Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sports Health Benefits of Vitamin D

Context: Vitamin D is a potent secosteroid hormone that provides many skeletal and extraskeletal health benefits. Musculoskeletal injury prevention and recovery are potentially affected by sufficient circulating levels of the storage form of vitamin D: 25-hydroxyvitamin D3, or 25(OH)D. Vitamin D deficiency can exist among young, active, and healthy people, which may put them at increased risk for injury and prolonged recovery. Evidence Aquisition: PubMed was searched using vitamin D and skeletal muscle, vitamin D and athletic performance, and vitamin D review articles. Studies from the 1930s to 2012 were used for the review. Results: There is strong correlation between vitamin D sufficiency and optimal muscle function. Increasing levels of vitamin D reduce inflammation, pain, and myopathy while increasing muscle protein synthesis, ATP concentration, strength, jump height, jump velocity, jump power, exercise capacity, and physical performance. 25(OH)D levels above 40 ng/mL are required for fracture prevention, including stress fractures. Optimal musculoskeletal benefits occur at 25(OH)D levels above the current definition of sufficiency (> 30 ng/mL) with no reported sports health benefits above 50 ng/mL. Conclusions: Vitamin D deficiency is common in athletes. For athletes presenting with stress fractures, musculoskeletal pain, and frequent illness, one should have a heightened awareness of the additional likely diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency. Correction of this deficiency is completed by standardized and supervised oral supplementation protocols producing significant musculoskeletal sports health benefits.
Building an evaluation framework for social media-enabled collaborative learning environments (SMECLEs)

Social media is an emerging topic in information systems (IS) research, but has quickly been adopted by practice in many areas including marketing, finance and customer service. Another area seeing increased adoption is learning, where social media platforms are being appropriated to build collaborative learning environments, which can be referred to as social media-enabled collaborative learning environments (SMECLE). However, it is not evident whether these social media platforms can enable collaborative learning; therefore, the purpose of this research is to build an evaluation framework to explore whether social media platforms enable collaborative learning. To achieve this, the paper identifies the social media and collaborative learning constructs that are necessary to build such an evaluation framework. Finally, three illustrative examples of how to utilise the evaluation framework are presented, further exposing the rules of its use. The framework is of value to educators who may be deciding to develop SMECLEs or want to provide themselves an appropriate means of evaluating the effectiveness of social media platforms in enabling collaborative learning.
Prefetching Using Markov Predictors

Prefetching is one approach to reducing the latency of memory operations in modern computer systems. In this paper, we describe the Markov prefetcher. This prefetcher acts as an interface between the on-chip and off-chip cache, and can be added to existing computer designs. The Markov prefetcher is distinguished by prefetching multiple reference predictions from the memory subsystem, and then prioritizing the delivery of those references to the processor.This design results in a prefetching system that provides good coverage, is accurate and produces timely results that can be effectively used by the processor. In our cycle-level simulations, the Markov Prefetcher reduces the overall execution stalls due to instruction and data memory operations by an average of 54% for various commercial benchmarks while only using two thirds the memory of a demand-fetch cache organization.
A hybrid SAR-VCO ΔΣ ADC with first-order noise shaping

A scaling-friendly, hybrid, two-stage ΔΣ ADC with a 5-bit SAR as first stage and a VCO as second stage is presented in this work. Since the VCO can provide fine quantization for small signals in the time-domain, it is used to directly quantize the SAR residue without OTA-based residue amplification. Also, having a small input swing obviates the need for VCO non-linearity calibration. The VCO phase overflow problem is solved by using a counter to record the number of overflows, thus allowing a variable sampling rate. Since the VCO phase and counter are never reset, the VCO's first-order noise-shaping capability is retained. A prototype ADC in an 180 nm process achieves 73 dB SNDR over 2.2 MHz bandwidth and consumes 5 mW from a 1.8V supply while sampling at 35 MHz.
The caveolin-binding motif of the pathogen-related yeast protein Pry1, a member of the CAP protein superfamily, is required for in vivo export of cholesteryl acetate

Proteins belonging to the CAP superfamily are present in all kingdoms of life and have been implicated in different physiological processes. Their molecular mode of action, however, is poorly understood. Saccharomyces cerevisiae expresses three members of this superfamily, pathogen-related yeast (Pry)1, -2, and -3. We have recently shown that Pry function is required for the secretion of cholesteryl acetate and that Pry proteins bind cholesterol and cholesteryl acetate, suggesting that CAP superfamily members may generally act to bind sterols or related small hydrophobic compounds. Here, we analyzed the mode of sterol binding by Pry1. Computational modeling indicates that ligand binding could occur through displacement of a relatively poorly conserved flexible loop, which in some CAP family members displays homology to the caveolin-binding motif. Point mutations within this motif abrogated export of cholesteryl acetate but did not affect binding of cholesterol. Mutations of residues located outside the caveolin-binding motif, or mutations in highly conserved putative catalytic residues had no effect on export of cholesteryl acetate or on lipid binding. These results indicate that the caveolin-binding motif of Pry1, and possibly of other CAP family members, is crucial for selective lipid binding and that lipid binding may occur through displacement of the loop containing this motif.
Pembangkit Listrik Tenaga Surya Dan Penerapannya Untuk Daerah Terpencil

