Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elevated levels of soluble adhesion molecules in sera and BAL fluid of individuals infected with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1.

STUDY OBJECTIVE T-lymphocytic alveolitis and increased levels of interleukin-2 receptor-alpha (CD25)-bearing T cells in the BAL fluid (BALF) of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) carriers have been reported. Several chemokines and adhesion molecules may contribute to the accumulation of T lymphocytes in the lungs of HTLV-1 carriers. To clarify the correlation between adhesion molecules and HTLV-1-associated pulmonary disorders, we compared the distribution of T-lymphocyte subsets and soluble adhesion molecules, including soluble intercellular adhesion molecule (sICAM)-1, soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1), soluble L-selectin (sL-selectin), soluble E-selectin (sE-selectin), and soluble P-selectin (sP-selectin), in BALF and peripheral blood, between HTLV-1 carriers and noninfected healthy subjects. DESIGN Flow cytometric analysis with monoclonal antibodies to cell-surface antigens was used to identify T-lymphocyte subsets in BALF samples from HTLV-1 carriers (n = 13) and noninfected healthy control subjects (n = 10). The levels of various soluble adhesion molecules in serum and in BALF were estimated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS Higher percentages of CD3+ cells, CD3-expressing human leukocyte antigen-DR antigen, and CD3+CD25+ cells were detected in the BALF of HTLV-1 carriers than in that of noninfected control subjects. The concentrations of sICAM-1, sVCAM-1, sL-selectin, SE- selectin, and sP-selectin in the sera of patients were significantly higher than those in noninfected healthy control subjects. The concentration of sICAM-1 in the BALF of patients was significantly higher than that in noninfected healthy control subjects, and the concentration of sICAM-1 correlated well with the percentage of CD3+CD25+ cells. CONCLUSION The concentrations of adhesion molecules in the sera of and sICAM-1 in the BALF of HTLV-1 carriers were significantly higher than those in noninfected individuals, and the concentration of sICAM-1 correlated well with the percentage of CD3+CD25+ cells in BALF. Our results suggest a possible interaction between activated T cells bearing CD25 and soluble adhesion molecules, especially sICAM-1, which may contribute to the pulmonary involvement in HTLV-1 carriers.
Assessment of Adaptive Breast Cancer Screening Policies for Improved Mortality Reduction in Low to Middle Income Countries

Objective: To investigate adaptive breast cancer screening policies using clinical breast examination for early detection and mortality reduction in low to middle income countries like India. Methods: Using published data from the Mumbai randomized cluster control trial (1998-2006), we first estimated the mean sojourn time at 5.9 years (95% Confidence Interval: 5.3-6.5) assuming 52% sensitivity of the test. The estimated mean sojourn time was used as a “silent interval” in time varying cellular kinetics with the two stage deterministic clonal expansion model, and we found age specific sojourn times in years as follows: 35-39. 0.8; 40-44, 1.0; 45-49, 1.8; 50-54, 3.2; and 55+, 5.9. Equipped with age specific sojourn times and sensitivity, we investigate adaptive screening policies for various year age groups using different screening intervals, maintaining a constant screen count of 10 and a 6 state Markov transition model. The rationale for using a fixed number of screens was to benchmark the effect of the screening interval. Result: We found that annual screening at ages 35-39 and biennial from 41-49 would achieve a mortality reduction of 27.9%, while annual screening from 38-42 and triennial from 43-58 would achieve a mortality reduction of 25.5%. Biennial screening from 40-60 years of age showed a mortality reduction of 23.6%, indicating inclusion of annual screening might be effective. We demonstrated a modelling framework that could be applied to the final data of randomized controlled trials, such as the ongoing Mumbai and Trivandrum trials in India, for assessing efficacy of annual screening in younger women. Conclusion: The framework could be useful to decide age groups that would yield maximal effectiveness in screening trials with selected screening intervals. Further, the framework could be adapted in other low to middle income countries for designing either screening trials or adaptive screening policies.
Estimating properties of unconsolidated sand-clay from spectral-induced polarization

Spectral-induced polarization (SIP) of glass beads, gravel, sand and sand-clay mixtures (5, 10 and 20% clay by weight) was measured over 10 mHz to 100 Hz by employing an SR810 DSP lock-in amplifier. Phase shift (j), and real part (s¢) and imaginary part (s¢¢) of complex electrical conductivity of the materials were calculated from the measured voltage and its x- and y-components to link them to physico-chemical properties of the materials. The phase shift decreased with the increase in salt concentration in pore water and diminished above a material-specific limiting salt concentration. The imaginary part of electrical conductivity was strongly correlated with clay content of the samples. For gravel and sand, j was strongly sensitive to pore-water content at 0.1 Hz, and there was a material-specific correlation between j and pore-water content. The ratio of the real part of electrical conductivity of the unsaturated samples to that of the saturated samples increased linearly with the increasing degree of pore-water saturation (ratio of water content of a sample to its water content at saturation) except for sand+20% clay mixture, in which the real part of electrical conductivity ratio first increased linearly and then leveled off at high (» 0.6) water saturation. The real part of electrical conductivity ratio versus the degree of pore-water saturation relationship was different for sand+10% clay and sand+20% clay samples but unique for sand and sand+5% clay samples. Such relationships of real part of electrical conductivity ratio of soils to their pore-water saturation provide prospects of predicting important soil properties such as soil salinity.
Frequency and recovery effects in high-κ BTI degradation

