Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connectivity in Random Annulus Graphs and the Geometric Block Model

We provide new connectivity results for {\em vertex-random graphs} or {\em random annulus graphs} which are significant generalizations of random geometric graphs. Random geometric graphs (RGG) are one of the most basic models of random graphs for spatial networks proposed by Gilbert in 1961, shortly after the introduction of the Erdős-R\'{en}yi random graphs. They resemble social networks in many ways (e.g. by spontaneously creating cluster of nodes with high modularity). The connectivity properties of RGG have been studied since its introduction, and analyzing them has been significantly harder than their Erdős-R\'{en}yi counterparts due to correlated edge formation. Our next contribution is in using the connectivity of random annulus graphs to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for efficient recovery of communities for {\em the geometric block model} (GBM). The GBM is a probabilistic model for community detection defined over an RGG in a similar spirit as the popular {\em stochastic block model}, which is defined over an Erdős-R\'{en}yi random graph. The geometric block model inherits the transitivity properties of RGGs and thus models communities better than a stochastic block model. However, analyzing them requires fresh perspectives as all prior tools fail due to correlation in edge formation. We provide a simple and efficient algorithm that can recover communities in GBM exactly with high probability in the regime of connectivity.
Modification of the Leuven integrated friction model structure

This note presents a modification of the integrated friction model structure proposed by Swevers et al. (2000), called the Leuven model. The Leuven model structure allows accurate modeling both in the presliding and the sliding regimes without the use of a switching function. The model incorporates a hysteresis function with nonlocal memory and arbitrary transition curves. This note presents two modifications of the Leuven model. A first modification overcomes a recently detected shortcoming of the original Leuven model: a discontinuity in the friction force which occurs during certain transitions in presliding. A second modification, using the general Maxwell slip model to implement the hysteresis force, eliminates the problem of stack overflow, which can occur with the implementation of the hysteresis force.
Tracking the career development of scientists in low- and middle-income countries trained through TDR’s research capacity strengthening programmes: Learning from monitoring and impact evaluation

The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) co-sponsored by UNICEF, UNDP, World Bank and WHO has been supporting research capacity strengthening in low- and middle-income countries for over 40 years. In order to assess and continuously optimize its capacity strengthening approaches, an evaluation of the influence of TDR training grants on research career development was undertaken. The assessment was part of a larger evaluation conducted by the European Science Foundation. A comprehensive survey questionnaire was developed and sent to a group of 117 trainees supported by TDR who had completed their degree (masters or PhD) between 2000 and 2012; of these, seventy seven (77) responded. Most of the respondents (80%) rated TDR support as a very important factor that influenced their professional career achievements. The “brain drain” phenomenon towards high-income countries was particularly low amongst TDR grantees: the rate of return to their region of origin upon completion of their degree was 96%. A vast majority of respondents are still working in research (89%), with 81% of respondents having participated in multidisciplinary research activities; women engaged in multidisciplinary collaboration to a higher extent than men. However, only a minority of all have engaged in intersectoral collaboration, an aspect that would require further study. The post-degree career choices made by the respondents were strongly influenced by academic considerations. At the time of the survey, 92% of all respondents hold full-time positions, mainly in the public sector. Almost 25% of the respondents reported that they had influenced policy and practice changes. Some of the challenges and opportunities faced by trainees at various stages of their research career have been identified. Modalities to overcome these will require further investigation. The survey evidenced how TDR’s research capacity grant programmes made a difference on researchers’ career development and on south-south collaborations, by strengthening and localizing research capacity in lower income regions, and also showed there is more that needs to be done. The factors involved, challenges and lessons learnt may help donors and policy makers improve their future interventions with regard to designing capacity strengthening programmes and setting funding priorities.
IoT enabled dustbins

