Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved Quantum Algorithm for Triangle Finding via Combinatorial Arguments

In this paper we present a quantum algorithm solving the triangle finding problem in unweighted graphs with query complexity Õ(n5/4), where n denotes the number of vertices in the graph. This improves the previous upper bound O(n9/7) = O(n1.285) recently obtained by Lee, Magniez and Santha. Our result shows, for the first time, that in the quantum query complexity setting unweighted triangle finding is easier than its edge-weighted version, since for finding an edge-weighted triangle Belovs and Rosmanis proved that any quantum algorithm requires O(n9/7/ √log n) queries. Our result also illustrates some limitations of the non-adaptive learning graph approach used to obtain the previous O(n9/7) upper bound since, even over unweighted graphs, any quantum algorithm for triangle finding obtained using this approach requires v(n9/7/ √log n) queries as well. To bypass the obstacles characterized by these lower bounds, our quantum algorithm uses combinatorial ideas exploiting the graph-theoretic properties of triangle finding, which cannot be used when considering edge-weighted graphs or the non-adaptive learning graph approach.
Which Surgery in Geriatric Breast Cancer

Introduction: The improved living and environmental conditions have resulted in an increase in life expectancy with greater observation of breast cancer in elderly. The present study, through a retrospective analysis of our series, compares the results of treatment in two similar groups of patients under 75 (65-75) and over 75 (76-85) years of age, evaluating the efficacy and complications of loco-regional and general therapy in relationship to biological age, associated diseases, and also the influence on the results of the cultural level and lifestyle.
Fork Head Box Class O1 (FOXO1) Activates Bim Expression to Mediate Cardiac Apoptosis in Chronic Intermittent Hypoxia-Induced Cardiac Hypertrophy

Background Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is characterized by chronic intermittent episodes of upper-airway obstruction with hypoxia and is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, including myocardial hypertrophy. Chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) has been shown to induce apoptosis in cardiomyocytes. However, the mechanisms of cardiomyocytes apoptosis under CIH largely remain unclear. Material/Methods We used male Sprague-Dawley rats and human cardiomyocyte cell line H9C2, and Annexin V/PI, Western blot analysis, co-immunoprecipitation, RT-PCR, immunohistochemistry, and TUNEL assay were carried out. Results We show that Bim was significantly up-regulated by CIH in cardiomyocytes, and the function of Bim in CIH-induced apoptosis was supported by the genetic suppression of Bim with si-RNA. We also observed that CIH-motivated expression of Bim was directly related to fork head box class O1 (FOXO1), which is increased in CIH. Genetic ablation and pharmacological inhibition of FOXO1 in cardiomyocytes attenuated CIH-induced apoptosis, hypertrophy, and features of perivascular fibrosis in cardiomyocytes in vitro and in vivo. Conclusions FOXO1 is a key integrator of the apoptosis signal transduction pathway, driving chronic intermittent hypoxia-induced cardiac hypertrophy, and inhibition of FOXO1 provides a potential target for the treatment of OSAS with cardiac hypertrophy.
Glucagon testing in adult growth hormone deficiency-current status and future perspectives

Growth hormone deficiency (GHD) in adults is a recognized clinical syndrome and its diagnosis is established through GH stimulation testing. The decision to perform GH stimulation testing should be based on clinical findings, medical history and using the appropriate GH stimulation test to obtain biochemical evidence. The insulin tolerance test (ITT) remains the diagnostic test of choice, but this test is labor intensive, contraindicated in the elderly and in adults with seizure disorders and ischemic heart disease, can be unpleasant for the patient, and is potentially hazardous. The glucagon stimulation test (GST) in recent years has been increasingly used as the alternative test to the ITT in the US and Europe because of its availability, reproducibility, safety, lack of influence by gender and hypothalamic cause of GHD, and relatively few contraindications. In the article, we discuss our recommendations in performing this test, the potential drawbacks in conducting and caveats in interpreting this test, and its future perspectives.
Cassava starch-based films plasticized with sucrose and inverted sugar and reinforced with cellulose nanocrystals.

