Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi layered natural rubber coated woven P‐aramid and UHMWPE fabric composites for soft body armor application

In this work, the authors have investigated the impact performance of natural rubber (NR) coated high strength, high modulus fabrics. P-aramid (Kevlar 129) and ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fabric were coated with different concentrations of NR solutions (20%, 30%). Samples were produced with different add on percentage. The NR solutions with 20% and 30% solid content provided 4 and 6% add-on on p-aramid fabric and 6 and 9% add-on on UHMWPE fabric. Multilayered fabric structures coated with NR were also studied. Compression molding technique was used to prepare the layered fabric structures. The effect of coating with different add-on percentages of NR on fabrics was studied. The pull out force increased by ∼480% and 360% on NR-coated p-aramid and UHMWPE fabrics, respectively. Although the impact energy absorption of single layer NR-coated fabrics was lower than that of neat fabrics, there was substantial improvement in the impact energy absorption of the two layered p-aramid and UHMWPE rubber coated fabrics as compared to untreated two layered ones. The increase was 44% and 81%, respectively, for Kevlar and UHMWPE fabrics. Further, the effect of NR latex treatment on tensile strength of fabrics has also been studied. POLYM. COMPOS. , 2017. © 2017 Society of Plastics Engineers
Does reflexology impact on cancer patients' quality of life?

AIM The objective of this study was to determine whether reflexology has an impact on the quality of life of patients in the palliative stage of cancer. METHOD Twelve patients in the palliative stage of cancer with various tumour types were randomised into two groups. They were randomly assigned to receive either reflexology or placebo reflexology. All participants completed a linear analogue self-assessment scale relating to quality of life. All participants then received three sessions of either reflexology or placebo reflexology. The same person, a qualified reflexologist, provided the interventions for both groups. The participants were not aware of which intervention they were receiving. All participants then completed a second linear analogue self-assessment scale relating to quality of life. RESULTS All participants felt that their quality of life had improved, even those who had received the placebo treatment. The reflexology group, however, reported more benefit than the placebo group. There was a significant difference (p = 0.004) between the reflexology group and the placebo group. CONCLUSION This study showed that reflexology does have an impact on the quality of life of patients in the palliative stage of cancer.
On Information Leakage in Deduplicated Storage Systems

Most existing cloud storage providers rely on data deduplication in order to significantly save storage costs by storing duplicate data only once. While the literature has thoroughly analyzed client-side information leakage associated with the use of data deduplication techniques in the cloud, no previous work has analyzed the information leakage associated with access trace information information (e.g., object size and timing) that are available whenever a client uploads a file to a curious cloud provider. In this paper, we address this problem and analyze information leakage associated with data deduplication on a curious storage server. We show that even if the data is encrypted using a key not known by the storage server, the latter can still acquire considerable information about the stored files and even determine which files are stored. We validate our results both analytically and experimentally using a number of real storage datasets.
Efficient fixpoint computation in linear tabling

Early resolution mechanisms proposed for tabling such as OLDT rely on suspension and resumption of subgoals to compute fixpoints. Recently, a new resolution framework called linear tabling has emerged as an alternative tabling method. The idea of linear tabling is to use iterative computation rather than suspension to compute fixpoints. Although linear tabling is simple, easy to implement, and superior in space efficiency, the current implementations are several times slower than XSB, the state-of-the-art implementation of OLDT, due to re-evaluation of looping subgoals. In this paper, we present a new linear tabling method and propose several optimization techniques for fast computation of fixpoints. The optimization techniques significantly improve the performance by avoiding redundant evaluation of subgoals, re-application of clauses, and reproduction of answers in iterative computation. Our implementation of the method in B-Prolog not only consumes an order of magnitude less stack space than XSB for some programs but also compares favorably well with XSB in speed.
Maternal Mortality-reduction Programme in Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh, a large state in southern India, has a high maternal mortality ratio of 195 per 100,000 livebirths despite the improvements in social, demographic and health indicators over the last two decades. This contrary situation has been analyzed using findings of different studies on maternal mortality, and four factors have been presented for consistently-high maternal mortality in the state. First, the disproportionately-high focus on family planning towards population stabilization reduced the emphasis on maternal health in the peripheral hospitals, resulting in low use of these facilities for childbirths. Second, the growth of services in Primary Health Centres was not given adequate emphasis, resulting in the weakening of the peripheral health system. Third, there was little emphasis on developing a cadre of midwives who would have primarily focused on maternal health. Lastly, the low status of women in the state has hampered timely referral and access to services.
Bmc Microbiology Assessing the Reliability of Eburst Using Simulated Populations with Known Ancestry

