Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blueberry, blackberry, and blackcurrant differentially affect plasma lipids and pro-inflammatory markers in diet-induced obesity mice

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Evidence indicates that berry anthocyanins are anti-atherogenic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory. However, berries differ vastly in their anthocyanin composition and thus potentially in their biological and metabolic effects. The present study compared hypolipidemic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties of blueberry (BB), blackberry (BK), and blackcurrant (BC) in a diet-induced obesity (DIO) mouse model. MATERIALS/METHODS Male C57BL/6J mice were fed a high fat (HF; 35% fat, w/w) control diet or a HF diet supplemented with freeze-dried 5% BB, 6.3% BK or 5.7% BC for 12 weeks (10 mice/group) to achieve the same total anthocyanin content in each diet. Plasma lipids, antioxidant status and pro-inflammatory cytokines were measured. The expression of genes involved in antioxidant defense, inflammation, and lipid metabolism was determined in the liver, epididymal adipose tissue, proximal intestine, and skeletal muscle. Histological analysis was performed to identify crown-like structure (CLS) in epididymal fat pads to determine macrophage infiltration. RESULTS No differences were noted between the control and any berry-fed groups in plasma levels of liver enzymes, insulin, glucose, ferric reducing antioxidant power, superoxide dismutase, and tumor necrosis factor α. However, BK significantly lowered plasma triglyceride compared with the HF control and other berries, whereas BC significantly reduced F4/80 mRNA and the number of CLS in the epididymal fat pad, indicative of less macrophage infiltration. CONCLUSIONS The present study provides evidence that BB, BK and BC with varying anthocyanin composition differentially affect plasma lipids and adipose macrophage infiltration in DIO mice, but with no differences in their antioxidant capacity and anti-inflammatory potential.
Cost of hospital care for HIV/AIDS infected patients in three general reference hospitals in Lubumbashi, DR Congo: prospective cohort study

Introduction This article analyses the composition of healthcare costs for HIV/AIDS infected patients in a country with limited resources and attempts to identify the factors that influence these costs. The aims are to calculate medical care costs, analysing how they vary depending on patients’ income, and to evaluate the factors explaining healthcare consumption. Methods This is a prospective cohort study focusing on patients who were admitted to hospital for a short stay between January 2010 and June 2011, before their integration into a specialised program. The patients were selected randomly. Free consent was obtained from all participants. Data were analysed using the SPSS 19.0 software. The significance threshold was set at 5% and the CI (Confidence Interval) at 95%. We used Kruskal-Wallis tests, Fisher's exact test and multiple linear regression. Results We monitored 209 patients. Their average age was 36.37 years (SD: 8.72). The sex ratio was 0.58 and the women patients were generally younger than the male ones (p=0.011). The overall cost of healthcare amounted to $US 41,922. The cost of Antiretroviral Therapy represented 21.6% ($US 9,045). The price of para-clinical examinations represented 46% ($US 19,136) of the overall cost. The patient's average monthly income was $US 157.40 whereas the average direct cost per patient was$US 201.45. Both monthly income (t=4.385; p=0.0000) and education level (t=3.703 p=0.0003) were statistically significant predictive factors for healthcare consumption. The medical care costs for patients with opportunistic infections were nine times higher than those for patients who presented none. The presence of opportunistic infections increased healthcare consumption by approximately 31$ US (CI 95%: 15-46.9). Conclusion The average direct cost for patients on each short-term stay was higher than the average monthly income. To be able to access the necessary services, the patients need additional resources, which are derived from various sources. Monthly income and the level of education were both statistically significant predictors for healthcare consumption. The analysis allows us to extend the study by using different analytical accounting approaches such as by case and by pathology.
Feature-based evaluation of competing apps

App marketplaces, i.e. Google Play Store and Apple AppStore,comprise many competing apps offering a fair set of similar features. Users of competing apps can submit feedback in the form of ratings and textual comments. The feedback is useful for app developers to get a better understanding of where their app stands in the competition. However, app ratings don’t provide concrete information regarding users’ perceptions about an app’s features compared to similar apps. Studies have shown that users express sentiments on app features in app reviews. Therefore, user reviews are a valuable information source to compare competing apps based on users' sentiments regarding features. So far, researchers have analyzed app reviews to summarize the users’ sentiments on app features but the existing approaches have not been used for the comparison of competing apps. In this direction, we analyze app reviews of 25 apps to extract app features, determine competing apps based on feature commonality, and then compare competing apps based on users’ sentiments regarding features. We developed a tool prototype that helps app developers in identifying features which have been perceived negatively by its users. The tool prototype is also useful to find a set of features loved by users in other similar apps but missing in one’s app. We demonstrate the usefulness of the tool prototype and give pointers to future work.
Can Geospatial Data Improve House Price Indexes? A Hedonic Imputation Approach with Splines