Solar cell is a device which is capable of converting directly the energy of light to electricity. This device have been implemented in some rural areas of Indonesia as solar home systems of 50 Wp, and PV-diesel hybrid systems. While operation, the solar cell system didn¶ t need fossil fuel, no result pollution and noise to the environment, almost maintenance free, and very easy to operate. The solar radiation is the renewable energy source of solar cell which is abundance and unlimited. However, the solar cell is the promising one as a future energy technology of Indonesia.
Expression of the toxin‐antitoxin genes yefMLrh, yoeBLrh in human Lactobacillus rhamnosus isolates

Lactobacilli are important microorganisms in various activities, for example, diary products, meat ripening, bread and pickles, but, moreover, are associated directly with human skin and cavities (e.g., mouth, gut, or vagina). Some of them are used as probiotics. Therefore, the molecular biological investigation of these bacteria is important. Earlier we described several toxin antitoxin systems (type II) in lactobacilli. Here, we describe the structure and transcriptional regulation of genes, encoding TA system YefM‐YoeBLrh in three strains of Lactobacillus rhamnosus comparing stationary and exponential growth phases, the influence of stress factors and mRNA stability. The same TA system is responding to physiological and stress conditions differently in related strains. Using primer extension and RLM‐RACE methods we determined three transcription start sites of RNAs in the operon. The promoter region of the operon is preceded by a conserved BOX element occurring at multiple positions in the genomes of L. rhamnosus strains. Downstream of and partially overlapping with the 3′ end of the yoeBLrh toxin gene, a divergently transcribed unexpected RNA was detected.
Sequential Document Representations and Simplicial Curves

The popular bag of words assumption represents a document as a histogram of word occurrences. While computationally efficient, such a representation is unable to maintain any sequential information. We present a continuous and differentiable sequential document representation that goes beyond the bag of words assumption, and yet is efficient and effective. This representation employs smooth curves in the multinomial simplex to account for sequential information. We discuss the representation and its geometric properties and demonstrate its applicability for the task of text classification.
Joint Learning of a Dual SMT System for Paraphrase Generation

SMT has been used in paraphrase generation by translating a source sentence into another (pivot) language and then back into the source. The resulting sentences can be used as candidate paraphrases of the source sentence. Existing work that uses two independently trained SMT systems cannot directly optimize the paraphrase results. Paraphrase criteria especially the paraphrase rate is not able to be ensured in that way. In this paper, we propose a joint learning method of two SMT systems to optimize the process of paraphrase generation. In addition, a revised BLEU score (called iBLEU) which measures the adequacy and diversity of the generated paraphrase sentence is proposed for tuning parameters in SMT systems. Our experiments on NIST 2008 testing data with automatic evaluation as well as human judgments suggest that the proposed method is able to enhance the paraphrase quality by adjusting between semantic equivalency and surface dissimilarity.
Predictive interaction using the delphian desktop

This paper details the design and evaluation of the Delphian Desktop, a mechanism for online spatial prediction of cursor movements in a Windows-Icons-Menus-Pointers (WIMP) environment. Interaction with WIMP-based interfaces often becomes a spatially challenging task when the physical interaction mediators are the common mouse and a high resolution, physically large display screen. These spatial challenges are especially evident in overly crowded Windows desktops. The Delphian Desktop integrates simple yet effective predictive spatial tracking and selection paradigms into ordinary WIMP environments in order to simplify and ease pointing tasks. Predictions are calculated by tracking cursor movements and estimating spatial intentions using a computationally inexpensive online algorithm based on estimating the movement direction and peak velocity. In testing the Delphian Desktop effectively shortened pointing time to faraway icons, and reduced the overall physical distance the mouse (and user hand) had to mechanically traverse.
Recurrent Timing Neural Networks for Joint F0-Localisation Based Speech Separation

A novel extension to recurrent timing neural networks (RTNNs) is proposed which allows such networks to exploit a joint interaural time difference-fundamental frequency (ITD-F0) auditory cue as opposed to F0 only This extension involves coupling a second layer of coincidence detectors to a two-dimensional RTNN. The coincidence detectors are tuned to particular ITDs and each feeds excitation to a column in the RTNN. Thus, one axis of the RTNN represents FO and the other ITD. The resulting behaviour allows sources to be segregated on the basis of their separation in ITD-F0 space. Furthermore, all grouping and segregation activity proceeds within individual frequency channels without recourse to across channel estimates of FO or ITD that are commonly used in auditory scene analysis approaches. The system has been evaluated using a source separation task operating on spatialised speech signals.
Characteristics of organic pores and composition of bio-precursors in the Wufeng and Longmaxi Formation shales, Southern Sichuan Basin, China