Net end-of-life aging prediction under realistic use conditions is the key objective for any product aging model. In this paper, a net degradation model is introduced and effects such as recovery, subsequent degradation, frequency, duty cycle, and recovery bias are evaluated. The high-κ recovery behavior observed is consistent with SiO2 gate stacks, which allows the use of SiO2 models to predict recovery in both NMOS and PMOS high-κ transistors.
Analytical assessment of multi-user vs. spatial diversity trade-offs with delayed channel state information

In this letter, we explore the combined use of spatial and multi-user diversity in a cellular system where channel state information is subject to delays in the feedback channel. First, we analytically derive the probability and cumulative density functions of the post-scheduling signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for both a single-input single-output (SISO) and an orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) transmission schemes. Then, we obtain the closed-form expressions of the corresponding average system capacities. By evaluating those expressions, we analytically show that the OSTBC scheme is far less sensitive to delays in the feedback channel
Code density concerns for new architectures

Reducing a program's instruction count can improve cache behavior and bandwidth utilization, lower power consumption, and increase overall performance. Nonetheless, code density is an often overlooked feature in studying processor architectures. We hand-optimize an assembly language embedded benchmark for size on 21 different instruction set architectures, finding up to a factor of three difference in code sizes from ISA alone. We find that the architectural features that contribute most heavily to code density are instruction length, number of registers, availability of a zero register, bit-width, hardware divide units, number of instruction operands, and the availability of unaligned loads and stores. We extend our results to investigate operating system, compiler, and system library effects on code density. We find that the executable starting address, executable format, and system call interface all affect program size. While ISA effects are important, the efficiency of the entire system stack must be taken into account when developing a new dense instruction set architecture.
Dressing after reverse bevel flap procedures.

Abstract Effects of withholding a dressing and applying Coe-Pak after reverse bevel flap procedures in periodontal surgery were compared in 24 patients. Maxillary and mandibular posterior segments were treated using a “split-month” technique. Slight differences occurred between dressed and undressed segments. Gingival Index scores for the undressed segments were lower than those for the dressed segments at 7 days after operation, but by 21 and 28 days post-operatively the position was reversed. Changes in gingival fluid flow followed a similar pattern but were not statistically significant. The 0.18 mm difference in crevice depth of the dressed as opposed to the undressed segments noted 28 days post-operatively was statistically significant. Clinically satisfactory results were achieved in both instances. Post-operative dressing was associated with a greater incidence of pain and swelling, but a reduced incidence of bleeding, sensitivity and eating difficulty. More patients stated a preference for no dressing should the operation have to be repeated. After reverse bevel flap procedures, no differences between dressed and undressed segments which would be likely to have practical significance were demonstrated, and it is therefore suggested that application of a dressing should be a matter of individual preference.
Pre-task music improves swimming performance.

AIM The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pre-task music on swimming performance and other psychological variables. METHODS A randomized counterbalanced within-subjects (experimental and control condition) design was employed. Eighteen regional level male swimmers performed two 200-m freestyle swimming time trials. Participants were exposed to either 5 minutes of self-selected music (pre-task music condition) or 5 minutes of silence (control condition) and, after 1 minute, performed the swimming task. RESULTS Swimming time was significantly shorter (-1.44%) in the pre-task music condition. Listening to pre-task music increased motivation to perform the swimming task, while arousal remained unchanged. While fatigue increased after the swimming task in both conditions, vigor, ratings of perceived exertion and affective valence were unaltered. CONCLUSION It is concluded, for the first time, that pre-task music improves swimming performance.
Association of IFN-g+874(T/A) polymorphism with female patients of age-related cataracts

