Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When Scalability Meets Consistency: Genuine Multiversion Update-Serializable Partial Data Replication

In this article we introduce GMU, a genuine partial replication protocol for transactional systems, which exploits an innovative, highly scalable, distributed multiversioning scheme. Unlike existing multiversion-based solutions, GMU does not rely on a global logical clock, which represents a contention point and can limit system scalability. Also, GMU never aborts read-only transactions and spares them from distributed validation schemes. This makes GMU particularly efficient in presence of read-intensive workloads, as typical of a wide range of real-world applications. GMU guarantees the Extended Update Serializability (EUS) isolation level. This consistency criterion is particularly attractive as it is sufficiently strong to ensure correctness even for very demanding applications (such as TPC-C), but is also weak enough to allow efficient and scalable implementations, such as GMU. Further, unlike several relaxed consistency models proposed in literature, EUS has simple and intuitive semantics, thus being an attractive, scalable consistency model for ordinary programmers. We integrated the GMU protocol in a popular open source in-memory transactional data grid, namely Infinispan. On the basis of a large scale experimental study performed on heterogeneous experimental platforms and using industry standard benchmarks (namely TPC-C and YCSB), we show that GMU achieves linear scalability and that it introduces negligible overheads (less than 10%), with respect to solutions ensuring non-serializable semantics, in a wide range of workloads.
ExpFinder: Finding experts by graph pattern matching

We present ExpFinder, a system for finding experts in social networks based on graph pattern matching. We demonstrate (1) how ExpFinder identifies top-K experts in a social network by supporting bounded simulation of graph patterns, and by ranking the matches based on a metric for social impact; (2) how it copes with the sheer size of real-life social graphs by supporting incremental query evaluation and query preserving graph compression, and (3) how the GUI of ExpFinder interacts with users to help them construct queries and inspect matches.
Great Basin Factsheet Series 2016 - Information and tools to restore and conserve Great Basin ecosystems

Land managers are responsible for developing effective strategies for conserving and restoring Great Basin ecosystems in the face of invasive species, conifer expansion, and altered fire regimes. A warming climate is magnifying the effects of these threats and adding urgency to implementation of management practices that will maintain or improve ecosystem functioning. This Factsheet Series was developed to provide land managers with brief summaries of the best available information on contemporary management issues to facilitate science delivery and foster effective management. Each peer-reviewed factsheet was developed as a collaborative effort among knowledgeable scientists and managers. The series begins with information on how to put ecosystem resilience and resistance concepts into practice. Subsequent factsheets address key threats to Great Basin ecosystems - limiting medusahead invasion and restoring perennial communities, reducing woody fuel loads and establishing effective fuel breaks, assessing and mitigating soil erosion, managing threats to aspen communities in a changing environment, and seeding and transplanting techniques for restoring sagebrush communities.
Multi-document summarization for Turkish news

In this paper, we introduce our multi-document summarization system for Turkish news. The aim of the summarization system is to build a single document for multi document news that have been collected previously. The news were collected from several Turkish news sources via Real Simple Syndication (RSS). They were separated into clusters according to their topics. We utilized cosine similarity metric for the clustering process. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) has been used in the summarization phase. Multi-Document Summarization (MDS) differs from single document summarization in that the issues of compression, speed, redundancy and passage selection are essential inside the formation of ideal summaries. In this study, we utilized term frequency in document scoring which let us select the sentences with higher importance degree. We use ROUGE technique for evaluation of the system and our results show that the average of recall and precision percentage of this system is 43%. In the manual summarization phase, fifteen volunteers took part. The reason of low percentage is interpreted as getting texts randomly without any edit. It has been observed that the number of sentences and rate of summarization affect the accuracy rate.
Temperature dependence and thermo-reversibility of physical hardening of asphalt binders

At low temperatures, some asphalt binders are known to harden significantly with time. This process is commonly referred to as physical hardening; and, if neglected during testing, it may lead to overestimation of asphalt binder performance at low temperatures. Modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) were employed to study the morphology, glass transition, enthalpy relaxation, crystallinity, and viscoelastic properties of two asphalt binders. The binders were subjected to isothermal storage at different temperatures within the glass transition range. The glass transition temperature and enthalpy relaxation linearly increased with the logarithm of storage time. The rate of change (slope) was dependent on storage temperature and was different for each binder. The hardening rate was calculated from rheological data, and similar trends in calorimetric data were observed. The thermo-reversibility of hardening was also studied. The presented results indicate that the physical hardening of asphalt binders was predominantly caused by the physical aging of the glassy state (generally at temperatures below 10degreesC). The rate of hardening increased with decreasing temperature. By heating above the glass transition region (generally above 10degreesC), the effect of hardening was fully reversed in the amorphous binder, while in the semi-crystalline binder a negligible hardening was still observed at higher temperatures. For the covering abstract see ITRD E157233
Eicosapentaenoic Acid and Oxypurinol in the Treatment of Muscle Wasting in a Mouse Model of Cancer Cachexia

