Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Benchmarking DataStax Enterprise/Cassandra with HiBench

This report evaluates the new analytical capabilities of DataStax Enterprise (DSE) [1] through the use of standard Hadoop workloads. In particular, we run experiments with CPU and I/O bound micro-benchmarks as well as OLAP-style analytical query workloads. The performed tests should show that DSE is capable of successfully executing Hadoop applications without the need to adapt them for the underlying Cassandra distributed storage system [2]. Due to the Cassandra File System (CFS) [3], which supports the Hadoop Distributed File System API, Hadoop stack applications should seamlessly run in DSE. The report is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a brief description of the technologies involved in our study. An overview of our used hardware and software components of the experimental environment is given in Section 3. Our benchmark methodology is defined in Section 4. The performed experiments together with the evaluation of the results are presented in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes with lessons learned.
Adaptive iterative multiuser decision feedback detection

Adaptive iterative receivers which combine multiuser decision-feedback detection with maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoding and soft feedback are presented for synchronous coded direct sequence-code-division multiple access. Both successive and parallel demodulation of users are considered. Optimal filters are derived using both minimum mean squared error and least squares (LS) criteria. The latter assumes short (repeated) spreading codes and that the users to be demodulated simultaneously transmit training sequences. The LS criterion does not require prior knowledge or estimates of spreading codes and channels. Simulation results show that the adaptive receiver can perform significantly better than the standard (soft) interference canceller, since the adaptive algorithm attempts to measure and exploit the second-order statistics between the input and output of the MAP decoder. With limited training, successive feedback and decoding performs significantly better than parallel feedback. The effect of code rate on performance is examined, and reduced-rank versions of the adaptive LS algorithms, which can reduce training overhead, are also presented.
Prefrontal Cortex to Accumbens Projections in Sleep Regulation of Reward

Sleep profoundly affects the emotional and motivational state. In humans and animals, loss of sleep often results in enhanced motivation for reward, which has direct implications for health risks as well as potential benefits. Current study aims at understanding the mechanisms underlying sleep deprivation (SDe)-induced enhancement of reward seeking. We found that after acute SDe, mice had an increase in sucrose seeking and consumption but not food intake, suggesting a selective enhancement of motivation for reward. In the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a key brain region regulating emotional and motivational responses, we observed a decrease in the ratio of the overall excitatory over inhibitory synaptic inputs onto NAc principle neurons after SDe. The shift was partly mediated by reduced glutamatergic transmission of presynaptic origin. Further analysis revealed that there was selective reduction of the glutamate release probability at the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-to-NAc synapses, but not those from the hippocampus, thalamus, or the basal lateral amygdala. To reverse this SDe-induced synaptic alteration, we expressed the stabilized step function opsin (SSFO) in the mPFC; optogenetic stimulation of SSFO at mPFC-to-NAc projection terminals persistently enhanced the action potential-dependent glutamate release. Intra-NAc optogenetic stimulation of SSFO selectively at mPFC-to-NAc terminals restored normal sucrose seeking in mice after SDe without affecting food intake. These results highlight the mPFC-to-NAc projection as a key circuit-based target for sleep to regulate reward-motivated behaviors. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Sleep loss, a costly challenge of modern society, has profound physiological and psychological consequences, including altered reward processing of the brain. The current study aims at understanding the mechanisms underlying sleep deprivation-induced enhancement of reward seeking. We identify that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-to-nucleus accumbens (NAc) glutamatergic transmission is selectively weakened following acute sleep deprivation, whose restoration normalizes reward seeking in sleep-deprived mice. These results suggest a possibility of normalizing sleep deprivation-induced abnormal reward seeking by targeting specific neural projections, and they demonstrate the mPFC-to-NAc glutamatergic projection as a key circuit-based target for sleep to regulate reward-motivated behaviors.
Sensitization to disperse dyes in a patch test population over a five-year period.

BACKGROUND In spite of sporadic data pointing at the role of textile dyes as important contact allergens, only few studies have addressed the issue of the frequency of sensitization to textile dyes in populations of consecutive patients. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of sensitization to disperse dyes, to investigate cross reactivity between azo dyes and para-amino compounds, to describe azo-dye-positive patients, and to study the correlation between clinical aspects and sensitization to different disperse dyes. METHODS From January 1996 to December 2000, 6,478 consecutive patients were tested with 7 textile dyes: Disperse Blue 124, Disperse Blue 106, Disperse Red 1, Disperse Yellow 3, Disperse Orange 3 (DO3), para-aminoazobenzene (PAAB), and para-dimethylaminoazobenzene (PDAAB). RESULTS Of the above, 437 patients were allergic. The most common sensitizers were Disperse Blue (DB) dyes and Disperse Orange 3. Both the clinical aspect and the localization of the lesions were unusual in a fair percentage of cases, especially in DB-positive subjects. Involvement of skin folds was observed in 27% of disperse dye-positive patients, mainly comprising DB-sensitive women. Cross-reactivity between azo-dyes and paraphenylenediamine (PPD) was frequent in DO3-, PAAB-, and PDAAB-positive subjects, but not in DB-allergic ones. Moreover, cross reactions between DB106 and DB124 were observed in 59% of DB106- and/or DB124-positive patients. CONCLUSIONS The frequency of disperse dye allergy is higher than generally estimated. Further studies, using routine diagnostic testing with disperse dyes, are needed to investigate whether this increasing trend is present outside of Europe.
An exploration of self-disclosure after traumatic brain injury