Aim: Exposure to UV light is the major risk factor in the development of age-related cataract (ARC). UV filters produced during tryptophan catabolism maintain the transparency of the lens and protect retina from photo damage. Indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase (IDO), the first rate-limiting enzyme in the tryptophan catabolism, is up regulated by interferon-gamma (IFN-g) which harbors single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The T allele of SNP at +874 position of the IFN-g is known to be associated with the up regulation of IDO than the allele A. Hence, we attempted to study the IFN-g+874(T/A) polymorphism for its association with ARCs. Materials and Methods: A total of 680 cataract cases [199 nuclear (NC), 175 cortical (CC), 174 posterior subcapsular (PSC), and 132 mixed types (MT)] and 210 healthy controls were genotyped for +874(T/A) polymorphism using amplification refractory mutation system-polymerase chain reaction on 2% agarose gel stained with ethidium bromide. Results: There was increased risk for CC and PSC when the patients happened to be females, with low body mass index and with early onset. Considering the IFN-g polymorphism, a high risk was observed for CC and PSC in female patients of AA genotype with significant protection for those with TT genotypes. Conclusion: Present results indicate that +874(T/A) polymorphism may be considered as one of the biomarkers to distinguish between the CC and PSC types of cataracts for risk estimations. The study appears to be the first of its kind reporting an association of IFN-g+874(T/A) polymorphism with ARCs.
A potential mechanism for cryptic female choice in a flour beetle

Abstract In polyandrous mating systems, events occurring during copulation can alter the fate of the mating male's sperm. These events may exert selective pressures resulting in the evolution of diverse reproductive behaviours, morphologies and physiologies. This study investigates the role of male and female copulatory behaviours on sperm fate in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. I describe and quantify copulatory behaviours for mating pairs, and examine sperm fate by quantifying sperm transfer, sperm storage and second male sperm precedence. Whereas female quiescence during copulation and male leg rubbing during copulation together account for significant variation (26%) in sperm precedence, female copulatory quiescence alone provides information about the timing and numbers of sperm transferred. These experiments show that a female copulatory behaviour predicts sperm fate, and emphasize the value of studying variation in both male and female copulatory behaviours for understanding factors affecting sperm use.
HPMR: Prefetching and pre-shuffling in shared MapReduce computation environment

MapReduce is a programming model that supports distributed and parallel processing for large-scale data-intensive applications such as machine learning, data mining, and scientific simulation. Hadoop is an open-source implementation of the MapReduce programming model. Hadoop is used by many companies including Yahoo! , Amazon, and Facebook to perform various data mining on large-scale data sets such as user search logs and visit logs. In these cases, it is very common to share the same computing resources by multiple users due to practical considerations about cost, system utilization, and manageability. However, Hadoop assumes that all cluster nodes are dedicated to a single user, failing to guarantee high performance in the shared MapReduce computation environment. In this paper, we propose two optimization schemes, prefetching and pre-shuffling, which improve the overall performance under the shared environment while retaining compatibility with the native Hadoop. The proposed schemes are implemented in the native Hadoop-0.18. 3 as a plug-in component called HPMR (High Performance MapReduce Engine). Our evaluation on the Yahoo! Grid platform with three different workloads and seven types of test sets from Yahoo! shows that HPMR reduces the execution time by up to 73%.
Simulations of Mechanical Properties of CuZr and CuMg Metallic Glasses

Molecular dynamic simulations have been performed to study the mechanical properties of Cu15Mg85, respectively and Cu50Zr50 metallic glasses. The many body interaction between atoms are described at the Effective Medium Theory interatomic potential level of theory. In order to treat Cu50Zr50 a new interatomic potential has been constructed. The interatomic potential was fitted to lattice constants, elastic constants and cohesive energies of Cu, Zr and Cu50Zr50 in the B2 structure. We tested the optimized Cu50Zr50 interatomic potential by comparing the lattice properties of several CuZr structures to accurate Density Functional Theory calculations and find a satisfactory agreement. Furthermore, with the CuZr interatomic potential we are able to describe the thermodynamics of CuZr glass during cooling in good agreement with experiments. Two different method have been used to study the formation of shear bands during plastic deformation: i) a simple shear deformation, and ii) nanoindentation with a cylindrical indenter. For the simple shear deformation we observe formation of shear bands with a width of 5 nm and 8 nm for Cu50Zr50 and Cu15Mg85, respectively. The formation of shear bands during nanoindentation was found to be dependent on the indentation velocity, radius of the indenter and the cooling rate. Shear bands formation is more clear when we use low velocity of nanoindentation, larger radius of the indenter and when the samples are cooled slowly.
Genetic diversity of internalin genes in the ascB‐dapE locus among Listeria monocytogenes lineages III and IV strains

Listeria monocytogenes is an important foodborne pathogen encompassing four phylogenetic lineages. Lineages III and IV are rare, but have been reported to show considerable biodiversity, providing important clues for the evolutionary history in Listeria. In this study, analysis of the ascB‐dapE locus reveals genetic diversity in lineages III and IV, and is consistent with the classification of sublineages. Four of the six genetic patterns (two of sublineage IIIC and two of lineage IV) are specific to these two lineages. The ascB‐dapE locus suggests a hot spot for genome diversification, and serves as an attractive molecular marker for better understanding of the biodiversity and population structure of lineages III and IV strains.
Propagation of weakly non-linear, narrow-banded waves against strong currents

