Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased inactivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae by protraction of UV irradiation

The principle of equi-effectivity of the product of intensity and exposure time (principle of Bunsen-Roscoe) of UV irradiation has been assumed to be valid for the inactivation of microorganisms in general. Earlier studies claimed higher survival of Escherichia coli B/r with fractionated irradiation compared with single-exposure survival. However, data on the inactivation effect of protraction of UV irradiation are not available. By means of a specially designed UV irradiation apparatus which secured absolute UV dose measurements throughout the experiments, the effects of variation of UV irradiation intensities (253.7 nm) and exposure times were tested on the inactivation of a bacterial virus (Staphylococcus aureus phage A994), a vegetative bacterial strain (E. coli ATCC 25922), and bacterial spores (Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633) as well as three haploid laboratory strains (RC43a, YNN281, and YNN282) and two diploid strains (commercial bakery yeast strain and laboratory strain YNN281 x YNN282) or yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and spores of the latter diploid yeast strain. Each test organism was exposed to three UV intensities (0.02, 0.2, and 2 W/m2), with corresponding exposure times resulting in three dose levels for each intensity. Differences in inactivation rates were tested by analyses of variance and Newman-Keuls tests. Virus and bacteria showed no differences in inactivation rates by variation of intensities and exposure times within selected UV doses; hence, the principle of Bunsen-Roscoe could not be rejected for these strains. However, in the eukaryotic test strains of S. cerevisiae longer exposure times with lower intensities led to enhanced inactivation in both haploid and diploid strains, with a more pronounced effect in the diploid yeast strains, whereas in yeast spores in this dose rate effect could not be observed.
Instance-dependent Regret Bounds for Dueling Bandits

We study the multi-armed dueling bandit problem in which feedback is provided in the form of relative comparisons between pairs of actions, with the goal of eventually learning to select actions that are close to the best. Following Dud´ ik et al. (2015), we aim for algorithms whose performance approaches that of the optimal randomized choice of actions, the von Neumann winner, expressly avoiding more restrictive assumptions, for instance, regarding the existence of a single best action (a Condorcet winner). In this general setting, the best known algorithms achieve regret ~ O( p KT ) inT rounds withK actions. In this paper, we present the first instance-dependent regret bounds for the general problem, focusing particularly on when the von Neumann winner is sparse. Specifically, we propose a new algorithm whose regret, relative to a unique von Neumann winner with sparsitys, is at most ~ O( p sT ), plus an instance-dependent constant. Thus, when the sparsity is much smaller
Acoustic Properties Predict Perception of Unfamiliar Dutch Vowels by Adult Australian English and Peruvian Spanish Listeners

Research suggests that the size of the second language (L2) vowel inventory relative to the native (L1) inventory may affect the discrimination and acquisition of L2 vowels. Models of non-native and L2 vowel perception stipulate that naïve listeners' non-native and L2 perceptual patterns may be predicted by the relationship in vowel inventory size between the L1 and the L2. Specifically, having a smaller L1 vowel inventory than the L2 impedes L2 vowel perception, while having a larger one often facilitates it. However, the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model specifies that it is the L1–L2 acoustic relationships that predict non-native and L2 vowel perception, regardless of L1 vowel inventory. To test the effects of vowel inventory size vs. acoustic properties on non-native vowel perception, we compared XAB discrimination and categorization of five Dutch vowel contrasts between monolinguals whose L1 contains more (Australian English) or fewer (Peruvian Spanish) vowels than Dutch. No effect of language background was found, suggesting that L1 inventory size alone did not account for performance. Instead, participants in both language groups were more accurate in discriminating contrasts that were predicted to be perceptually easy based on L1–L2 acoustic relationships, and were less accurate for contrasts likewise predicted to be difficult. Further, cross-language discriminant analyses predicted listeners' categorization patterns which in turn predicted listeners' discrimination difficulty. Our results show that listeners with larger vowel inventories appear to activate multiple native categories as reflected in lower accuracy scores for some Dutch vowels, while listeners with a smaller vowel inventory seem to have higher accuracy scores for those same vowels. In line with the L2LP model, these findings demonstrate that L1–L2 acoustic relationships better predict non-native and L2 perceptual performance and that inventory size alone is not a good predictor for cross-language perceptual difficulties.
Characterization of the bacterial flora of tilapia ( Oreochoromis niloticus ) harvested from four lakes in the north of Cameroon

