Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low temperature and short days together induce thyroid activation and suppression of LH release in Japanese quail.

We have found in Japanese quail that low ambient temperature is required to terminate breeding activity in the presence of short days (Wada et al., 1990, Gen. Comp. Endocrinol. 80, 465-472; Tsuyoshi and Wada, 1992, Gen. Comp. Endocrinol. 85, 424-429). To elucidate the mechanism for photoperiodic and temperature regulation of the release of luteinizing hormone (LH), several serum variables were measured in three groups of mature male birds: (a) birds kept on long days of 16L:8D, 24 hr at 19 degrees as an initial control group (Group IC), (b) birds transferred from long days to short days of 8L:16D, 24 hr at 19 degrees (Group S) for 14 days, and (c) birds transferred to short days of 8L:16D and low temperature cycles of 12 hr, 19 degrees: 12 hr, 9 degrees (Group SL) for 14 days. Testicular mass and plasma concentrations of LH significantly decreased to nonbreeding levels in Group SL, but not in Group S, confirming our previous results. Hematocrit, serum osmolarity, and concentrations of Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, and Cl- ions were not different among the three groups. Serum concentrations of free fatty acids were increased in Group SL, but the increase was not statistically significant. On the other hand, plasma concentrations of thyroid hormones changed significantly; thyroxine (T4), but not triiodothyronine (T3), increased in Group S, and T3, but not T4, increased in Group SL. To follow the changes in plasma levels of LH, T4, and T3 during the treatments, blood samples were collected every other day for 2 weeks from birds in the three groups of mature male birds described above. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Using Weighted Scan Enable Signals to Improve Test Effectiveness of Scan-Based BIST

The conventional test-per-scan built-in self-test (BIST) scheme needs a number of shift cycles followed by one capture cycle. Fault effects received by the scan flip-flops are shifted out while shifting in the next test vector, like scan testing. Unlike deterministic testing, it is unnecessary to apply a complete test vector to the scan chains. A new scan-based BIST scheme is proposed by properly controlling the scan enable signals of the scan chains. Different weighted values are assigned to the scan enable signals of scan flip-flops in separate scan chains. Capture cycles can be inserted at any clock cycle if necessary. A new testability estimation procedure according to the proposed testing scheme is presented. A greedy procedure is proposed to select a weight for each scan chain. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve test effectiveness of scan-based BIST greatly and most circuits can obtain complete fault coverage or very close to complete fault coverage.
Study of the glassy magnetic behaviour and charge-ordering phase transitions in La0.75Ca0.25FeO3−δ perovskite

Abstract In this work, La0.75Ca0. 25FeO3−δ perovskite sample was prepared by the coprecipitation method. The nanoparticle was found to crystallize in the orthorhombic (Pbnm) phase as confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopic (TEM). The oxygen non-stoichiometry (δ) and magnetic states of iron ions (three magnetic sextets and non-magnetic doublet) were investigated by Mössbauer spectroscopy at room temperature (RT). The shape of the magnetic hysteresis loop of the sample reveals the existence of a weak ferromagnetism at RT. The magnetization vs. temperature curves, measured in the 9 to 200 K range, showed that the sample exhibits two magnetic-phase transition temperatures at 29 K (Tg) and 120 K (TCO). The magnetization isotherms, M (H), around these magnetic-phase transition temperatures for the sample are analyzed.
Mild renal dysfunction on admission is an important prognostic predictor in patients with infective endocarditis: a retrospective single-center study.

OBJECTIVE Infective endocarditis (IE) continues to be associated with high mortality. The aim of the present study was to identify prognostic predictors for short-term mortality in patients with IE. METHODS We conducted a retrospective study of 119 consecutive patients with IE (mean age 58±17). Prognostic predictors for mortality at the early phase of admission were determined using a multivariate regression analysis, and a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was carried out to evaluate the predictive ability. RESULTS Eleven of 119 patients died during hospital admission. In this non-survivor group, the clinical parameters at the time of admission, including serum creatinine (Cr), the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), the red blood cell count, the white blood cell count, the serum CRP level and heart rate, differed significantly from those observed in the survivors (all; p<0.05). According to a logistic regression analysis, an increase in log-serum Cr per one standard deviation (odds ratio=2.18, 95%CI=1.08-4.41) and a decrease in log-eGFR per one standard deviation (odds ratio=0.51, 95%CI=0.26-0.98) were significantly associated with in-hospital death. The area under the ROC curve for serum Cr to predict the outcome was 0.80, the sensitivity was 64% and the specificity was 85% at a cut-off value of 1.16 mg/dL. For eGFR, the area under the ROC curve was 0.77, the sensitivity was 64% and the specificity was 86% at a cut-off value of 47.5 mL/min./1.73 m(2). CONCLUSION Mild renal dysfunction at the time of admission is an important predictor of early phase mortality in patients with IE.
Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load

