Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Indication of Reliability of the Two-Level Approach of the AWIN Welfare Assessment Protocol for Horses

Simple Summary Animal welfare is a very emotional issue. It is therefore necessary to measure it objectively. As welfare includes different components such as the health status, the behaviour and the emotional state, different indicators are needed for its assessment. A two-level approach is proposed in the Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) assessment protocol for horses; the first level providing a fast overview and the second more details. The aim of this study was to give an indication whether this two-level approach produces reliable results, i.e., whether the first level assessment does indeed provide a good overview or whether too many welfare issues remain undetected. Therefore, a trained observer performed 112 first and second level assessments directly following each other. The results were compared based on the agreement between the two levels. In this study, based on one observer, overall, the first level did provide a good overview of the welfare status. Adaption of some of the indicators of the first level assessment might be necessary. Nevertheless, this two-level approach enhances feasibility and there is indication that it is a reliable approach. Therewith, this approach might also be interesting for implementation in other welfare assessment schemes. Abstract To enhance feasibility, the Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) assessment protocol for horses consists of two levels: the first is a visual inspection of a sample of horses performed from a distance, the second a close-up inspection of all horses. The aim was to analyse whether information would be lost if only the first level were performed. In this study, 112 first and 112 second level assessments carried out on a subsequent day by one observer were compared by calculating the Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient (RS), Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC), Smallest Detectable Changes (SDC) and Limits of Agreements (LoA). Most indicators demonstrated sufficient reliability between the two levels. Exceptions were the Horse Grimace Scale, the Avoidance Distance Test and the Voluntary Human Approach Test (e.g., Voluntary Human Approach Test: RS: 0.38, ICC: 0.38, SDC: 0.21, LoA: −0.25–0.17), which could, however, be also interpreted as a lack of test-retest reliability. Further disagreement was found for the indicator consistency of manure (RS: 0.31, ICC: 0.38, SDC: 0.36, LoA: −0.38–0.36). For these indicators, an adaptation of the first level would be beneficial. Overall, in this study, the division into two levels was reliable and might therewith have the potential to enhance feasibility in other welfare assessment schemes.
Pharmacoeconomic considerations in the treatment of breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women worldwide and causes great economic burden. The aim of this paper is to present the available clinical and pharmacoeconomic evidence associated with different therapies for breast cancer. As significant progress was made in recent years and there are many alternative treatments, which are indicated according to the stage and the type of the disease, the age and health status of patient, and vary from surgery to hormonal treatment and chemotherapy. A broad literature review was undertaken and the paper presents the evidence available regarding the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the alternative options. Despite the high cost of most therapies and perceptions that treatments in this area may not be cost-effective, due to a combination of high costs and short survival, based on the literature review treatment options for breast cancer are in general deemed to be cost-effective. Time horizon, stage of the disease, patient age, therapy onset, benefit duration and time to recurrence may influence the results. Pharmacoeconomic analyses of alternative therapy options will improve decision-making and will help to optimize the use of scarce health care resources allocated to the care of breast cancer patients.
An Adaptive Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Dynamic Fleet Management, II: Multiperiod Travel Times

In a companion paper (Godfrey and Powell 2002) we introduced an adaptive dynamic programming algorithm for stochastic dynamic resource allocation problems, which arise in the context of logistics and distribution, fleet management, and other allocation problems. The method depends on estimating separable nonlinear approximations of value functions, using a dynamic programming framework. That paper considered only the case in which the time to complete an action was always a single time period. Experiments with this technique quickly showed that when the basic algorithm was applied to problems with multiperiod travel times, the results were very poor. In this paper, we illustrate why this behavior arose, and propose a modified algorithm that addresses the issue. Experimental work demonstrates that the modified algorithm works on problems with multiperiod travel times, with results that are almost as good as the original algorithm applied to single period travel times.
Clinical significance of pharmacogenomic studies in tardive dyskinesia associated with patients with psychiatric disorders

Pharmacogenomics is the study of the effects of genetic polymorphisms on medication pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. It offers advantages in predicting drug efficacy and/or toxicity and has already changed clinical practice in many fields of medicine. Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is a movement disorder that rarely remits and poses significant social stigma and physical discomfort for the patient. Pharmacokinetic studies show an association between cytochrome P450 enzyme-determined poor metabolizer status and elevated serum antipsychotic and metabolite levels. However, few prospective studies have shown this to correlate with the occurrence of TD. Many retrospective, case-control and cross-sectional studies have examined the association of cytochrome P450 enzyme, dopamine (receptor, metabolizer and transporter), serotonin (receptor and transporter), and oxidative stress enzyme gene polymorphisms with the occurrence and severity of TD. These studies have produced conflicting and confusing results secondary to heterogeneous inclusion criteria and other patient characteristics that also act as confounding factors. This paper aims to review and summarize the pharmacogenetic findings in antipsychotic-associated TD and assess its clinical significance for psychiatry patients. In addition, we hope to provide insight into areas that need further research.
Genomic Structure of the Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium DT 64 Bacteriophage ST64T: Evidence for Modular Genetic Architecture

ABSTRACT The complete sequence of the double-stranded DNA genome of a serotype-converting temperate bacteriophage, ST64T, was determined. The 40,679-bp genomic sequence of ST64T has an overall GC content of 47.5% and was reminiscent of a number of lambdoid phages, in particular, P22. Inferred proteins of ST64T which exhibited a high degree of sequence similarity to P22 proteins (>90%) included the functional serotype conversion cassette, integrase, excisionase, Abc1, Abc2, early antitermination (gp24), NinD, NinH, NinZ, packaging (gp3 and gp2), head (with the exception of gp26, gp7, gp20, and gp16), and tail proteins. The putative immunity genes were highly related to those of Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium phage L, whereas the lysis genes were almost identical to those of S. enterica serovar Typhimurium PS3.
Optimal Sensor Placement for a Constellation of Multistatic Narrowband Pixelated Sensors

This paper presents a novel approach to selecting the location of a constellation of multistatic RF sensors to optimize system detection and tracking. The method works by computing the posterior Cramér-Rao lower bound on localization error as a function of sensor positions, and then selecting sensor locations to minimize the bound. One important contribution of this study is the derivation of the bound for a non-Gaussian, nonlinear pixelated sensor model which includes transmit and receive beam patterns, direct path energy, and target impulse response. A second contribution is a report on the results of two field collections which illustrate the efficacy of the method.
Technology Adaptation: Capturing the Appropriation Dynamics of Web-Based Collaboration Support in a Project Team

This research applies contributions from the social sciences to examine how organizations adapt information systems in a project team setting. Its main concern is to study the set of events and actions implicated in the institutionalization of an information system. The motivation for this research has been to address the following questions: why are well designed information systems so often not successfully adapted or used by organizations? How does the adaptation process affect and how is it affected by work context characteristics? In our research we are focusing on analyzing the adaptation process of a collaborative platform in a project team, in the context of the construction industry by applying adaptive structuration theory.
Cooperative Intrusion Detection and Tolerance System

Protecting implemented security mechanisms and ensuring their robustness when a host is compromised is among the major challenges that have being studied. Implementing security mechanisms such as intrusion detection inside workstation disks is among recent findings that can be exploited to fulfill these needs. In this paper, we describe a Cooperative Intrusion Detection and Tolerance System, called C-IDTS, which takes advantage of the information that are available at the network, host and storage level to better detect intrusion attempts in their early stages, even when the host is compromised. It also provides intrusion tolerance capability and supports investigation activities.
Defining the Limits of Greater India

Greater India comprises a part of the Indian plate that subducted under Asia to help form the Tibetan Plateau. Defining the size of the Greater India is thus a key constraint to model the India‐Asia collision, growth of the plateau, and the tectonic evolution of the Neo‐Tethyan realm. We report Early Cretaceous paleomagnetic data from the central and eastern Tethyan Himalaya that yield paleolatitudes consistent with previous Early Cretaceous paleogeographic reconstructions. These data suggest Greater India extended at least 2,675 ± 720 and 1,950 ± 970 km farther north from the present northern margin of India at 83.6°E and 92.4°E, respectively. An area of lithosphere ≥4.7 × 106 km2 was consumed through subduction, thereby placing a strict limit on the minimum amount of Indian lithosphere consumed since the breakup of Gondwanaland.
Systematic Definition of Protein Constituents along the Major Polarization Axis Reveals an Adaptive Reuse of the Polarization Machinery in Pheromone-Treated Budding Yeast

