Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unique oligonucleotide primers in PCR for identification of Cryptococcus neoformans

On the basis of a comparison of rRNA sequences coding the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and 5.8S regions of Filobasidiella neoformans, the teleomorph of Cryptococcus neoformans, and members of its most closely related taxa, unique oligonucleotides were designed for the specific amplification of DNA only from C. neoformans. Various combinations of these primers, designated CN4, CN5, and CN6, and the previously described fungal primers ITS1 and ITS2 were tested in PCR for their ability to amplify DNA from 37 strains of C. neoformans and 31 other isolates representing 18 species of yeasts. The combination of primers CN4 and CN5 amplified DNA from both varieties of C. neoformans but from none of the other species tested. Other pairs of primers (namely, CN5-CN6, CN4-ITS1, and CN6-ITS1) amplified DNA only from C. neoformans and from the saprophyte Filobasidiella depauperata, which is the only other member of the genus Filobasidiella. With appropriate controls, these specific oligonucleotides may be used as primers in PCR to identify C. neoformans.
Energetic Limits to Economic Growth

The human population and economy have grown exponentially and now have impacts on climate, ecosystem processes, and biodiversity far exceeding those of any other species. Like all organisms, humans are subject to natural laws and are limited by energy and other resources. In this article, we use a macro ecological approach to integrate perspectives of physics, ecology, and economics with an analysis of extensive global data to show how energy imposes fundamental constraints on economic growth and development. We demonstrate a positive scaling relationship between per capita energy use and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) both across nations and within nations over time. Other indicators of socioeconomic status and ecological impactare correlated with energy use and GDP. We estimate global energy consumption for alternative future scenarios of population growth and standards of living. Large amounts of energy will be required to fuel economic growth, increase standards of living, and lift developing nations out of poverty.
SAT-based ATPG for Path Delay Faults in Sequential Circuits

Due to the development of high speed circuits beyond the 2-GHz mark, the significance of automatic test pattern generation for path delay faults (PDFs) drastically increased in the last years. This paper describes an algorithm for generating robust and non-robust tests for PDFs based on Boolean satisfiability (SAT). A new formulation for the robust path delay fault model as a SAT instance is introduced. Unlike previous SAT-based approaches our approach can cope with latches and is therefore applicable for sequential circuits. The formulation provides the possibility to apply the SAT technique incremental SAT to accelerate the process. Experimental results show the efficiency of the approach.
Testing for co-integration with spot prices of some related agricultural commodities

In this paper the hypothesis is tested whether prices of related agricultural commodities are co-integrated, as a similar behaviour over time of their time series data is of ten observed. Various integration and co-integration tests are briefly surveyed and commented, after which they are applied on the time series of four related agricultural commodities and a worldinflation indicator. This research has also been done because we are interested to compare empirically the bivariate approach of Engle and Granger, and the multivariate tackling of Engle and Yoo, and Johansen. We conclude that co-integration relationships between these prices exist, and that the results obtained by using the methods of Johansen appeared to be the most informative about the existence these relationships. Facultei t der Economische Wetenschappen en Econometrie, Vrije Universiteit, postbus 7161, 1007 MC Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Inference Problems in the Analysis of the Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption and Coronary Heart Disease

Results concerning the dependence of life durations on alcohol use of individuals who die of coronary heart disease are brought into question when no account is taken of the mortality risks associated with other competing diseases. Procedures which restrict the analysis of coronary heart disease to respondents who die of this disease will produce biased estimates of the parameters of interest. Other dimensions of coronary heart disease are neglected by focusing on durations of life and well-constructed sample surveys can provide important new information on how alcohol consumption affects the risks of getting coronary heart disease.
Metabolic responses to prolonged consumption of glucose- and fructose-sweetened beverages are not associated with postprandial or 24-h glucose and insulin excursions 1–3 associated with chronic consumption of sugar-sweetened

