Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serving Deep Learning Models with Deduplication from Relational Databases

Serving deep learning models from relational databases brings significant benefits. First, features extracted from databases do not need to be transferred to any decoupled deep learning systems for inferences, and thus the system management overhead can be significantly reduced. Second, in a relational database, data management along the storage hierarchy is fully integrated with query processing, and thus it can continue model serving even if the working set size exceeds the available memory. Applying model deduplication can greatly reduce the storage space, memory footprint, cache misses, and inference latency. However, existing data deduplication techniques are not applicable to the deep learning model serving applications in relational databases. They do not consider the impacts on model inference accuracy as well as the inconsistency between tensor blocks and database pages. This work proposed synergistic storage optimization techniques for duplication detection, page packing, and caching, to enhance database systems for model serving. Evaluation results show that our proposed techniques significantly improved the storage efficiency and the model inference latency, and outperformed existing deep learning frameworks in targeting scenarios.
Divergent effects of transformational leadership on safety compliance: A dual-path moderated mediation model

Research on the relationship between transformational leadership and safety compliance has yielded equivocal results. This study investigates how and when transformational leadership produces divergent effects on safety compliance. Using a time-lagged research design, we collect data from a sample of 309 employees in the Chinese construction industry to examine the hypothesized relationship. We find that transformational leadership positively affects safety compliance through employees’ felt obligation toward their leader. However, transformational leadership also negatively impacts safety compliance through safety risk tolerance. We further show that employees’ perception of the safety climate plays a contingent role in the above processes. Specifically, a high-level perceived safety climate strengthens the positive indirect effect of transformational leadership on safety compliance through felt obligation, while a low-level perceived safety climate strengthens the negative indirect effect of transformational leadership on safety compliance through safety risk tolerance. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are also discussed.
Adolescent Athletes Demonstrate Inferior Objective Profiles at the Time of Return to Sport After ACLR Compared With Healthy Controls

Background: Athletes display persistent muscle deficits and altered limb-loading mechanics at the time of return to sport (RTS) after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR). Purpose: To compare an objective profile of adolescent athletes at RTS after ACLR to matched healthy controls. Study Design: Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Included were 124 participants; 62 patients who underwent ACLR (15.4 ± 1.7 years) and 62 healthy controls (15.3 ± 1.7 years). Motion capture and force plates were used to capture joint motions during jump landing (JL) and single-limb squat (SLS) tasks. Energy absorption contribution (EAC) was calculated, and repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to assess for EAC differences between groups. Participants completed an International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) Subjective Knee Form, and isokinetic quadriceps and hamstring strength testing was performed on each limb. Independent t tests were run to examine age, height, weight, and IKDC scores as well as compare differences between groups for quadriceps and hamstring strength. Results: A significant group × joint interaction was found for JL (P < .001) and SLS (P < .001). For JL, patients who underwent ACLR utilized significantly greater hip (P < .001) and significantly less knee (P < .001) EAC on the surgical limb compared with controls. During SLS, patients who underwent ACLR utilized significantly greater hip (P < .001) and significantly less knee (P < .001) EAC on the surgical limb compared with controls. The ACLR cohort demonstrated lower IKDC scores (P < .001) and significantly lower quadriceps strength on the surgical limb (P < .001) than controls. There were no differences in surgical limb hamstring strength between the ACLR cohort and healthy controls (P = .701). Conclusion: Compared with matched healthy controls, the participants who underwent ACLR in this study demonstrated an inferior objective profile at RTS, consisting of deficits in surgical limb loading, self-reported outcomes, and strength.
Baseline characteristics, management and long-term outcomes of different etiologies of cardiac tamponade evaluated in a cohort of 340 patients

Introduction Studies on the etiology of cardiac tamponade (CT) are scarce or lacking follow-up, and usually include small or highly selected groups of patients. Aim To evaluate the various etiologies and outcomes of CT in a cohort of patients treated in a tertiary care hospital encompassing cardiology, cardiac surgery and intensive care units. Material and methods We retrospectively analyzed all adult patients hospitalized in the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze (Poland) between January 2008 and December 2018, who required therapeutic pericardiocentesis or pericardiotomy due to CT. All various etiologies of CT were presented and assigned to the main etiology groups. For each group basic characteristics, in-hospital management, in-hospital and up to 2-year mortality were analyzed. Result Among 340 patients with CT, 56% were men. The leading etiology groups included patients after invasive cardiac procedures, patients following postpericardiotomy (PCT) syndrome and the patients with neoplasm. Patients with end stage renal failure, PCT and iatrogenic CTs were the most disease burdened groups. The highest need for advanced therapy and in-hospital mortality were observed for the acute myocardial infarction group, in contrast to PCT. Conclusions Within our cohort of patients, the invasive cardiac procedures overtake neoplastic causation of cardiac tamponade. The worst in-hospital prognosis was noted for CT following acute myocardial infarction and both iatrogenic invasive cardiac and cardiac surgery procedures. The highest long-term mortality was recorded for patients with end stage renal failure and the neoplastic group.
Characteristics of Lung Microbiota in Children's Refractory Mycoplasma pneumoniae Pneumonia Coinfected with Human Adenovirus B

Background Both M. pneumoniae and human adenovirus (HAdV) are common causative agents of lower respiratory tract infection in children; nonetheless, the lung microbiota in patients with coinfection of HAdV and M. pneumoniae remain unexplored. Methods Thirty-two children, diagnosed with refractory M. pneumoniae pneumonia (RMPP), entered into the one-year study from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. Among them, twenty-one entered into the M. pneumoniae monoinfection (MP) group and eleven entered into the M. pneumoniae and HAdV coinfection (MP&ADV) group. The characteristics of the clinical findings were examined, and the lung microbiota was analyzed by metagenomic next generation sequencing (mNGS). Results Eleven patients in the MP&ADV group were coinfected with human mastadenovirus species B. The fever days lasted for significantly longer periods in the MP&ADV group than in the MP group (P < 0.05). The percentage of CD16+CD56+ cells was significantly higher in the MP&ADV group than that in the MP group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in α-diversity between the MP and MP&ADV groups, but the β-diversity was clearly higher in the MP&ADV group than that in the MP group (P < 0.05). At the microbial level, the top phylum of the MP BALF microbiota was Tenericutes; in contrast, it was Preplasmiviricota in the MP&ADV BALF. There were significant differences in the relative abundance of Tenericutes and Preplasmiviricota between the two groups (P < 0.001). There was a strong positive correlation between human mastadenovirus B and fever days, M. pneumoniae and level of IgA, and a strong negative correlation between Mycoplasma pneumoniae and PCT. Conclusions In RMPP, the BALF microbiota in children with mono M. pneumoniae infection was simpler than those with coinfection with human mastadenovirus B. Prolonged fever days were associated with human mastadenovirus B coinfection.
Comparison of Epidermal Gene Expression Profiles in Mice Aged 1 to 20 Months

Introduction Although it is well known that epidermal function changes with aging, the transcriptomic basis and possible signaling pathways for aging-associated functional changes remain largely unknown. Methods Here, we employed RNA sequencing techniques to assess epidermal gene expression profiles in the epidermis of mice aged 1, 2, 6, 12 and 20 months. Results A total of 132 genes displayed reductions in expression levels with aging, while expression levels of 406 genes increased with aging. Epidermal gene expression was prominently upregulated in 2-month-old vs 1-month-old mice, while more genes were downregulated in 12-month-old mice. Upregulation of genes associated with immune/inflammatory responses was observed in the epidermis of aged mice in comparison to that of young mice, whereas downregulated signaling pathways in the epidermis of aged mice were primarily involved in metabolism, such as fatty acid elongation, glutathione metabolism and biosynthesis of antibiotics. Some signaling pathways, such as chemokine signaling, cytokine/cytokine receptor interaction signaling and IL-17 signaling pathways, were remarkably upregulated in 12-month-old mice. Steroid synthesis, metabolic pathway, thermogenesis and proteasome pathways were steadily downregulated, starting at 2 months old. Conclusion These results indicate that the epidermis of aged mice displays an upregulation of genes associated with inflammatory signaling pathways, and downregulation of genes related to metabolic signaling pathways.
PREVENTING CHRONIC DISEASE

