Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demystifying Cache Policies for Photo Stores at Scale: A Tencent Case Study

Photo service providers are facing critical challenges of dealing with the huge amount of photo storage, typically in a magnitude of billions of photos, while ensuring national-wide or world-wide satisfactory user experiences. Distributed photo caching architecture is widely deployed to meet high performance expectations, where efficient still mysterious caching policies play essential roles. In this work, we present a comprehensive study on internet-scale photo caching algorithms in the case of QQPhoto from Tencent Inc., the largest social network service company in China. We unveil that even advanced cache algorithms can only perform at a similar level as simple baseline algorithms and there still exists a large performance gap between these cache algorithms and the theoretically optimal algorithm due to the complicated access behaviors in such a large multi-tenant environment. We then expound the behind reasons for that phenomenon via extensively investigating the characteristics of QQPhoto workloads. Finally, in order to realistically further improve QQPhoto cache efficiency, we propose to incorporate a prefetcher in the cache stack based on the observed immediacy feature that is unique to the QQPhoto workload. Evaluation results show that with appropriate prefetching we improve the cache hit ratio by up to 7.4%, while reducing the average access latency by 6.9% at a marginal cost of 4.14% backend network traffic compared to the original system that performs no prefetching.
Porous Calcium Phosphate Ceramic Scaffolds with Tailored Pore Orientations and Mechanical Properties Using Lithography-Based Ceramic 3D Printing Technique

This study demonstrates the usefulness of the lithography-based ceramic 3-dimensional printing technique with a specifically designed top-down process for the production of porous calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramic scaffolds with tailored pore orientations and mechanical properties. The processing parameters including the preparation of a photocurable CaP slurry with a high solid loading (φ = 45 vol%), the exposure time for photocuring process, and the initial designs of the porous scaffolds were carefully controlled. Three types of porous CaP scaffolds with different pore orientations (i.e., 0°/90°, 0°/45°/90°/135°, and 0°/30°/60°/90°/120°/150°) were produced. All the scaffolds exhibited a tightly controlled porous structure with straight CaP frameworks arranged in a periodic pattern while the porosity was kept constant. The porous CaP scaffold with a pore orientation of 0°/90° demonstrated the highest compressive strength and modulus due to a number of CaP frameworks parallel to the loading direction. On the other hand, scaffolds with multiple pore orientations may exhibit more isotropic mechanical properties regardless of the loading directions. The porous CaP scaffolds exhibited an excellent in vitro apatite-forming ability in a stimulated body fluid (SBF) solution. These findings suggest that porous CaP scaffolds with tailored pore orientations may provide tunable mechanical properties with good bone regeneration ability.
Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 Gag domains have distinct RNA-binding specificities with implications for RNA packaging and dimerization

Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is the first retrovirus that has conclusively been shown to cause human diseases. In HIV-1, specific interactions between the nucleocapsid (NC) domain of the Gag protein and genomic RNA (gRNA) mediate gRNA dimerization and selective packaging; however, the mechanism for gRNA packaging in HTLV-1, a deltaretrovirus, is unclear. In other deltaretroviruses, the matrix (MA) and NC domains of Gag are both involved in gRNA packaging, but MA binds nucleic acids with higher affinity and has more robust chaperone activity, suggesting that this domain may play a primary role. Here, we show that the MA domain of HTLV-1, but not the NC domain, binds short hairpin RNAs derived from the putative gRNA packaging signal. RNA probing of the HTLV-1 5′ leader and cross-linking studies revealed that the primer-binding site and a region within the putative packaging signal form stable hairpins that interact with MA. In addition to a previously identified palindromic dimerization initiation site (DIS), we identified a new DIS in HTLV-1 gRNA and found that both palindromic sequences bind specifically the NC domain. Surprisingly, a mutant partially defective in dimer formation in vitro exhibited a significant increase in RNA packaging into HTLV-1–like particles, suggesting that efficient RNA dimerization may not be strictly required for RNA packaging in HTLV-1. Moreover, the lifecycle of HTLV-1 and other deltaretroviruses may be characterized by NC and MA functions that are distinct from those of the corresponding HIV-1 proteins, but together provide the functions required for viral replication.
Measurement and Analysis of Thermal Conductivity of Ti3C2Tx MXene Films

A new class of 2D materials named “MXene” has recently received significant research interest as they have demonstrated great potential for the applications in batteries, supercapacitors, and electronic devices. However, the research on their thermal properties is still very limited. In this work, Ti3C2Tx films were prepared by the vacuum-assisted filtration of delaminated nano-flake Ti3C2Tx MXenes. The thermal and electrical conductivity of the Ti3C2Tx films were measured by the state-of-the-art T-type method. The results showed that the effective thermal conductivity of the films increased from 1.26 W·m−1·K−1 at 80 K to 2.84 W·m−1·K−1 at 290 K, while the electrical conductivity remained at 12,800 Ω−1·m−1 for the same temperature range. Thermal resistance model was applied to evaluate the inherent thermal conductivity of the Ti3C2Tx flakes, which was estimated to be in the range of tens to hundreds W·m−1·K−1.
Improved osteogenic differentiation of human dental pulp stem cells in a layer-by-layer-modified gelatin scaffold

