the battle against atherosclerotic diseases with the use of new medications that seem to retard or even halt the progression of the atherosclerotic process with a resulting improvement in health and longevity for millions of individuals. This remarkable progress in medicine did not happen without controversies. The question of whether reduction of cholesterol levels in the blood would be helpful for people in general and for patients, in particular, remained one of the most controversial questions during much of the 20th Atherosclerosis Compendium
Notes on the Reidemeister Torsion

Reidemeister torsion (R-torsion for short) is an algebraic topology invariant which takes values in the multiplicative group of the units of a commutative ring. Although R-torsion has been largely subsumed in the more general theory of Whitehead torsion, it has retained a life of its own. There are applications to the structure theory of compact polyhedra and manifolds, especially in the odd dimensions (e.g. 3), knots and links, dynamical systems, analytic torsion, Seiberg-Witten theory, .
Assessing Rheological Behavior of Modified Paving Asphalt Cement

The Asphalt cement is produced as by-product from oil industry in Iraq; the asphalt must practice further processing to control the percentage of its different ingredients so that it will be suitable for paving process. If such processing is not conducted, then another alternative of modifying the asphalt cement properties with additives could be implemented. The objective of this work is to prepare different types of modified Asphalt cement using locally available additives, and subjecting the prepared modified Asphalt cement to testing procedures usually adopted for Asphalt cement, and evaluates the suitability of modified asphalt cement for paving process requirements. An attempt was made to prepare the modified Asphalt cement for pavement construction in the laboratory by digesting each of the two penetration grade Asphalt cement (40-50 and 60-70)with sulfur, fly ash, fumed silica, crumb rubber and Phospho gypsum. Three different percentages of each of the above mentioned additives have been tried using continuous stirring and heating at 150- 160 o C for 30 minutes . The prepared modified Asphalt specimens were subjected to physical properties determination; such as (Cone penetration, Softening point, Resilience, Cold bond adhesion) to investigate its quality. Rheological properties such as Creep stiffness, Penetration index, Stiffness modulus and Penetration viscosity number were also investigated and compared. It was concluded that Sulfur additive provides the lowest creep stiffness at all of the loading periods and for both asphalt grades, while crumb rubber additive shows the highest creep stiffness. The softer asphalt 60-70 experience increases in the magnitude of m-60 by 84 percent when compared to harder asphalt of 40-50. Sulfur, Phospho gypsum, and fly ash increase the temperature susceptibility of both grades of asphalt cement, while Rubber and sulfur, improved the elastic properties of both grades of asphalt.
Robust Organizational Principles of Protrusive Biopolymer Networks in Migrating Living Cells

Cell migration is associated with the dynamic protrusion of a thin actin-based cytoskeletal extension at the cell front, which has been shown to consist of two different substructures, the leading lamellipodium and the subsequent lamellum. While the formation of the lamellipodium is increasingly well understood, organizational principles underlying the emergence of the lamellum are just beginning to be unraveled. We report here on a 1D mathematical model which describes the reaction-diffusion processes of a polarized actin network in steady state, and reproduces essential characteristics of the lamellipodium-lamellum system. We observe a steep gradient in filament lengths at the protruding edge, a local depolymerization maximum a few microns behind the edge, as well as a differential dominance of the network destabilizer ADF/cofilin and the stabilizer tropomyosin. We identify simple and robust organizational principles giving rise to the derived network characteristics, uncoupled from the specifics of any molecular implementation, and thus plausibly valid across cell types. An analysis of network length dependence on physico-chemical system parameters implies that to limit array treadmilling to cellular dimensions, network growth has to be truncated by mechanisms other than aging-induced depolymerization, e.g., by myosin-associated network dissociation at the transition to the cell body. Our work contributes to the analytical understanding of the cytoskeletal extension's bisection into lamellipodium and lamellum and sheds light on how cells organize their molecular machinery to achieve motility.
Lower-extremity function for driving an automobile after operative treatment of ankle fracture.

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine when patients recover the ability to safely operate the brakes of an automobile following operative repair of an ankle fracture. Methods: A computerized driving simulator was developed and tested. Eleven healthy volunteers were tested once to establish normal mean values (Group I), and a group of thirty-one volunteers with a fracture of the right ankle were tested at six, nine, and twelve weeks following operative repair (Group II). The subjects were tested with a series of driving scenarios (city, suburban, and highway). Scores on the Short Form Musculoskeletal Assessment were recorded at six, nine, and twelve weeks and were compared with the results of the driving test. We investigated the effect of the time of the visit and of the testing condition on the braking times. Results: The total braking time was 1079 msec for Group I and 1330, 1172, and 1160 msec for Group II at six, nine, and twelve weeks, respectively, postoperatively (p = 0.0094). The total braking time consistently improved for each of the driving scenarios at each successive data point (p = 0.05). The increase in the total braking time at six weeks meant an increase in the distance traveled by the automobile before braking of 22 ft (6.7 m) at 60 mph (96.6 km/hr), and the increase at nine weeks meant an increase of 8 ft (2.4 m) at 60 mph. The functional outcome improved at each successive visit, although no significant association was found between the functional scores and normalization of total braking time. Conclusion: By nine weeks, the total braking time of patients who have undergone fixation of a displaced right ankle fracture returns to the normal, baseline value.
Functional Polymer Scaffolds for Blood Vessel Tissue Engineering