Determining how and when to use geospatial data (i.e., longitudes and latitudes for each house) is probably the most pressing open question in the house price index literature. This issue is particularly timely for national statistical offices in the European Union who are now required by Eurostat to produce official house price indexes. Our solution combines the hedonic imputation method with a flexible hedonic model that captures geospatial data using a nonparametric spline surface. For Sydney, Australia, we find that the extra precision provided by geospatial data as compared with postcode dummies has only a marginal impact on the resulting hedonic index. This is good news for resource-stretched statistical offices. We nevertheless observe a slight downward bias when postcodes are used (which gets much larger when postcodes are replaced by bigger Residex regions). This bias can be attributed to a gradual shift of sold houses towards worse locations within each postcode (Residex region) during our sample period.
Mobility of a Mononucleotide within a Lipid Matrix: A Neutron Scattering Study

An essential question in studies on the origins of life is how nucleic acids were first synthesized and then incorporated into compartments about 4 billion years ago. A recent discovery is that guided polymerization within organizing matrices could promote a non-enzymatic condensation reaction allowing the formation of RNA-like polymers, followed by encapsulation in lipid membranes. Here, we used neutron scattering and deuterium labelling to investigate 5′-adenosine monophosphate (AMP) molecules captured in a multilamellar phospholipid matrix. The aim of the research was to determine and compare how mononucleotides are captured and differently organized within matrices and multilamellar phospholipid structures and to explore the role of water in organizing the system to determine at which level the system becomes sufficiently anhydrous to lock the AMP molecules into an organized structure and initiate ester bond synthesis. Elastic incoherent neutron scattering experiments were thus employed to investigate the changes of the dynamic properties of AMP induced by embedding the molecules within the lipid matrix. The influence of AMP addition to the lipid membrane organization was determined through diffraction measurement, which also helped us to define the best working Q range for dynamical data analysis with respect to specific hydration. The use of different complementary instruments allowed coverage of a wide time-scale domain, from ns to ps, of atomic mean square fluctuations, providing evidence of a well-defined dependence of the AMP dynamics on the hydration level.
Quantitative solution of omega-regular games380872

We consider two-player games played for an infinite number of rounds, with ω-regular winning conditions. The games may be concurrent, in that the players choose their moves simultaneously and independently, and probabilistic, in that the moves determine a probability distribution for the successor state. We introduce quantitative game μ-calculus, and we show that the maximal probability of winning such games can be expressed as the fixpoint formulas in this calculus. We develop the arguments both for deterministic and for probabilistic concurrent games; as a special case, we solve probabilistic turn-based games with ω-regular winning conditions, which was also open. We also characterize the optimality, and the memory requirements, of the winning strategies. In particular, we show that while memoryless strategies suffice for winning games with safety and reachability conditions, Büchi conditions require the use of strategies with infinite memory. The existence of optimal strategies, as opposed to ε-optimal, is only guaranteed in games with safety winning conditions.
Design, Implementation, and Analysis of an Anonymity Network for Web Browsing

Various MIX-based systems offering anonymity for near real-time traffic have been operational. However, they did not deliver many quantitative results about performance, bandwidth overhead, or other issues that arise when implementing or operating such a system. Consequently, the problem of how to design and operate a MIX-based system such that it provides a good balance between usability, protection from attacks, and overhead is not well understood. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and analysis of a MIX-based anonymity network for Web browsing that offers a high level of anonymity against an attacker and good end-to-end performance at a reasonable bandwidth overhead. We describe a novel way of operating the MIXes that maximizes the protection from traffic analysis attacks while minimizing the bandwidth overhead. We also look at some advanced options we have integrated into our system that either improve its performance and usability or that make it more resistant against sophisticated attacks. We deliver quantitative results about the performance of our system, which should help to give a better understanding of MIX networks.
Electronic Communications of the EASST Volume 29 ( 2010 ) Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques ( GT-VMT 2010 ) Verification of Model Transformations

With the increasing use of automatic transformations of models, the correctness of these transformations becomes an increasingly important issue. Especially for model transformation generally defined using abstract description techniques like graph transformations or declarative relational specifications, however, establishing the soundness of those transformations by test-based approaches is not straight-forward. We show how formal verification of soundness conditions over such declarative relational style transformations can be performed using an interactive theorem prover. The relational style allows a direct translation of transformations as well as associated soundness conditions into corresponding axioms and theorems. Using the Isabelle theorem prover, the approach is demonstrated for a refactoring transformation and a connectedness soundness condition.
Analysis and Performance Evaluation of Radial Flux Air-Cored Permanent Magnet Machines with Concentrated Coils