Nowadays, waste management is one of the problems on which million of dollars are spent worldwide. the key issue in waste management is waste collection and sorting. Also, one of the issues in the waste management is that the garbage bin at public places gets overflowed in advance before the commencement of the next cleaning process. This, in turn, leads to various hazards such as bad odor & ugliness to that place which may be the root cause for the spread of various diseases. To tackle this problem, we propose the IOT enabled dustbins in this paper. these bins, use RFID tags for tracking of the wastes linked with a web-based online system and according to the weight of waste added, host server calculates the points and updates in the database of virtual wallet. Also, it measures the fullness of the dustbins and updates the status of each dustbin on the municipal server. It notifies them when the dustbin is full and provides the shortest route to empty all the dustbins based on the capacity of the municipal waste loading vehicles. The Capacity of trucks is calculated and updated each time according to the number of dustbins serviced by the trucks, as soon as it completes a route assigned to it. Furthermore, the user is assisted in material waste classification through our application and also the smart bin knows its content and can report back to the rest of the recycling chain about its contents. Our system, target two crucial problems, cost efficiency in waste sorting and waste collection processes.
Ciliary neurotrophic factor in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma and age-related cataract

Purpose To study the ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) concentration in the aqueous humor (AH), lacrimal fluid (LF), and blood serum (BS) in patients with age-related cataract and primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Methods CNTF concentrations were studied in 61 patients with age-related cataract, 55 patients with POAG combined with cataract, and 29 healthy controls (one eye in each person). Preliminary experiments permitted us to extend the minimum quantifiable value of the CNTF Quantikine enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit to 2.5 pg/ml. Results The levels of CNTF in LF and BS did not differ in patients with cataract and controls. The CNTF concentration (pg/ml) in patients with POAG and cataract was lower than in patients with cataract (p<0.001) in AH (39.9±26.2 versus 57.2±25.6) and in LF (25.7±14.9 versus 39.9±18.0). The differences were not statistically significant for the CNTF level in BS (5.45±4.72 versus 5.96±4.92) and the AH/LF ratio (1.69±1.05 versus 1.58±0.70). In the patients with POAG, the AH level of CNTF correlated with the visual field index (Pearson’s correlation coefficient r = 0.35, p = 0.01). A statistically significant decrease in the AH and LF concentrations of CNTF was observed in patients in all stages of POAG compared with the cataract group. This decrease was particularly prominent in patients with severe glaucoma. Compared to patients with combined early and moderate stages of disease patients with advanced glaucoma showed an insignificant reduction in the median CNTF concentration in AH and LF. The serum CNTF concentration did not show any dependence on the glaucoma stage. The CNTF concentration in the AH strongly correlated with the CNTF concentration in the LF (r=0.71, p<0.000). A formula was suggested to calculate the concentration of CNTF in AH based on the CNTF concentration in LF. Conclusions The CNTF concentration is reduced in the AH and LF of patients with POAG, especially in those with severe visual field loss. The CNTF concentration in AH and LF showed a strong correlation, and this phenomenon opens up new options for a noninvasive estimation of the CNTF concentration in AH. The CNTF concentration established in the AH, LF, and BS of patients with age-related cataract can serve as normative data for persons older than 50 years old.
Forced Convective Air-Cooling Effect on Electronic Components of Different Geometries and Orientations at Flow Shedding Region

The recent technological developments in electronics and product miniaturization demand high-performance thermal management to secure the reliability and the operating characteristics of the components. The present 2-D numerical study investigates heat transfer characteristics of different geometries of electronic components such as capacitors, resistors, condensers, and pin fin heat sinks and the additional effect of their optimized orientation in the confined forced convective air-cooling arrangement. The flow confinement effect is induced by preferring the blockage ratio (channel height/characteristic length of various geometries) to be 4. A finite volume-based flow solver is used to solve flow and energy equations. The resulting flow and heat transfer characteristics of various geometries studied from pressure contour, temperature contour, total drag coefficient, total pressure drop, Strouhal number, and volume goodness factor, and local and average Nusselt numbers for various Reynolds numbers such as 200, 400, 600, and 800. The average forced convection heat transfer enhancement depends on profoundly attached flow velocity, not on flow shedding. As per the thermal hydraulic performance, 45° tilted square front cum segment is the best among geometries considered for the analysis at this confinement.
Rational modification of Corynebacterium glutamicum dihydrodipicolinate reductase to switch the nucleotide‐cofactor specificity for increasing l‐lysine production