Background: The program eBURST uses multilocus sequence typing data to divide bacterial populations into groups of closely related strains (clonal complexes), predicts the founding genotype of each group, and displays the patterns of recent evolutionary descent of all other strains in the group from the founder. The reliability of eBURST was evaluated using populations simulated with different levels of recombination in which the ancestry of all strains was known.
A Decidable Extension of Data Automata

Data automata on data words is a decidable model proposed by Boja\'nczyk et al. in 2006. Class automata, introduced recently by Boja\'nczyk and Lasota, is an extension of data automata which unifies different automata models on data words. The nonemptiness of class automata is undecidable, since class automata can simulate two-counter machines. In this paper, a decidable model called class automata with priority class condition, which restricts class automata but strictly extends data automata, is proposed. The decidability of this model is obtained by establishing a correspondence with priority multicounter automata. This correspondence also completes the picture of the links between various class conditions of class automata and various models of counter machines. Moreover, this model is applied to extend a decidability result of Alur, Cern\'y and Weinstein on the algorithmic analysis of array-accessing programs.
Six cycles of S1 recurrent selection in two Spanish maize synthetics

European flint × U.S. dent is the most common heterotic pattern used in early maize (Zea mays L.) breeding programs in Spain. Two synthetic maize populations, EZS1 (formed from four Spanish flint populations), and EZS2 (formed from four American dent populations), were developed in Zaragoza, Spain. These synthetics, which showed heterotic behaviour, were subjected to six cycles of S1 recurrent selection for increased grain yield and reduced lodging. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of selection on these and other agronomic traits in both synthetics. The original populations, EZS1C0 and EZS2C0, and the six cycles of selection of both, were evaluated at two locations over two years. Over the six selection cycles, the average yield of EZS1 and EZS2 increased by 0.82 Mg ha -1 and 0.93 Mg ha -1 per cycle respectively, while lodging decreased by 2.76% and 2.44% per cycle respectively. Changes due to selection were significant for all test traits in both synthetics. It was concluded that S1 selection is effective in improving the yield of, and reducing lodging in, both synthetics.
STUDIES ON THE RATE OF SEEDING OF LYMPHOCYTES FROM THE INTACT GUINEA PIG THYMUS *

There has been much discussion in the literature recently about the possible importance of cell emigration from the thymus, particularly during the first days of life. However, there is no decisive evidence in the literature to prove that thymic lymphocytes ever leave the thymus in an intact animal. The present study is an attempt to prove formally that thymic cells do seed out into the other lymphoid organs, and to determine the importance of such emigration in immunological processes.
Neem Leaf Glycoprotein Partially Rectifies Suppressed Dendritic Cell Functions and Associated T Cell Efficacy in Patients with Stage IIIB Cervical Cancer

ABSTRACT Myeloid-derived dendritic cells (DCs) generated from monocytes obtained from stage IIIB cervical cancer (CaCx IIIB) patients show dysfunctional maturation; thus, antitumor T cell functions are dysregulated. In an objective to optimize these dysregulated immune functions, the present study is focused on the ability of neem leaf glycoprotein (NLGP), a nontoxic preparation of the neem leaf, to induce optimum maturation of dendritic cells from CaCx IIIB patients. In vitro NLGP treatment of immature DCs (iDCs) obtained from CaCx IIIB patients results in upregulated expression of various cell surface markers (CD40, CD83, CD80, CD86, and HLA-ABC), which indicates DC maturation. Consequently, NLGP-matured DCs displayed balanced cytokine secretions, with type 1 bias and noteworthy functional properties. These DCs displayed substantial T cell allostimulatory capacity and promoted the generation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). Although NLGP-matured DCs derived from CaCx monocytes are generally subdued compared to those with a healthy monocyte origin, considerable revival of the suppressed DC-based immune functions is noted in vitro at a fairly advanced stage of CaCx, and thus, further exploration of ex vivo and in vivo DC-based vaccines is proposed. Moreover, the DC maturating efficacy of NLGP might be much more effective in the earlier stages of CaCx, where the extent of immune dysregulation is less and, thus, the scope of further investigation may be explored.
Effect of Multiple Parasitic Infections on the Tolerance to Pollutant Contamination

The horizontally-transmitted acanthocephalan parasite Polymorphus minutus and the vertically-transmitted microsporidian parasite Dictyocoela roeselum have both been shown to influence on the antitoxic responses of mono-infected Gammarus roeseli exposed to cadmium. The present study investigates the effect of this co-infection on the antitoxic defence responses of naturally infected females exposed to cadmium stress. Our results revealed that, depending on the cadmium dose, bi-infection induced only slight, significant increased cell damage in G. roeseli as compared to non-infection. In addition, the antitoxic defence pattern of cadmium-exposed bi-infected hosts was similar to the pattern of cadmium-exposed D. roeselum-infected hosts. Reduced glutathione concentrations, carotenoid levels and γ-glutamylcystein ligase activity decreased, while metallothionein concentrations increased. This similar pattern indicates that host physiology can be controlled to some extent by microsporidia under stress conditions. It supports the hypothesis of a disruption of acanthocephalan effects in the presence of microsporidia. However, the global negative effects of bi-infection on host condition should be tested on more biological models, since competition between parasites depends on life history trade-off.
Association of Cigarette Prices with the Prevalence of Smoking in Korean University Students: Analysis of Effects of the Tobacco Control Policy.