Bio-precursors of organic matter, referring to formerly living precursors, can influence content and distribution of organic pores significantly. However, insufficient attention has been paid in previous studies. To research the impact of bio-precursors of organic matter on shale organic pores, we conducted palynology and thin section analysis, total organic carbon analysis, and N2 gas absorption experiments on the Wufeng and Longmaxi Formations shales and kerogen samples from the Shuanghe outcrop section in southern Sichuan Basin, China. Generally, there are three bio-precursor assemblages being developed from bottom to top in the Wufeng and Longmaxi Formation, namely benthic algae, benthic–planktonic algae, and planktonic algae assemblages. Porosity in kerogen contributes greatly to shale porosity, accounting for 13 − 53% of total porosity. The total porosity and mesopore volume of samples (kerogen and shale) dominated by benthic algae are higher than those by planktonic algae. Pore size distributions of kerogen samples containing mainly benthic algae and planktonic algae are unimodal and multimodal type, respectively, when the pore diameter is larger than 5 nm. The different features between benthic and planktonic algae assemblages could be attributed to their different hydrocarbon generation potential and biological structure. Smaller fractal dimension of pores in kerogen samples mainly containing planktonic algae suggested that the planktonic algae are responsible for smoother pores in shales.
Performance analysis of a secondary heat recovery solar-assisted heat pump drying system for mango

An experimental investigation of solar-assisted heat pumpa drying mango has been conducted. A new solar-assisted heat pump drying system with a secondary heat recovery was setup, which can operate independently in solar drying mode and heat pump drying mode, or operate in a joint mode. An evaporator of the heat pump and a heat exchanger were adopted to recover the waste heat from the exhaust moist air from the drying chamber for increasing the utilization of energy. The mango slices of 80 kg were spread over 40 trays in the form of a single layer for the drying test with the hot air of 45°C. The experiments were conducted to dry the mango with solar drying mode and heat pump drying mode for studying the performance of the new drying system. The time durations were 6.5 h with the solar drying mode and 10.7 h with the heat pump drying mode for drying the mango, respectively. Moreover, the efficiency of the solar-assisted drying mode was 6% higher than the heat pump drying mode and the power consumption of 3.5 kW h could be saved by using the solar-assisted heat pump mode. The coefficients of performance were 3.48 and 3.69 for the heat pump drying mode and the solar-assisted heat pump mode, respectively. The average efficiency of the heat exchanger for recovering the waste heat could reach 41.7% during the whole working process.
Optimizing CNNs on Multicores for Scalability, Performance and Goodput

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are a class of Ar- tificial Neural Networks (ANN) that are highly efficient at the pattern recognition tasks that underlie difficult AI prob- lems in a variety of domains, such as speech recognition, object recognition, and natural language processing. CNNs are, however, computationally intensive to train. This paper presents the first characterization of the per- formance optimization opportunities for training CNNs on CPUs. Our characterization includes insights based on the structure of the network itself (i.e., intrinsic arithmetic inten- sity of the convolution and its scalability under parallelism) as well as dynamic properties of its execution (i.e., sparsity of the computation). Given this characterization, we present an automatic framework called spg-CNN for optimizing CNN training on CPUs. It comprises of a computation scheduler for efficient parallel execution, and two code generators: one that opti- mizes for sparsity, and the other that optimizes for spatial reuse in convolutions. We evaluate spg-CNN using convolutions from a variety of real world benchmarks, and show that spg-CNN can train CNNs faster than state-of-the-art approaches by an order of magnitude.
Origins of De Novo Genes in Human and Chimpanzee

The birth of new genes is an important motor of evolutionary innovation. Whereas many new genes arise by gene duplication, others originate at genomic regions that did not contain any genes or gene copies. Some of these newly expressed genes may acquire coding or non-coding functions and be preserved by natural selection. However, it is yet unclear which is the prevalence and underlying mechanisms of de novo gene emergence. In order to obtain a comprehensive view of this process, we have performed in-depth sequencing of the transcriptomes of four mammalian species—human, chimpanzee, macaque, and mouse—and subsequently compared the assembled transcripts and the corresponding syntenic genomic regions. This has resulted in the identification of over five thousand new multiexonic transcriptional events in human and/or chimpanzee that are not observed in the rest of species. Using comparative genomics, we show that the expression of these transcripts is associated with the gain of regulatory motifs upstream of the transcription start site (TSS) and of U1 snRNP sites downstream of the TSS. In general, these transcripts show little evidence of purifying selection, suggesting that many of them are not functional. However, we find signatures of selection in a subset of de novo genes which have evidence of protein translation. Taken together, the data support a model in which frequently-occurring new transcriptional events in the genome provide the raw material for the evolution of new proteins.
Wavelet Thresholding via a Bayesian

