Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy and implementation of granulosis virus against codling moth in orchard IPM.

A commereial formulation of granuTosis vitus of codling noxh (c$v) was tested in a field trial. Three tactics tot applying thb virus were co4pared: (L) four applications of the standard dose of 0.5 7 ha-t with aD average interval of 1"30 day degrees >Looc, (2) 10 appTications of' 0.05 7 ha-l with'a w-eek7y intervaT, and (3) a conbination of these tactics. In a7l vints treatments, numbets of deep antries caused by codlinq moth Tarsrae vete reduced with about 9O*. cpcv appears to fit weTl in the present orchatd IPti system in the iletherlands. In the tirst period of egg hatch, the use ot a 7ow dosaqe in conbinatLon with the trequent fungicide applications is an option. llhen fenoxycarb is used attet bLoom 'aQainst Leafro77ers, CNv should be suitable fot a corrective treatment Tater in the season. htroaluctiott Granulosis virus (cpcv) would be an attractive alternatLve to chemical insecticides for control of the codling moth, cydia pomoneTTa (L.),'in Dutch orchard IPlt. Since 1ts discovery in 1963 (Tanada, L964), this specific pathogen has been proved effective in many field trials (Huber & Dickler 1977, Jagues et a7. L987, Blommers et a7. 1987, Audemard & Cavalloro 1988). Recently, a formulation by Hoechst AG, with the name Granusal, was registered in cermany. In 1991 this forrnulation rras used in a field trial in the Netherlands. Because the neonate larvae feed very little before entering the fruit, it is inportant that a lethal density of virus particles is present on the fruits during the entire period of egg hatch. Taking into account the inactivation of cpcv by sunlight, Dickler (1989) suggested some possible control tactics. These tactics were compared in this trial. The first one is to cover the period of egg hatch with (1) few applications with a relatively hiqh ('standard') dose df cpcv. Because decreasing the dose has little effect on the efficacy of the virus during the first week after application (Dickler & Huber, 1986), an other tactic is (2) to spray one tenth of the dose with a weekly interval, the so-called Split-up treatnent. These tactics can also be combined; (3) the sptit. up schene is followed first, and if needed, standard doses are applied later. According to the autors, the initial low dosages can be combined with fungicide sprays during this period, so as to avoid extra labour.
Optimal Power Dispatch of DGs in DC Power Grids: a Hybrid Gauss-Seidel-Genetic-Algorithm Methodology for Solving the OPF Problem

This paper addresses the optimal power flow (OPF) problem in direct current (DC) power grids via a hybrid Gauss-Seidel-Genetic-Algorithm methodology through a master-slave optimization strategy. In the master stage, a genetic algorithm is employed to select the power dispatch for any distributed generator while the slave stage, Gauss-Seidel method is used for solving the resulting power flow equations without recurring to matrix inversions. This approach is important since it can be easily implementable over any simple programming toolbox finding the optimal solution of the OPF problem. Genetic-Algorithm proposed in this paper corresponds to a continuous variant of the conventional binary approaches. Computational results show the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed optimization method when is compared to GAMS/CONOPT nonlinear solver.
Female Orgasm and the Phallic Constraint Hypothesis: The Consequence of the Byproduct Account

Whereas Gould & Lewontin (1979) accuse adaptationists of ignoring developmental constraints, it has been claimed that this problem is not intrinsic to adaptationism, and that adaptationism has improved in this respect since the ‘spandrels’ paper. However, a proper examination of one of the greatest debates over adaptationism, that over female orgasm, does not show this higher standard being put into practice. This paper explores the ‘phallic constraint hypothesis’ implicit in the so-called byproduct account of female orgasm, not as some ‘anti-adaptationist’ ‘explanation’ of female orgasm but rather as a factor in the structure of adaptationist theory. It is argued that the outcome of this hypothesis is far too significant to be ignored and that in doing so (however inadvertently because the by-product account has generally not been proposed as a constraint), the adaptationists of this debate conform closer to the portrayal of Gould & Lewontin than to, for example, that of Mayr (1983) or Dawkins (2006a).
Comparative Clinical Results of Phacoemulsification Combined with CO2 Laser-Assisted Sclerectomy vs. Phacoemulsification Combined with Trabeculectomy in Patients with Open-Angle Glaucoma

