Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ozone oxidative preconditioning protects the rat kidney from reperfusion injury via modulation of the TLR4-NF-κB pathway.

PURPOSE To investigate the protective effects of ozone oxidative preconditioning (OzoneOP) were associated with the modulation of TLR4-NF-κB pathway. METHODS Thirty six rats were subjected to 45 min of renal ischemia, with or without treatment with OzoneOP (1 mg/kg). Blood samples were collected for the detection of blood urea nitrogen and creatinine levels. Histologic examinations were evaluated and immunohistochemistry was also performed for localization of TLR4 and NF-κB. The expression of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, ICAM-1 and MCP-1 were studied by Real-time PCR. Western blot was performed to detect the expression of TLR4 and NF-κB. RESULTS The results indicated that blood urea nitrogen and creatinine levels increased significantly in I/R group. Rats treated with OzoneOP showed obviously less renal damage. Immunohistochemistry showed that TLR4 were ameliorated by OzoneOP. Realtime PCR showed that OzoneOP could significantly inhibit the increased mRNA levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, ICAM-1 and MCP-1 induced by I/R. Western blot indicated that the expression of TLR4 and NF-κB were upregulated in I/R group, but OzoneOP could inhibit this increase. CONCLUSION These findings indicated that OzoneOP had potent anti-inflammatory properties by the modulation of the TLR4-NF-κB pathway in renal ischemia/reperfusion injury.
Effects of dietary L-carnitine and coenzyme Q10 at different supplemental ages on growth performance and some immune response in ascites-susceptible broilers

Abstract Effects of dietary L-carnitine and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) at different supplemental ages on performance and some immune response were investigated in ascites-susceptible broilers. A 3 × 2 × 2 factorial design was used consisting of L-carnitine supplementation (0, 75, and 100 mg/kg), CoQ10 supplementation (0 and 40 mg/kg) and different supplemental ages (from day 1 on and from day 10 on). A total of 480 one-day-old Arbor Acre male broiler chicks were randomly allocated to 12 groups, every group had five replicates, each with eight birds. The birds were fed a corn-soybean based diet for six weeks. From day 10 – 21, all the birds were exposed to a low ambient temperature (12 – 15°C) to increase the susceptibility to ascites. No significant effects were observed on growth performance by L-carnitine, CoQ10 supplementation, and different supplemental ages. Packed cell volume was significantly decreased by L-carnitine supplementation alone, and ascites heart index and ascites mortality were decreased by L-carnitine, CoQ10 supplementation alone, and L-carnitine + CoQ10 supplementation together (p < 0.05). Heart index of broilers was significantly improved by L-carnitine, CoQ10 supplementation alone during 0 – 3 week. Serum IgG content was improved by L-carnitine supplementation alone (p < 0.05), but lysozyme activity was increased by L-carnitine + CoQ10 supplementation together (p < 0.05). A significant L-carnitine by supplemental age interaction was observed in lysozyme activity. L-carnitine supplementation alone had no effects on the peripheral blood lymphocyte (PBL) proliferation in response to concanavalin A (ConA) and lipopolysaccharide, but supplemental CoQ10 alone and L-carnitine + CoQ10 together decreased the PBL proliferation in response to ConA (p < 0.05). The present study suggested that L-carnitine + CoQ10 supplementation together had positive effects on some immune response of ascites-susceptible broilers, which might benefit for the reduction of broilers' susceptibility to ascites.
The arithmetic of centrosome biogenesis

How do cells regulate centrosome number? A canonical duplication cycle generates two centrosomes from one in most proliferating cells. Centrioles are key to this process, and molecules such as centrins, SAS-4 and ZYG-1 govern daughter centriole formation. Cdk2 activity probably couples centrosome duplication with the S phase, and a licensing mechanism appears to limit centrosome duplication to once per cell cycle. However, such mechanisms must be altered in some cells – for example, spermatocytes – in which centrosome duplication and DNA replication are uncoupled. There are also alternative pathways of centrosome biogenesis. For example, one centrosome is reconstituted from two gametes at fertilization; in this case, the most common strategy involves differential contributions of centrioles and pericentriolar material (PCM) from each gamete. Furthermore, centrioles can sometimes form de novo from no apparent template. This occurs, for instance, in the early mouse embryo and in parthenogenetic species and might rely on a pre-existing seed that resides within PCM but is not visible by ultrastructural analysis.
A Telephone-Delivered Physical Activity and Dietary Intervention for Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension: Does Intervention Dose Influence Outcomes?