Dental pulp stem cell is a new type of mesenchymal stem cell that has a potential for tissue regeneration. Gelatin sponges are often used for hemostasis in dental surgery. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the dental pulp stem cells’ proliferation and osteogenic differentiation in different layer-by-layer-modified gelatin sponge scaffolds including the G, G + P (gelatin sponge+ poly-l-lysine modification), G + M (gelatin sponge + mineralization modification), and G + M + P (gelatin sponge + mineralization modification + poly-l-lysine modification) groups in vitro and assessed them in vivo. The results showed that dental pulp stem cells had a great potential for osteogenic differentiation. In vitro, the G + M + P group not only enhanced the adhesion and proliferation of dental pulp stem cells but also facilitated their osteogenic differentiation. However, alkaline phosphatase activity was prohibited after modification. In vivo, both dental pulp stem cells and cells from nude mice grew well on the scaffold, and G + M and G + M + P groups could promote the mineralization deposit formation and the expression of osteocalcin in osteogenic differentiation of dental pulp stem cells. In conclusion, the combination of dental pulp stem cells and G + M + P scaffold has a great potential for bone tissue engineering.
Second rate or a second chance? Assessing biomass and biodiversity recovery in regenerating Amazonian forests

Secondary forests (SFs) regenerating on previously deforested land account for large, expanding areas of tropical forest cover. Given that tropical forests rank among Earth’s most important reservoirs of carbon and biodiversity, SFs play an increasingly pivotal role in the carbon cycle and as potential habitat for forest biota. Nevertheless, their capacity to regain the biotic attributes of undisturbed primary forests (UPFs) remains poorly understood. Here, we provide a comprehensive assessment of SF recovery, using extensive tropical biodiversity, biomass, and environmental datasets. These data, collected in 59 naturally regenerating SFs and 30 co‐located UPFs in the eastern Amazon, cover >1,600 large‐ and small‐stemmed plant, bird, and dung beetles species and a suite of forest structure, landscape context, and topoedaphic predictors. After up to 40 years of regeneration, the SFs we surveyed showed a high degree of biodiversity resilience, recovering, on average among taxa, 88% and 85% mean UPF species richness and composition, respectively. Across the first 20 years of succession, the period for which we have accurate SF age data, biomass recovered at 1.2% per year, equivalent to a carbon uptake rate of 2.25 Mg/ha per year, while, on average, species richness and composition recovered at 2.6% and 2.3% per year, respectively. For all taxonomic groups, biomass was strongly associated with SF species distributions. However, other variables describing habitat complexity—canopy cover and understory stem density—were equally important occurrence predictors for most taxa. Species responses to biomass revealed a successional transition at approximately 75 Mg/ha, marking the influx of high‐conservation‐value forest species. Overall, our results show that naturally regenerating SFs can accumulate substantial amounts of carbon and support many forest species. However, given that the surveyed SFs failed to return to a typical UPF state, SFs are not substitutes for UPFs.
Mapping up-to-Date Paddy Rice Extent at 10 M Resolution in China through the Integration of Optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar Images

Rice is a staple food in East Asia and Southeast Asia—an area that accounts for more than half of the world’s population, and 11% of its cultivated land. Studies on rice monitoring can provide direct or indirect information on food security, and water source management. Remote sensing has proven to be the most effective method for the large-scale monitoring of croplands, by using temporary and spectral information. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud-based platform providing access to high-performance computing resources for processing extremely large geospatial datasets. In this study, by leveraging the computational power of GEE and a large pool of satellite and other geophysical data (e.g., forest and water extent maps, with high accuracy at 30 m), we generated the first up-to-date rice extent map with crop intensity, at 10 m resolution in the three provinces with the highest rice production in China (the Heilongjiang, Hunan and Guangxi provinces). Optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data were monthly and metric composited to ensure a sufficient amount of up-to-date data without cloud interference. To remove the common confounding noise in the pixel-based classification results at medium to high resolution, we integrated the pixel-based classification (using a random forest classifier) result with the object-based segmentation (using a simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) method). This integration resulted in the rice planted area data that most closely resembled official statistics. The overall accuracy was approximately 90%, which was validated by ground crop field points. The F scores reached 87.78% in the Heilongjiang Province for monocropped rice, 89.97% and 80.00% in the Hunan Province for mono- and double-cropped rice, respectively, and 88.24% in the Guangxi Province for double-cropped rice.
Reconstruction of Three-Dimensional (3D) Indoor Interiors with Multiple Stories via Comprehensive Segmentation