l‐lysine is an important amino acid in animals and humans and NADPH is a vital cofactor for maximizing the efficiency of l‐lysine fermentation. Dihydrodipicolinate reductase (DHDPR), an NAD(P)H‐dependent enzyme, shows a variance in nucleotide‐cofactor affinity in bacteria. In this study, we rationally engineered Corynebacterium glutamicum DHDPR (CgDHDPR) to switch its nucleotide‐cofactor specificity resulting in an increase in final titer (from 82.6 to 117.3 g L−1), carbon yield (from 0.35 to 0.44 g [g glucose]−1) and productivity (from 2.07 to 2.93 g L−1 hr−1) of l‐lysine in JL‐6 ΔdapB::Ec‐dapBC115G,G116C in fed‐batch fermentation. To do this, we comparatively analyzed the characteristics of CgDHDPR and Escherichia coli DHDPR (EcDHDPR), indicating that hetero‐expression of NADH‐dependent EcDHDPR increased l‐lysine production. Subsequently, we rationally modified the conserved structure of cofactor‐binding motif, and results indicated that introducing the mutation K11A or R13A in CgDHDPR and introducing the mutation R16A or R39A in EcDHDPR modifies the nucleotide‐cofactor affinity of DHDPR. Lastly, the effects of these mutated DHDPRs on l‐lysine production were investigated. The highest increase (26.2%) in l‐lysine production was observed for JL‐6 ΔdapB::Ec‐dapBC115G,G116C, followed by JL‐6 Cg‐dapBC37G,G38C (21.4%) and JL‐6 ΔdapB::Ec‐dapBC46G,G47C (15.2%). This is the first report of a rational modification of DHDPR that enhances the l‐lysine production and yield through the modulation of nucleotide‐cofactor specificity.
Suboptimal Viral Suppression Rates Among HIV-Infected Children in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND The 90-90-90 goal to achieve viral suppression in 90% of all human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected people on antiretroviral treatment (ART) is especially challenging in children. Global estimates of viral suppression among children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are lacking. METHODS We searched for randomized controlled trials and observational studies and analyzed viral suppression rates among children started on ART during 3 time periods: early (2000-2005), intermediate (2006-2009), and current (2010 and later), using random effects meta-analysis. RESULTS Seventy-two studies, reporting on 51 347 children (aged <18 years), were included. After 12 months on first-line ART, viral suppression was achieved by 64.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 57.5-71.8) in the early, 74.2% (95% CI, 70.2-78.2) in the intermediate, and 72.7% (95% 62.6-82.8) in the current time period. Rates were similar after 6 and 24 months of ART. Using an intention-to-treat analysis, 42.7% (95% CI, 33.7-51.7) in the early, 45.7% (95% CI, 33.2-58.3) in the intermediate, and 62.5% (95% CI, 53.3-72.6) in the current period were suppressed. Long-term follow-up data were scarce. CONCLUSIONS Viral suppression rates among children on ART in LMICs were low and considerably poorer than those previously found in adults in LMICs and children in high-income countries. Little progress has been made in improving viral suppression rates over the past years. Without increased efforts to improve pediatric HIV treatment, the 90-90-90 goal for children in LMIC will not be reached.
Treatment of a mixed acinar-endocrine carcinoma with uptake on 68Gallium-DOTATOC positron emission tomography-computed tomography: A case report

The case of a 35-year old female patient with a diagnosis of metastatic mixed acinar-endocrine carcinoma (MAEC) is investigated in the present study. The patient was believed to have a well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumor (NET) with a high Ki-67 index and uptake on 68Gallium-DOTATOC positron emission tomography-computed tomography for 9 years, and was treated accordingly. The patient had long lasting disease control by treatment with sunitinib, and a response was observed in numerous lesions with peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT). Following treatment for metastatic disease for >4 years, liver transplantation was performed, as an exception to normal recommendations, at the time of progression of a centrally located liver lesion inducing obstructive jaundice. Following transplantation, the diagnosis of a Grade 3 NET, as defined by the WHO 2010 classification, was challenged and changed to MAEC. MAEC is a rare type of tumor of the pancreas, exhibiting endocrine and acinar differentiation. It is difficult to diagnose, often being misidentified as acinar cell carcinoma or predominantly as neuroendocrine neoplasms. Immunohistochemical labelling provides the only evidence for the dual differentiation of neuroendocrine (synaptophysin and chromogranin) and acinar (lipase, trypsin and chymotrypsin) cell markers. Studies investigating MAECs with a clear histopathological diagnosis are scarce, in addition to evidence of disease behaviour and treatment options. It is generally agreed that surgery is the primary treatment in patients with resectable tumors. The responses to sunitinib and PRRT suggested that treatments considered or developed for NETs may be beneficial in MAEC cases.
MobileNets for flower classification using TensorFlow

Classification of objects into their specific classes is always been significant tasks of machine learning. As the study of flower, categorizing specific class of flower is important subject in the field of Botany but the similarity between the diverse species of flowers, texture and color of flowers, and the dissimilarities amongst the same species of flowers, there still are some challenges in the recognition of flower images. Existing recent Google's inception-v3 model comparatively takes more time and space for classification with high accuracy. In this paper, we have shown experimental performance of MobileNets model on TensorFlow platform to retrain the flower category datasets, which can greatly minimize the time and space for flower classification compromising the accuracy slightly.
Cause-Effect Inference by Comparing Regression Errors

We address the problem of inferring the causal relation between two variables by comparing the least-squares errors of the predictions in both possible causal directions. Under the assumption of an independence between the function relating cause and effect, the conditional noise distribution, and the distribution of the cause, we show that the errors are smaller in causal direction if both variables are equally scaled and the causal relation is close to deterministic. Based on this, we provide an easily applicable method that only requires a regression in both possible causal directions. The performance of this method is compared with different related causal inference methods in various artificial and real-world data sets.
Fenestration of the calyx of held occurs sequentially along the tonotopic axis, is influenced by afferent activity, and facilitates glutamate clearance

The calyx of Held is a type of giant glutamatergic presynaptic terminal in the mammalian auditory brainstem that transmits afferent information from the cochlear nucleus to the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB). It participates in sound localization, a process that requires very high temporal precision. Consistent with its functional role, the calyx shows a number of specializations for temporal fidelity, one of them being the giant terminal itself with its many release sites. During the first 3 weeks of postnatal development, the calyx transforms from a spoon‐shaped, closed morphology to a highly fenestrated open structure. Calyces in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) were labeled via injection of fluorescent tracers and their morphology was reconstructed at various timepoints during early postnatal development. We show that the fenestration process does not occur simultaneously in all calyces. Calyces transmitting high‐frequency sound information fenestrate significantly earlier than those transmitting low‐frequency information, such that a temporary developmental gradient along the tonotopic axis is established around the time of hearing onset. Animals that were deprived of afferent activity before hearing onset, either via cochlear removal or administration of ototoxic drugs, do not show this developmental gradient. Glial processes containing glutamate transporters occupy the newly created windows in the calyx and thus could augment the fast clearance of neurotransmitter. The physiological consequences of this faster clearance include a faster decay time course of synaptic currents as well as a lower amount of residual current accumulating during the processing of repeated activity such as stimulus trains. J. Comp. Neurol. 514:92–106, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparatives, Quantifiers, Proportions: a Multi-Task Model for the Learning of Quantities from Vision