Aims: To investigate the motivation for concealment and disclosure of issues related to acquired and traumatic brain injury, and the association of these motivations with a range of possible predictors and outcomes (specifically, self-esteem, social support, social avoidance, loneliness, life satisfaction and community integration). Method: Three studies were carried out. The first (N=18) was a qualitative exploration of the reasons why people with acquired brain injury and their family carers chose to disclose or conceal information about the brain injury. In the second (N=55) two questionnaires were developed from the first study (the Non-Disclosure and Self-Disclosure questionnaires). These focused on the motivations of the person with the brain injury, one addressing motivations to conceal and the other motivations to disclose. Assessments of the reliability and validity of these measures were carried out. The third study (N=65) investigated the relationships between these motivations to conceal/disclose and some possible predictors and outcomes of these motivations. Findings: In the first study, a range of motivations for disclosure (e.g. seeking social support) and for concealment (e.g. avoiding the negative reactions of others) emerged from the data. In the second study, the derived questionnaires showed good internal consistency (the Cronbach’s alpha levels are N-DQ = .92 and S-DQ = .92) and the test-retest reliability (ICC= ranged from .38 to .805). Predicted significant correlations with Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation and N-DQ1 (r=.418, n=55, p=.002) and with the Distress Disclosure Index and S-DQ2 (r=.595, n=54, p=.001) provided evidence of their concurrent validity. In the third study, as hypothesized, higher motivations to conceal (i.e. high N-DQ scores) were significantly correlated with lower self esteem (r = -.357, n = 65, p = .003 with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory); higher social avoidance (r = .345, n = 64, p = .005 with the SAD); and greater loneliness (r = .380, n = 65, p = .002 with the University of California Los Angeles loneliness scale). The results of a mediation analysis were consistent with the hypothesis that higher motivations to conceal had an impact on general life satisfaction (as measured by the LiSat-11) via the mediation of social avoidance (SAD) and loneliness scale (UCLA). However, the hypothesis related to social support was not supported. Conclusions and implications: Many people affected by a brain injury and their families are concerned about the negative and positive impact that disclosure of information about the brain injury may have. Concern about the negative impact may be associated with negative views of the self, and have a range of negative social consequences. However, disclosure in some circumstances does, in reality, have a negative impact. People with an acquired brain injury and their families may need support in learning to conceal and disclose information about their injury in a more effective way.
Bariatric surgery vs. advanced practice medical management in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus: rationale and design of the Surgical Therapy And Medications Potentially Eradicate Diabetes Efficiently trial (STAMPEDE)

Obesity and Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are closely interrelated, and are two of the most common chronic, debilitating diseases worldwide. Surgical approaches to weight loss (bariatric surgery) result in marked improvement of T2DM, however randomized trials directly comparing the efficacy of surgical and medical approaches are lacking. The Surgical Therapy and Medications Potentially Eradicate Diabetes Efficiently (STAMPEDE) trial was designed to evaluate the efficacy of two bariatric surgery procedures involving gastric restriction only (laparascopic sleeve gastrectomy) and gastric bypass (Roux‐en‐Y) to advanced medical therapy in patients with T2DM with modest obesity with BMI of 27–42 kg/m2. This single site, prospective, randomized controlled trial will enroll 150 subjects who will be followed. The primary end point will be the rate of biochemical resolution of T2DM at 1 year as measured by HbA1c < 6%. The safety and adverse event rates will also be compared between the three arms of the study.
Living-Donor Liver Transplantation and Hepatitis C

Hepatitis-C-virus- (HCV-) related end-stage cirrhosis is the primary indication for liver transplantation in many countries. Unfortunately, however, HCV is not eliminated by transplantation and graft reinfection is universal, resulting in fibrosis, cirrhosis, and finally graft decompression. In areas with low deceased-donor organ availability like Japan, living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is similarly indicated for HCV cirrhosis as deceased-donor liver transplantation (DDLT) in Western countries and accepted as an established treatment for HCV-cirrhosis, and the results are equivalent to those of DDLT. To prevent graft failure due to recurrent hepatitis C, antiviral treatment with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin is currently considered the most promising regimen with a sustained viral response rate of around 30% to 35%, although the survival benefit of this regimen remains to be investigated. In contrast to DDLT, many Japanese LDLT centers have reported modified treatment regimens as best efforts to secure first graft, such as aggressive preemptive antiviral treatment, escalation of dosages, and elongation of treatment duration.
Peer Truth Serum: Incentives for Crowdsourcing Measurements and Opinions