The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of Aeromonas spp. , Vibrio spp. and Plesiomonas shigelloides in Cameroonian tilapia.120 samples of tilapia were collected from June to December 2005 in four localities in the north of Cameroon and were delivered to the laboratory in cool boxes. For the sample preparation to isolate the bacteria, 50 g of sample (gills, intestine and skin of individually fish) were taken using a sterile scalpel. These 50 g were homogenized in 450 ml of sterilised peptone solution. After 18 h of incubation, the homogenate sample was inoculated on thiosulphate citrate bile salt sucrose (TCBS) using an inoculation loop and incubated at 37°C for 18 to 24 h. The isolated colonies were subjected to morphological, physiological and commercially available API kits tests. In addition, the antimicrobial pattern of the identified strains to ten different antibiotics was studied using the agar disk diffusion method. The results obtained from this study show the presence of bacterial species belonging to Aeromonas spp. (n=39), Vibrio spp. (n=41) and P. shigelloides (n=14). The results of antimicrobial susceptibility show that the highest rates of resistance was found in ampicillin (100% of isolates), nitrofurantoin (more than 68% of isolates), association of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole (51% of isolates) and sulfamide (46 % of isolates). This work therefore highlights an important incidence of Aeromonas spp. , Vibrio spp. and P. shigelloides with potential antimicrobial resistance, isolated from tilapia in four localities of Cameroon.
Multiple Cases-Based Reasoning Including Justification

Case-based reasoning is a promising approach to develop a tutoring system. However, there still remains some problems to be solved. First, the system should explain the inference procedure upon the user’s requests. Second, the explanation structure in the case may be inconsistent during the adaptation process. Third, when the system finds a gap between the new problem situation and the retrieved case, more complete matching should be performed by using not only the case but also multiple cases. In this paper, the authors will introduce the explanation structure so as to explain the reasoning process. Then, the authors will introduce a justification process for justifying the explanation structure. Finally, the authors will study the adaptability of multiple cases to create a solution which explains a complex reasoning process.
Cervicography for triage of women with mildly abnormal cervical cytology results.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the sensitivity and specificity of cervicography in detecting cervical cancer precursor lesions in women participating in the National Cancer Institute's multicenter atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance and low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion triage study (ALTS). STUDY DESIGN Cervigrams were obtained from 3134 women with a referral Papanicolaou smear diagnosis of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance or low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion. Cervigram and cervical histology results were compared by using cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 2 and CIN 3 disease end points. RESULTS Of 3134 women, 444 had histologic findings of more than or equal to CIN 2 and 222 had CIN 3. Cervicography interpretation by using a threshold of greater than or equal to atypical had a sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of 79.3%, 61.0%, 13.4%, and 97.5%, respectively, for detecting greater than or equal to CIN 3. Cervicography was more sensitive (80.8% vs 57.1%), but less specific (55.7% vs 81.8%), for detecting CIN 3 in women younger than 35 years compared with women 35 years or older, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Cervicography functioned moderately well at detecting CIN 2 or CIN 3 in women with atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance and low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion Papanicolau smear results. Cervigram sensitivity was better for younger women.
Scalable Memcached Design for InfiniBand Clusters Using Hybrid Transports