Purpose. To examine associations of intervention dose with behavior change outcomes in a telephone counseling intervention for physical activity and dietary change. Design. Secondary analysis of intervention participants from a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Setting. Primary care practices in a disadvantaged community in Queensland, Australia. Subjects. Adult patients with type 2 diabetes or hypertension. Intervention. Patients (n = 228) received telephone counseling over a 12-month period. The initiation phase (1–4 months) consisted of up to 10 weekly or fortnightly calls; the maintenance-enhancement phase (5–12 months) consisted of up to eight monthly calls. Measures. Intervention dose was defined as the number of calls completed in total and during each phase and was categorized into tertiles. Diet and physical activity were measured using validated self-report instruments. Analysis. Multivariate analyses of call completion and change in health behaviors. Results. Those completing a high number of calls were more likely to be female, white, older than 60 years, retired, and earning less than an average weekly Australian wage. Relative to low call completion, high completion during the maintenance-enhancement phase was associated with significantly greater (least squares mean [SE]) behavioral improvement for the following: total fat intake as percentage of calories (–3.58% [.74%]), saturated fat intake (–2.51% [.51%]), fiber intake (4.23 [1.20] g), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (187.82 [44.78] minutes). Conclusion. Interventions of longer duration may be required to influence complex behaviors such as physical activity and fat and fiber intake. (Am J Health Promot 2011;25[4]:257–263.)
Automatic construction of an action video shot database using web videos

There are a huge number of videos with text tags on the Web nowadays. In this paper, we propose a method of automatically extracting from Web videos video shots corresponding to specific actions with just only providing action keywords such as “walking” and “eating”. The proposed method consists of three steps: (1) tag-based video selection, (2) segmenting videos into shots and extracting features from the shots, and (3) visual-feature-based video shot selection with tag-based scores taken into account. Firstly, we gather video IDs and tag lists for 1000 Web videos corresponding to given keywords via Web API, and we calculate tag relevance scores for each video using a tag-co-occurrence dictionary which is constructed in advance. Secondly, we fetch the top 200 videos from the Web in the descending order of the tag relevance scores, and segment each downloaded video into several shots. From each shot we extract spatio-temporal features, global motion features and appearance features, and convert them into the bag-of-features representation. Finally, we apply the VisualRank method to select the video shots which describe the actions corresponding to the given keywords best after calculating a similarity matrix between video shots. In the experiments, we achieved the 49.5% precision at 100 shots over six kinds of human actions by just providing keywords without any supervision. In addition, we made large-scale experiments on 100 kinds of action keywords.
Giant mature teratoma in the mediastinum presenting with rapid growth

Teratomas are primary germ-cell tumours in the mediastinum. Although they are generally slow-growing and asymptomatic, rapid growth causing life-threatening complications can occur. Sebaceous secretion, insulin production, chorionic gonadotropin secretion and pancreatic enzyme secretion are the presumptive causes of tumour progression. Only few cases of rapidly growing teratomas have been reported previously. Here, we present a case of a giant mature teratoma in the mediastinum that presented with rapid growth and compare the characteristics of this case with those of previous cases.
Market power and efficiency in a computational electricity market with discriminatory double-auction pricing

This study reports experimental market power and efficiency outcomes for a computational wholesale electricity market operating in the short run under systematically varied concentration and capacity conditions. The pricing of electricity is determined by means of a clearinghouse double auction with discriminatory midpoint pricing. Buyers and sellers use a modified Roth-Erev individual reinforcement learning algorithm (1995) to determine their price and quantity offers in each auction round. It is shown that high market efficiency is generally attained and that market microstructure is strongly predictive for the relative market power of buyers and sellers, independently of the values set for the reinforcement learning parameters. Results are briefly compared against results from an earlier study in which buyers and sellers instead engage in social mimicry learning via genetic algorithms.
Study and Refactoring of Android Asynchronous Programming

To avoid unresponsiveness, a core part of mobile development is asynchronous programming. Android provides several async constructs that developers can use. However, developers can still use the inappropriate async constructs, which result in memory leaks, lost results, and wasted energy. Fortunately, refactoring tools can eliminate these problems by transforming async code to use the appropriate constructs. In this paper we conducted a formative study on a corpus of 611 widely-used Android apps to map the asynchronous landscape of Android apps, understand how developers retrofit asynchrony, and learn about barriers encountered by developers. Based on this study, we designed, implemented, and evaluated ASYNCDROID, a refactoring tool which enables Android developers to transform existing improperly-used async constructs into correct constructs. Our empirical evaluation shows that ASYNCDROID is applicable, accurate, and saves developers effort. We submitted 45 refactoring patches, and developers consider that the refactorings are useful.
Predicting Quality of Life Based on Humor Style