UNLABELLED Bionanocomposites films of cassava starch plasticized with sucrose and inverted sugar and reinforced by cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) were prepared by solution casting method incorporating 0.1 to 5 wt% of eucalyptus CNCs. The nanocrystals were characterized using transmission electron microscopy, whereas the bionanocomposites properties were studied using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, tensile measurements, water solubility, swelling behavior, and water activity (a(w)). The water resistance properties (solubility and swelling behavior) of the nanocomposites were enhanced with the addition of cellulose nanofillers. These results were explained in terms of the high crystallinity of the nanocrystals and the formation of a rigid network with the nanofillers, which provide physical barriers to the permeation of water within the hydrophilic cassava matrix. The addition of CNCs in the bionanocomposites decreases a(w) linearly, reaching values below 0.5 (for CNCs concentration higher than 4 wt%), a reference value for no microbial proliferation for food product design. The presence of small concentrations of CNCs (0.1-0.3 wt%) also effectively increased the maximum tensile strength (more than 90%) and elastic modulus (more than 400%), indicating the formation of a suitable percolation network in this concentration range. Because the cellulose nanofillers enhanced the mechanical and water stability properties of the nanocomposites, the obtained results in this work may be applied to the development of biodegradable packaging or coatings to enhance shelf life of food products. PRACTICAL APPLICATION The main drawbacks of using starch-based polymers as packaging or coating in the food industry are their low mechanical properties and inherent water sensitivity. This study demonstrates that cellulose nanocrystals can be used to: (i) obtain better mechanical properties (increasing the tensile strength and modulus more than 90% and 400%, respectively; (ii) enhance the water stability and (iii) water activity of starch-based films. These results indicate that the obtained environmentally friendly nanocomposites in this work can be used to the development of films or coatings to enhance the shelf life of food products.
Effects of an aqueous extract of Eucommia on articular cartilage in a rat model of osteoarthritis of the knee

Osteoarthritis is a common chronic and progressively degenerative joint condition. The stem bark of Eucommia ulmoides Oliver (a member of the Eucommiaceae family), which is also known as Du-Zhong, is a traditional Chinese medicine commonly used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. However, the mechanisms underlying the effects of Eucommia in the treatment of arthritis of the knee require further study. The present study investigated the effects of an aqueous extract of Eucommia on the articular cartilage (by Mankin’s grade) and the levels of matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1), MMP-3 and MMP-13 in the serum and synovial fluid in a rat model of osteoarthritis. The serum levels of MMP-1, -3 and -13 were measured by double-antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) at weeks 1, 2 and 4. The levels of MMP-1, -3 and 13 were significantly decreased in the rats treated with Eucommia compared with those in the control rats (P<0.05). Histopathological examination results indicated a lower Mankin’s grade in the Eucommia group compared with that of the control rats. Therefore, Eucommia was demonstrated to have a cartilage-protecting effect in rats with osteoarthritis, potentially by improving cartilage metabolism, regulating the degradation of the extracellular matrix of the articular cartilage, and inhibiting apoptosis in chondrocytes, thereby slowing down joint degeneration.
Metallic composite coatings by electroless technique – a critical review

The development of composite/nanocomposite coatings on various surfaces based on electroless process has much interest among researchers due to their enhanced mechanical, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties compared with their metallic or alloy counterparts. These coatings have shown many applications in automotive, aerospace and industrial fields with unique characteristics obtained by the incorporation of secondary particles as reinforcement at micro or nanoscale in the matrix. However, properties of the product depend upon not only the nature of secondary particle used but also the specific characteristics of the metal matrix. This paper critically reviews the recent developments in micro and nanostructured metallic composite coatings formed by electroless coating techniques and retrospect into the various mechanisms of the electroless coating process, its preparation with different metallic systems, properties, and applications in detail.
Architecture of Explanatory Inference in the Human Prefrontal Cortex