Modern decision making tools are based on statistical analysis of abundant data, which is often collected by querying multiple individuals. We consider data collection through crowdsourcing, where independent and self-interested agents, non-experts, report measurements, such as sensor readings, opinions, such as product reviews, or answers to human intelligence tasks. Since the accuracy of information is positively correlated with the effort invested in obtaining it, self-interested agents tend to report low-quality data. Therefore, there is a need for incentives that cover the cost of effort, while discouraging random reports. We propose a novel incentive mechanism called Peer Truth Serum that encourages truthful and accurate reporting, showing that it is the unique mechanism to satisfy a combination of desirable properties.
Targeted therapy and personalized medicine in hepatocellular carcinoma: drug resistance, mechanisms, and treatment strategies

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is characterized by a growing number of new cases diagnosed each year that is nearly equal to the number of deaths from this cancer. In a majority of the cases, HCC is associated with the underlying chronic liver disease, and it is diagnosed in advanced stage of disease when curative treatment options are not applicable. Sorafenib is a treatment of choice for patients with performance status 1 or 2 and/or macrovascular invasion or extrahepatic spread, and regorafenib is the only systemic treatment found to provide survival benefit in HCC patients progressing on sorafenib treatment. Other drugs tested in different trials failed to demonstrate any benefit. Disappointing results of numerous trials testing the efficacy of various drugs indicate that HCC has low sensitivity to chemotherapy that is in great part caused by multidrug resistance. Immunotherapy for HCC is a new challenging treatment option and involves immune checkpoint inhibitors/antibody-based therapy and peptide-based vaccines. Another challenging approach is microRNA-based therapy that involves two strategies. The first aims to inhibit oncogenic miRNAs by using miRNA antagonists and the second strategy is miRNA replacement, which involves the reintroduction of a tumor-suppressor miRNA mimetic to restore a loss of function.
A Case-Control Study of Risk Factors Associated with Scrub Typhus Infection in Beijing, China

To investigate the risk factors of scrub typhus infection in Beijing, China, a case-control study was carried out. Cases (n = 56) were defined as persons who were diagnosed by PCR and serological method within three years. Three neighborhood control subjects were selected by matching for age and occupation. Living at the edge of the village, living in the houses near grassland, vegetable field or ditch, house yard without cement floor, piling weeds in the house or yard, all of these were risk factors for scrub typhus infection. Working in vegetable fields and hilly areas, and harvesting in autumn posed the highest risks, with odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of 3.7 (1.1–11.9), 8.2 (1.4–49.5), and 17.2 (5.1–57.9), respectively. These results would be useful for the establishment of a detail control strategy for scrub typhus infection in Beijing, China.
Incorporating Simplex Method into Guided Complete Search: An Application to the Nurse Rostering Problem

Guided Complete Search (GCS) is a generic framework for combining and coordinating a tree search solver and a secondary solver to yield a complete and efficient CSP solver. The primary solver of GCS is systematic tree search augmented with constraint propagation algorithm, which is used to maintain the completeness of the GCS solver. The secondary solver of GCS can either be a complete or incomplete solver, which mainly produces guidance to the primary solver for solution searching by providing value ordering suggestions. In this paper, we describe our newly defined GCS/Simplex solver, which incorporates Simplex method into the GCS framework. To demonstrate the efficiency, we apply the GCS/Simplex to the nurse rostering problem, and its general form, namely, cardinality matrix problem. The nurse rostering problem is one of the most difficult scheduling problems in artificial intelligence and operations research. And the cardinality matrix problem is the underlying structure of several real-life problems such as rostering, scheduling and time-tabling problem. Both are shown to be computational intractable. Experimental results show that the GCS/Simplex solver is efficient in solving this kind of scheduling problems in terms of both computation time and number of fails.
AS-ALPS: a database for analyzing the effects of alternative splicing on protein structure, interaction and network in human and mouse