Mem cached is a general-purpose key-value based distributed memory object caching system. It is widely used in data-center domain for caching results of database calls, API calls or page rendering. An efficient Mem cached design is critical to achieve high transaction throughput and scalability. Previous research in the field has shown that the use of high performance interconnects like InfiniBand can dramatically improve the performance of Mem cached. The Reliable Connection (RC) is the most commonly used transport model for InfiniBand implementations. However, it has been shown that RC transport imposes scalability issues due to high memory consumption per connection. Such a characteristic is not favorable for middle wares like Mem cached, where the server is required to serve thousands of clients. The Unreliable Datagram (UD) transport offers higher scalability, but has several other limitations, which need to be efficiently handled. In this context, we introduce a hybrid transport model which takes advantage of the best features of RC and UD to deliver scalability and performance higher than that of a single-transport. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort aimed at studying the impact of using a hybrid of multiple transport protocols on Mem cached performance. We present comprehensive performance analysis using micro benchmarks, application benchmarks and realistic industry workloads. Our performance evaluations reveal that our Hybrid transport delivers performance comparable to that of RC, while maintaining a steady memory footprint. Mem cached Get latency for 4byte data size, is 4. 28μs and 4. 86μs for RC and hybrid transports, respectively. This represents a factor of twelve improvement over the performance of SDP. In evaluations using Apache Olio benchmark with 1,024 clients, Mem cached execution time using RC, UD and hybrid transports are 1.61, 1.96 and 1.70 seconds, respectively. Further, our scalability analysis with 4,096 client connections reveal that our proposed hybrid transport achieves good memory scalability.
A robust solver using a continuation method for Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation with degree constraint

The paper is concerned with computational aspects in solving the Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation problem with degree constraint tackled by Byrnes, Georgiou and Lindquist (2001). The previous solver for obtaining a positive real interpolant with a bounded degree sometimes reveals numerical difficulties caused by the inaccuracy of spectral factorization and the ill-conditioning of a system of linear equations. The solver is modified so that it does not have these drawbacks. The modified approach is based on a continuation method with predictor-corrector steps. The proposed solver turns out to be quite efficient and numerically robust.
Fruit juice consumption is associated with improved nutrient adequacy in children and adolescents: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003–2006

Abstract Objective To examine the contribution of 100 % fruit juice (FJ) consumption to dietary adequacy of shortfall nutrients by children and adolescents. Design Cross-sectional. Setting Secondary analysis of data from the 2003–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Subjects Children and adolescents aged 2–18 years (n 7250). Usual intake, determined from two 24 h dietary recalls, was calculated using the National Cancer Institute method. The population was dichotomized into consumers or non-consumers of 100 % FJ. The age/gender-specific percentage of the two consumption groups with intakes less than the Estimated Average Requirement or that exceeded the Adequate Intake for selected nutrients was determined. A Z-statistic for differences in population proportions was used to determine significance (P < 0·05). Results Children aged 2–5 years had the highest percentage of 100 % FJ consumers (71·1 %), followed by children aged 6–12 years (57·0 %) and adolescents aged 13–18 years (44·5 %). Compared with 100 % FJ consumers, a significantly higher percentage of non-consumers had intakes below the Estimated Average Requirement for vitamin A (24·4 (se 2·5) % v. 42·2 (se 2·5) %), vitamin C (0·1 (se 0·2) % v. 38·9 (se 4·1) %), folate (8·8 (se 1·5) % v. 22·1 (se 2·4) %), P (11·6 (se 2·1) % v. 21·3 (se 2·6) %) and Mg (25·8 (se 1·7) % v. 46·1 (se 2·0) %). A greater percentage of 100 % FJ consumers exceeded the Adequate Intake for K (2·4 (se 0·5) v. 0·5 (se 0·2) %) compared with non-consumers. Conclusions Consumption of 100 % FJ is associated with improved nutrient adequacy and can contribute to a healthy diet.
DEEP-WATER OTWAY BASIN: A NEW ASSESSMENT OF THE TECTONICS AND HYDROCARBON PROSPECTIVITY