Cancer cachexia is a wasting condition, driven by systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. This study investigated eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in combination with oxypurinol as a treatment in a mouse model of cancer cachexia. Mice with cancer cachexia were randomized into 4 treatment groups (EPA (0.4 g/kg/day), oxypurinol (1 mmol/L ad-lib), combination, or control), and euthanized after 29 days. Analysis of oxidative damage to DNA, mRNA analysis of pro-oxidant, antioxidant and proteolytic pathway components, along with enzyme activity of pro- and antioxidants were completed on gastrocnemius muscle. The control group displayed earlier onset of tumor compared to EPA and oxypurinol groups (P<0.001). The EPA group maintained body weight for an extended duration (20 days) compared to the oxypurinol (5 days) and combination (8 days) groups (P<0.05). EPA (18.2±3.2 pg/ml) and combination (18.4±3.7 pg/ml) groups had significantly higher 8-OH-dG levels than the control group (12.9±1.4 pg/ml, P≤0.05) indicating increased oxidative damage to DNA. mRNA levels of GPx1, MURF1 and MAFbx were higher following EPA treatment compared to control (P≤0.05). Whereas oxypurinol was associated with higher GPx1, MnSOD, CAT, XDH, MURF1, MAFbx and UbB mRNA compared to control (P≤0.05). Activity of total SOD was higher in the oxypurinol group (32.2±1.5 U/ml) compared to control (27.0±1.3 U/ml, P<0.01), GPx activity was lower in the EPA group (8.76±2.0 U/ml) compared to control (14.0±1.9 U/ml, P<0.05), and catalase activity was lower in the combination group (14.4±2.8 U/ml) compared to control (20.9±2.0 U/ml, P<0.01). There was no change in XO activity. The increased rate of weight decline in mice treated with oxypurinol indicates that XO may play a protective role during the progression of cancer cachexia, and its inhibition is detrimental to outcomes. In combination with EPA, there was little significant improvement from control, indicating oxypurinol is unlikely to be a viable treatment compound in cancer cachexia.
Analysis of Influence of L2 English Speakers’ Fluency on Occurrence and Duration of Sentence-medial Pauses in English Readout Speech

Pause plays important roles for the intelligibility, naturalness and fluency of speech. This paper reported the effect of native (L1) Bengali speakers’ fluency of English on occurrence probability and duration of sentencemedial pauses with respect to three factors: phrase type, phrase length (l), distance (d). In this analysis, 40 nonnative (L2) English (L1 Bengali) speakers’ data was divided into five different groups (poor, average, good, very good and excellent) based on their English fluency level. From result of this comparative study, it is seen that occurrence probability and duration of sentence-medial pauses for each phrase type, each l value and each d value increase as L2 English speakers’ fluency decreases. Moreover like L1 English speakers, occurrence probability and duration of sentence-medial pauses are almost linearly dependent on l and d respectively for L2 English speakers regardless of their fluency. Furthermore effect of three factors on sentencemedial pauses of fluent L2 English speakers is more close to that of L1 English speakers compared to less fluent L2 English speakers.
Shear Stress–Dependent Downregulation of the Adhesion-G Protein–Coupled Receptor CD97 on Circulating Leukocytes upon Contact with Its Ligand CD55

Adhesion G protein–coupled receptors (aGPCRs) are two-subunit molecules, consisting of an adhesive extracellular α subunit that couples noncovalently to a seven-transmembrane β subunit. The cooperation between the two subunits and the effect of endogenous ligands on the functioning of aGPCRs is poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the interaction between the pan-leukocyte aGPCR CD97 and its ligand CD55. We found that leukocytes from CD55-deficient mice express significantly increased levels of cell surface CD97 that normalized after transfer into wild-type mice because of contact with CD55 on both leukocytes and stromal cells. Downregulation of both CD97 subunits occurred within minutes after first contact with CD55 in vivo, which correlated with an increase in plasma levels of soluble CD97. In vitro, downregulation of CD97 on CD55-deficient leukocytes cocultured with wild-type blood cells was strictly dependent on shear stress. In vivo, CD55-mediated downregulation of CD97 required an intact circulation and was not observed on cells that lack contact with the blood stream, such as microglia. Notably, de novo ligation of CD97 did not activate signaling molecules constitutively engaged by CD97 in cancer cells, such as ERK and protein kinase B/Akt. We conclude that CD55 downregulates CD97 surface expression on circulating leukocytes by a process that requires physical forces, but based on current evidence does not induce receptor signaling. This regulation can restrict CD97–CD55-mediated cell adhesion to tissue sites.
Ultrasonography for Detecting Adhesions: Aspirin Continuation for Lung Resection Patients