Scaffold pore size plays a critical role in the infiltration of the cells into the structure. For engineered blood vessels, co-cultures of endothelial (EC) on the lumen, and smooth muscle cells (SMC) on the external surface of tubular scaffolds are performed. The more adequate pore sizes for EC are, in general, smaller than for SMC. In the present work, poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) flat film and hollow fibers are prepared by phase inversion. The influence of polymer and coagulation solution compositions on pore morphology of the films is analysed and the results are applied to obtain, in a one step process, PCL hollow fibers with suitable pore size for both EC and SMC.
Influence of processing conditions on the thermal and mechanical properties of SU8 negative photoresist coatings

The thermal and mechanical properties of a new negative photoresist, SU8, were characterized. The influence of curing conditions, such as baking temperature, baking time and UV dosage, on the thermal and mechanical properties of the resultant coatings was studied in detail. It was found that the glass-transition temperature (Tg) of the coatings was coincident with the baking temperature over the temperature range of 25 °C–220 °C for coatings being baked for just 20 min. However, the Tg reached a limiting value (about 240 °C) once the cross-linking reaction was complete, and would not increase further with the baking temperature. The peak temperature of the dimension versus temperature plots, where heat shrinkage occurred, was about a factor of 1.16 times higher than the baking temperature for the temperature range studied. Both the Tg and the shrinkage temperature were affected by the baking time. The thermal expansion coefficients (TEC), including the volumetric TEC (αv), the in-plane TEC (α1) and the out-of-plane TEC (α2), were measured by a pressure–volume–temperature (PVT) apparatus and thermal–mechanical analyzer (TMA). Great residual stress could be generated during the process, and the change in residual stress with the environmental humidity was investigated using vibrational holographic interferometry.
Effects of memory strategy training on performance and event-related brain potentials of children with ADHD in an episodic memory task

Evidence for memory problems in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is accumulating. Attempting to counter such problems, in the present study children with ADHD aged 8–12 years underwent a six-week metacognitive memory strategy training (MST) or one of two other active trainings, either a metacognitive attention-perceptual-motor training (APM) or placebo training consisting of playing board games (PLA). Effects of the training on episodic memory and underlying brain processes were investigated by comparing performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) on pre- and post-training sessions in an old/new recognition task between the three training groups. Potential far transfer effects of the memory strategy training were investigated by measuring performance on neuropsychological attention and memory-span tasks and parent-rated ADHD symptoms. The metacognitive memory strategy training led to significantly improved memory performance and enhanced amplitude of left parietal P600 activity associated with the process of memory recollection when compared to PLA, but APM training evoked similar improvements. Memory performance gains were significantly correlated with the memory-related ERP effects. Preliminary far transfer effects of MST training were found on attention and working memory performance and on parent-rated ADHD symptoms, although these results need replication with larger and better IQ-matched groups.
Control of a Salmonella virulence operon by proline-charged tRNAPro

Significance Pathogens must express their virulence genes in the correct locales to cause disease. This task requires a pathogen’s ability to sense host signals and to transduce this information to its expression machinery. Here we establish that the facultative intracellular pathogen Salmonella enterica responds to a decrease in the levels of proline-charged tRNAPro by promoting expression of the mgtCBR virulence operon. We determine that hyperosmotic stress and proline limitation reduce proline-charged tRNAPro levels and show that the compartment harboring Salmonella is limited in proline and that Salmonella experiences high osmolarity inside macrophages. Our findings indicate that Salmonella detects host cues by the changes they produce on bacterial constituents. The intracellular pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium requires the mgtC gene to cause disease. The mgtC transcript includes a long leader region that harbors a short proline codon-rich ORF—termed mgtP—the translation of which is predicted to favor formation of one of two alternative stem-loop structures. We now report that the mgtP proline codons are critical for expression of the mgtC coding region inside host cells, for Salmonella survival inside macrophages, and for virulence in mice. We determine that the mgtP proline codons mediate the response to proline-charged tRNAPro, the levels of which decrease under proline limitation and/or hyperosmotic stress. The host compartment harboring Salmonella appears to be limited in proline because proline auxotrophs were defective for intramacrophage survival and virulence in mice. Salmonella seems to experience hyperosmotic stress during infection because osmotically regulated genes were highly induced inside phagocytic cells. Replacing mgtP proline codons with codons specifying threonine converted the mgtC leader into a threonine-responding element. Our findings indicate that an attenuation-like mechanism governs transcription elongation into the mgtCBR coding region. Moreover, they highlight how pathogens construe host signals by the effect they have on bacterial constituents.
Efficacy of desvenlafaxine succinate for menopausal hot flashes

Introduction: The concern for the development of breast cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease and deep venous thrombosis with the use of hormonal therapy has led to the development of alternative nonhormonal forms of therapy like desvenlafaxine for the management of hot flashes. Areas covered: This review is based upon a PubMed search and clinical trials. The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of desvenlafaxine are reviewed. This review outlines the effects of desvenlafaxine in management of severity and frequency of vasomotor symptoms, sleep quality and quality of life in postmenopausal women. The potential adverse effects of desvenlafaxine are summarized. Expert opinion: Based on the evidence from randomized clinical trials, desvenlafaxine is an alternate viable option for reducing the frequency and severity of hot flashes when other treatments fail. In clinical trials, it has been shown that desvenlafaxine reduced the frequency of hot flashes by 55 – 69%. In the trials so far it appears to have good safety and tolerability profile when the drug is initiated in titrating doses. The optimum dose is 100 mg/day and is to be started at 50 mg/day for 3 days and titrated to 100 mg/day. The most common adverse events reported were nausea, dry mouth, fatigue, constipation, diarrhea and somnolence.