Causal reasoning is a ubiquitous feature of human cognition. We continuously seek to understand, at least implicitly and often explicitly, the causal scenarios in which we live, so that we may anticipate what will come next, plan a potential response and envision its outcome, decide among possible courses of action in light of their probable outcomes, make midstream adjustments in our goal-related activities as our situation changes, and so on. A considerable body of research shows that the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is crucial for causal reasoning, but also that there are significant differences in the manner in which ventrolateral PFC, dorsolateral PFC, and anterolateral PFC support causal reasoning. We propose, on the basis of research on the evolution, architecture, and functional organization of the lateral PFC, a general framework for understanding its roles in the many and varied sorts of causal reasoning carried out by human beings. Specifically, the ventrolateral PFC supports the generation of basic causal explanations and inferences; dorsolateral PFC supports the evaluation of these scenarios in light of some given normative standard (e.g., of plausibility or correctness in light of real or imagined causal interventions); and anterolateral PFC supports explanation and inference at an even higher level of complexity, coordinating the processes of generation and evaluation with further cognitive processes, and especially with computations of hedonic value and emotional implications of possible behavioral scenarios – considerations that are often critical both for understanding situations causally and for deciding about our own courses of action.
ACME: Automated Cell Morphology Extractor for Comprehensive Reconstruction of Cell Membranes

The quantification of cell shape, cell migration, and cell rearrangements is important for addressing classical questions in developmental biology such as patterning and tissue morphogenesis. Time-lapse microscopic imaging of transgenic embryos expressing fluorescent reporters is the method of choice for tracking morphogenetic changes and establishing cell lineages and fate maps in vivo. However, the manual steps involved in curating thousands of putative cell segmentations have been a major bottleneck in the application of these technologies especially for cell membranes. Segmentation of cell membranes while more difficult than nuclear segmentation is necessary for quantifying the relations between changes in cell morphology and morphogenesis. We present a novel and fully automated method to first reconstruct membrane signals and then segment out cells from 3D membrane images even in dense tissues. The approach has three stages: 1) detection of local membrane planes, 2) voting to fill structural gaps, and 3) region segmentation. We demonstrate the superior performance of the algorithms quantitatively on time-lapse confocal and two-photon images of zebrafish neuroectoderm and paraxial mesoderm by comparing its results with those derived from human inspection. We also compared with synthetic microscopic images generated by simulating the process of imaging with fluorescent reporters under varying conditions of noise. Both the over-segmentation and under-segmentation percentages of our method are around 5%. The volume overlap of individual cells, compared to expert manual segmentation, is consistently over 84%. By using our software (ACME) to study somite formation, we were able to segment touching cells with high accuracy and reliably quantify changes in morphogenetic parameters such as cell shape and size, and the arrangement of epithelial and mesenchymal cells. Our software has been developed and tested on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms and is available publicly under an open source BSD license (https://github.com/krm15/ACME).
Body temperature and cold sensation during and following exercise under temperate room conditions in cold‐sensitive young trained females

We evaluated cold sensation at rest and in response to exercise‐induced changes in core and skin temperatures in cold‐sensitive exercise trained females. Fifty‐eight trained young females were screened by a questionnaire, selecting cold‐sensitive (Cold‐sensitive, n = 7) and non‐cold‐sensitive (Control, n = 7) individuals. Participants rested in a room at 29.5°C for ~100 min after which ambient temperature was reduced to 23.5°C where they remained resting for 60 min. Participants then performed 30‐min of moderate intensity cycling (50% peak oxygen uptake) followed by a 60‐min recovery. Core and mean skin temperatures and cold sensation over the whole‐body and extremities (fingers and toes) were assessed throughout. Resting core temperature was lower in the Cold‐sensitive relative to Control group (36.4 ± 0.3 vs. 36.7 ± 0.2°C). Core temperature increased to similar levels at end‐exercise (~37.2°C) and gradually returned to near preexercise rest levels at the end of recovery (>36.6°C). Whole‐body cold sensation was greater in the Cold‐sensitive relative to Control group during resting at a room temperature of 23.5°C only without a difference in mean skin temperature between groups. In contrast, cold sensation of the extremities was greater in the Cold‐sensitive group prior to, during and following exercise albeit this was not paralleled by differences in mean extremity skin temperature. We show that young trained females who are sensitive to cold exhibit augmented whole‐body cold sensation during rest under temperate ambient conditions. However, this response is diminished during and following exercise. In contrast, cold sensation of extremities is augmented during resting that persists during and following exercise.
A Novel Flux Focusing Magnetically Geared Machine with Reduced Eddy Current Loss