Humor is a multifaceted construct commonly used in daily life. For centuries philosophers, healers, and religious figures have extolled humor as the " best medicine " for both the body and the mind. Recent research has shown humor can be adaptive or maladaptive (i.e., contribute to or subtract from well-being; Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003). Empirical evidence supporting these claims for humor and physical health has been inconsistent; however, new evidence suggests there may indeed be a connection (Martin, 2001; Martin et al., 2003). At the same time, previous research has consistently supported the notion that using humor is related to psychological health. Findings such as these have implications beyond one's physical and mental health; these findings also have implications on one's quality of life. Much like the notion of humor, quality of life is a difficult concept to define succinctly. Quality of life contains several domains including physical health, mental health, social status, and environmental elements (Skevington, Lotfy, & O'Connell, 2004). Previous research has suggested a link between humor and quality of life. Adaptive humor is positively correlated with indicators of psychological health, e.g. self-and quality of life directly so the primary purpose of this study was to explore how well humor styles predict quality of life. To explore this predictive relationship, students from an introductory psychology class at a mid-size university were recruited to participate in this study. It was hypothesized that the adaptive humor styles would positively predict quality of life while the maladaptive humor styles would negatively predict quality of life. Stepwise regression models found partial support for the hypotheses. Implications and future directions are discussed.
A data mining approach to dinoflagellate clustering according to sterol composition: correlations with evolutionary history

This study examined the sterol compositions of 102 dinoflagellates using clustering and cluster validation techniques, as a means of determining the relatedness of the organisms. In addition, dinoflagellate sterol-based relationships were compared statistically to 18S rDNA-based phylogenetic relationships using the Mantel test. Our results indicated that the examined dinoflagellates formed six clusters based on sterol composition and that several, but not all, dinoflagellate genera, which formed discrete clusters in the 18S rDNA-based phylogeny, shared similar sterol compositions. This and other correspondences suggest that the sterol compositions of dinoflagellates are explained, to a certain extent, by the evolutionary history of this lineage.
Confidence Regions for Infinite-Dimensional Statistical Parameters

I declare that this essay is work done as part of the Part III Examination. I have read and understood the Statement on Plagiarism for Part III and Graduate Courses issued by the Faculty of Mathematics, and have abided by it. This essay is the result of my own work, and except where explicitly stated otherwise, only includes material undertaken since the publication of the list of essay titles, and includes nothing which was performed in collaboration. No part of this essay has been submitted, or is concurrently being submitted, for any degree, diploma or similar qualification at any university or similar institution.
Plants, fractals, and formal languages

Although fractal models of natural phenomena have received much attention recently, there are other models of complex natural objects which have been around longer in Computer Imagery but are not widely known. These are procedural models of plants and trees. An interesting class of these models is presented here which handles plant growth, sports an efficient data representation, and has a high “database amplification” factor. It is based on an extension of the well-known formal languages of symbol strings to the lesser-known formal languages of labeled graphs. It is so tempting to describe these plant models as “fractal” that the similarities of this class of models with fractal models are explored in an attempt at rapprochement. The models are not fractal so the common parts of fractal theory and plant theory are abstracted to form a class of objects, the graftals. This class may prove to be of great interest to the future of Computer Imagery. Determinism is shown to provide adequate complexity, whereas randomness is only convenient and often inefficient. Finally, a nonfractal, nongraftal family of trees by Bill Reeves is introduced to emphasize some of the paper's nongrammatical themes.
Inverse Box-Counting Method and Application: A Fractal-Based Procedure To Reclaim a Michigan Surface Mine

Planners and designers are interested in replicating biospheric landscape patterns to reclaim surface mines to match existing natural landscape patterns. One approach that shows promise is the use of fractal geometry to generate biospheric landscape patterns. While the measurement of the actual fractal dimension of a landscape can be difficult, a box-counting method was developed at AgroCampus Ouest, Angers, France which approximates the spatial patterns of biospheric landscapes. Essentially the procedure entails covering a natural object/pattern with a regular grid of size r and then one simply counts the number of grid boxes, N(r), that contain some part of the object. The boxes are subdivided and the value of r is progressively reduced and N(r) is similarly re-measured until some of the boxes become empty (containing no landscape objects of interest). Then the fractal dimension of the object is approximated to be the log(N(r))/log(1/r). We illustrate this procedure by measuring and replicating a stand of trees in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and applying the method for a planting plan on a surface mine. Our study revealed a fractal number of 1.017 (p<0.01), with a mean of 77.4 trees per 100 m by 100 m stand, and a standard deviation of 34.87 trees per stand.
An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 BC to AD 400

Setting the historical stage the formative eras of classical Mashariki society mapping the mosaics of cultural interaction regional trends and developments East Africa in the later classical age, to A.D. 400 southeastern Africa in the later classical age, to A.D. 400 social and economic transformation in the later classical age, 300 B.C. to A.D. 400. Appendixes: adjunct tables of evidence supplementary tables of evidence.
An anterior–posterior axis within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex separates self and reward