Purpose: To compare outcomes of CO2 laser–assisted sclerectomy surgery (CLASS) and trabeculectomy in patients with open-angle glaucoma, both combined with phacoemulsification. Methods: A retrospective analytical study included 70 eyes. We compared the results of surgical procedures, phacoemulsification + trabeculectomy + Ologen implant performed in 2013 and 2014 and phacoemulsification + CLASS + Ologen implant performed in 2015 and 2016. Patients diagnosed with open-angle glaucoma were included. Intraocular pressure (IOP) was measured preoperatively and at 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. Best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was measured preoperatively and at 1, 9, and 12 months. Medication use was measured preoperatively and at 9 and 12 months. Success rate was defined as IOP ≤ 18 mmHg with or without medication 1 year postoperatively. Results: In total, 37 eyes were included in the trabeculectomy group and 33 eyes in the CLASS group. Both groups had a follow-up of 1 year. In the trabeculectomy group, mean ± SD preoperative IOP and that at 1-year follow-up were 17.03 ± 5.75 and 11.65 ± 1.34 mmHg (a reduction of 37.68%), BCVA increased from 0.196 ± 0.27 to 0.20 ± 0.32, and medications decreased from 2.97 ± 1.11 to 1.27 ± 1.07. The success rate was 86.4%. In the CLASS group, mean ± SD preoperative IOP and that at 1-year follow-up were 21.15 ± 7.2 and 12.42 ± 2.3 mmHg (a 45.19% reduction), BCVA declined from 0.20 ± 0.2 to 0.07 ± 0.1, and medications decreased from 3.51 ± 0.79 to 0.51 ± 0.66. The success rate was 97.2%. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that CLASS is a technique that allows good reduction of IOP and medications and maintains better visual acuity with lower rates of postoperative complications than conventional trabeculectomy.
Improving Variational Autoencoders with Inverse Autoregressive Flow

We propose a simple and scalable method for improving the flexibility of variational inference through a transformation with autoregressive neural networks. Autoregressive neural networks, such as RNNs or the PixelCNN, are very powerful models and potentially interesting for use as variational posterior approximation. However, ancestral sampling in such networks is a long sequential operation, and therefore typically very slow on modern parallel hardware, such as GPUs. We show that by inverting autoregressive neural networks we can obtain equally powerful posterior models from which we can sample efficiently on modern hardware. We show that such data transformations, inverse autoregressive flows (IAF), can be used to transform a simple distribution over the latent variables into a much more flexible distribution, while still allowing us to compute the resulting variables' probability density function. The method is simple to implement, can be made arbitrarily flexible and, in contrast with previous work, is well applicable to models with high-dimensional latent spaces, such as convolutional generative models. The method is applied to a novel deep architecture of variational auto-encoders. In experiments with natural images, we demonstrate that autoregressive flow leads to significant performance gains.
Receptive Fields Neural Networks using the Gabor Kernel Family