OBJECTIVE Nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS), such as sucralose, have been reported to have metabolic effects in animal models. However, the relevance of these findings to human subjects is not clear. We evaluated the acute effects of sucralose ingestion on the metabolic response to an oral glucose load in obese subjects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Seventeen obese subjects (BMI 42.3 ± 1.6 kg/m2) who did not use NNS and were insulin sensitive (based on a homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance score ≤2.6) underwent a 5-h modified oral glucose tolerance test on two separate occasions preceded by consuming either sucralose (experimental condition) or water (control condition) 10 min before the glucose load in a randomized crossover design. Indices of β-cell function, insulin sensitivity (SI), and insulin clearance rates were estimated by using minimal models of glucose, insulin, and C-peptide kinetics. RESULTS Compared with the control condition, sucralose ingestion caused 1) a greater incremental increase in peak plasma glucose concentrations (4.2 ± 0.2 vs. 4.8 ± 0.3 mmol/L; P = 0.03), 2) a 20 ± 8% greater incremental increase in insulin area under the curve (AUC) (P < 0.03), 3) a 22 ± 7% greater peak insulin secretion rate (P < 0.02), 4) a 7 ± 4% decrease in insulin clearance (P = 0.04), and 5) a 23 ± 20% decrease in SI (P = 0.01). There were no significant differences between conditions in active glucagon-like peptide 1, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, glucagon incremental AUC, or indices of the sensitivity of the β-cell response to glucose. CONCLUSIONS These data demonstrate that sucralose affects the glycemic and insulin responses to an oral glucose load in obese people who do not normally consume NNS.
Algorithm and Architecture Design of Perception Engine for Video Coding Applications

In image and video coding field, an effective compression algorithm should remove not only the spatial, temporal, and statistical redundancy but also the perceptual redundancy information from the pictures. Many perceptual models are presented in the literature to cooperate with video coding system to obtain significant bit rate reduction without perceptual distortion. One of the critical issues for those perceptual models is their high computational complexity to apply to real-time applications. To alleviate this problem, this paper aims at hardware architecture design of perception engine for video coding applications. The adopted perceptual models include the structural similarity model, visual attention models, and just-noticeable-distortion model, and contrast sensitivity function. Moreover, those models are further developed and modified to be suitable for hardware implementation. Macroblock-based processing with data reuse scheme is used to save the system bandwidth. The architecture of parallel processing for each visual model with sharing the on-chip memory and buffers is developed to reduce the chip area. Subjective experiment results show that the adopted model achieves about 7%-41% bit-rate saving in the QP range of 24-36 without visual quality degradation. For the hardware implementation of the perception engine, the chip is taped out using 0.18 m technology. The chip size is about 3.3 3.3 mm , and the power consumption is 83.9 mW. The processing capability is HDTV720p.
International Physical Activity Questionnaire: Validity against fitness.

PURPOSE This study was conducted to criterion-validate the short format of International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) against health-related fitness. METHODS Participants included 951 men, aged 21-43 yr. VO2max by ergometer was used to measure cardiorespiratory fitness. Muscular fitness tests included the number of sit-ups, push-ups, and squats performed during 60 s. Physical activity was assessed from IPAQ by categories for health (health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA)) and by calculating total and vigorous MET-hours per week. The participants were classified in five groups of almost equal size by the IPAQ outcomes. Moreover, the frequency of vigorous activity was assessed by one precoded question (single-item question on leisure-time vigorous physical activity (SIVAQ)). RESULTS The mean fitness improved from the first through the fourth IPAQ group. VO2max in the most active IPAQ group, however, was lower than in the fourth group (P < 0.05), both with HEPA categories and vigorous METs as the outcome. In contrast, the weekly frequency of vigorous physical activity showed a positive association with fitness through all six categories. The 65 sedentary (according to SIVAQ) and unfit individuals who belonged to the highest 20% (by IPAQ total METs) were older (30.6 +/- 5.1 vs 28.9 +/- 3.8, P = 0.02), more obese (waist 93 +/- 12 vs 89 +/- 10 cm), more often current smokers (59.4 vs 42.0%; P = 0.03), and less educated (<12 yr of education 70.8 vs 52.0%; P = 0.02), compared with the others in the highest IPAQ group. CONCLUSIONS Almost 10% of young men had poor fitness and apparently low physical activity, but they reported very high physical activity by IPAQ. An evident need therefore exists to develop IPAQ further to solve the apparent overreporting by a considerable proportion of sedentary individuals.
Practical Synthesis of α‐Amyrin, β‐Amyrin, and Lupeol: The Potential Natural Inhibitors of Human Oxidosqualene Cyclase