BACKGROUND Increased pricing of cigarettes might be one of the most effective approaches for reducing the prevalence of smoking. This study aimed to investigate the effects of increasing cigarette prices through taxation by a tobacco intervention policy on the changes in smoking prevalence in Korean university students. MATERIALS AND METHODS The participants in this study were 23,047 healthy university students aged 18-29 years from a health examination in 2011-2015. We investigated the adjusted prevalence of daily and occasional smoking before and after increasing cigarette prices through taxation. RESULTS The prevalence of occasional smoking was significantly decreased in 2015 from 2014 in both male (from 10.7% in 2014 to 5.4%) and female (from 3.6% to 1.1%) students, but the prevalence of daily smoking did not decrease significantly. The frequency of individuals who had attempted smoking cessation during the past year was significantly higher among occasional smokers in male students (90.2%) compared with daily smokers (64.9%). For female students, there were no differences in experience of smoking cessation, willingness for smoking cessation, or E-cigarette experience between daily and occasional smokers. CONCLUSIONS We found that a policy of increasing cigarette prices through taxation is associated with decreases in the prevalence of occasional smokers, who have relatively lower nicotine dependence compared with individuals who smoke daily. The results of our study suggest that social support and direct intervention for smoking cessation at the community level are needed for university students alongside the pricing policy.
Finsler-Geometric Continuum Mechanics and the Micromechanics of Fracture in Crystals

A continuum theory for the mechanical response of solid bodies subjected to potentially finite deformation is further developed and applied to solve several new problems in the context of the micromechanics of crystalline solids. The theory invokes concepts from Finsler differential geometry, and it provides a diffuse interface description of fracture surfaces. The director or internal state vector is associated with an order parameter describing degradation of the solid. Here, the deformation gradient between pseudo-Finsler reference and spatial configuration spaces is decomposed into a product of two terms, neither necessarily integrable to a vector field. The first is the recoverable elastic deformation, the second is the residual deformation attributed to changes in free volume in failure zones. The latter is restricted to spherical or isotropic symmetry; resulting Euler–Lagrange equations for mechanical and state variable equilibrium are derived. Metric tensors and volume elements depend on the internal state via a conformal transformation, i.e., Weyl scaling. This version of the theory is first applied to tensile fracture of magnesium. Analytical solutions demonstrate the model's capability to predict ductile versus brittle fracture depending on incorporation of Weyl scaling, with results aligned with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The second application is shear fracture in boron carbide: solutions depict weakening and tensile pressure in conjunction with structural collapse in shear transformation zones, as suggested by experiments, quantum mechanics, and/or MD simulations.
Adaptive multiuser radio resource allocation for OFDMA systems

Efficient radio resource allocation is essential to provide quality-of-service (QoS) for wireless networks. In this paper, we propose an adaptive multiuser radio resource allocation model for the downlink of OFDMA system, which efficiently exploits the time diversity, frequency diversity as well as multiuser diversity in the time, frequency and user domain, respectively. According to the allocation algorithm's computational complexity, two different-complexity adaptive resource allocation algorithms algorithm A and algorithm B - are proposed which adopt a two-step allocation method to reduce the scheduling complexity and meanwhile improve the scheduling performance. Simulation results show that while the performance of algorithm A and B is slightly different, both of the proposed algorithms yield much higher spectral efficiency and much lower outage probability, which are flexible and efficient for the downlink of OFDMA systems
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Institute of Mathematics the Ornstein Uhlenbeck Bridge and Applications to Markov Semigroups the Ornstein Uhlenbeck Bridge and Applications to Markov Semigroups

For an arbitrary Hilbert space-valued Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process we construct the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Bridge connecting a given starting point x and an end-point y provided y belongs to a certain linear subspace of full measure. We derive also a stochastic evolution equation satisfied by the OU Bridge and study its basic properties. The OU Bridge is then used to investigate the Markov transition semigroup defined by a stochastic evolution equation with additive noise. We provide an explicit formula for the transition density and study its regularity. These results are applied to show some basic properties of the transition semigroup. Given the Strong Feller property and the existence of invariant measure we show that all L p functions are transformed into continuous functions thus generalising the Strong Feller property. We also show that transition operators are q-summing for some q > p > 1, in particular of Hilbert-Schmidt type.
ICTCP: Incast Congestion Control for TCP in data center networks