This paper proposes a novel flux focusing magnetically geared (MG) machine for wind power generation, considering the permanent magnets (PMs) eddy current loss and the balance between the pull-out torque of MG machine and the back-electromotive force (EMF)of the PM brushless machine. The PM eddy current loss in the two rotors of the conventional surface-mounted MG machine is calculated and analyzed by using finite-element method. By adopting serial-spoke structure in the inner rotor, a novel rotor structure for a MG machine is proposed to reduce the PM eddy current loss. Moreover, in order to balance the pull-out torque and the back-EMF, several serial-spoke structures and the main design parameters are investigated. Then, a quantitative comparison between the proposed topology and the conventional surface-mounted MG machine is performed. The analysis results indicate that the PM eddy current loss of the proposed MG machine can be significantly reduced and its pull-out torque and back-EMF can be balanced well.
Is There an Increased Risk of Lung Cancer among the Chinese Silica Cohort? - The Influence of Occupational Confounders

To evaluate a possible influence of confounding in risk estimation for lung cancer in relation to silica dust exposure, we re-analyze a recently published exposure-response relationship using a sub-cohort of Chinese tungsten miners which has no relevant occupational confounders. The cohort of tungsten miners consisted of 19,007 workers in six tungsten mines with a follow-up period from January 1, 1960 to December 31, 2003. Cumulative silica dust exposure was estimated by linking the work history to the job-exposure matrix. The time-dependent Cox proportional hazards model was used for exposure-response analysis. Analysis of the cohort of tungsten miners does not deliver a clear exposure-response relationship between silica dust exposure and lung cancer deaths. The Chinese silica cohort fails as yet to provide clear evidence of a dose-response relationship between silica dust exposure and lung cancer risk in the absence of occupational confounding factors.
CDMA Uplink Power Control as a Noncooperative Game

We present a game-theoretic treatment of distributed power control in CDMA wireless systems. We make use of the conceptual framework of noncooperative game theory to obtain a distributed and market-based control mechanism. Thus, we address not only the power control problem, but also pricing and allocation of a single resource among several users. A cost function is introduced as the difference between the pricing and utility functions, and the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium is established. In addition, two update algorithms, namely, parallel update and random update, are shown to be globally stable under specific conditions. Convergence properties and robustness of each algorithm are also studied through extensive simulations.
Generalized Fano-Type Inequality for Countably Infinite Systems with List-Decoding

This study investigates generalized Fano-type inequalities in the following senses: (i) the alphabet ${\mathcal{X}}$ of a random variable X is countably infinite; (ii) instead of a fixed finite cardinality of ${\mathcal{X}}$, a fixed X-marginal distribution is given; (iii) information measures are generalized from the conditional Shannon entropy H(X | Y to a general type of conditional information measures ${\mathfrak{h}_\phi }\left( {X|Y} \right)$ without explicit form; and (iv) the average probability of error is defined on list-decoding rules. As a result, we give tight upper bounds on such generalized conditional information measures for a fixed X-marginal, a fixed list size, and a fixed tolerated probability of error. Then, we also clarify a sufficient condition, which the Fano-type inequalities are sharp, on the cardinality of the alphabet y of a side information Y. Resulting Fano-type inequalities can apply to not only the conditional Shannon entropy but also the Arimoto’s and Hayashi’s conditional Rényi entropies. All of the proofs in this study can be found in arXiv:1801.02876 [19].
Transcriptional Repressor Gfi1 Integrates Cytokine-Receptor Signals Controlling B-Cell Differentiation