A practical synthesis of α‐amyrin (1), β‐amyrin (2), and lupeol (3) was accomplished in total yields of 32, 42, and 40% starting from easily available ursolic acid (4), oleanolic acid (5), and betulin (6), respectively. Remarkably, these three natural pentacyclic triterpenes exhibited potential inhibitory activity against human oxidosqualene cyclase.
Distributed optimization with arbitrary local solvers

With the growth of data and necessity for distributed optimization methods, solvers that work well on a single machine must be re-designed to leverage distributed computation. Recent work in this area has been limited by focusing heavily on developing highly specific methods for the distributed environment. These special-purpose methods are often unable to fully leverage the competitive performance of their well-tuned and customized single machine counterparts. Further, they are unable to easily integrate improvements that continue to be made to single machine methods. To this end, we present a framework for distributed optimization that both allows the flexibility of arbitrary solvers to be used on each (single) machine locally and yet maintains competitive performance against other state-of-the-art special-purpose distributed methods. We give strong primal–dual convergence rate guarantees for our framework that hold for arbitrary local solvers. We demonstrate the impact of local solver selection both theoretically and in an extensive experimental comparison. Finally, we provide thorough implementation details for our framework, highlighting areas for practical performance gains.
KLE at TREC 2008 Blog Track: Blog Post and Feed Retrieval

This paper describes our participation in the TREC 2008 Blog Track. For the opinion task, we made an opinion retrieval model that consists of preprocessing, topic retrieval, opinion finding, and sentiment classification parts. For topic retrieval, our system is based on the passage-based retrieval model and feedback. For the opinion analysis, we created a pseudo opinionated word (POW), O, which is representative of all opinion words, and expanded the original query with O. For the blog distillation task, we integrated the average score of all posts within a feed, and the average score of the most relevant N post scores. We also examined the pseudorelevance feedback for the distillation task by focusing on various document selection schemes to expand the query terms. The experimental results show a significant improvement over previous results.
Plan bouquets: query processing without selectivity estimation

Selectivity estimates for optimizing OLAP queries often differ significantly from those actually encountered during query execution, leading to poor plan choices and inflated response times. We propose here a conceptually new approach to address this problem, wherein the compile-time estimation process is completely eschewed for error-prone selectivities. Instead, a small "bouquet" of plans is identified from the set of optimal plans in the query's selectivity error space, such that at least one among this subset is near-optimal at each location in the space. Then, at run time, the actual selectivities of the query are incrementally "discovered" through a sequence of partial executions of bouquet plans, eventually identifying the appropriate bouquet plan to execute. The duration and switching of the partial executions is controlled by a graded progression of isocost surfaces projected onto the optimal performance profile. We prove that this construction results in bounded overheads for the selectivity discovery process and consequently, guaranteed worst-case performance. In addition, it provides repeatable execution strategies across different invocations of a query. The plan bouquet approach has been empirically evaluated on both PostgreSQL and a commercial DBMS, over the TPC-H and TPC-DS benchmark environments. Our experimental results indicate that, even with conservative assumptions, it delivers substantial improvements in the worst-case behavior, without impairing the average-case performance, as compared to the native optimizers of these systems. Moreover, the bouquet technique can be largely implemented using existing optimizer infrastructure, making it relatively easy to incorporate in current database engines. Overall, the bouquet approach provides novel guarantees that open up new possibilities for robust query processing.
Distractor Repetitions Retrieve Previous Responses to Targets

Response retrieval theories assume that stimuli and responses become integrated into “event files” (Hommel, 1998) in memory so that a second encounter with a specific stimulus automatically retrieves the response that was previously associated with this stimulus. In this article, we tested a specific prediction of a recent variant of stimulus retrieval theories as introduced by Rothermund, Wentura, and De Houwer (2005): In selection tasks where target stimuli are accompanied by distractors, responses to target stimuli are automatically bound to distractor stimuli as well; repeating the distractor should retrieve the response to the target that formerly accompanied the distractor. In three experiments we confirmed this prediction: Distractor repetition facilitated responding in the probe in the case of response repetition whereas repeating the distractor delayed responding in the case of response change.
Physical Collection Efficiency of Filter Materials for Bacteria and Viruses