Background: Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has been shown to be associated with dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, fatty liver, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. It has been proposed that adverse metabolic effects of chronic consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages are a consequence of increased circulating glucose and insulin excursions, ie, dietary glycemic index (GI). Objective: We determined whether the greater adverse effects of fructose than of glucose consumption were associated with glucose and insulin exposures. Design: The subjects were studied in a metabolic facility and consumed energy-balanced diets containing 55% of energy as complex carbohydrate for 2 wk (GI = 64). The subjects then consumed 25% of energy requirements as fructose- or glucose-sweetened beverages along with their usual ad libitum diets for 8 wk at home and then as part of energy-balanced diets for 2 wk at the metabolic facility (fructose GI = 38, glucose GI = 83). The 24-h glucose and insulin proﬁles and fasting plasma glycated albumin and fructosamine concentrations were measured 0, 2, 8, and 10 wk after beverage consumption. Results: Consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages lowered glucose and insulin postmeal peaks and the 23-h area under the curve compared with the baseline diet and with the consumption of glucose-sweetened beverages (all P , 0.001, effect of sugar). Plasma glycated albumin concentrations were lower 10 wk after fructose than after glucose consumption ( P , 0.01, effect of sugar), whereas fructosamine concentrations did not differ between groups. Conclusion: The results suggest that the speciﬁc effects of fructose, but not of glucose and insulin excursions, contribute to the adverse effects of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages on lipids and insulin sensitivity. This study is registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01165853. Am J Clin Nutr 2011;94:112–9.
An Efficient Global Algorithm for Single-Group Multicast Beamforming

Consider the single-group multicast beamforming problem, where multiple users receive the same data stream simultaneously from a single transmitter. The problem is NP-hard and all existing algorithms for the problem either find suboptimal approximate or local stationary solutions. In this paper, we propose an efficient branch-and-bound algorithm for the problem that is guaranteed to find its global solution. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed algorithm is the first tailored global algorithm for the single-group multicast beamforming problem. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm is computationally efficient (albeit its theoretical worst-case iteration complexity is exponential with respect to the number of receivers) and it significantly outperforms a state-of-the-art general-purpose global optimization solver called Baron. Our proposed algorithm provides an important benchmark for performance evaluation of existing algorithms for the same problem. By using it as the benchmark, we show that two state-of-the-art algorithms, semidefinite relaxation algorithm and successive linear approximation algorithm, work well when the problem dimension (i.e., the number of antennas at the transmitter and the number of receivers) is small but their performance deteriorates quickly as the problem dimension increases.
Effects of supplemental microbial phytase enzyme on performance and phytate phosphorus digestibility of a corn-wheat-soybean meal diet in broiler chicks

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of supplemental phytase in a corn-wheatsoybean meal basal diet on phosphorus (P) digestibility and performance of broiler chicks. 378 one-day old broiler chicks (Ross 308) were allocated to 3×3 factorial arrangements with three levels of phytase enzyme (0, 500 and 1000 FTU/kg) and three levels of non-phytate P (100, 80 and 60% of NRC requirements). Broiler chicks received experimental diets from 7 to 49 days of age. Phytase significantly (P < 0.05) improved body weight gain and feed intake. Tibial ash and P contents increased significantly by phytase supplementation. Ileal P digestibility increased and P excretion reduced by added phytase. The greatest response due to supplemental phytase regarding P digestibility and utilization was obtained at the lowest dietary non-phytate P (NPP) level (60% of NRC requirements). Difference between various levels of added phytase (500 and 1000 FTU/kg) regarding P excretion and utilization was not significant. The interactions between supplemental phytase and dietary NPP for P utilization, tibial ash and P contents were significant (P < 0.05). The results indicate that, supplemental microbial phytase (500 FTU/kg of diet) added to diet containing NPP lower than NRC requirements (60%) can improve growth performance, tibial ash and phytate P utilization in broiler chickens.
Temperature effect on reflected laser probing signal of multiple elementary substructures