Hematopoietic stem cell differentiation is specified by cytokines and transcription factors, but the mechanisms controlling instructive and permissive signalling networks are poorly understood. We provide evidence that CLP1-dependent IL7-receptor mediated B cell differentiation is critically controlled by the transcriptional repressor Gfi1. Gfi1-deficient progenitor B cells show global defects in IL7Rα-dependent signal cascades. Consequently, IL7-dependent trophic, proliferative and differentiation-inducing responses of progenitor B cells are perturbed. Gfi1 directly regulates expression levels of IL7Rα and indirectly controls STAT5 signalling via expression of SOCS3. Thus, Gfi1 selectively specifies IL7-dependent development of B cells from CLP1 progenitors, providing clues to the transcriptional networks integrating cytokine signals and lymphoid differentiation.
Intraarticular and Systemic Inflammatory Profiles May Identify Patients with Osteoarthritis

Objective. To determine whether cytokine/chemokine profiles from synovial fluid and sera discriminate mild/moderate osteoarthritis (OA) from normal and severe OA cohorts. Methods. Multiplex technology was used to quantify expression levels for 42 cytokines in the synovial fluid of patients diagnosed with severe OA (n = 20) and mild/moderate OA (n = 12), as well as normal controls (n = 34). The same 42 cytokines were examined in serum samples of patients with severe OA (n = 26) and mild/moderate OA (n = 74) and normal individuals (n = 100). Treatment group comparisons followed by principal component analysis (PCA) and K-means clustering of the significantly different cytokines/chemokines revealed groupings of patients by physician diagnosis. Results. Differences in cytokine/chemokine levels were found between control, mild/moderate OA, and severe OA synovial fluid samples, as well as between normal and mild/moderate OA serum samples, and between control and severe OA serum samples. No differences were observed between mild/moderate and severe OA serum samples. Visual groupings based on PCA were validated by K-means analysis, with the best results obtained from the comparison of normal and mild/moderate OA serum samples with 96% of normal and 93% of mild/moderate OA samples accurately identified. Conclusion. Our study suggests that comparing the expression levels of cytokines/chemokines in synovial fluid and/or serum of patients with OA may have promise as a diagnostic platform to identify patients early in their disease course. This high-throughput low-cost assay may be able to provide clinicians with a diagnostic test to complement existing clinical and imaging modalities currently used to diagnose OA.
Helicobacter pylori Serology at Diagnosis and Follow-up of Biopsy-verified Infection in Children

Data on the use of Helicobacter pylori serology in children are limited. We studied the serum antibodies of 105 H. pylori-infected children (median age 9.1 y, range 1.5-17.5 y) using an in-house enzyme immunoassay. At diagnosis of the biopsy-verified infection, IgG antibodies to H. pylori were elevated in 98/105 children (93%) but were at a normal level in 7 children, 5 of whom were < 5 y of age. Serum IgA antibodies to H. pylori were elevated in 40/105 children (38%). The levels of IgG and IgA antibody titers to H. pylori correlated with age ( p < 0.001 and p < 0.02, respectively). IgG titers were reduced by ≥ 50% in 85% (83/98; median follow-up 0.6 y) of children after therapy. In 56 such children eradication was verified by negative histology or urea breath test but 1 such child showed Helicobacters on histologic examination. Of the 15 children whose IgG titers dropped by < 50%, 7 were considered positive and 4 negative on the basis of histology or urea breath test. In 3 children, IgG titers returned to pretreatment levels 1 y after a 50% drop was seen. Serology is 1 alternative for monitoring H. pylori infection in children, although its sensitivity is lower in very young children. The length of follow-up needed after eradication, however, is unclear.