The northwest-trending Otway Basin in southeast Australia formed during the separation of Australia and Antarctica between the latest Jurassic and the Early Cainozoic. A new, deep-seismic data set shows that the basin comprises two temporally and spatially overlapping rift components: the mainly Late Jurassic to mid-Cretaceous, east-west trending, inner Otway Basin—comprising the onshore basin and most of the continental shelf basin; and the northwest–southeast to north–south trending depocentres beneath the outer shelf and continental slope, extending from eastern South Australia to the west coast of Tasmania, and a relatively minor and ill-defined sub-basin underlying the continental rise in water depths greater than about 4,500 m. This rift system was most active from the mid-Cretaceous to Palaeogene, and was strongly affected by sinistral strike-slip motion as Australia and Antarctica separated. The continental slope elements contain the bulk of the sediment volume in the basin. From northwest to southeast, these elements comprise the Beachport and Morum Sub-basins, the north-south trending Discovery Bay High, and the Nelson Sub-basin which appears to be structurally and stratigraphically continuous with the Sorell Basin off west Tasmania. The reflection character of the crust and upper mantle varies widely across the basin, and there is a strong correlation between that character and the basin configuration. It appears that accommodation space beneath the slope basin was created largely by extension and removal of most of the laminated deep continental crust. There is encouragement for hydrocarbon exploration in the deep-water basin. Firstly, there are indications of diagenesis related to fluid flow in and above the strongly faulted Cretaceous section in the Morum Sub-basin. As an Early Cretaceous petroleum system is already proven beneath the continental shelf, this suggests that the same system is also active in deep-water. Secondly, existing sample data suggest that a second, Late Cretaceous petroleum system could be active where any source rocks are sufficiently deeply buried; this condition would probably be met in the Nelson Sub-basin.
A novel recovery mechanism enabling fine-granularity locking and fast, REDO-only recovery

We present a series of novel techniques and algorithms for transaction commit, logging, recovery, and propagation control. In combination, they provide a recovery component that maintains the persistent state of the database (both log and data pages) always in a committed state. Recovery from system and media failures only requires only REDO operations, which can happen concurrently with the processing of new transactions. The mechanism supports fine-granularity locking, partial rollbacks, and snapshot isolation for reader transactions. Our design does not assume a specific hardware configuration such as non-volatile RAM or flash---it is designed for traditional disk environments. Nevertheless, it can exploit modern I/O devices for higher transaction throughput and reduced recovery time with a high degree of flexibility.
Is “clinical” insight the same as “cognitive” insight in schizophrenia?

Abstract Poor insight is associated with impaired cognitive function in psychosis. Whether poor clinical insight overlaps with other aspects of self-awareness in schizophrenia, such as cognitive self-awareness, is unclear. We investigated whether awareness of clinical state (“clinical insight”) and awareness of cognitive deficits (“cognitive insight”) overlap in schizophrenia in a sample of 51 stabilized patients with chronic schizophrenia. Cognitive insight was assessed in terms of the agreement between subjective self-report and neuropsychological assessment. Patients who show good cognitive insight did not necessarily show good clinical insight. By contrast, self-report and objective neuropsychological assessment only correlated for patients in the intact clinical insight group and not for those in the impairment clinical insight group. We conclude that while good cognitive insight may not be necessary for good clinical insight, good cognitive awareness is at least partly reliant on the processes involved in clinical insight. (JINS, 2009, 15, 471–475.)
Revisiting the 1992 Landers earthquake: a Bayesian exploration of co-seismic slip and off-fault damage