Image classification is an increasingly important field within machine learning. Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNN’s) have been proven to be one of the most successful approaches. CNN’s perform outstanding when ample training data is available. However, because CNN’s have a large number of parameters they are prone to overfitting, meaning it will work well on training data, but not on unseen data. Moreover, there are no specific mechanisms in a CNN to take variances, like scale and rotation, into account. Jacobsen et al. [1] proposed a model to overcome these problems, called the receptive field neural network (RFNN). We extend upon the results of Jacobsen et al. to use a weighted combinations of fixed receptive fields in a convolutional neural network. The key difference is that we are using the Gabor family basis for the fixed receptive fields, instead of the Gaussian derivative basis. The use of the Gabor family is inspired by their ability to model receptive fields in the visual system in the mammal cortex and their use in the field of computer vision. We performed an exploratory study on the Gabor family basis in the RFNN model using three well established datasets of images, the Handwritten Digit dataset (MNIST), the MNIST Rotated and the German Traffic Signs dataset (GTSRB). Our results show that for fewer training examples the Gabor RFNN performs better than the classical CNN. Moreover, the results compared with the Gaussian RFNN suggest that the Gabor family basis has a lot of potential in the RFNN model, performing close to state-of-the-art models. In the future, we should look for a method of learning the Gabor function parameters, making it less sensitive to parameters chosen a priori.
Recommending personalized touristic sights using google places

The purpose of the Contextual Suggestion track, an evaluation task at the TREC 2012 conference, is to suggest personalized tourist activities to an individual, given a certain location and time. In our content-based approach, we collected initial recommendations using the location context as search query in Google Places. We first ranked the recommendations based on their textual similarity to the user profiles. In order to improve the ranking of popular sights, we combined the initial ranking with rankings based on Google Search, popularity and categories. Finally, we performed filtering based on the temporal context. Overall, our system performed well above average and median, and outperformed the baseline - Google Places only -- run.
An Optimal Algorithm for the Separating Common Tangents of two Polygons

We describe an algorithm for computing the separating common tangents of two simple polygons using linear time and only constant workspace. A tangent of a polygon is a line touching the polygon such that all of the polygon lies to the same side of the line. A separating common tangent of two polygons is a tangent of both polygons where the polygons are lying on different sides of the tangent. Each polygon is given as a read-only array of its corners. If a separating common tangent does not exist, the algorithm reports that. Otherwise, two corners defining a separating common tangent are returned. The algorithm is simple and implies an optimal algorithm for deciding if the convex hulls of two polygons are disjoint or not. This was not known to be possible in linear time and constant workspace prior to this paper. An outer common tangent is a tangent of both polygons where the polygons are on the same side of the tangent. In the case where the convex hulls of the polygons are disjoint, we give an algorithm for computing the outer common tangents in linear time using constant workspace.
Groups of Adjacent Contour Segments for Object Detection

We present a family of scale-invariant local shape features formed by chains of k connected roughly straight contour segments (kAS), and their use for object class detection. kAS are able to cleanly encode pure fragments of an object boundary without including nearby clutter. Moreover, they offer an attractive compromise between information content and repeatability and encompass a wide variety of local shape structures. We also define a translation and scale invariant descriptor encoding the geometric configuration of the segments within a kAS, making kAS easy to reuse in other frameworks, for example, as a replacement or addition to interest points (IPs). Software for detecting and describing kAS is released at http://lear.inrialpes. fr/software. We demonstrate the high performance of kAS within a simple but powerful sliding-window object detection scheme. Through extensive evaluations, involving eight diverse object classes and more than 1,400 images, we (1) study the evolution of performance as the degree of feature complexity k varies and determine the best degree, (2) show that kAS substantially outperform IPs for detecting shape-based classes, and (3) compare our object detector to the recent state-of-the-art system by Dalal and Triggs (2005).
Oral Appliance Therapy Should be Reimbursed After CPAP Intolerance

It is the position of the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (AADSM) that payers should cover oral appliance therapy (OAT) provided by a qualified dentist after a physician has determined that the patient is intolerant to Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP). Current scholarly data indicate that OAT successfully manages OSA and is cost effective. The AADSM convened a task force of experts with the goal to review evidence in favor of OAT reimbursement. Thus, this paper will explore the evidence in favor of OAT reimbursement.
Estimating the Population Impact of a New Pediatric Influenza Vaccination Program in England Using Social Media Content