Introduction Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death among American Indians and Alaska Natives. Reducing CVD risk requires effective communication about risk factors and preventive behaviors. Messages should be designed with an understanding of where people seek health information, their perceptions of a hazard, and their perception of information sufficiency. We examined these components of message design to inform strategies to effectively communicate information about CVD to American Indians and Alaska Natives. Methods We surveyed 220 adults who self-identified as American Indians or Alaska Natives at 2 Native-focused events in urban areas. Our survey included items on demographic characteristics, place of residence, sources of information used to learn about CVD, perceived information sufficiency, and perceptions about the importance of CVD as a health problem. Results Respondents used the internet (67%), their doctors (66%), friends and relatives (63%), brochures (62%), and television (61%) to learn about CVD. Participants aged 60 or older and those living on a reservation were more likely to use their doctor to learn about CVD than their younger (≤30 y) or urban peers. CVD was viewed as a major problem for American Indians and Alaska Natives (84%) and for Americans in general (86%). Most respondents felt moderately (54%) or well informed (37%) about CVD. Conclusion Various information sources should be used to increase awareness about CVD. Special attention may be needed to optimize communication to American Indians and Alaska Natives aged 60 or older and people living on reservations. Further study is needed to determine how our findings can best inform effective interventions to reduce CVD morbidity and mortality among these populations.
Interdigitated Columnar Representation of Personal Space and Visual Space in Human Parietal Cortex

Personal space (PS) is the space around the body that people prefer to maintain between themselves and unfamiliar others. Intrusion into personal space evokes discomfort and an urge to move away. Physiologic studies in nonhuman primates suggest that defensive responses to intruding stimuli involve the parietal cortex. We hypothesized that the spatial encoding of interpersonal distance is initially transformed from purely sensory to more egocentric mapping within human parietal cortex. This hypothesis was tested using 7 Tesla (7T) fMRI at high spatial resolution (1.1 mm isotropic), in seven subjects (four females, three males). In response to visual stimuli presented at a range of virtual distances, we found two categories of distance encoding in two corresponding radially-extending columns of activity within parietal cortex. One set of columns (P columns) responded selectively to moving and stationary face images presented at virtual distances that were nearer (but not farther) than each subject's behaviorally-defined personal space boundary. In most P columns, BOLD response amplitudes increased monotonically and nonlinearly with increasing virtual face proximity. In the remaining P columns, BOLD responses decreased with increasing proximity. A second set of parietal columns (D columns) responded selectively to disparity-based distance cues (near or far) in random dot stimuli, similar to disparity-selective columns described previously in occipital cortex. Critically, in parietal cortex, P columns were topographically interdigitated (nonoverlapping) with D columns. These results suggest that visual spatial information is transformed from visual to body-centered (or person-centered) dimensions in multiple local sites within human parietal cortex. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Recent COVID-related social distancing practices highlight the need to better understand brain mechanisms which regulate “personal space” (PS), which is defined by the closest interpersonal distance that is comfortable for an individual. Using high spatial resolution brain imaging, we tested whether a map of external space is transformed from purely visual (3D-based) information to a more egocentric map (related to personal space) in human parietal cortex. We confirmed this transformation and further showed that it was mediated by two mutually segregated sets of columns: one which encoded interpersonal distance and another that encoded visual distance. These results suggest that the cortical transformation of sensory-centered to person-centered encoding of space near the body involves short-range communication across interdigitated columns within parietal cortex.
A full-stack search technique for domain optimized deep learning accelerators