The present work investigates whether different quantification mechanisms (set comparison, vague quantification, and proportional estimation) can be jointly learned from visual scenes by a multi-task computational model. The motivation is that, in humans, these processes underlie the same cognitive, non-symbolic ability, which allows an automatic estimation and comparison of set magnitudes. We show that when information about lower-complexity tasks is available, the higher-level proportional task becomes more accurate than when performed in isolation. Moreover, the multi-task model is able to generalize to unseen combinations of target/non-target objects. Consistently with behavioral evidence showing the interference of absolute number in the proportional task, the multi-task model no longer works when asked to provide the number of target objects in the scene.
The Effect of Topoisomerase I Inhibitors on the Efficacy of T-Cell-Based Cancer Immunotherapy

Abstract Background Immunotherapy has increasingly become a staple in cancer treatment. However, substantial limitations in the durability of response highlight the need for more rational therapeutic combinations. The aim of this study is to investigate how to make tumor cells more sensitive to T-cell-based cancer immunotherapy. Methods Two pairs of melanoma patient-derived tumor cell lines and their autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were utilized in a high-throughput screen of 850 compounds to identify bioactive agents that could be used in combinatorial strategies to improve T-cell-mediated killing of tumor cells. RNAi, overexpression, and gene expression analyses were utilized to identify the mechanism underlying the effect of Topoisomerase I (Top1) inhibitors on T-cell-mediated killing. Using a syngeneic mouse model (n = 5 per group), the antitumor efficacy of the combination of a clinically relevant Top1 inhibitor, liposomal irinotecan (MM-398), with immune checkpoint inhibitors was also assessed. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results We found that Top1 inhibitors increased the sensitivity of patient-derived melanoma cell lines (n = 7) to T-cell-mediated cytotoxicity (P < .001, Dunnett’s test). This enhancement is mediated by TP53INP1, whose overexpression increased the susceptibility of melanoma cell lines to T-cell cytotoxicity (2549 cell line: P = .009, unpaired t test), whereas its knockdown impeded T-cell killing of Top1 inhibitor–treated melanoma cells (2549 cell line: P < .001, unpaired t test). In vivo, greater tumor control was achieved with MM-398 in combination with α-PD-L1 or α-PD1 (P < .001, Tukey’s test). Prolonged survival was also observed in tumor-bearing mice treated with MM-398 in combination with α-PD-L1 (P = .002, log-rank test) or α-PD1 (P = .008, log-rank test). Conclusions We demonstrated that Top1 inhibitors can improve the antitumor efficacy of cancer immunotherapy, thus providing the basis for developing novel strategies using Top1 inhibitors to augment the efficacy of immunotherapy.
Building a new research framework for social evolution: intralocus caste antagonism

The breeding and non‐breeding ‘castes’ of eusocial insects provide a striking example of role‐specific selection, where each caste maximises fitness through different morphological, behavioural and physiological trait values. Typically, queens are long‐lived egg‐layers, while workers are short‐lived, largely sterile foragers. Remarkably, the two castes are nevertheless produced by the same genome. The existence of inter‐caste genetic correlations is a neglected consequence of this shared genome, potentially hindering the evolution of caste dimorphism: alleles that increase the productivity of queens may decrease the productivity of workers and vice versa, such that each caste is prevented from reaching optimal trait values. A likely consequence of this ‘intralocus caste antagonism’ should be the maintenance of genetic variation for fitness and maladaptation within castes (termed ‘caste load’), analogous to the result of intralocus sexual antagonism. The aim of this review is to create a research framework for understanding caste antagonism, drawing in part upon conceptual similarities with sexual antagonism. By reviewing both the social insect and sexual antagonism literature, we highlight the current empirical evidence for caste antagonism, discuss social systems of interest, how antagonism might be resolved, and challenges for future research. We also introduce the idea that sexual and caste antagonism could interact, creating a three‐way antagonism over gene expression. This includes unpacking the implications of haplodiploidy for the outcome of this complex interaction.