Blocking dynamics of gravity water waves have been investigated in a laboratory environment for a range of wave conditions. A non-linear numerical model has been developed to simulate the observed characteristic features of wave blocking. The model is based on a WKB perturbation expansion technique, which is used to study the amplitude evolution of narrow banded spectral waves, but allows for a complex phase to account for wave blocking. The model is onedimensional and has been width integrated to account for narrowing side walls. The model is susceptible to spurious oscillations that propagate against the waves that are exacerbated in the presence of an opposing current. Numerical filtering techniques are applied to damp out these oscillations. The numerical model does a reasonable job in simulating wave blocking in the smallest amplitude monochromatic wave test cases and also in tests involving wave packets. The model is limited because the location of wave blocking is determined by linear theory, while experimental results indicate that amplitude dispersive effects are very important. The model also blocks the waves at the blocking point of the carrier frequency which is contrary to the observed data, where the wave spectrum is blocked selectively at the blocking points of corresponding wave components. The modeling exercise together with the experimental results throws light on the blocking characteristics of gravity waves, and suggests alternative paths for the development of non-linear wave blocking models.
Performance of Motor Imagery Brain-Computer Interface Based on Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Modulation

Voluntarily modulating neural activity plays a key role in brain-computer interface (BCI). In general, the self-regulated neural activation patterns are used in the current BCI systems involving the repetitive trainings with feedback for an attempt to achieve a high-quality control performance. With the limitation posed by the training procedure in most BCI studies, the present work aims to investigate whether directly modulating the neural activity by using an external method could facilitate the BCI control. We designed an experimental paradigm that combines anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with a motor imagery (MI)-based feedback EEG BCI system. Thirty-two young and healthy human subjects were randomly assigned to the real and sham stimulation groups to evaluate the effect of tDCS-induced EEG pattern changes on BCI classification accuracy. Results showed that the anodal tDCS obviously induces sensorimotor rhythm (SMR)-related event-related desynchronization (ERD) pattern changes in the upper-mu (10-14 Hz) and beta (14-26 Hz) rhythm components. Both the online and offline BCI classification results demonstrate that the enhancing ERD patterns could conditionally improve BCI performance. This pilot study suggests that the tDCS is a promising method to help the users to develop reliable BCI control strategy in a relatively short time.
A Case of Solitary Brain Metastasis from Uterine Mullerian Adenosarcoma with Sarcomatous Overgrowth

Uterine adenosarcoma (AS) are rare tumors and have more favorable outcomes than the aggressive uterine carcinosarcomas. Uterine adenosarcoma with sarcomatous overgrowth (ASSO) is a variant form of AS and exhibits aggressive growth of tumor and the prognosis is relatively poor compared with typical AS. Usually patterns of metastasis have been known to behave like endometrial carcinoma and spread through the lymphatics. Brain metastasis from uterine AS is extremely rare. Herein, we report a case of successfully surgically removed solitary brain metastasis without any extracranial recurrence from uterine ASSO after 4 years of primary treatment.
Why polar gigantism and Palaeozoic gigantism are not equivalent: effects of oxygen and temperature on the body size of ectotherms

Summary Organisms of gigantic proportions inhabited the world at a time of a hyperoxic prehistoric atmosphere (Palaeozoic gigantism). Extant giants are found in cold polar waters, with large quantities of dissolved oxygen (polar gigantism). Oxygen is usually deemed central to explain such gigantism. Examples of one category of gigantism are often cited in support of the other, but novel insights into the bioavailability of oxygen imply that they cannot be taken as equivalent manifestations of the effect of oxygen on body size. Recently, the availability of oxygen has been shown to be lower in cold waters, despite greater oxygen solubility. Consequently, gigantism in cold, oxygenated waters and gigantism in an oxygen-pressurized world are fundamentally different: Palaeozoic gigantism likely arose because of greater oxygen availability, while polar gigantism arises in spite of lower oxygen availability. The traditional view of respiration focuses on meeting the challenge of extracting sufficient amounts of oxygen, which essentially is a toxic gas. We present a broader perspective, which specifically includes risks of oxygen poisoning. We discuss how challenges pertaining to balancing oxygen uptake capacity and risks of oxygen poisoning are very different for animals breathing either air or water. We propose a novel explanation for polar gigantism in aquatic ectotherms, arguing that their larger body size represents a respiratory advantage that helps to overcome the larger viscous forces in water. Being large helps organisms to balance the opposing risks of asphyxiation and poisoning, especially in colder, more viscous, water. This results in a selection for larger sizes, with polar gigantism as the extreme manifestation. Hence, a larger size provides respiratory benefits to water-breathing ectotherms, but not terrestrial ectotherms. This can explain why clines in body size across temperature and latitude are stronger in aquatic ectotherms.