Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immuno-detection of PPAR overexpression with no change protein turnover endocardial tissues suggests major alterations in energy metabolism during ischemic and dilated cardiomyopathy conditions of heart

Immuno-Detection of PPAR Overexpression in Protein Turnover in Endocardial Tissues Suggesting Alterations in Energy Metabolism during Ischemic and Dilated Cardiomyopathy Conditions The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) family regulates genes encoding enzymes involved in fatty acid and glucose metabolism. This role in the high-energy consuming heart organ has been a major target in cardiomyopathy studies. PPARs and nuclear protein levels were investigated in endocardial tissues samples obtained from ischemic and dilated cardiomyopathy male patients. Control samples were obtained from male accident victims of same age group. The expression of PPAR isoforms in each sample was analyzed by, protein assay, SDS-PAGE, western blotting and densitometry. The mean milligram nuclear protein of endocardial tissues for each of the three groups was measured as follows: ischemic 17.6 ± 8.1; dilated 13.7 ± 3.4; control 21.0 ± 6.0; (n=3 per group). The range of protein variability by Pearson correlation coefficient r was -0.91 ≤ r ≤ +0.77, (n=9). However, the sample means of the ischemic and dilated groups were not significantly different from the control mean, P>0.5 in each case by student’s test. The isoforms of PPAR are strongly expressed in cardiomyopathy conditions without change in nuclear protein turnover. The results also show that PPAR-α and PPAR-γ may be more predominant in the heart than PPAR-s. Furthermore, the expression of the spliced variants of PPAR-α and PPAR-γ were not affected by the cardiomyopathy conditions and PPAR-s have no spliced variant in the heart. The study provides an evidence of alteration in the heart’s energy metabolic processes during cardiomyopathies.
Automated insightful drill-down recommendations for learning analytics dashboards

The big data revolution is an exciting opportunity for universities, which typically have rich and complex digital data on their learners. It has motivated many universities around the world to invest in the development and implementation of learning analytics dashboards (LADs). These dashboards commonly make use of interactive visualisation widgets to assist educators in understanding and making informed decisions about the learning process. A common operation in analytical dashboards is a 'drill-down', which in an educational setting allows users to explore the behaviour of sub-populations of learners by progressively adding filters. Nevertheless, drill-down challenges exist, which hamper the most effective use of the data, especially by users without a formal background in data analysis. Accordingly, in this paper, we address this problem by proposing an approach that recommends insightful drill-downs to LAD users. We present results from an application of our proposed approach using an existing LAD. A set of insightful drill-down criteria from a course with 875 students are explored and discussed.
Capuchin: Tensor-based GPU Memory Management for Deep Learning

In recent years, deep learning has gained unprecedented success in various domains, the key of the success is the larger and deeper deep neural networks (DNNs) that achieved very high accuracy. On the other side, since GPU global memory is a scarce resource, large models also pose a significant challenge due to memory requirement in the training process. This restriction limits the DNN architecture exploration flexibility. In this paper, we propose Capuchin, a tensor-based GPU memory management module that reduces the memory footprint via tensor eviction/prefetching and recomputation. The key feature of Capuchin is that it makes memory management decisions based on dynamic tensor access pattern tracked at runtime. This design is motivated by the observation that the access pattern to tensors is regular during training iterations. Based on the identified patterns, one can exploit the total memory optimization space and offer the fine-grain and flexible control of when and how to perform memory optimization techniques. We deploy Capuchin in a widely-used deep learning framework, Tensorflow, and show that Capuchin can reduce the memory footprint by up to 85% among 6 state-of-the-art DNNs compared to the original Tensorflow. Especially, for the NLP task BERT, the maximum batch size that Capuchin can outperforms Tensorflow and gradient-checkpointing by 7x and 2.1x, respectively. We also show that Capuchin outperforms vDNN and gradient-checkpointing by up to 286% and 55% under the same memory oversubscription.
Radiological Study of Interphalangeal Sesamoid Bones on Hallux in Korean Subjects