TCP incast congestion happens in high-bandwidth and low-latency networks, when multiple synchronized servers send data to a same receiver in parallel [15]. For many important data center applications such as MapReduce[5] and Search, this many-to-one traffic pattern is common. Hence TCP in-cast congestion may severely degrade their performances, e.g., by increasing response time. In this paper, we study TCP incast in detail by focusing on the relationship among TCP throughput, round trip time (RTT) and receive window. Different from the previous approach to mitigate the impact of incast congestion by a fine grained timeout value, our idea is to design an ICTCP (Incast congestion Control for TCP) scheme at the receiver side. In particular, our method adjusts TCP receive window proactively before packet drops occur. The implementation and experiments in our testbed demonstrate that we achieve almost zero timeout and high goodput for TCP incast.
Exploring Socio-Technical Features of Green Interior Design of Residential Buildings: Indicators, Interdependence and Embeddedness

This research aims to develop indicators for assessing green interior design of new residential buildings in China, grounded in the socio-technical systems approach. The research was carried out through a critical literature review and two focus group studies. The results show that the boundaries of green interior design were identified with respect to three dimensions, namely performance, methodology and stakeholders. The socio-technical systems approach argues for the recognition of the interdependence between the systems elements and the feature of embeddedness. The interdependence of the systems elements exists within each of these three dimensions and across them. It is also found that the socio-technical systems of green interior design are embedded in the social, regulatory and geographic context. Taking interior design of residential buildings as the empirical setting, this study contributes to the literature of green building assessment by presenting a socio-technical systems approach.
Effective Maxwell Equations in a Geometry with Flat Rings of Arbitrary Shape

We analyze the time-harmonic Maxwell equations in a complex geometry: many (order $\eta^{-3}$) small (order $\eta^1$), thin (order $\eta^2$), and highly conductive (order $\eta^{-3}$) metallic objects are distributed in a domain $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^3$. We determine the effective behavior of this metamaterial in the limit $\eta\searrow 0$. For $\eta>0$, each single conductor occupies a simply connected domain, but the conductor closes to a ring in the limit $\eta\searrow 0$. This change of topology allows for an extra dimension in the solution space of the corresponding cell-problem. Even though both original materials (metal and void) have the same positive magnetic permeability $\mu_0>0$, the effective Maxwell system exhibits, depending on the frequency, a negative magnetic response.
Accounting for biases in riboprofiling data indicates a major role for proline and not positive amino acids in stalling translation

The recent advent of ribosome profiling – sequencing of short ribosome-bound fragments of mRNA – has offered an unprecedented opportunity to interrogate the sequence features responsible for modulating translational rates. Nevertheless, numerous analyses of the first riboprofiling dataset have produced equivocal and often incompatible results. Here we analyze three independent yeast riboprofiling data sets, including two with much higher coverage than previously available, and find that all three show substantial technical sequence biases that confound interpretations of ribosomal occupancy. After accounting for these biases, we find no effect of previously implicated factors on ribosomal pausing. Rather, we find that incorporation of proline, whose unique side-chain stalls peptide synthesis in vitro, also slows the ribosome in vivo. We also reanalyze a recent method that reported positively charged amino acids as the major determinant of ribosomal stalling and demonstrate that its assumptions lead to false signals of stalling in low-coverage data. Our results suggest that any analysis of riboprofiling data should account for sequencing biases and sparse coverage. To this end, we establish a robust methodology that enables analysis of ribosome profiling data without prior assumptions regarding which positions spanned by the ribosome cause stalling.
Oncolytic Virotherapy for Multiple Myeloma: Past, Present, and Future

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a B-cell malignancy that is currently felt to be incurable. Despite recently approved novel targeted treatments such as lenalidomide and bortezomib, most MM patients' relapse is emphasizing the need for effective and well-tolerated therapies for this deadly disease. The use of oncolytic viruses has garnered significant interest as cancer therapeutics in recent years, and are currently under intense clinical investigation. Both naturally occurring and engineered DNA and RNA viruses have been investigated preclinically as treatment modalities for several solid and hematological malignancies. Presently, only a genetically modified measles virus is in human clinical trials for MM. The information obtained from this and other future clinical trials will guide clinical application of oncolytic viruses as anticancer agents for MM. This paper provides a timely overview of the history of oncolytic viruses for the treatment of MM and future strategies for the optimization of viral therapy for this disease.