Electro-Optical Probing (EOP) has shown its efficiency in the world of failure analysis. The different external physical parameters effects, especially the temperature, on the EOP signals are not well known and not that much described in the literature. In addition to thermoreflectance, the temperature is a parameter that affects directly the free carrier's distribution and carrier mobilities inside the semiconductor. Temperature also modifies the absorption coefficient and not only the refractive index as known in the thermo-reflectance domain. All the physical and environmental parameters contribute to the modulation of the reflected laser probing beam onto structures under test. In this paper we will expose the origins of the reflected laser beam and the impact of the temperature on the EOP signal. For the first time, all the parameters, including temperature, have been taken into account. It opens the door of laser probing techniques improvements in failure analysis of submicron devices.
A Plant-Specific Kinesin Binds to Actin Microfilaments and Interacts with Cortical Microtubules in Cotton Fibers1

A novel kinesin, GhKCH1, has been identified from cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) fibers. GhKCH1 has a centrally located kinesin catalytic core, a signature neck peptide of minus end-directed kinesins, and a unique calponin homology (CH) domain at its N terminus. GhKCH1 and other CH domain-containing kinesins (KCHs) belong to a distinct branch of the minus end-directed kinesin subfamily. To date the KCH kinesins have been found only in higher plants. Because the CH domain is often found in actin-binding proteins, we proposed that GhKCH1 might play a role in mediating dynamic interaction between microtubules and actin microfilaments in cotton fibers. In an in vitro actin-binding assay, GhKCH1's N-terminal region including the CH domain interacted directly with actin microfilaments. In cotton fibers, GhKCH1 decorated cortical microtubules in a punctate manner. Occasionally GhKCH1 was found to be associated with transverse-cortical actin microfilaments, but never with axial actin cables in cotton fibers. Localization of GhKCH1 on cortical microtubules was independent of the integrity of actin microfilaments. Thus, GhKCH1 may play a role in organizing the actin network in coordination with the cortical microtubule array. These data also suggest that flowering plants may employ unique KCHs to coordinate actin microfilaments and microtubules during cell growth.
Transition of Adolescent Political Action Orientations to Voting Behavior in Early Adulthood in View of a Social‐Cognitive Action Theory Model of Personality

The political activity and voting behavior of 136 young German adults in 1994 were predicted by their political action orientations measured 7 years before. Respondents belonging to cohorts born in 1971, 1972, and 1973 were surveyed in 1987, 1988, and 1994. The questionnaires measured variables relevant to the social-cognitive action theory model of personality: self-concept of political competence, beliefs about political locus of control, political knowledge, trust in politics, satisfaction with politics, and political activity in everyday life. The results are interpreted with respect to the correlative and absolute stability versus plasticity of the variables from 1987 to 1994, as well as the predictive value of the action theory personality variables for political activities and for voting behavior measured 7 years later. Longitudinal results indicate a high predictive value of self-concept of political competence and political knowledge for political activity and voting in early adulthood. Because only these two personality variables showed relatively high positional stability coefficients from adolescence to early adulthood, the discussion refers to the necessity of early developmental interventions to prevent extreme types of politically uninterested and passive adults. Therefore, the social-cognitive action theory personality model of political participation is extended to a social-cognitive action theory personality model of political socialization in the life span.
Personalized, interactive tag recommendation for flickr

We study the problem of personalized, interactive tag recommendation for Flickr: While a user enters/selects new tags for a particular picture, the system suggests related tags to her, based on the tags that she or other people have used in the past along with (some of) the tags already entered. The suggested tags are dynamically updated with every additional tag entered/selected. We describe a new algorithm, called Hybrid, which can be applied to this problem, and show that it outperforms previous algorithms. It has only a single tunable parameter, which we found to be very robust. Apart from this new algorithm and its detailed analysis, our main contributions are (i) a clean methodology which leads to conservative performance estimates, (ii) showing how classical classification algorithms can be applied to this problem, (iii) introducing a new cost measure, which captures the effort of the whole tagging process, (iv) clearly identifying, when purely local schemes (using only a user's tagging history) can or cannot be improved by global schemes (using everybody's tagging history).
Minimal model for studying prion‐like folding pathways