Purpose: Frequency of sesamoid bone on hallucal interphalangeal joint has been described to be low probability in orthopaedic and anatomical literature. We have, however, experienced two cases of interphalangeal joint dislocation giving difficulty to usual manipulative reduction because of presence of sesamoid bone recently. In order to ascertain existence of sesamoid bone on interphalangeal joint of hallux in Korean adults, radiological study have been performed with feet of patients Materials and Methods: Between May 2003 and October 2006, 974 patients with 1098 radiographs of feet which were reached skeletal maturity over 18-year-old were examined. Unilateral or bilateral anteroposterior, lateral and oblique radiographs were observed by one same person and presence was recorded if there was sesamoid in films. Distance of long and short axes were measured in lateral view and cases of two sesamoids in interphalangeal joint were recorded. Statistical differences between left and right side or between men and women were evaluated by chi-square test. Results: Frequency of sesamoid was 980 cases (89.3%) and no occurrence in 118 cases (10.7%). Two sesamoids were observed in 3 cases. Average distance of long axis was 4.9 mm (range, 0.5-11.4) and average distance of short axis was 3.5 mm (range, 0.3-9.3). Unilateral sesamoid was observed in 7 patients (5.6%), bilateral absence was 7 patients (5.6%) and bilateral sesamoids in 110 patients (88.8%) out of 124 patients who took bilateral feet radiographs. Men has less frequency than women significantly (p=0.014) while there was no significant difference in frequency according to side(p>0.05). Conclusion: Sesamoid bone was seen in 980 feet (89.3%) out of 1098 normal Korean radiological studies of feet. We report 3 cases of two seamoids which was extremely rarely reported in literature. Korean frequency is similar with Japanese, but much higher than Caucasians and black Africans.
Effect of Informal Sector Tax Revenue on Capital Development in Lagos Metropolis

Abstract The study investigates the effect of informal sector tax proceeds on capital development in Lagos Metropolis. The study adopted Ex-post facto design to obtain secondary data, covering 20 years (2000–2019) from the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service and the Ministry of Budget and Planning. All the series were tested for normalities to determine the appropriateness of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression. The results of the study revealed that tax collected from the association, petty traders, and market men and women had a significant effect on capital development in Lagos Metropolis. It is evident from the monumental capital projects being executed by the government in the Metropolis. The study recommends that the government should not only create an enabling environment for the informal sector to thrive but also give all necessary support for its survival because the sector has contributed to the capital development of the Metropolis through tax revenue.
Towards a comparative framework of demographic resilience

In times of global biodiversity crisis, developing tools to define, quantify, compare and predict ecological resilience is essential for understanding species’ responses to global change. Disparate interpretations of ecological resilience have, however, hampered the development of a common currency to quantify and compare resilience across natural systems. Most frameworks of study have focused on upper levels of biological organisation, especially ecosystems or communities, which adds layers of complication to measuring resilience with empirical data. To overcome such limitations, we suggest quantifying resilience using demographic data. Surprisingly, a quantifiable definition of resilience does not exist at the demographic level. Here, we present a framework of demographic resilience with a set of metrics that are comparable across species, and facilitate cost-effective management decisions.
Clinical and Microbiologic Profile of Patients With Staphylococcus aureus Infection

Background: Invasive Staphylococcus aureus infection (ISA) is increasingly being recognized as an important cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. This problem is confounded by the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus. The aim of the study was to describe the clinical presentation and antibiotic susceptibility profile of ISA infection in a tertiary hospital in North West Nigeria. Materials and Methods: This study was a prospective cohort study carried out on patients with ISA infection who were seen at a regional referral tertiary hospital in North West Nigeria. One hundred forty patients with ISA infection were studied. Clinical evaluation and relevant laboratory investigations were conducted. Antibiotic susceptibility tests were carried out by disk diffusion method according to Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute guidelines. Results: The mean age of the patients was 40.7 ± 15.6 years, with maleto-female ratio of 1.4:1. Skin and soft tissue infections (108 [77.1%]) and primary bacteremia (17 [12.1%]) were the most common diagnoses. Most infections were community-acquired infections (94 [67.1%]). Risk factors were identified in 112 (80%), of which diabetes mellitus (40 [35.7%]) and chronic kidney diseases (33 [29.5%]) predominate. Eighty-two (52.2%) of the isolates were methicillin-sensitive S. aureus, and 75 (47.8%) were methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). More cases of MRSA compared with methicillin-sensitive S. aureus were seen among patients with pneumonia and primary bacteremia. The overall mortality was 25 (19.7%) at 1-month follow-up. On multiple logistic regression analysis, the only factors predictive of mortality were sepsis (odds ratio, 6.723; 95% confidence interval, 1.431–31.585) and infection with MRSA (odds ratio, 5.523; 95% confidence interval, 1.506–20.250). Conclusions: This study shows high burden of ISAwith high prevalence of MRSA. This underscores the need for antimicrobial stewardship program and strengthening of infection control practices in our hospital.
How good is my feedback?: a content analysis of written feedback

Feedback is a crucial element in helping students identify gaps and assess their learning progress. In online courses, feedback becomes even more critical as it is one of the resources where the teacher interacts directly with the student. However, with the growing number of students enrolled in online learning, it becomes a challenge for instructors to provide good quality feedback that helps the student self-regulate. In this context, this paper proposed a content analysis of feedback text provided by instructors based on different indicators of good feedback. A random forest classifier was trained and evaluated at different feedback levels. The results achieved outcomes up to 87% and 0.39 of accuracy and Cohen's κ, respectively. The paper also provides insights into the most influential textual features of feedback that predict feedback quality.
Determinants of Sexual and Reproductive Health among street adolescents in dagorretti district in Nairobi

1 Rosemary Kamanu; MSc. Public Health student, Jomo Kenya University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) /Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) Prof Zipporah Ng’ang’a: Lead supervisor, Director, JKUAT, Institute of Tropical Diseases. Mr. James Muttunga: Alternate Supervisor, Chief Research Officer, KEMRI Background: Adolescents make up 80% of the world population and despite being the hardest hit by sexual and reproductive health challenges their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs are largely unmet. The challenges are more intense among certain groups, including street adolescents based on social, cultural and
Catalyzer: Sub-millisecond Startup for Serverless Computing with Initialization-less Booting

Serverless computing promises cost-efficiency and elasticity for high-productive software development. To achieve this, the serverless sandbox system must address two challenges: strong isolation between function instances, and low startup latency to ensure user experience. While strong isolation can be provided by virtualization-based sandboxes, the initialization of sandbox and application causes non-negligible startup overhead. Conventional sandbox systems fall short in low-latency startup due to their application-agnostic nature: they can only reduce the latency of sandbox initialization through hypervisor and guest kernel customization, which is inadequate and does not mitigate the majority of startup overhead. This paper proposes Catalyzer, a serverless sandbox system design providing both strong isolation and extremely fast function startup. Instead of booting from scratch, Catalyzer restores a virtualization-based function instance from a well-formed checkpoint image and thereby skips the initialization on the critical path (init-less). Catalyzer boosts the restore performance by on-demand recovering both user-level memory state and system state. We also propose a new OS primitive, sfork (sandbox fork), to further reduce the startup latency by directly reusing the state of a running sandbox instance. Fundamentally, Catalyzer removes the initialization cost by reusing state, which enables general optimizations for diverse serverless functions. The evaluation shows that Catalyzer reduces startup latency by orders of magnitude, achieves < 1ms latency in the best case, and significantly reduces the end-to-end latency for real-world workloads. Catalyzer has been adopted by Ant Financial, and we also present lessons learned from industrial development.
Equations of state, phase relations, and oxygen fugacity of the Ru-RuO2 buffer at high pressures and temperatures

Abstract Experimental studies and measurements of inclusions in diamonds show that ferric iron components are increasingly stabilized with depth in the mantle. To determine the thermodynamic stability of such components, their concentration needs to be measured at known oxygen fugacities. The metal-oxide pair Ru and RuO2 are ideal as an internal oxygen fugacity buffer in high-pressure experiments. Both phases remain solid to high temperatures and react minimally with silicates, only exchanging oxygen. To calculate oxygen fugacities at high pressure and temperature, however, requires information on the phase relations and equation of state properties of the solid phases. We have made in situ synchrotron X‑ray diffraction measurements in a multi-anvil press on mixtures of Ru and RuO2 to 19.4 GPa and 1473 K with which we have determined phase relations of the RuO2 phases and derived thermal equations of state (EoS) parameters for both Ru and RuO2. Rutile-structured RuO2 was found to undergo two phase transformations, first at ~7 GPa to an orthorhombic structure and then above 12 GPa to a cubic structure. The phase boundary of the cubic phase was constrained for the first time at high pressure and temperature. We have derived a continuous Gibbs free energy expression for the tetragonal and orthorhombic phases of RuO2 by fitting the second-order phase transition boundary and P-V-T data for both phases, using a model based on Landau theory. The transition between the orthorhombic and cubic phases was then used along with EoS terms derived for both phases to determine a Gibbs free energy expression for the cubic phase. We have used these data to calculate the oxygen fugacity of the Ru + O2 = RuO2 equilibrium, which we have parameterized as a single polynomial across the stability fields of all three phases of RuO2. The expression is log10fO2(Ru – RuO2) = (7.782 – 0.00996P + 0.001932P2 – 3.76 × 10–5P3) + (–13 763 + 592P – 3.955P2)/T + (–1.05 × 106 – 4622P)/T2, which should be valid from room pressure up to 25 GPa and 773–2500 K, with an estimated uncertainty of 0.2 log units. Our calculated fO2 is shown to be up to 1 log unit lower than estimates that use previous expressions or ignore EoS terms.
Integrative Systematic Revision of Bolitoglossa celaque (Caudata: Plethodontidae), with a new species from the Lenca Highlands of Honduras

Abstract: The diversity of the tropical climbing salamander genus Bolitoglossa (Magnadigita) in Honduras has been underestimated historically, with 11 new species having been described in the past quarter-century. Bolitoglossa celaque is known to occur in three disjunct mountain ranges across the Lenca Highlands region of southwestern Honduras, and previous studies have independently demonstrated differences in mitochondrial genealogy and genome size between populations to the east and west of the Mejocote–San Juan Depression. Sampling from all three mountain ranges represented two genetically distinct clades: one associated with the vicinity of the type locality, Montaña de Celaque, and the second consisting of several eastern populations from the departments of Intibucá and La Paz. Distinctiveness of these two clades was further investigated and supported by analyses of morphological variation, geometric morphometrics of foot morphology, and comparative osteology. Based on congruent signals from each line of evidence, we restrict the taxon B. celaque to Montaña de Celaque and describe the eastern populations as a new species of Bolitoglossa.
Linkage Disequilibrium, Effective Population Size and Genomic Inbreeding Rates in American Mink Using Genotyping-by-Sequencing Data

Knowledge of linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns is necessary to determine the minimum density of markers required for genomic studies and to infer historical changes as well as inbreeding events in the populations. In this study, we used genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across American mink genome and further to estimate LD, effective population size (Ne), and inbreeding rates based on excess of homozygosity (FHOM) and runs of homozygosity (ROH). A GBS assay was constructed based on the sequencing of ApeKI-digested libraries from 285 American mink using Illumina HiSeq Sequencer. Data of 13,321 SNPs located on 46 scaffolds was used to perform LD analysis. The average LD (r2 ± SD) between adjacent SNPs was 0.30 ± 0.35 over all scaffolds with an average distance of 51 kb between markers. The average r2 < 0.2 was observed at inter-marker distances of >40 kb, suggesting that at least 60,000 informative SNPs would be required for genomic selection in American mink. The Ne was estimated to be 116 at five generations ago. In addition, the most rapid decline of population size was observed between 100 and 200 generations ago. Our results showed that short extensions of homozygous genotypes (500 kb to 1 Mb) were abundant across the genome and accounted for 33% of all ROH identified. The average inbreeding coefficient based on ROH longer than 1 Mb was 0.132 ± 0.042. The estimations of FHOM ranged from −0.44 to 0.34 among different samples with an average of 0.15 over all individuals. This study provided useful insights to determine the density of SNP panel providing enough statistical power and accuracy in genomic studies of American mink. Moreover, these results confirmed that GBS approach can be considered as a useful tool for genomic studies in American mink.
Pathways Connecting Late-Life Depression and Dementia

Late-life depression is associated with significant cognitive impairment. Meta-analyses showed that depression is associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and it might be an etiological factor for AD. Since late-life depression is often connected with cognitive impairment and dementia is usually associated with depressive symptoms, a simple diagnostic approach to distinguish between the disorders is challenging. Several overlapping pathophysiological substrates might explain the comorbidity of both syndromes. Firstly, a stress syndrome, i.e., elevated cortisol levels, has been observed in up to 70% of depressed patients and also in AD pathology. Stress conditions can cause hippocampal neuronal damage as well as cognitive impairment. Secondly, the development of a depression and dementia after the onset of vascular diseases, the profile of cerebrovascular risk factors in both disorders and the impairments depending on the location of cerebrovascular lesions, speak in favor of a vascular hypothesis as a common factor for both disorders. Thirdly, neuroinflammatory processes play a key role in the etiology of depression as well as in dementia. Increased activation of microglia, changes in Transforming-Growth-Factor beta1 (TGF-beta1) signaling, production of pro-inflammatory cytokines as well as reduction of anti-inflammatory molecules are examples of common pathways impaired in dementia and depression. Fourthly, the neurotrophin BDNF is highly expressed in the central nervous system, especially in the hippocampus, where it plays a key role in the proliferation, differentiation and the maintenance of neuronal integrity throughout lifespan. It has been associated not only with antidepressant properties but also a reduction of cognitive impairment and therefore could be involved also in AD. Another etiologic factor is amyloid accumulation, as plasma amyloid beta-42 independently predicts both late-onset depression and AD. Higher plasma amyloid beta-42 predicts the development of late onset depression and conversion to possible AD. However, clinical trials with antibodies against beta amyloid recently failed, i.e., Solanezumab, Aducanumab, and Crenezumab. An overproduction of amyloid-beta might simply reflect a form of synaptic plasticity to compensate for neuronal dysfunction in different kind of neurological and psychiatric diseases of multiple etiologies. The tau hypothesis, sex/gender specific differences, epigenetics and the gut microbiota-brain axis imply other potential common pathways connecting late-life depression and dementia. In conclusion, different potential pathophysiological links between dementia and depression highlight several specific synergistic and multifaceted treatment possibilities, depending on the individual risk profile of the patient.