We have constructed a database, AS-ALPS (alternative splicing-induced alteration of protein structure), which provides information that would be useful for analyzing the effects of alternative splicing (AS) on protein structure, interactions with other bio-molecules and protein interaction networks in human and mouse. Several AS events have been revealed to contribute to the diversification of protein structure, which results in diversification of interaction partners or affinities, which in turn contributes to regulation of bio-molecular networks. Most AS variants, however, are only known at the sequence level. It is important to determine the effects of AS on protein structure and interaction, and to provide candidates for experimental targets that are relevant to network regulation by AS. For this purpose, the three-dimensional (3D) structures of proteins are valuable sources of information; however, these have not been fully exploited in any other AS-related databases. AS-ALPS is the only AS-related database that describes the spatial relationships between protein regions altered by AS (‘AS regions’) and both the proteins’ hydrophobic cores and sites of inter-molecular interactions. This information makes it possible to infer whether protein structural stability and/or protein interaction are affected by each AS event. AS-ALPS can be freely accessed at http://as-alps.nagahama-i-bio.ac.jp and http://genomenetwork.nig. ac.jp/as-alps/.
Neuromuscular synapses can form in vivo by incorporation of initially aneural postsynaptic specializations

Synapse formation requires the coordination of pre- and postsynaptic differentiation. An unresolved question is which steps in the process require interactions between pre- and postsynaptic cells, and which proceed cell-autonomously. One current model is that factors released from presynaptic axons organize postsynaptic differentiation directly beneath the nerve terminal. Here, we used neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) of the zebrafish primary motor system to test this model. Clusters of neurotransmitter (acetylcholine) receptors (AChRs) formed in the central region of the myotome, destined to be synapse-rich, before axons extended and even when axon extension was prevented. Time-lapse imaging revealed that pre-existing clusters on early-born slow (adaxial) muscle fibers were incorporated into NMJs as axons advanced. Axons were, however, required for the subsequent remodeling and selective stabilization of synaptic clusters that precisely appose post- to presynaptic elements. Thus, motor axons are dispensable for the initial stages of postsynaptic differentiation but are required for later stages. Moreover, many AChR clusters on later-born fast muscle fibers formed at sites that had already been contacted by axons, suggesting heterogeneity in the signaling mechanisms leading to synapse formation by a single axon.
Temperament as an Indicator of Language Achievement.

Language learning is a complex process that is controlled or influenced by a host of linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Some of these factors are the main concerns of psychologists rather than linguists. Ever since psychology began to develop in the 20th century, more and more individual characteristics were identified and defined. Eysenck’s introduction of a way to measure temperament interested (applied) linguists, and some of them tried to investigate the influence of temperament on language learning. The present study, too, set out to investigate the probable effects of temperament on EFL speaking achievement. 139 Iranian intermediate-proficiency university students took the U-test, an IELTS-based structured interview, and the Eysenck Personality Test. They then took a speaking course. Another structured interview was conducted at the end of the course as the post-test. The results of a Mixed between-within Subjects Analysis of Variance (SPANOVA) indicated that introverts were advantaged in speaking achievement. The sanguine participants in the study outperformed the choleric ones who in turn outperformed the melancholic participants. The weakest results belonged to the phlegmatic participant group.
Infertility after the pill.

A disquieting feature of treatment with oral contraceptives is receiving increasing attention among gynaecologists. This is that some women, on discontinuing the use of oral contraceptives, do not experience a normal return to menses, but may remain amenorrhoeic for years.1 This state of post-pill amenorrhoea was first noted in 1966 by three separate groups of workers.2 Since then the number of reports have mounted rapidly. R. P. Shearman, who has followed up this condition most assiduously among his patients in Sydney, first reported nine cases in 1966.2 Two years later he reported 22 cases.5 In 1970 he noted 26 women with amenorrhoea and galactorrhoea mainly following withdrawal of oral contraceptives.6 In 1971 his series had risen7 to 69 and in 1972 he presented data on 96 patients with secondary amenorrhoea after the discontinuance of oral contraceptives.8 The last series, by much the largest published so far, when taken in conjunction with other publications on the subject9-12 clearly establishes some of the facts about the condition. In the first place the association with synthetic oestrogenprogestogen mixtures is so strong that a causal connexion is likely. Secondly, a large proportion of these amenorrhoeic patients will ovulate if treated with clomiphene or pituitary gonadotrophins. The defect is therefore not in the ovaries (which may be reduced to small atrophic organs by long treatment with oral contraceptives) but probably in the hypothalamus, where the releasing hormones which control pituitary secretion are produced. Often galactorrhoea is associated with the amenorrhoea, a finding which again implicates the hypothalamus, as the prolactin-inhibiting centre is also situated there. Some of the clinical features of post-pill amenorrhoea are surprising. For one thing, the length of treatment with progestogen-oestrogen mixtures does not matter. Several authors have recorded its occurring after only three months of taking the pill. Nor is the likelihood of amenorrhoea bound up with any particular mixture. In particular, sequential preparations do not appear to be more or less likely to cause trouble than the mixed pills. The condition is not more common in older women, and it has been reported in both nulliparous and parous women. Though a large proportion of women who develop post-pill amenorrhoea give