The fast and stable reconstruction of building interiors from scanned point clouds has recently attracted considerable research interest. However, reconstructing long corridors and connected areas across multiple floors has emerged as a substantial challenge. This paper presents a comprehensive segmentation method for reconstructing a three-dimensional (3D) indoor structure with multiple stories. With this method, the over-segmentation that usually occurs in the reconstruction of long corridors in a complex indoor environment is overcome by morphologically eroding the floor space to segment rooms and by overlapping the segmented room-space with partitioned cells via extracted wall lines. Such segmentation ensures both the integrity of the room-space partitions and the geometric regularity of the rooms. For spaces across floors in a multistory building, a peak-nadir-peak strategy in the distribution of points along the z-axis is proposed in order to extract connected areas across multiple floors. A series of experimental tests while using seven real-world 3D scans and eight synthetic models of indoor environments show the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.
A self-adjuvanted nanoparticle based vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus

Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) affects poultry respiratory, renal and reproductive systems. Currently the efficacy of available live attenuated or killed vaccines against IBV has been challenged. We designed a novel IBV vaccine alternative using a highly innovative platform called Self-Assembling Protein Nanoparticle (SAPN). In this vaccine, B cell epitopes derived from the second heptad repeat (HR2) region of IBV spike proteins were repetitively presented in its native trimeric conformation. In addition, flagellin was co-displayed in the SAPN to achieve a self-adjuvanted effect. Three groups of chickens were immunized at four weeks of age with the vaccine prototype, IBV-Flagellin-SAPN, a negative-control construct Flagellin-SAPN or a buffer control. The immunized chickens were challenged with 5x104.7 EID50 IBV M41 strain. High antibody responses were detected in chickens immunized with IBV-Flagellin-SAPN. In ex vivo proliferation tests, peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMCs) derived from IBV-Flagellin-SAPN immunized chickens had a significantly higher stimulation index than that of PBMCs from chickens receiving Flagellin-SAPN. Chickens immunized with IBV-Flagellin-SAPN had a significant reduction of tracheal virus shedding and lesser tracheal lesion scores than did negative control chickens. The data demonstrated that the IBV-Flagellin-SAPN holds promise as a vaccine for IBV.
Safety Outcomes During Pediatric GH Therapy: Final Results From the Prospective GeNeSIS Observational Program

Abstract Context Safety concerns have been raised regarding premature mortality, diabetes, neoplasia, and cerebrovascular disease in association with GH therapy. Objective To assess incidence of key safety outcomes. Design Prospective, multinational, observational study (1999 to 2015). Setting A total of 22,311 GH-treated children from 827 investigative sites in 30 countries. Patients Children with growth disorders. Interventions GH treatment. Main outcome measures Standardized mortality ratio (SMR) and standardized incidence ratio (SIR) with 95% CIs for mortality, diabetes, and primary cancer using general population registries. Results Predominant short stature diagnoses were GH deficiency (63%), idiopathic short stature (13%), and Turner syndrome (8%), with mean ± SD follow-up of 4.2 ± 3.2 years (∼92,000 person-years [PY]). Forty-two deaths occurred in patients with follow-up, with an SMR (95% CI) of 0.61 (0.44, 0.82); the SMR was elevated for patients with cancer-related organic GH deficiency [5.87 (3.21, 9.85)]. Based on 18 cases, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) risk was elevated [SIR: 3.77 (2.24, 5.96)], but 72% had risk factors. In patients without cancer history, 14 primary cancers were observed [SIR: 0.71 (0.39, 1.20)]. Second neoplasms occurred in 31 of 622 cancer survivors [5.0%; 10.7 (7.5, 15.2) cases/1000 PY] and intracranial tumor recurrences in 67 of 823 tumor survivors [8.1%; 16.9 (13.3, 21.5) cases/1000 PY]. All three hemorrhagic stroke cases had risk factors. Conclusions GeNeSIS (Genetics and Neuroendocrinology of Short Stature International Study) data support the favorable safety profile of pediatric GH treatment. Overall risk of death or primary cancer was not elevated in GH-treated children, and no hemorrhagic strokes occurred in patients without risk factors. T2DM incidence was elevated compared with the general population, but most cases had diabetes risk factors.
General Factors of Psychopathology, Personality, and Personality Disorder: Across Domain Comparisons