The rapidly-changing deep learning landscape presents a unique opportunity for building inference accelerators optimized for specific datacenter-scale workloads. We propose Full-stack Accelerator Search Technique (FAST), a hardware accelerator search framework that defines a broad optimization environment covering key design decisions within the hardware-software stack, including hardware datapath, software scheduling, and compiler passes such as operation fusion and tensor padding. In this paper, we analyze bottlenecks in state-of-the-art vision and natural language processing (NLP) models, including EfficientNet and BERT, and use FAST to design accelerators capable of addressing these bottlenecks. FAST-generated accelerators optimized for single workloads improve Perf/TDP by 3.7× on average across all benchmarks compared to TPU-v3. A FAST-generated accelerator optimized for serving a suite of workloads improves Perf/TDP by 2.4× on average compared to TPU-v3. Our return on investment analysis shows that FAST-generated accelerators can potentially be practical for moderate-sized datacenter deployments.
BERT Attends the Conversation: Improving Low-Resource Conversational ASR

We propose new, data-efficient training tasks for BERT models that improve performance of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems on conversational speech. We include past conversational context and fine-tune BERT on transcript disambiguation without external data to rescore ASR candidates. Our results show word error rate recoveries up to 37.2%. We test our methods in low-resource data domains, both in language (Norwegian), tone (spontaneous, conversational), and topics (parliament proceedings and customer service phone calls). These techniques are applicable to any ASR system and do not require any additional data, provided a pre-trained BERT model. We also show how the performance of our context-augmented rescoring methods strongly depends on the degree of spontaneity and nature of the conversation.
The effects of cow introductions on milk production and behaviour of the herd measured with sensors

Abstract This research paper addresses the hypothesis that cow introductions in dairy herds affect milk production and behaviour of animals already in the herd. In dairy farms, cows are commonly regrouped or moved. Negative effects of regroupings on the introduced animals are reported in other studies. However, little is known about the effects on lactating cows in the herd. In this research a herd of 53 lactating dairy cows was divided into two groups in a cross-over design study. 25 cows were selected as focal cows for which continuous sensor data were collected. The treatment period consisted of replacing non-focal cows three times a week. Many potentially influencing factors were taken into account in the analysis. Replacement of cows in the treatment period indeed affected the focal animals. During the treatment period these cows showed increased walking and reduced rumination activity and produced less milk compared to the control period. Milk production per milking decreased in the treatment period up to 0.4 kg per milking on certain weekdays. Lying and standing behaviour were similar between the control and the treatment period. The current study suggests that cow introductions affect welfare and milk production of the cows already in the herd.
A comprehensive update to Dendritic Cell therapy for glioma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Background Gliomas are major challenges of neuro-oncology due to high mortality. Clinical applications of dendritic cells (DCs) have yielded promising results in the clinical trial pipelines over decades. Research design In this systematic review, we critically discuss the current status, future perspective, and challenges of DC therapy for gliomas . and summarize the study population, blinding, comparators, dosage, treatment regimens, efficacy, and safety issues of the clinical trials published on DC therapy for gliomas and also report the results of our meta-analysis on safety and immunological efficacy of DC therapy for gliomas. Results The results of our meta-analysis indicated that the most frequent grade I/II adverse event (AE) reported in phase I or phase I/II trials was fatigue (∼16% and 24%). Moreover, in phase II trials, fatigue and cytopenia were the most common AEs (∼9% and 14%). Meanwhile, Grade III/IV AEs were rare . Moreover, our meta-analysis indicated ∼64% CD8+ T cells infiltration into tumor site after DC therapy and also ∼45% IFNγ increase. Conclusions DC therapy could serve as a potential immunotherapy for gliomas; however, limitations exist to draw certain conclusions due to diversity of the criteria applied to assess clinical response and limited data on patients’ survival.
Surveillance of Rodent Pests for SARS-CoV-2 and Other Coronaviruses, Hong Kong