Background The rollout of a new childhood live attenuated influenza vaccine program was launched in England in 2013, which consisted of a national campaign for all 2 and 3 year olds and several pilot locations offering the vaccine to primary school-age children (4-11 years of age) during the influenza season. The 2014/2015 influenza season saw the national program extended to include additional pilot regions, some of which offered the vaccine to secondary school children (11-13 years of age) as well. Objective We utilized social media content to obtain a complementary assessment of the population impact of the programs that were launched in England during the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 flu seasons. The overall community-wide impact on transmission in pilot areas was estimated for the different age groups that were targeted for vaccination. Methods A previously developed statistical framework was applied, which consisted of a nonlinear regression model that was trained to infer influenza-like illness (ILI) rates from Twitter posts originating in pilot (school-age vaccinated) and control (unvaccinated) areas. The control areas were then used to estimate ILI rates in pilot areas, had the intervention not taken place. These predictions were compared with their corresponding Twitter-based ILI estimates. Results Results suggest a reduction in ILI rates of 14% (1-25%) and 17% (2-30%) across all ages in only the primary school-age vaccine pilot areas during the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 influenza seasons, respectively. No significant impact was observed in areas where two age cohorts of secondary school children were vaccinated. Conclusions These findings corroborate independent assessments from traditional surveillance data, thereby supporting the ongoing rollout of the program to primary school-age children and providing evidence of the value of social media content as an additional syndromic surveillance tool.
Interacting Symbionts and Immunity in the Amphibian Skin Mucosome Predict Disease Risk and Probiotic Effectiveness

Pathogenesis is strongly dependent on microbial context, but development of probiotic therapies has neglected the impact of ecological interactions. Dynamics among microbial communities, host immune responses, and environmental conditions may alter the effect of probiotics in human and veterinary medicine, agriculture and aquaculture, and the proposed treatment of emerging wildlife and zoonotic diseases such as those occurring on amphibians or vectored by mosquitoes. Here we use a holistic measure of amphibian mucosal defenses to test the effects of probiotic treatments and to assess disease risk under different ecological contexts. We developed a non-invasive assay for antifungal function of the skin mucosal ecosystem (mucosome function) integrating host immune factors and the microbial community as an alternative to pathogen exposure experiments. From approximately 8500 amphibians sampled across Europe, we compared field infection prevalence with mucosome function against the emerging fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Four species were tested with laboratory exposure experiments, and a highly susceptible species, Alytes obstetricans, was treated with a variety of temperature and microbial conditions to test the effects of probiotic therapies and environmental conditions on mucosome function. We found that antifungal function of the amphibian skin mucosome predicts the prevalence of infection with the fungal pathogen in natural populations, and is linked to survival in laboratory exposure experiments. When altered by probiotic therapy, the mucosome increased antifungal capacity, while previous exposure to the pathogen was suppressive. In culture, antifungal properties of probiotics depended strongly on immunological and environmental context including temperature, competition, and pathogen presence. Functional changes in microbiota with shifts in temperature provide an alternative mechanistic explanation for patterns of disease susceptibility related to climate beyond direct impact on host or pathogen. This nonlethal management tool can be used to optimize and quickly assess the relative benefits of probiotic therapies under different climatic, microbial, or host conditions.
Polynomial Surfaces Interpolating Arbitrary Triangulations

Triangular Bezier patches are an important tool for defining smooth surfaces over arbitrary triangular meshes. The previously introduced 4-split method interpolates the vertices of a 2-manifold triangle mesh by a set of tangent plane continuous triangular Bezier patches of degree five. The resulting surface has an explicit closed form representation and is defined locally. In this paper, we introduce a new method for visually smooth interpolation of arbitrary triangle meshes based on a regular 4-split of the domain triangles. Ensuring tangent plane continuity of the surface is not enough for producing an overall fair shape. Interpolation of irregular control-polygons, be that in 1D or in 2D, often yields unwanted undulations. Note that this undulation problem is not particular to parametric interpolation, but also occurs with interpolatory subdivision surfaces. Our new method avoids unwanted undulations by relaxing the constraint of the first derivatives at the input mesh vertices: The tangent directions of the boundary curves at the mesh vertices are now completely free. Irregular triangulations can be handled much better in the sense that unwanted undulations due to flat triangles in the mesh are now avoided.
Effect of egg albumen (protein additive) on surimi prepared from lizardfish (Saurida tumbil) during frozen storage.