Existing models for the distribution of subsurface fault slip associated with the 1992 Landers, CA, earthquake (M_w = 7.3) show significant dissimilarities. In particular, they exhibit different amounts of slip at shallow depths (<5 km). These discrepancies can be primarily attributed to the ill-posed nature of the slip inversion problem and to the use of physically unjustifiable smoothing or regularization constraints. In this study, we propose a new coseismic model obtained from the joint inversion of multiple observations in a relatively unregularized and fully Bayesian framework. We use a comprehensive data set including GPS, terrestrial geodesy, multiple SAR interferograms and co-seismic offsets from correlation of aerial images. These observations provide dense coverage of both near- and far-field deformation. To limit the impact of modelling uncertainties, we develop a 3-D fault geometry designed from field observations, co-seismic offsets and the distribution of aftershocks. In addition, we account for uncertainty in the assumed elastic structure used to compute the Green’s functions. Our solution includes the ensemble of all plausible models that are consistent with our prior information and fit the available observations within data and prediction uncertainties. Using near-fault high-resolution ground deformation measurements and the density of aftershocks, we investigate the properties of the damage zone and its impact on the inferred slip at depth. We attribute a part of the inferred slip deficit at shallow depth to our models not including the impact of a damage zone associated with a reduction of shear modulus in the vicinity of the fault.
Sentinel lymph node biopsy status is not the most powerful predictor of prognosis in cutaneous melanoma

Sentinel lymph node (SLN) status has been advocated in several recently published articles as the single most valuable prognostic marker for melanoma, and of greater prognostic importance than more established parameters such as Breslow thickness. A careful examination of the evidence for these claims, however, indicates that they are not substantiated by the available data, are somewhat misleading and suggest misinterpretation of the statistical analysis of the papers to which they refer. We will examine the basis for these claims and show why they are invalid.
Introduction into the analysis of high-throughput-sequencing based epigenome data

Sequencing-based approaches now allow high-resolution, genome-scale investigation of cellular epigenetic landscapes. For example, mapping of open chromatin regions, post-translational histone modifications and DNA methylation across a whole genome is now feasible, and new non-coding regulatory RNAs can be sensitively identified via RNA sequencing. The resulting large-scale data sets promise to contribute towards a more precise and complete understanding of gene regulation and to yield insights into the interplay between genomes and the environment. In this article, I review some of the conceptual issues and currently available software tools for the analysis of sequencing-based whole-genome epigenetics data.
Handling Flash Crowds from Your Garage

The garage innovator creates new web applications which may rocket to popular success - or sink when the flash crowd that arrives melts the web server. In the web context, utility computing provides a path by which the innovator can, with minimal capital, prepare for overwhelming popularity. Many components required for web computing have recently become available as utilities. We analyze the design space of building a load-balanced system in the context of garage innovation. We present six experiments that inform this analysis by highlighting limitations of each approach. We report our experience with three services we deployed in "garage" style, and with the flash crowds that each drew.
Dynamics and structure of the Bax-Bak complex responsible for releasing mitochondrial proteins during apoptosis

Bax and Bak are known to play a central role in facilitating the release of mitochondrial intermembrane proteins during apoptosis. The detailed mechanism, however, is still not clear. Using live cell imaging techniques, we showed here that Bax underwent four distinct stages of dynamic redistribution during UV-induced apoptosis. At stage I, Bax was distributed diffusely in the cytosol. About an hour after UV treatment at stage II, Bax started to translocate to mitochondria and distributed uniformly at the mitochondrial outer membrane (MOM). Within a few minutes, at stage III, Bax and Bak began to form small complexes at the MOM. Later, at stage IV, these Bax and Bak complexes expanded to become large clusters. We found that the formation of Bax-Bak small complexes at stage III was responsible for permeabilizing the MOM to release cytochrome c and Smac. Using a FRET technique, we further showed that Bax binds to Bak within the complex formed at the MOM during stage III. Finally, using a quantitative fluorescence measurement, we determined that the Bax-Bak complex was about 0.25 μm wide and composed of more than 100 protein molecules. These findings suggest that the Bax-Bak structure responsible for releasing mitochondrial proteins during apoptosis is not channel-like.