The Monte Carlo technique is used to simulate the energy landscape and the folding kinetics of a minimal prion‐like protein model. We show that the competition between hydrogen‐bonding and hydrophobic interactions yields two energetically favored secondary structures, an α‐helix and a β‐hairpin. Folding simulations indicate that the probability of reaching the α‐helix form from a denatured random conformation is much higher than the probability of reaching the β‐sheet form, even though the β‐sheet has a lower energy. The existence of a lower energy β‐sheet state gives the possibility for the normal α‐helix structure to take a structural transformation into the β‐sheet structure under external influences. Proteins 2003;51:283–288. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Wearable Food Intake Monitoring Technologies: A Comprehensive Review

Wearable devices monitoring food intake through passive sensing is slowly emerging to complement self-reporting of users’ caloric intake and eating behaviors. Though the ultimate goal for the passive sensing of eating is to become a reliable gold standard in dietary assessment, it is currently showing promise as a means of validating self-report measures. Continuous food-intake monitoring allows for the validation and refusal of users’ reported data in order to obtain more reliable user information, resulting in more effective health intervention services. Recognizing the importance and strength of wearable sensors in food intake monitoring, there has been a variety of approaches proposed and studied in recent years. While existing technologies show promise, many challenges and opportunities discussed in this survey, still remain. This paper presents a meticulous review of the latest sensing platforms and data analytic approaches to solve the challenges of food-intake monitoring, ranging from ear-based chewing and swallowing detection systems that capture eating gestures to wearable cameras that identify food types and caloric content through image processing techniques. This paper focuses on the comparison of different technologies and approaches that relate to user comfort, body location, and applications for medical research. We identify and summarize the forthcoming opportunities and challenges in wearable food intake monitoring technologies.
Classification of edge‐transitive rose window graphs

Given natural numbers n⩾3 and 1⩽a, r⩽n−1, the rose window graph Rn(a, r) is a quartic graph with vertex set \documentclass{article}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage[mathscr]{euscript}\footskip=0pc\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document}$\{{{x}}_{{i}}|{{i}}\in {\mathbb{Z}}_{{n}}\} \cup \{{{y}}_{{i}}|{{i}}\in{\mathbb{Z}}_{{n}}\}$\end{document} and edge set \documentclass{article}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage[mathscr]{euscript}\footskip=0pc\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document}$\{\{{{x}}_{{i}},{{x}}_{{{i+1}}}\} \mid {{i}}\in {\mathbb{Z}}_n \} \cup \{\{{{y}}_{{{i}}},{{y}}_{{{i+r}}}\}\mid {{i}} \in{\mathbb{Z}}_{{n}}\}\cup \{\{{{x}}_{{{i}}},{{y}}_{{{i}}}\} \mid {{i}}\in {\mathbb{Z}}_{{{n}}}\}\cup \{\{{{x}}_{{{i+a}}},{{y}}_{{{i}}}\} \mid{{i}} \in {\mathbb{Z}}_{{{n}}}\}$\end{document}. In this article a complete classification of edge‐transitive rose window graphs is given, thus solving one of the three open problems about these graphs posed by Steve Wilson in 2001. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 65: 216–231, 2010
Model-Free Episodic Control

State of the art deep reinforcement learning algorithms take many millions of interactions to attain human-level performance. Humans, on the other hand, can very quickly exploit highly rewarding nuances of an environment upon first discovery. In the brain, such rapid learning is thought to depend on the hippocampus and its capacity for episodic memory. Here we investigate whether a simple model of hippocampal episodic control can learn to solve difficult sequential decision-making tasks. We demonstrate that it not only attains a highly rewarding strategy significantly faster than state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning algorithms, but also achieves a higher overall reward on some of the more challenging domains.
Memory-centric accelerator design for Convolutional Neural Networks