Abstract Although theoretical discourse and experimental studies on the self- and reward-biases have a long tradition, currently we have only a limited understanding of how the biases are represented in the brain and, more importantly, how they relate to each other. We used multi-voxel pattern analysis to test for common representations of self and reward in perceptual matching in healthy human subjects. Voxels across an anterior–posterior axis in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) distinguished (i) self–others and (ii) high–low reward, but cross-generalization between these dimensions decreased from anterior to posterior vmPFC. The vmPFC is characterized by a shift from a common currency for value to independent, distributed representations of self and reward across an anterior–posterior axis. This shift reflected changes in functional connectivity between the posterior part of the vmPFC and the frontal pole when processing self-associated stimuli, and the middle frontal gyrus when processing stimuli associated with high reward. The changes in functional connectivity were correlated with behavioral biases, respectively, to the self and reward. The distinct representations of self and reward in the posterior vmPFC are associated with self- and reward-biases in behavior.
Confabulation : constructing motivated memories

Neurological confabulation is a prototypical form of false remembering and as such, it can provide insight into the nature of human memory. The main aims of the thesis was to empirically investigate the neuropsychological hypothesis that the content of confabulation is motivated. This was addressed by studying the neuropathological and neuropsychological profiles of 13 neurological patients with severe forms of confabulation, and by conducting three original experimental group studies and two single-case studies. Confabulating patients were compared with frontal and amnesic non-confabulating patients, as well as with neurologically healthy controls. Neuropathological findings confirmed previous indications of orbital and medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC) damage or disconnection. Neuropsychological data showed that the presence of amnesia and executive function varied across confabulating patients. The first experimental study revealed that bilateral confabulating patients showed a positive emotional bias in their spontaneous confabulations. The second study, based on a recognition experiment, confirmed the presence of this bias, over and above the deficits of temporality and reality monitoring. The third study was based on an emotional prose recall experiment, in which the self- relevance of the material was manipulated. This revealed that the emotional biases shown by confabulating patients were self-serving, and not explicable by deficits of amnesia or executive dysfunction. These self-serving biases were common to bilateral and unilateral confabulating patients, but their confabulations showed valence differences. Two single-case studies provided further specification to these findings and showed that confabulating patients form confabulations according to the values and goals of their premorbid self-representation. In conclusion, this thesis provided experimental support for the hypothesis that the content of confabulation is motivated. This finding was conceptualised as a disinhibition of emotional memory associations, most likely caused by damage or functional disconnection of the OMPFC from adjacent limbic structures. These conclusions have wider implications about the role of the OMPFC in mediating the relation between emotion and memory.
VisOHC: Designing Visual Analytics for Online Health Communities

Through online health communities (OHCs), patients and caregivers exchange their illness experiences and strategies for overcoming the illness, and provide emotional support. To facilitate healthy and lively conversations in these communities, their members should be continuously monitored and nurtured by OHC administrators. The main challenge of OHC administrators' tasks lies in understanding the diverse dimensions of conversation threads that lead to productive discussions in their communities. In this paper, we present a design study in which three domain expert groups participated, an OHC researcher and two OHC administrators of online health communities, which was conducted to find with a visual analytic solution. Through our design study, we characterized the domain goals of OHC administrators and derived tasks to achieve these goals. As a result of this study, we propose a system called VisOHC, which visualizes individual OHC conversation threads as collapsed boxes-a visual metaphor of conversation threads. In addition, we augmented the posters' reply authorship network with marks and/or beams to show conversation dynamics within threads. We also developed unique measures tailored to the characteristics of OHCs, which can be encoded for thread visualizations at the users' requests. Our observation of the two administrators while using VisOHC showed that it supports their tasks and reveals interesting insights into online health communities. Finally, we share our methodological lessons on probing visual designs together with domain experts by allowing them to freely encode measurements into visual variables.
Theoretical and computational bounds for m-cycles of the 3 n + 1-problem

1.1. Generalities. The 3n+1-problem is a well known problem in elementary number theory. Let n be a natural number, and consider the sequence generated by iteration of T (n) = 1 2(3n + 1) if n is odd, T (n) = 1 2n if n is even. Numerical verification indicates that for all natural numbers finally the cycle {1, 2} appears. A proof of this so-called 3n+1-conjecture is lacking so far, in spite of various approaches to the problem. See Lagarias [La] and Wirsching [Wi] for extensive overviews on the 3n+ 1-problem. We call a cycle an m-cycle if the numbers in it appear in m sequences, each consisting of an increasing subsequence of odd numbers, followed by a decreasing subsequence of even numbers. Let such an m-cycle contain in total K odd numbers and L even numbers. The cycle {1, 2} is a 1-cycle, and in 1977 Steiner [St] proved that no other 1-cycles exist. Any m-cycle containing natural numbers greater than 2 is called nontrivial, and in 2004 Simons [Si] proved the nonexistence of nontrivial 2-cycles. In this paper we generalize the approach of Steiner and Simons, and for an arbitrary value of m we derive the following: