Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Reliable and Computationally Cheap Approach for Finding Robust Optimal Solutions

Current robust optimisation techniques can be divided into two main groups: algorithms that rely on previously sampled points versus those that need additional function evaluations to confirm robustness of solutions during optimisation. This paper first identifies and investigates the drawbacks of these two methods: unreliability for the first and excessive computational cost for the second. A novel approach is then proposed to alleviate the drawbacks of both methods. The proposed method considers the number of suitable, previously sampled points in the parameter space as a key metric to decide whether a solution can be assumed to be a robust solution when relying on previously sampled points. This factor is treated as a constraint that prevents solutions with low numbers of suitable, previously sampled points from participating in the improvement of the next population. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the proposed method is implemented for Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) and applied to several test functions from the literature. The results show that the proposed approach is able to effectively improve the reliability of algorithms that rely of previously sampled points without the need for extra function evaluations.
Nanomedicine strategies for sustained, controlled, and targeted treatment of cancer stem cells of the digestive system

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) constitute a small proportion of the cancer cells that have self-renewal capacity and tumor-initiating ability. They have been identified in a variety of tumors, including tumors of the digestive system. CSCs exhibit some unique characteristics, which are responsible for cancer metastasis and recurrence. Consequently, the development of effective therapeutic strategies against CSCs plays a key role in increasing the efficacy of cancer therapy. Several potential approaches to target CSCs of the digestive system have been explored, including targeting CSC surface markers and signaling pathways, inducing the differentiation of CSCs, altering the tumor microenvironment or niche, and inhibiting ATP-driven efflux transporters. However, conventional therapies may not successfully eradicate CSCs owing to various problems, including poor solubility, stability, rapid clearance, poor cellular uptake, and unacceptable cytotoxicity. Nanomedicine strategies, which include drug, gene, targeted, and combinational delivery, could solve these problems and significantly improve the therapeutic index. This review briefly summarizes the ongoing development of strategies and nanomedicine-based therapies against CSCs of the digestive system.
Lentiviral vector-mediated PAX6 overexpression promotes growth and inhibits apoptosis of human retinoblastoma cells.

PURPOSE The cancer-associated gene PAX6 is a key regulator in the embryological development of the retina. The authors assessed whether PAX6 was associated with the development of retinoblastoma. Methods. Two human retinoblastoma cell lines (Y79 and SO-Rb50) were transfected with PAX6-GFP recombinant lentiviral vectors and were compared with cells undergoing transfection with GFP lentiviral vectors and cells without any intervention. Overexpression of PAX6 was assessed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis and Western blot analysis. Cell proliferation assays were evaluated by colorimetric cell counting kit-8. The cell cycle was analyzed by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Apoptosis rates were assessed by TUNEL assay followed by FACS analysis. Using Western blot analysis, the authors measured levels of proteins p53, p21, p27, cdc2, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, and cleaved caspase-3. RESULTS Three days after transfection, both cell lines showed a statistically significant (P < 0.001) overexpression of PAX6, parallel to significantly (P < 0.001) increased cell proliferation. At 7 days after transfection, cell cycle analysis showed a significant (P < 0.001) reduction of G0/G1 arrest and a significant induction of G2/M arrest (P < 0.01). Parallel to a reduction in caspase-3 levels, the apoptosis rate significantly (P < 0.001) decreased. Levels of p53, p21, and p27 were reduced, and the levels of cdc2 were increased. CONCLUSIONS Lentiviral vector-mediated overexpression of PAX6 in human retinoblastoma cells was associated with increased cell proliferation parallel to a reduced caspase-3-dependent apoptotic rate and a change in the p53 regulated cell cycle. PAX6 may be further explored for the diagnosis of and therapy for retinoblastomas.
DECDC: An energy-aware route protocol for wireless sensor networks

With the analysis of wireless sensor network clustering route mechanism, distributed energy-surplus and centralism distance clustering protocol (DECDC) has been proposed for dynamic optimization problem of wireless sensor network routing technology cluster head choice and clustering and inter-cluster route, in witch a node, according to its residual energy and the position and distance from sink node, independently makes its decision compete for becoming a cluster head. Moreover this protocol proposes a communication method, which based on the minimum way tree, causing cluster head to carry on according to the minimum gathering by tree. Experiment results have shown that compared with LEACH, in the same case, can lead to the increase of sensor network lifetime by 800% respectively,the energy consumption is more balance. So the reliability of sensing information in DECDC is higher than the other protocol.
Small Open Reading Frames, Non-Coding RNAs and Repetitive Elements in Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA 110

Small open reading frames (sORFs) and genes for non-coding RNAs are poorly investigated components of most genomes. Our analysis of 1391 ORFs recently annotated in the soybean symbiont Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA 110 revealed that 78% of them contain less than 80 codons. Twenty-one of these sORFs are conserved in or outside Alphaproteobacteria and most of them are similar to genes found in transposable elements, in line with their broad distribution. Stabilizing selection was demonstrated for sORFs with proteomic evidence and bll1319_ISGA which is conserved at the nucleotide level in 16 alphaproteobacterial species, 79 species from other taxa and 49 other Proteobacteria. Further we used Northern blot hybridization to validate ten small RNAs (BjsR1 to BjsR10) belonging to new RNA families. We found that BjsR1 and BjsR3 have homologs outside the genus Bradyrhizobium, and BjsR5, BjsR6, BjsR7, and BjsR10 have up to four imperfect copies in Bradyrhizobium genomes. BjsR8, BjsR9, and BjsR10 are present exclusively in nodules, while the other sRNAs are also expressed in liquid cultures. We also found that the level of BjsR4 decreases after exposure to tellurite and iron, and this down-regulation contributes to survival under high iron conditions. Analysis of additional small RNAs overlapping with 3’-UTRs revealed two new repetitive elements named Br-REP1 and Br-REP2. These REP elements may play roles in the genomic plasticity and gene regulation and could be useful for strain identification by PCR-fingerprinting. Furthermore, we studied two potential toxin genes in the symbiotic island and confirmed toxicity of the yhaV homolog bll1687 but not of the newly annotated higB homolog blr0229_ISGA in E. coli. Finally, we revealed transcription interference resulting in an antisense RNA complementary to blr1853, a gene induced in symbiosis. The presented results expand our knowledge on sORFs, non-coding RNAs and repetitive elements in B. japonicum and related bacteria.
Cerebrospinal fluid levels of β-amyloid 1-42, but not of tau, are fully changed already 5 to 10 years before the onset of Alzheimer dementia.

CONTEXT Early detection of prodromal Alzheimer disease (AD) is important because new disease-modifying therapies are most likely to be effective when initiated during the early stages of disease. OBJECTIVES To assess the ability of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers total tau (T-tau), phosphorylated tau (P-tau), and β-amyloid 1-42 (Aβ42) to predict future development of AD dementia within 9.2 years in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and to compare CSF biomarkers between early and late converters to AD. DESIGN A clinical study with a median follow-up of 9.2 years (range, 4.1-11.8 years). SETTING Memory disorder clinic. Patients A total of 137 patients with MCI who underwent lumbar puncture at baseline. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Conversion to AD dementia. RESULTS During follow-up, 72 patients (53.7%) developed AD and 21 (15.7%) progressed to other forms of dementia. At baseline, CSF Aβ42 levels were reduced and T-tau and P-tau levels were elevated in patients who converted to AD during follow-up compared with nonconverters (P < .001). Baseline CSF Aβ42 levels were equally reduced in patients with MCI who converted to AD within 0 to 5 years (early converters) compared with those who converted between 5 and 10 years (late converters). However, CSF T-tau and P-tau levels were significantly higher in early converters vs late converters. A baseline Aβ42:P-tau ratio predicted the development of AD within 9.2 years with a sensitivity of 88%, specificity of 90%, positive predictive value of 91%, and negative predictive value of 86%. CONCLUSIONS Approximately 90% of patients with MCI and pathologic CSF biomarker levels at baseline develop AD within 9 to 10 years. Levels of Aβ42 are already fully decreased at least 5 to 10 years before conversion to AD dementia, whereas T-tau and P-tau seem to be later markers. These results provide direct support in humans for the hypothesis that altered Aβ metabolism precedes tau-related pathology and neuronal degeneration.
Voxel-based morphometry analyses of in vivo MRI in the aging mouse lemur primate

Cerebral atrophy is one of the most widely brain alterations associated to aging. A clear relationship has been established between age-associated cognitive impairments and cerebral atrophy. The mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) is a small primate used as a model of age-related neurodegenerative processes. It is the first non-human primate in which cerebral atrophy has been correlated with cognitive deficits. Previous studies of cerebral atrophy in this model were based on time consuming manual delineation or measurement of selected brain regions from magnetic resonance images (MRI). These measures could not be used to analyse regions that cannot be easily outlined such as the nucleus basalis of Meynert or the subiculum. In humans, morphometric assessment of structural changes with age is generally performed with automated procedures such as voxel-based morphometry (VBM). The objective of our work was to perform user-independent assessment of age-related morphological changes in the whole brain of large mouse lemur populations thanks to VBM. The study was based on the SPMMouse toolbox of SPM 8 and involved thirty mouse lemurs aged from 1.9 to 11.3 years. The automatic method revealed for the first time atrophy in regions where manual delineation is prohibitive (nucleus basalis of Meynert, subiculum, prepiriform cortex, Brodmann areas 13–16, hypothalamus, putamen, thalamus, corpus callosum). Some of these regions are described as particularly sensitive to age-associated alterations in humans. The method revealed also age-associated atrophy in cortical regions (cingulate, occipital, parietal), nucleus septalis, and the caudate. Manual measures performed in some of these regions were in good agreement with results from automatic measures. The templates generated in this study as well as the toolbox for SPM8 can be downloaded. These tools will be valuable for future evaluation of various treatments that are tested to modulate cerebral aging in lemurs.
Implementation experiments to evaluate a new TCP congestion control supporting loss-fairness

This paper proposes a new TCP congestion control supporting loss-fairness, which also contributes to improving RTT fairness. It has been well known that smaller RTT flows grab more bandwidth than larger ones when they compete on the shared link. This is called RTT unfairness and is caused by congestion control mechanism of the current TCP. To solve this problem, many protocols have been proposed. TCP-Libra is one of them, which formulates its window increase rate as a function of RTT and brings the same throughput irrespective of different RTT values. However, we indicate TCP-Libra's formulation holds only when the congestion window is halved upon packet losses similar to TCP-Reno. When we apply different (smarter) window control scheme s, the formulation has to be modified accordingly. Therefore, in this paper, we consider a hybrid congestion control supporting RTT fairness which switches two modes according to buffering state at the bottleneck link. In decrement phase upon packet loss, it decreases window size to clear the buffering packets instead of halvi ng the window size. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of loss-fairness for our window increase formulation, which is equivalent to RTT-fairness. Experiments are carried out to validate the proposed method by both imple me ntation experiments and simulations, and much better performances are achieved against conventional methods.
Women coping with life: A mixed methods study of incarcerated women with life sentences

WOMEN COPING WITH LIFE: A MIXED METHODS STUDY OF INCARCERATED WOMEN WITH LIFE SENTENCES By Gina L. Fedock Life sentences have increasingly translated into prison stays until the end of natural life. Incarcerated women serving life sentences comprise a small, but growing, sub-population of the prison population. Women with life sentences enter prison with high rates of physical and mental health concerns, and these concerns are often chronic and recurring needs for women’s duration in prison. Pressing concerns include persistent depression and suicide risk factors. However, there is a lack of research focused on improving this population’s mental health, and specifically, no existing intervention for this population of women. Thus, this dissertation seeks to enhance and broaden the knowledge base about factors that influence the mental health of women with life sentence in order to provide clarity and guide advocacy for prison-based mental health services. Also, this dissertation includes a sub-study that examines the mental health outcomes for a new intervention with this population of women. Two key theories serve as the foundation for this dissertation: importation theory and deprivation theory. Three sub-studies comprise three core chapters of this dissertation. Across these studies, the results highlight implications for social work practice, policy, and research.
Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Partially Observable Games with Sampling-Based State Estimation

Games constitute a challenging domain of reinforcement learning (RL) for acquiring strategies because many of them include multiple players and many unobservable variables in a large state space. The difficulty of solving such realistic multiagent problems with partial observability arises mainly from the fact that the computational cost for the estimation and prediction in the whole state space, including unobservable variables, is too heavy. To overcome this intractability and enable an agent to learn in an unknown environment, an effective approximation method is required with explicit learning of the environmental model. We present a model-based RL scheme for large-scale multiagent problems with partial observability and apply it to a card game, hearts. This game is a well-defined example of an imperfect information game and can be approximately formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) for a single learning agent. To reduce the computational cost, we use a sampling technique in which the heavy integration required for the estimation and prediction can be approximated by a plausible number of samples. Computer simulation results show that our method is effective in solving such a difficult, partially observable multiagent problem.
An Extended Level Method for Efficient Multiple Kernel Learning

We consider the problem of multiple kernel learning (MKL), which can be formulated as a convex-concave problem. In the past, two efficient methods, i.e., Semi-Infinite Linear Programming (SILP) and Subgradient Descent (SD), have been proposed for large-scale multiple kernel learning. Despite their success, both methods have their own shortcomings: (a) the SD method utilizes the gradient of only the current solution, and (b) the SILP method does not regularize the approximate solution obtained from the cutting plane model. In this work, we extend the level method, which was originally designed for optimizing non-smooth objective functions, to convex-concave optimization, and apply it to multiple kernel learning. The extended level method overcomes the drawbacks of SILP and SD by exploiting all the gradients computed in past iterations and by regularizing the solution via a projection to a level set. Empirical study with eight UCI datasets shows that the extended level method can significantly improve efficiency by saving on average 91.9% of computational time over the SILP method and 70.3% over the SD method.
Pharmacological properties of immuno-isolated neuronal nicotinic receptors

Recently we immunoaffinity-purified an ACh receptor from chicken brain using a monoclonal antibody raised against receptors from fish electric organ (Whiting and Lindstrom, 1986). This neuronal receptor could be affinity-labeled with 3H-bromoacetylcholine, and antisera to it specifically blocked ACh-induced depolarization of chicken ciliary ganglion cells. Here we show that this neuronal ACh receptor binds 3H- nicotine with high affinity (KD = 6.61 +/- 0.13 nM). 3H-Nicotine binding was blocked by various nicotinic cholinergic ligands but not by alpha-bungarotoxin or the muscarinic antagonist atropine. Binding was also blocked by affinity labeling the receptor with bromoacetylcholine (after reduction by dithiothreitol). Additionally, we were able to use rat antisera raised against the chicken brain receptor to isolate a component from detergent extracts of rat brain that also bound 3H- nicotine with high affinity (KD = 1.5 nM). The pharmacology of this putative ACh receptor from rat brain was almost identical to the receptor from chicken brain, and its regional distribution was in good agreement with that of 3H-nicotine binding to rodent brain membranes reported by other workers. Thus, by analogy to the receptor we have purified and characterized from chicken brain, this nicotine-binding component from rat brain is probably a functional mammalian neuronal nicotinic ACh receptor.
YouTube-8M Video Understanding Challenge Approach and Applications

This paper introduces the YouTube-8M Video Understanding Challenge hosted as a Kaggle competition and also describes my approach to experimenting with various models. For each of my experiments, I provide the score result as well as possible improvements to be made. Towards the end of the paper, I discuss the various ensemble learning techniques that I applied on the dataset which significantly boosted my overall competition score. At last, I discuss the exciting future of video understanding research and also the many applications that such research could significantly improve.
Household and Family in Theory on Inequality

Households organized as families are essential units in theory on inequality because they redistribute the product of larger organizations: the consumption of resources by individuals is influenced by the power structures of their families. Households vary demographically as well as in social structure, and redistribute according to varying principles that typically contrast with those of production organizations. In pa; ticular the rules of exchange-economic vs. noneconomic-under which distribution takes place may differfrom those under which redistribution takes place. Many issues in inequality theory stem from the fact that economic and noneconomic rules of exchange are both present in the same social settings.
Cold-Induced Changes in Gene Expression in Brown Adipose Tissue, White Adipose Tissue and Liver

Cold exposure imposes a metabolic challenge to mammals that is met by a coordinated response in different tissues to prevent hypothermia. This study reports a transcriptomic analysis in brown adipose tissue (BAT), white adipose (WAT) and liver of mice in response to 24 h cold exposure at 8°C. Expression of 1895 genes were significantly (P<0.05) up- or down-regulated more than two fold by cold exposure in all tissues but only 5 of these genes were shared by all three tissues, and only 19, 14 and 134 genes were common between WAT and BAT, WAT and liver, and BAT and liver, respectively. We confirmed using qRT-PCR, the increased expression of a number of characteristic BAT genes during cold exposure. In both BAT and the liver, the most common direction of change in gene expression was suppression (496 genes in BAT and 590 genes in liver). Gene ontology analysis revealed for the first time significant (P<0.05) down regulation in response to cold, of genes involved in oxidoreductase activity, lipid metabolic processes and protease inhibitor activity, in both BAT and liver, but not WAT. The results reveal an unexpected importance of down regulation of cytochrome P450 gene expression and apolipoprotein, in both BAT and liver, but not WAT, in response to cold exposure. Pathway analysis suggests a model in which down regulation of the nuclear transcription factors HNF4α and PPARα in both BAT and liver may orchestrate the down regulation of genes involved in lipoprotein and steroid metabolism as well as Phase I enzymes belonging to the cytochrome P450 group in response to cold stress in mice. We propose that the response to cold stress involves decreased gene expression in a range of cellular processes in order to maximise pathways involved in heat production.
Size-dependent density of zirconia nanoparticles

The correlation between density and specific surface area of ZrO2 nanoparticles (NPs) was studied. The NPs were produced using a hydrothermal process involving microwave heating. The material was annealed at 1100 °C which resulted in an increase in the average grain size of the ZrO2 NPs from 11 to 78 nm and a decrease in the specific surface area from 97 to 15 m2/g. At the same time, the density increased from 5.22 g/m3 to 5.87 g/m3. This effect was interpreted to be the result of the presence of a hydroxide monolayer on the NP surface. A smaller ZrO2 grain size was correlated with a larger contribution of the low density surface layer to the average density. To prove the existence of such a layer, the material was synthesized using 50% heavy water. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) permitted the identification of the –OD groups created during synthesis. It was found that the –OD groups persisted on the ZrO2 surface even after annealing at 1100 °C. This hydroxide layer is responsible for the decrease in the average density of the NPs as their size decreases. This study of the correlation between particle size and density may be used to assess the quality of the NPs. In most cases, the technological aim is to avoid an amorphous layer and to obtain fully crystalline nanoparticles with the highest density possible. However, due to the effect of the surface layers, there is a maximum density which can be achieved for a given average NP diameter. The effect of the surface layer on the NP density becomes particularly evident for NPs smaller than 50 nm, and thus, the density of nanoparticles is size dependent.