In this paper two different concentrated coil configurations for radial flux air-cored permanent magnet (RFAPM) machines are analysed and evaluated against a RFAPM machine that utilises overlapping coils. The comparative analysis of the different machines are done analytically. The analytical results are compared with finite element analysis results of simplified linearised equivalent models for the different coil configurations. The finite element analysis results correlate well with the analytical results in predicting a higher torque factor for small diameter, short stack RFAPM machines with concentrated coil configurations than for machines with overlapping coil configurations, with the same coil side-width values.
Virtuelles Konstruieren mit Gestik und Sprache

Im Bielefelder Labor fur Kunstliche Intelligenz und Virtuelle Realitat liegt der Forschungsschwerpunkt auf der Integration von gestischer und sprachlicher Kommunikation in einem Szenario des Virtuellen Konstruierens. Dabei werden hochaufgeloste raumliche Visualisierungen CAD-basierter Bauteilmodelle in realistischer Grose auf einer Grosbildleinwand prasentiert und uber Eingabegerate der Virtuellen Realitat (Datenhandschuhe, Positionssensoren, Spracherkennungssystem) zu komplexen Aggregaten zusammengebaut. Wissensbasierte Techniken kommen dabei einerseits bei der Montagesimulation mit den computergraphischen Bauteilmodellen und andererseits bei der Auswertung der sprachlich-gestischen Eingaben zum Einsatz.
A Data Management Middleware for ITS Services in Smart Cities

A major societal challenge to be tackled in megacities is sustainable urban transportation. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) are actually data-centric applications that need to store and query real-time as well as historical/static data from various data sources and have to provide timely responses to users’ transportation needs. In this paper we introduce a data management middleware that offers the robustness of a common framework to support the development of smart applications having the above needs. It supports the efficient storage and access to real-time and historical/static data and provides both one-time and continuous query capabilities. While the middleware has been designed to be general and versatile to support data management for any kind of application, in this paper we explore its suitability to ITS smart services also by means of an experimental evaluation conducted on a variety of traffic scenarios.
Extending OWL Ontologies by Cartesian Types to Represent N-ary Relations in Natural Language

Arbitrary n -ary relations ( n ≥ 1 ) can in principle be realized through binary relations obtained by a reiﬁcation process that introduces new individuals to which the additional arguments are linked via accessor properties. Modern ontologies which employ standards such as RDF and OWL have mostly obeyed this restriction, but have struggled with it nevertheless. Additional arguments for representing, e.g., valid time, grading, uncertainty, negation, trust, sentiment, or additional verb roles (for ditransitive verbs and adjuncts) are often better modeled in relation and information extraction systems as direct arguments of the relation instance, instead of being hidden in deep structures. In order to address non-binary relations directly, ontologies must be extended by Cartesian types, ultimately leading to an extension of the standard entailment rules for RDFS and OWL. In order to support ontology construction, ontology editors such as Prot ´ eg ´ e have to be adapted as well.
Collateral Status on Baseline Computed Tomographic Angiography and Intra-Arterial Treatment Effect in Patients With Proximal Anterior Circulation Stroke

Background and Purpose— Recent randomized trials have proven the benefit of intra-arterial treatment (IAT) with retrievable stents in acute ischemic stroke. Patients with poor or absent collaterals (preexistent anastomoses to maintain blood flow in case of a primary vessel occlusion) may gain less clinical benefit from IAT. In this post hoc analysis, we aimed to assess whether the effect of IAT was modified by collateral status on baseline computed tomographic angiography in the Multicenter Randomized Clinical Trial of Endovascular Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke in the Netherlands (MR CLEAN). Methods— MR CLEAN was a multicenter, randomized trial of IAT versus no IAT. Primary outcome was the modified Rankin Scale at 90 days. The primary effect parameter was the adjusted common odds ratio for a shift in direction of a better outcome on the modified Rankin Scale. Collaterals were graded from 0 (absent) to 3 (good). We used multivariable ordinal logistic regression analysis with interaction terms to estimate treatment effect modification by collateral status. Results— We found a significant modification of treatment effect by collaterals (P=0.038). The strongest benefit (adjusted common odds ratio 3.2 [95% confidence intervals 1.7–6.2]) was found in patients with good collaterals (grade 3). The adjusted common odds ratio was 1.6 [95% confidence intervals 1.0–2.7] for moderate collaterals (grade 2), 1.2 [95% confidence intervals 0.7–2.3] for poor collaterals (grade 1), and 1.0 [95% confidence intervals 0.1–8.7] for patients with absent collaterals (grade 0). Conclusions— In MR CLEAN, baseline computed tomographic angiography collateral status modified the treatment effect. The benefit of IAT was greatest in patients with good collaterals on baseline computed tomographic angiography. Treatment benefit appeared less and may be absent in patients with absent or poor collaterals. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.trialregister. nl and http://www.controlled-trials.com. Unique identifier: (NTR)1804 and ISRCTN10888758, respectively.
Antenna implementable into button for on-body communications at 61 GHz