In the near future, cameras will be used everywhere as flexible sensors for numerous applications. For mobility and privacy reasons, the required image processing should be local on embedded computer platforms with performance requirements and energy constraints. Dedicated acceleration of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) can achieve these targets with enough flexibility to perform multiple vision tasks. A challenging problem for the design of efficient accelerators is the limited amount of external memory bandwidth. We show that the effects of the memory bottleneck can be reduced by a flexible memory hierarchy that supports the complex data access patterns in CNN workload. The efficiency of the on-chip memories is maximized by our scheduler that uses tiling to optimize for data locality. Our design flow ensures that on-chip memory size is minimized, which reduces area and energy usage. The design flow is evaluated by a High Level Synthesis implementation on a Virtex 6 FPGA board. Compared to accelerators with standard scratchpad memories the FPGA resources can be reduced up to 13× while maintaining the same performance. Alternatively, when the same amount of FPGA resources is used our accelerators are up to 11× faster.
The Second Entropy: A Variational Principle for Time-dependent Systems

Abstract: The fundamental optimization principle for non-equilibrium thermodynamics isgiven. The second entropy is introduced as the quantity that is maximised to determine theoptimum state of a non-equilibrium system. In contrast, the principles of maximum or mini-mum dissipation, which have previously been proposed by Onsager, Prigogine, and others asthe variational principle for such systems, are shown to be incapable of fulﬁlling that role. ˆKeywords: entropy, second law, non-equilibrium1. IntroductionThe second entropy is a a new type of entropy that has been introduced by the author for non-equilibrium systems. The concept has emerged from a theory for non-equilibrium thermodynamicsand statistical mechanics that has been developed over the last few years. For reviews see Refs [1, 2]. Amongst other things, the theory has lead for the ﬁrst time to the generalization of the Boltzmann dis-tribution to non-equilibrium systems, and to the development of a Monte Carlo computer algorithm forsuch time-dependent systems [3]. In this paper the theory is brieﬂy reviewed. New results are pre-sented for the distinction between ‘non-equilibrium’ and ‘not in equilibrium’ systems, (Sec. 2), for thevariational principle for non-equilibrium systems, (Sec. 3), and for the physical interpretation of the ﬂuc-tuation formulation of the second law, (Sec. 4). The discussion in Sec. 3 of several other non-equilibriumvariational principles that have previously been advocated, including the Principles of Minimum and ofMaximum Dissipation, is particularly detailed.
Repeated restraint and isolation stress alters adrenal and lymphocyte functions and some leukocyte differentiation antigens in lambs.

Lambs were used to evaluate the effect of repeated restraint and isolation stress (RIS) on secretion of cortisol, lymphocyte proliferative responses to mitogens, production of interleukin-2, and expression of leukocyte differentiation antigens. Differentiation antigens evaluated included cluster of differentiation antigens 2, 4, and 8 (CD2, CD4, and CD8, respectively); B cells; and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II, DQ, and DR. Lambs were assigned to either control (CON; n = 12) or to RIS treatment (n = 12) then were stanchioned in environmentally controlled rooms at 18 degrees C and constant light for 11 d before jugular vein catheters were inserted on d 0 of the experiment. On d 12, 13, and 14, lambs in the RIS treatment were removed to another location, restrained, and isolated from visual and tactile contact with other lambs for 6 h on each day. Following the 6-h stress treatment, lambs were returned to their home stanchions. The CON lambs remained in their stanchions. Samples of serum were obtained from all lambs, beginning before RIS (0 h) and at . 5-h intervals until the completion of stress (6 h) on d 12 and 14. In addition, samples of whole blood were obtained at 0 and 6 h on d 12, 13, and 14 for evaluation of immune function characteristics. Fitted polynomial curves describing the cortisol response in RIS and CON lambs differed (P less than .005) on both d 12 and 14, reflecting the unmistakable increase in cortisol in response to the stressor. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)