We discuss a Bayesian formalism which gives rise to a type of wavelet threshold estimation in non-parametric regression. A prior distribution is imposed on the wavelet coeecients of the unknown response function , designed to capture the sparseness of wavelet expansion common to most applications. For the prior speciied, the posterior median yields a thresholding procedure. Our prior model for the underlying function can be adjusted to give functions falling in any speciic Besov space. We establish a relation between the hyperparameters of the prior model and the parameters of those Besov spaces within which realizations from the prior will fall. Such a relation gives insight into the meaning of the Besov space parameters. Moreover, the established relation makes it possible in principle to incorporate prior knowledge about the function's regularity properties into the prior model for its wavelet coeecients. However, prior knowledge about a function's regularity properties might be hard to elicit; with this in mind, we propose a standard choise of prior hyperparameters that works well in our examples. Several simulated examples are used to illustrate our method, and comparisons are made with other thresholding methods. We also present an application to a data set collected in an anaesthesiological study.
Contrast analysis based on homogeneous and non-homogeneous patterns for SAR image classification*

Abstract This study presents a novel contrast-based classification algorithm for Synthetic Aperture Radar image. The proposed algorithm primarily analyses homogeneous and non-homogeneous patterns within the moving window. The points which are either significantly brighter or darker than the central pixel are considered as non-homogeneous patterns. While the points, moderately equal to central pixel are described as homogeneous patterns. The mean intensity values of homogeneous and non-homogeneous regions are used thereafter for measuring the contrast around the central pixel of the moving window. The ISODATA algorithm is used to classify the contrast transformed image. The importance of this method is that it is computationally simple, works with minimum human interaction and robust to speckle noise. The validation of the method is done on RISAT (Radar Imaging Satellite) data.
Serum amyloid A promotes lung neutrophilia by increasing IL-17A levels in the mucosa and γδ T cells.

RATIONALE Neutrophilic inflammation is an important pathologic feature of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and infectious exacerbations of COPD. Serum amyloid A (SAA) promotes neutrophilic inflammation by its interaction with lung mucosal ALX/FPR2 receptors. However, little is known about how this endogenous mediator regulates IL-17A immunity. OBJECTIVES To determine whether SAA causes neutrophilic inflammation by IL-17A-dependent mechanisms. METHODS The relationship between SAA and neutrophils was investigated in lung sections from patients with COPD and a chronic mouse model of SAA exposure. A neutralizing antibody to IL-17A was used to block SAA responses in vivo, and a cell-sorting strategy was used to identify cellular sources. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS SAA mRNA expression was positively associated with tissue neutrophils in COPD (P < 0.05). SAA predominately promoted expression of the TH17 polarizing cytokine IL-6, which was opposed by 15-epi-lipoxin A4, a counter-regulatory mediator, and ALX/FPR2 ligand. SAA-induced inflammation was markedly reduced by a neutralizing antibody to IL-17A in vivo. Cellular sources of IL-17A induced by SAA include CD4(+) T cells, γδ T cells, and an Epcam(+)CD45(-) population enriched for epithelial cells. SAA promotes expression of IL-17A in γδ T cells and this innate cell proportionally expressed higher levels of IL-17A transcript than CD4(+) T cells or epithelial cells. CONCLUSIONS The SAA-IL-17A axis represents an important innate defense network that may underlie persistent neutrophilic airway inflammation in COPD and modulating the ALX/FPR2 receptor represents a novel approach to targeting aberrant IL-17A-mediated lung immunity.
Seasonal Testicular Histology And Reproductive Cycle Of The Rainbow Lizard, Agama agama agama , L, (Agamidae, Reptilia) In Ile-Ife, South Western Nigeria

Seasonal histological features of the testis and epididymis were studied in male A. agama agama from July l990 to June, 1992 at Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Testis weights showed no significant difference (P > 0.05) in the dry and rainy seasons, but were generally low from August to January. Whereas seminiferous tubule diameter and epithelia heights showed no seasonal variation (p > 0.05), the epididymal tubule diameter and epithelia heights varied seasonally (P < 0.001). Although males in full breeding condition were caught all through the months, such were more prevalent from April to July. Females with eggs or enlarged ovarian follicles were caught all through the study period. Cases of multiple clutches were predominant from February to July. However vitellogenic activities decreased from August to January thus coinciding with the observed decrease in spermatogenic activity in the male. We propose that individual male Agama lizards maintain peculiar breeding patterns and that reproduction in Agama seems to be influenced by food availability as well as microclimatic conditions at oviposition sites.