Background/Aim: Aspirin reduces cardiovascular disease and/or stroke risks. However, perioperative aspirin use remains controversial. We assessed the efficacy of ultrasonography to facilitate video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). We analyzed the perioperative management of patients using aspirin and its association with bleeding events during lung cancer surgery. Patients and Methods: A total of 38 patients who underwent VATS after continuing or discontinuing aspirin were examined. Ultrasound was performed preoperatively to evaluate the pleural adhesions. Fisher's exact test was used to analyze correlations between the two groups. Results: Dense adhesions were found at VATS ports using ultrasonography (accuracy: 100%). No differences were detected in bleeding, thrombotic events, or operative times between the aspirin and non-aspirin groups. There were differences in bleeding (p=0.009) and operative times (p=0.021) between the dense adhesion and non-dense adhesion groups. Conclusion: Preoperative detection of pleural adhesions using ultrasonography was useful in selecting pulmonary resection patients who continued aspirin perioperatively.
Comparison of patient specific dose metrics between chest radiography, tomosynthesis, and CT for adult patients of wide ranging body habitus.

PURPOSE Given the radiation concerns inherent to the x-ray modalities, accurately estimating the radiation doses that patients receive during different imaging modalities is crucial. This study estimated organ doses, effective doses, and risk indices for the three clinical chest x-ray imaging techniques (chest radiography, tomosynthesis, and CT) using 59 anatomically variable voxelized phantoms and Monte Carlo simulation methods. METHODS A total of 59 computational anthropomorphic male and female extended cardiac-torso (XCAT) adult phantoms were used in this study. Organ doses and effective doses were estimated for a clinical radiography system with the capability of conducting chest radiography and tomosynthesis (Definium 8000, VolumeRAD, GE Healthcare) and a clinical CT system (LightSpeed VCT, GE Healthcare). A Monte Carlo dose simulation program (PENELOPE, version 2006, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) was used to mimic these two clinical systems. The Duke University (Durham, NC) technique charts were used to determine the clinical techniques for the radiographic modalities. An exponential relationship between CTDIvol and patient diameter was used to determine the absolute dose values for CT. The simulations of the two clinical systems compute organ and tissue doses, which were then used to calculate effective dose and risk index. The calculation of the two dose metrics used the tissue weighting factors from ICRP Publication 103 and BEIR VII report. RESULTS The average effective dose of the chest posteroanterior examination was found to be 0.04 mSv, which was 1.3% that of the chest CT examination. The average effective dose of the chest tomosynthesis examination was found to be about ten times that of the chest posteroanterior examination and about 12% that of the chest CT examination. With increasing patient average chest diameter, both the effective dose and risk index for CT increased considerably in an exponential fashion, while these two dose metrics only increased slightly for radiographic modalities and for chest tomosynthesis. Effective and organ doses normalized to mAs all illustrated an exponential decrease with increasing patient size. As a surface organ, breast doses had less correlation with body size than that of lungs or liver. CONCLUSIONS Patient body size has a much greater impact on radiation dose of chest CT examinations than chest radiography and tomosynthesis. The size of a patient should be considered when choosing the best thoracic imaging modality.
On the Accuracy of Estimated Synchronization Positions for Audio Digital Watermarks Using the Modified Patchwork Algorithm on Analog Channels

We investigated the accuracy of estimated synchronization positions for audio digital watermarking using the modified patchwork algorithm (MPA) on analog channels. We focused our efforts on synchronization since correct synchronization of DCT frames is crucial for watermark detection using this algorithm. We employed M-sequence synchronization patterns, and embedded this pattern as synchronization headers with the MPA watermark. The synchronization at the decoder was accomplished by detecting the maximum correlation between the detected sync pattern and the correct sync pattern. This synchronization was shown to be possible with embed frame length (EFL) of 32 samples and above with no perturbations. The accuracy degrades considerably with analog loop back. In addition, with modest levels of additive Gaussian noise and sample rate conversion in addition to analog loop back, robustness was shown for some samples, while for other samples, we were not able to detect synchronization for all trials tested.
Shape2Vec

Convolutional neural networks have been successfully used to compute shape descriptors, or jointly embed shapes and sketches in a common vector space. We propose a novel approach that leverages both labeled 3D shapes and semantic information contained in the labels, to generate semantically-meaningful shape descriptors. A neural network is trained to generate shape descriptors that lie close to a vector representation of the shape class, given a vector space of words. This method is easily extendable to range scans, hand-drawn sketches and images. This makes cross-modal retrieval possible, without a need to design different methods depending on the query type. We show that sketch-based shape retrieval using semantic-based descriptors outperforms the state-of-the-art by large margins, and mesh-based retrieval generates results of higher relevance to the query, than current deep shape descriptors.
Heritability of Hemostasis Phenotypes and Their Correlation with Type 2 Diabetes Status in Mexican Americans