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the physical collection efficiency of commercially available filters for collecting airborne bacteria, viruses, and other particles in the 10–900 nm (nanometer) size range. Laboratory experiments with various polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polycarbonate (PC) and gelatin filters in conjunction with Button™ Inhalable samplers and three-piece cassettes were undertaken. Both biological and non-biological test aerosols were used: Bacillus atrophaeus, MS2, polystyrene latex (PSL), and sodium chloride (NaCl). The B.atrophaeus endospores had an aerodynamic diameter of 900 nm, whereas MS2 virion particles ranged from 10 to 80 nm. Monodisperse 350 nm PSL particles were used as this size was believed to have the lowest filtration efficiency. NaCl solution (1% weight by volume) was used to create a polydisperse aerosol in the 10–600 nm range. The physical collection efficiency was determined by measuring particle concentrations size-selectively upstream and downstream of the filters. The PTFE and gelatin filters showed excellent collection efficiency (>93%) for all of the test particles. The PC filters showed lower collection efficiency for small particles especially <100 nm. Among the tested filters, the lowest collection efficiencies, 49 and 22%, were observed for 1 and 3-μm pore size PC filters at the particle sizes of 47 and 63 nm, respectively. The results indicate that the effect of filter material is more significant for the size range of single virions than for bacteria. The effect of filter loading was examined by exposing filters to mixtures of PSL particles, which aimed at mimicking typical indoor dust levels and size distributions. A 4-h loading did not cause significant change in the physical collection efficiency of the tested filters.
Employment Fluctuations with Equilibrium Wage Stickiness

Following a recession, the aggregate labor market is slack-employment remains below normal and recruiting efforts of employers, as measured by help-wanted advertising and vacancies, are low. A model of matching friction explains the qualitative responses of the labor market to adverse shocks, but requires implausibly large shocks to account for the magnitude of observed fluctuations. The incorporation of wage stickiness vastly increases the sensitivity of the model to driving forces. I develop a new model of the way that wage stickiness affects unemployment. The stickiness arises in an economic equilibrium and satisfies the condition that no worker-employer pair has an unexploited opportunity for mutual improvement. Sticky wages neither interfere with the efficient formation of employment matches nor cause inefficient job loss. Thus the model provides an answer to the fundamental criticism previously directed at sticky-wage models of fluctuations.
Storage and regulated secretion of factor VIII in blood outgrowth endothelial cells

In this study, the authors explored the feasibility of blood outgrowth endothelial cells as a cellular FVIII delivery device with particular reference to long-term production levels, intracellular storage in Weibel-Palade bodies and agonist-induced regulated secretion. The findings of this ex vivo study open a new avenue towards gene therapy for hemophilia A. Background Gene therapy provides an attractive alternative for protein replacement therapy in hemophilia A patients. Recent studies have shown the potential benefit of directing factor (F)VIII gene delivery to cells that also express its natural carrier protein von Willebrand factor (VWF). In this study, we explored the feasibility of blood outgrowth endothelial cells as a cellular FVIII delivery device with particular reference to long-term production levels, intracellular storage in Weibel-Palade bodies and agonist-induced regulated secretion. Design and Methods Human blood outgrowth endothelial cells were isolated from peripheral blood collected from healthy donors, transduced at passage 5 using a lentiviral vector encoding human B-domain deleted FVIII-GFP and characterized by flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. Results Blood outgrowth endothelial cells displayed typical endothelial morphology and expressed the endothelial-specific marker VWF. Following transduction with a lentivirus encoding FVIII-GFP, 80% of transduced blood outgrowth endothelial cells expressed FVIII-GFP. Levels of FVIII-GFP positive cells declined slowly upon prolonged culturing. Transduced blood outgrowth endothelial cells expressed 1.6±1.0 pmol/1×106 cells/24h FVIII. Morphological analysis demonstrated that FVIII-GFP was stored in Weibel-Palade bodies together with VWF and P-selectin. FVIII levels were only slightly increased following agonist-induced stimulation, whereas a 6- to 8-fold increase of VWF levels was observed. Subcellular fractionation revealed that 15–22% of FVIII antigen was present within the dense fraction containing Weibel-Palade bodies. Conclusions We conclude that blood outgrowth endothelial cells, by virtue of their ability to store a significant portion of synthesized FVIII-GFP in Weibel-Palade bodies, provide an attractive cellular on-demand delivery device for gene therapy of hemophilia A.
Copied Monolingual Data Improves Low-Resource Neural Machine Translation

We train a neural machine translation (NMT) system to both translate source-language text and copy target-language text, thereby exploiting monolingual corpora in the target language. Speciﬁcally, we create a bitext from the monolingual text in the target language so that each source sentence is identical to the target sentence. This copied data is then mixed with the parallel corpus and the NMT system is trained like normal, with no metadata to distinguish the two input languages. Our proposed method proves to be an effective way of incorporating monolingual data into low-resource NMT. see gains of up to 1.2 BLEU over a strong baseline with back-translation. Further analysis shows that the linguis-tic phenomena behind these gains are different from and largely orthogonal to back-translation, with our copied corpus method improving accuracy on named entities and other words that should remain identical between the source and target languages.