Lizardfish (Saurida tumbil (Bloch, 1795)) is a relatively abundant, low value fish that has wide distribution in India due to its adaptability to different environments. This study is an attempt to explore the possibilities of better utilization of this species by development of minced-based value added products and the evaluation of shelf life during frozen storage. Lizardfish were mince for the preparation of value added products viz., surimi and surimi with 3% egg albumen. The biochemical, gel strength and sensory parameters were analyzed to study the quality changes and shelf life of these products in frozen storage at -20C. The addition of 3% egg albumen exhibited gel enhancing effect by increase in gel stregth 113.56 g.cm, where as same treatment after 120 days of storage, % of total protein was higher 12.69 with comapare to without egg albumen surimi.
CORRELATION OF FGF23 AND BALP WITH BONE MINERAL DENSITY IN HEMODIALYSIS PATIENTS

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with numerous complications such as bone mineral disorder. The aim of our study was to analyze the correlation of bone turnover markers with Bone Mineral Density (BMD) measurements in Tunisian end stage renal diseases (ESRD) patients. Methods: This study included 100 ESRD Tunisian patients. Their estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was < 15 mL × min -1 × (1.73 m 2 ) -1 , which requires hemodialysis. Bone-specific alkaline phosphatase (BALP) serum con cen - tration was determined with a chemiluminescence immuno assay. Fibroblast Growth Factor 23 (FGF23) serum was assessed by Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay method. The serum levels of 25-Hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) and Beta cross-laps (CTX) was measured by Electrochemilumine - scence Technology. DEXA (dual-energy x-ray absorptio -metry) technique was used to evaluate BMD. Results: We observed a statistically significant negative correlation between BALP levels and total body BMD (r = P = 0.046). For osteopenic patients we found an inverse correlation between 25(OH)D concentrations and BMD in LS position (r = -0.336; P = 0.038). In men group, we have also found a negative correlation between iPTH and total BMD (r = -0.326; P = 0.015). However we found a positive correlation between calcium expression and BMD in LS site (r = 0.270; P = 0.031). Conclusions: FGF23 and BALP can predict bone loss in ESRD through their strong correlation with BMD in LS and FN sites respectively.
ASSOCIATION OF THE MTHFR 677C>T POLYMORPHISM WITH OBESITY AND BIOCHEMICAL VARIABLES IN A YOUNG POPULATION OF MEXICO

Background: Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase ( MTHFR ) gene polymorphisms have been associated with overweight people and obesity. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship of the MTHFR 677C>T s, for s. final extension in females. Also, overweight/obese individuals with TT genotype had less risk of high cholesterol or triglycerides than overweight/obese subjects with the other genotypes. Conclusions: These results suggest that the MTHFR 677T polymorphism might not be a risk factor for being over - weight/obesity. Rather, on the basis of our results, this variant could be a protector effect. However, further large- scale population-based studies are still necessary to clarify the role of the MTHFR 677C>T polymorphism in over - weight, obesity, and lipid profile level.
A systematic review

Abstract Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique to modulate cortical excitability and to induce neuronal plasticity. With a wide range of applications in neurological and psychiatric disorders, the efficiency of tDCS is also studied in the treatment of various pain conditions. Treatment with tDCS might accordingly provide pain relief for patients with acute or chronic pain and thus lead to an increase in quality of life. Moreover, applied as an adjunct therapy, tDCS can reduce help to reduce pain medication intake and accompanying adverse events. To this end, this review examines studies evaluating the efficacy of tDCS in pain relief in patients with intra-abdominal pain.