Polarizing cells extensively restructure cellular components in a spatially and temporally coupled manner along the major axis of cellular extension. Budding yeast are a useful model of polarized growth, helping to define many molecular components of this conserved process. Besides budding, yeast cells also differentiate upon treatment with pheromone from the opposite mating type, forming a mating projection (the ‘shmoo’) by directional restructuring of the cytoskeleton, localized vesicular transport and overall reorganization of the cytosol. To characterize the proteomic localization changes accompanying polarized growth, we developed and implemented a novel cell microarray-based imaging assay for measuring the spatial redistribution of a large fraction of the yeast proteome, and applied this assay to identify proteins localized along the mating projection following pheromone treatment. We further trained a machine learning algorithm to refine the cell imaging screen, identifying additional shmoo-localized proteins. In all, we identified 74 proteins that specifically localize to the mating projection, including previously uncharacterized proteins (Ycr043c, Ydr348c, Yer071c, Ymr295c, and Yor304c-a) and known polarization complexes such as the exocyst. Functional analysis of these proteins, coupled with quantitative analysis of individual organelle movements during shmoo formation, suggests a model in which the basic machinery for cell polarization is generally conserved between processes forming the bud and the shmoo, with a distinct subset of proteins used only for shmoo formation. The net effect is a defined ordering of major organelles along the polarization axis, with specific proteins implicated at the proximal growth tip.
Looking for topic similarities of highly inflected languages for language model adaptation

In this paper, we propose a new framework to construct corpus-based topic-sensitive language models of highly in-(cid:13)ected languages for large vocabulary speech recognition. 1 We concentrate on feature extraction process devoted to languages where words are formed by many di(cid:11)erent in-(cid:13)ectional a(cid:14)xatations. In our approach all words with the same meaning but di(cid:11)erent grammatical form are col-lected in one cluster automatically by using fuzzy comparison function. Using topic classi(cid:12)er sub-corpus of a large collection of training text is selected. Language models are built by interpolation of topic speci(cid:12)c models and general model. Results of experiments on English and Slovenian corpus are reported.
A unified model for stable and temporal topic detection from social media data

Web 2.0 users generate and spread huge amounts of messages in online social media. Such user-generated contents are mixture of temporal topics (e.g., breaking events) and stable topics (e.g., user interests). Due to their different natures, it is important and useful to distinguish temporal topics from stable topics in social media. However, such a discrimination is very challenging because the user-generated texts in social media are very short in length and thus lack useful linguistic features for precise analysis using traditional approaches. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to detect both stable and temporal topics simultaneously from social media data. Specifically, a unified user-temporal mixture model is proposed to distinguish temporal topics from stable topics. To improve this model's performance, we design a regularization framework that exploits prior spatial information in a social network, as well as a burst-weighted smoothing scheme that exploits temporal prior information in the time dimension. We conduct extensive experiments to evaluate our proposal on two real data sets obtained from Del.icio. us and Twitter. The experimental results verify that our mixture model is able to distinguish temporal topics from stable topics in a single detection process. Our mixture model enhanced with the spatial regularization and the burst-weighted smoothing scheme significantly outperforms competitor approaches, in terms of topic detection accuracy and discrimination in stable and temporal topics.
Temporal Profiles of the Levels of Endogenous Antioxidants After Four-Vessel Occlusion in Rats

Although it is known that development of lipid peroxidation after ischemia occurs predominantly in vulnerable regions, temporal profiles of antioxidants after ischemia have not been regionally elucidated. After reperfusion periods of 0, 3, 24, and 72 hours following 20 minutes of four-vessel occlusion (n = 6 in each group), the concentration of total glutathione (GSH) and the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) were assayed in the hippocampus, parietal cortex, striatum, thalamus, and brain stem. The levels of all antioxidants were unchanged in all regions without reperfusion; however, the concentration of total GSH significantly decreased in the hippocampus at 3 hours after the onset of reperfusion, and showed a maximum decrease in the hippocampus (68% of the sham-control level), parietal cortex (78% of the sham-control level), and striatum (76% of the sham-control level) after 24 hours of reperfusion. After 72 hours of reperfusion, these regions and the thalamus showed restoration and an increase in the total GSH concentration, respectively. The activities of SOD, GSH-Px, and catalase were stable during the reperfusion period, but the hippocampus showed significant increases in these enzyme activities and the parietal cortex and striatum showed significant increases in SOD activities at 72 hours after the onset of reperfusion. These results indicate that endogenous antioxidants take 72 hours for restoration in vulnerable regions after 20 minutes of four-vessel occlusion in rats.
Sub-Carrier Allocation using Channel Prediction for OFDMA systems based on IEEE 802.16 Standard