Hypercoagulation often occurs in type 2 diabetes, suggesting pleiotropy of the genes that influence disease liability and hemostasis-related phenotypes. To better understand the relationship between hemostasis and diabetes, we first used maximum-likelihood methods to estimate the relative contribution of additive genetic, measured environmental, and shared household effects to the normal variance of 16 hemostasis-related traits in 813 individuals participating in the San Antonio Family Heart Study. We estimated moderate to high heritabilities (0.20–0.60) for each phenotype. Von Willebrand factor (VWF), thrombin activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor, activated protein C (APC) ratio, factor V, and prothrombin time had heritabilities greater than 0.50. The correlation between type 2 diabetes status and the hemostasis-related traits was then partitioned into genetic and environmental components using bivariate variance-components methods. Significant (p le0.05) positive genetic correlations (0.37–0.51) occurred with factors II and VIII, VWF, total protein S (tPS), and tissue factor pathway inhibitor. Significant negative genetic correlations were estimated for activated partial thromboplastin time (-0.49) and APC ratio (-0.38). By contrast, significant environmental correlations occurred only with factor II (-0.40) and tPS (-0.31). Our results suggest that genes are important contributors to the normal variation in hemostasis-related traits and that genes influencing hemostasis-related traits pleiotropically influence diabetes risk.
Instability of the Pseudoautosomal Boundary in House Mice

Faithful segregation of mammalian X and Y chromosomes in male meiosis depends on pairing and recombination in a short interval of residual sequence homology known as the pseudoautosomal region (PAR). Faithful segregation of homologous chromosomes at meiosis requires pairing and recombination. In taxa with dimorphic sex chromosomes, pairing between them in the heterogametic sex is limited to a narrow interval of residual sequence homology known as the pseudoautosomal region (PAR). Failure to form the obligate crossover in the PAR is associated with male infertility in house mice (Mus musculus) and humans. Yet despite this apparent functional constraint, the boundary and organization of the PAR is highly variable in mammals, and even between subspecies of mice. Here, we estimate the genetic map in a previously documented expansion of the PAR in the M. musculus castaneus subspecies and show that the local recombination rate is 100-fold higher than the autosomal background. We identify an independent shift in the PAR boundary in the M. musculus musculus subspecies and show that it involves a complex rearrangement, but still recombines in heterozygous males. Finally, we demonstrate pervasive copy-number variation at the PAR boundary in wild populations of M. m. domesticus, M. m. musculus, and M. m. castaneus. Our results suggest that the intensity of recombination activity in the PAR, coupled with relatively weak constraints on its sequence, permit the generation and maintenance of unusual levels of polymorphism in the population of unknown functional significance.
Dasatinib (BMS-354825) Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamic Biomarkers in Animal Models Predict Optimal Clinical Exposure

Purpose: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is caused by reciprocal translocation between chromosomes 9 and 22, forming BCR-ABL, a constitutively activated tyrosine kinase. Imatinib mesylate, a selective inhibitor of BCR-ABL, represents current frontline therapy for CML; however, emerging evidence suggests that drug resistance to imatinib may limit its long-term success. To improve treatment options, dasatinib (BMS-354825) was developed as a novel, oral, multi-targeted kinase inhibitor of BCR-ABL and SRC family kinases. To date, dasatinib has shown promising anti-leukemic activity in preclinical models of CML and in phase I/II clinical studies in patients with imatinib-resistant or imatinib-intolerant disease. Experimental Design: The pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic biomarkers of dasatinib were investigated in K562 human CML xenografts grown s.c. in severe combined immunodeficient mice. Tumoral levels of phospho-BCR-ABL/phospho-CrkL were determined by Western blot. Results: Following a single oral administration of dasatinib at a preclinical efficacious dose of 1.25 or 2.5 mg/kg, tumoral phospho-BCR-ABL/phospho-CrkL were maximally inhibited at ∼3 hours and recovered to basal levels by 24 hours. The time course and extent of the inhibition correlated with the plasma levels of dasatinib in mice. Pharmacokinetic/biomarker modeling predicted that the plasma concentration of dasatinib required to inhibit 90% of phospho-BCR-ABL in vivo was 10.9 ng/mL in mice and 14.6 ng/mL in humans, which is within the range of concentrations achieved in CML patients who responded to dasatinib treatment in the clinic. Conclusions: Phospho-BCR-ABL/phospho-CrkL are likely to be useful clinical biomarkers for the assessment of BCR-ABL kinase inhibition by dasatinib.