In the paper, we describe the design and simulation of a button-like antenna for wireless body area network (WBAN) communication operating in the 61 GHz ISM frequency band. We developed a disc-like concept of an antenna. Instead of a direct connection between a circular disc and a feeding pin, the electromagnetic coupling is used. This concept enables us to obtain broadband characteristics with omnidirectional radiation pattern and polarization properties optimized for a body-centric communication. Impedance properties and radiation of the antenna were studied in free space and on a tissue-equivalent phantom representing the human body. The antenna was designed considering a single-layer technology and a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. We show that the antenna is matched from 59 GHz to 64 GHz. When simulated on a body, the antenna exhibited efficiency 60% and the maximum gain 8.8 dBi.
Fuzzy outlier analysis a combined clustering - outlier detection approach

Many outlier detection methods identify outliers ignoring any structure in data. However, it is sometimes beneficial to integrate outlierness and a method that groups data, such as clustering. This enhances both outlier and cluster analysis. In this paper, a fuzzy approach is proposed for integrating results from an outlier detection method and a clustering algorithm. A universal set of clusters is proposed which combines clusters obtained from clustering, and a virtual cluster for the outliers. The approach has two phases; the first computes patterns' initial memberships for the outlier cluster, and the second calculates memberships for the universal clusters, using an iterative membership propagation technique. The proposed approach is general and can combine any outlier detection method with any clustering algorithm. Both low and high dimensional data sets are used to illustrate the impact of the proposed approach.
A century of marketing

For more than a decade a growing number of academics have questioned the basis and value of many core marketing principles and have brought into question the credibility of the dominant historical account of the development of marketing (Fitchett 2005). Despite this criticism, and the growing disdain heaped upon marketers, change is notoriously slow in marketing education. This paper traces the history of marketing during the twentieth century to see if any lessons or indeed patterns can be distinguished for the new millennium marketers. While there is always a danger that much of what we each perceive as history is post-hoc rationalisation, there is value in looking back at how and what we have achieved, the perceived expectations along the way and (crucially) whether these have changed. The paper seeks to explore the apparent links between each generation of marketing thought in an attempt to understand, clarify current developments and raise possible research issues. It concludes that marketing thinking is dominated by its time and place and that the fruitless quest for the next new paradigm is more paralysing than stimulating in the marketing debate.
Investigation of non-synchronous penetration level and its impact on frequency response in a wind dominated power system

South Australia is a southern state of Australia, where penetration of wind power has continuously increased over the last few years. In recent times, most of the wind power plants have been constructed based on variable speed wind turbine generators, namely type III and IV machines. These machines, however, do not intrinsically offer any support to control frequency excursion following a major disturbance. These `asynchronous' machines together with a high voltage DC interconnection to the adjacent state Victoria often contribute to a higher level of non-synchronous generation in South Australia. During substantial presence of non-synchronous generation and high import from Victoria, South Australian system may rely on a few synchronous machines for frequency control following a disturbance. Under such operating scenarios, a big contingency such as an interconnection trip could result in unacceptable frequency deviation and rate of change of frequency. Consequently, the network may experience under frequency load shedding, which could affect the security of the system. To explore the above-mentioned issues, this paper evaluates non-synchronous penetration level in South Australia and investigates its effect on network frequency response. It also estimates the maximum allowable non-synchronous penetration level after an interconnection trip to minimise load shedding and keep rate of change of frequency within acceptable range.
Pricing Continuous Asian Options: A Comparison of Monte Carlo and Laplace Transform Inversion Methods

In this paper, we investigate two numerical methods for pricing Asian options: Laplace transform inversion and Monte Carlo simulation. In attempting to numerically invert the Laplace transform of the Asian call option that has been derived previously in the literature, we point out some of the potential difficulties inherent in this approach. We investigate the effectiveness of two easy-to-implement algorithms, which not only provide a cross-check for accuracy, but also demonstrate superior precision to two alternatives proposed in the literature for the Asian pricing problem. We then extend the theory of Laplace transforms for this problem by deriving the double Laplace transform of the continuous arithmetic Asian option in both its strike and maturity. We contrast the numerical inversion approach with Monte Carlo simulation, one of the most widely used techniques, especially by practitioners, for the valuation of derivative securities. For the Asian option pricing problem, we show that this approach will be effective for cases when numerical inversion is likely to be problematic. We then investigate ways to improve the precision of the simulation estimates through the judicious use of control variates. In particular, in the problem of correcting the discretization bias inherent in simulation when pricing continuous-time contracts, we find that the use of suitably biased control variates can be beneficial. This approach is also compared with the use of Richardson extrapolation.