We report surveillance conducted in 217 pestiferous rodents in Hong Kong for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We did not detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA but identified 1 seropositive rodent, suggesting exposure to a virus antigenically similar to SARS-CoV-2. Potential exposure of urban rodents to SARS-CoV-2 cannot be ruled out.
Myeloid cell TBK1 restricts inflammatory responses

Significance Macrophages play a crucial role in chronic inflammatory diseases, such as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and inflammatory bowel disease, but how the proinflammatory function of macrophages is controlled is not well understood. In this work, we identified TBK1 as a pivotal anti-inflammatory factor in macrophages that restricts inflammation in different disease models. Myeloid cell–specific TBK1 deficiency causes spontaneous development of metabolic disorders in aged mice and exacerbates high-fat diet–induced fatty liver disease with NASH-like symptoms. The Tbk1-MKO mice are also hypersensitive to experimental colitis. We obtained genetic evidence that TBK1 is crucial for controlling proinflammatory signaling pathway in macrophages. These findings establish TBK1 as a pivotal anti-inflammatory factor and a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. Proinflammatory cytokine production by innate immune cells plays a crucial role in inflammatory diseases, but the molecular mechanisms controlling the inflammatory responses are poorly understood. Here, we show that TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) serves as a vital regulator of proinflammatory macrophage function and protects against tissue inflammation. Myeloid cell–conditional Tbk1 knockout (MKO) mice spontaneously developed adipose hypertrophy and metabolic disorders at old ages, associated with increased adipose tissue M1 macrophage infiltration and proinflammatory cytokine expression. When fed with a high-fat diet, the Tbk1-MKO mice also displayed exacerbated hepatic inflammation and insulin resistance, developing symptoms of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Furthermore, myeloid cell–specific TBK1 ablation exacerbates inflammation in experimental colitis. Mechanistically, TBK1 functions in macrophages to suppress the NF-κB and MAP kinase signaling pathways and thus attenuate induction of proinflammatory cytokines, particularly IL-1β. Ablation of IL-1 receptor 1 (IL-1R1) eliminates the inflammatory symptoms of Tbk1-MKO mice. These results establish TBK1 as a pivotal anti-inflammatory mediator that restricts inflammation in different disease models.
H2O2 concentration-dependent kinetics of gene expression: linking the intensity of oxidative stress and mycobacterial physiological adaptation

ABSTRACT Defence against oxidative stress is crucial for Mycobacterium tuberculosis to survive and replicate within macrophages. Mycobacteria have evolved multilayer antioxidant systems, including scavenging enzymes, iron homeostasis, repair pathways, and metabolic adaptation, for coping with oxidative stress. How these systems are coordinated to enable the physiological adaptation to different intensities of oxidative stress, however, remains unclear. To address this, we investigated the expression kinetics of the well-characterized antioxidant genes at bacteriostatic H2O2 concentrations ranging from 1 mM to 10 mM employing Mycolicibacterium smegmatis as a model. Our results showed that most of the selected genes were expressed in a H2O2 concentration-dependent manner, whereas a subset exhibited sustained induction or repression without dose–effect, reflecting H2O2 concentration-dependent physiological adaptations. Through analyzing the dynamics of the coordinated gene expression, we demonstrated that the expressions of the H2O2 scavenging enzymes, DNA damage response, and Fe–S cluster repair function were strikingly correlated to the intensity of oxidative stress. The sustained induction of mbtB, irtA, and dnaE2 indicated that mycobacteria might deploy increased iron acquisition and error-prone lesion bypass function as fundamental strategies to counteract oxidative damages, which are distinct from the defence tactics of Escherichia coli characterized by shrinking the iron pool and delaying the DNA repair. Moreover, the distinct gene expression kinetics among the tricarboxylic acid cycle, glyoxylate shunt, and methylcitrate cycle suggested that mycobacteria could dynamically redirect its metabolic fluxes according to the intensity of oxidative stress. This work defines the H2O2 concentration-dependent gene expression kinetics and provides unique insights into mycobacterial antioxidant defence strategies.