The problem of sub-carrier allocation in OFDMA systems has been the focus of recent research efforts. All papers to our knowledge consider the problem of allocating sub-carriers one frame ahead. In this paper, we propose an OFDMA scheme which utilizes future channel prediction to adaptively allocate sub-carriers to each user based on their predicted channel states several frames ahead. The results obtained show that this scheme guarantees the required rates in addition to a fair allocation of the available sub-carriers among users when compared to the traditional single frame case
Elastin peptides in aging and pathological conditions

Abstract Elastin is the protein responsible for the resilience of vertebrate tissue. It is an extremely stable protein deposited during the early stages of life and experiencing almost no renewal. As a consequence, it can be considered that each individual has an elastin capital for life. Despite its extreme stability, elastin can be degraded by several enzymes termed elastases. Elastases are among the most aggressive proteases, and their presence is increased with age. As a consequence, elastin fragmentation resulting in the generation of elastin peptides is one of the hallmarks of aging. This review will examine their nature and further expose our current understanding of the role played by these peptides in aging and their contribution to tissue homeostasis and several pathologies.
Distinct domains of the spinal muscular atrophy protein SMN are required for targeting to Cajal bodies in mammalian cells

Mutations of the survival motor neuron gene SMN1 cause the inherited disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The ubiquitous SMN protein facilitates the biogenesis of spliceosomal small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs). The protein is detected in the cytoplasm, nucleoplasm and enriched with snRNPs in nuclear Cajal bodies. It is structurally divided into at least an amino-terminal region rich in basic amino acid residues, a central Tudor domain, a self-association tyrosine-glycine-box and an exon7-encoded C-terminus. To examine the domains required for the intranuclear localization of SMN, we have used fluorescently tagged protein mutants transiently overexpressed in mammalian cells. The basic amino acid residues direct nucleolar localization of SMN mutants. The Tudor domain promotes localization of proteins in the nucleus and it cooperates with the basic amino acid residues and the tyrosine-glycine-box for protein localization in Cajal bodies. Moreover, the most frequent disease-linked mutant SMNΔex7 reduces accumulation of snRNPs in Cajal bodies, suggesting that the C-terminus of SMN participates in targeting to Cajal bodies. A reduced number of Cajal bodies in patient fibroblasts associates with the absence of snRNPs in Cajal bodies, revealing that intranuclear snRNA organization is modified in disease. These results indicate that direct and indirect mechanisms regulate localization of SMN in Cajal bodies.
Mycobiota and Mycotoxic Contamination of Feed Cereals

Abstract The cereals are a suitable substrate for the growth of microscopic filamentous fungi. Micromycetes are capable of reducing the nutritional value of feedstuff and they can produce several mycotoxins. The most frequent genera of microscopic filamentous fungi are Fusarium, Penicillium, Alternaria and Aspergillus. The contamination by microscopic fungi and mycotoxins was determinated in 56 samples of feed cereals originating from the Slovak Republic. The most common genera of fungi detected in the feed cereals included: Alternaria (67.8 %), Fusarium (44.6 %), Penicillium (39.2 %), Mucor (30.3 %), Rhizopus (28.5 %), Cladosporium (21.4 %), Scopulariopsis (8.9 %) and Aspergillus (1.7 %). Deoxynivalenol was present in 24 samples (42.8 %) and zearalenone in 15 samples (26.7 %). The values of both mycotoxins did not reach the regulatory limits and thus they do not pose a risk to livestock nutrition.
Supporting Continuous Integration by Code-Churn Based Test Selection

Continuous integration promises advantages in large-scale software development by enabling software development organizations to deliver new functions faster. However, implementing continuous integration in large software development organizations is challenging because of organizational, social and technical reasons. One of the technical challenges is the ability to rapidly prioritize the test cases which can be executed quickly and trigger the most failures as early as possible. In our research we propose and evaluate a method for selecting a suitable set of functional regression tests on system level. The method is based on analysis of correlations between test-case failures and source code changes and is evaluated by combining semi-structured interviews and workshops with practitioners at Ericsson and Axis Communications in Sweden. The results show that using measures of precision and recall, the test cases can be prioritized. The prioritization leads to finding an optimal test suite to execute before the integration.
Research on the price prediction in supply chain based on data mining technology

Through using data mining methods, we can find useful hidden trends and relationships in the mass data. This can help supply chain companies to improve the quality of decision-making on supply chain management with the gained knowledge. Take the supply chain product polyester filament as an example, through the influence factor analysis of polyester filament price; this paper uses data mining methods to predict the prices of polyester filament. The established predictive models and analytical results can be used in the supply chain enterprises and as the basis of macro-control on the chemical fiber industry of and relevant departments.