Three separate and distinct literatures exist investigating general factors of psychopathology (p factor), personality (general factor of personality, GFP), and personality disorder (g-PD). Surprisingly, there has been little to no investigation regarding the convergence of these three distinct general factors. In the present investigation, two studies were conducted examining the convergence of the p factor, GFP, and g-PD. In Study 1, a combined model extracting all three factors from self-report data simultaneously found high convergence. The findings for the g-PD and GFP were replicated in Study 2 using multimethod data, wherein the GFP and the g-PD were extracted from a community sample of 1,630 older adults and correlated with an index of maladaptivity. The present findings support the position that general factors of psychopathology, personality disorder, and personality are likely to entail a common individual differences continuum, which may impact on how these general factors are to be understood.
The Trauma and Life Events (TALE) checklist: development of a tool for improving routine screening in people with psychosis

ABSTRACT Background: Best practice guidelines recommend traumatic events should be assessed in psychosis to support the identification and, when indicated, treatment of post-traumatic stress reactions. However, routine assessment in frontline services is rare, and available tools are not tailored to psychosis. Assessment obstacles include lengthy measures, a focus on single, physically threatening events, and the exclusion of psychosis-related traumas. Objective: To develop and validate a brief trauma screening tool for the identification of clinically significant traumas in people with psychosis. Method: The Trauma and Life Events (TALE) checklist was developed in conjunction with people with lived experience of trauma and psychosis, and specialist clinicians and researchers. The psychometric properties (i.e. test-retest reliability, content validity, construct validity) of the TALE were evaluated in a sample of 39 people with psychosis diagnoses. Results: The TALE displayed moderate psychometric acceptability overall, with excellent reliability and convergent validity for sexual abuse. High rates of psychosis-related trauma and childhood adversity were reported, in particular bullying and emotional neglect. A dose–response relationship between cumulative trauma, post-traumatic stress and psychosis was found. Conclusions: The TALE is the first screening tool specifically designed to meet the needs of routine trauma screening in psychosis services. The psychometric limitations highlight the challenge of developing a measure that is both sufficiently brief to be useful in clinical settings and comprehensive enough to identify all relevant adverse events. Validation of the TALE is now required across the spectrum of psychosis.
Does cognitive flexibility training enhance subjective mental functioning in healthy older adults?

ABSTRACT Declining cognitive abilities in older adults can contribute to significant changes in socioemotional health and substantially reduce their perception of well-being. Whereas much attention has been dedicated to creating cognitive training programs to improve cognitive health in old age, there is little emphasis on the consequences of such interventions for subjective mental functioning. We created a randomized controlled trial in which we evaluated the effects of an adaptive computerized cognitive flexibility training. Healthy older adults (60–80 years old) were assigned to one of three conditions (frequent or infrequent switching or active control group) and performed 58 half-hour sessions within a period of 12 weeks. We measured effects on subjective cognitive failures and executive dysfunctioning, everyday functioning, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and quality of life, before, and after training. Additionally, participants’ proxies rated their cognitive failures and executive dysfunctioning. Subjective cognitive failures and executive dysfunctioning improved 4 weeks posttraining in all groups, although effect sizes were low (ɳp2 = .058 and .079, respectively) and there were no differences between groups (all p’s > .38). No significant changes in subjective reports were seen directly after training, which was the case in all groups. Proxies did not report any functional changes over time, yet their evaluations were significantly more favorable than those of the participants, both pretraining (p < .0005) and posttraining (p = .004). Although we found no evidence of improvement on subjective mental functioning, we adduce several factors that encourage further research into the effects of computerized cognitive training on subjective performance.
Pathological Changes in Experimental Intramammary Infection with Different Staphylococcus Species in Mice

Introduction: Mastitis is caused by different Staphylococcus species, produce great economic loss to farmers. Present study was conducted to know pathological changes in mice inoculated with Staphylococcus epidermidis, S. chromogenes, S. haemolyticus and S. aureus isolated from bovine milk. Materials and Methods: Mice were inoculated with 50 μl (2x104 cfu organisms) per mammary gland and euthanized at 6, 12, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h. Mammary gland weight, gross and histopathological changes of mammary gland, liver, kidney, spleen, heart, lung and inguinal lymph node were studied. Results: Mammary gland weight and percentage of body weight increased at 6 and 96 h in S. aureus and S. haemolyticus infected mice. Gross changes were observed in mammary gland but not in other organs. Mammary gland revealed gross changes from 24 to 72 h in three Coagulase negative staphylococcal (CNS) species and persisted up to 96 h in S. aureus infected mice. Histopathological changes in mammary glands was severe in S. aureus and moderate in CNS species. S. aureus infected mice revealed severe damage to alveoli and loss of alveolar architecture at 96 h but three CNS species infection was overcome by host factors which was evident by proliferation of alveolar epithelial cells. No histological changes were observed in kidney, spleen, lung, heart and inguinal lymph nodes. Conclusions: S. aureus caused severe mastitis in mice when compared to CNS species. Further, it is first report of mice to study CNS mastitis, and in future it can be used as model for CNS mastitis.