Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR Quantification of Cytokine mRNA Expression in Golden Syrian Hamster Infected with Leishmania infantum and Treated with a New Amphotericin B Formulation

ABSTRACT A real-time quantitative reverse transcription-PCR assay was developed for the quantification of cytokine mRNA expression in the golden Syrian hamster Mesocricetus auratus infected with Leishmania infantum and treated with amphotericin B (AMB) formulated in microspheres made of human serum albumin (HSA). Treatment was administered intravenously on days 69, 71, and 73 postinfection (p.i.) with 107 metacyclic promastigotes, at doses of 2 and 40 mg/kg of AMB. High infection levels were recorded for untreated animals by day 76 p.i. , with parasite loads always about 2 log10 per gram higher in the liver than in the spleen. Treatment was highly effective with both doses, but at 40 mg/kg, almost complete parasite elimination was achieved. mRNA expression of gamma interferon (IFN-γ) and, to a lesser extent, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) in spleen cells was up-regulated in most animals of the untreated group. The mRNA expression of interleukin-4 was strongly down-regulated in untreated as well as treated infected animals. Treatment with the lower dose of AMB-HSA down-regulated the mRNA expression of IFN-γ and TNF-α, with no effect on the deactivating cytokine TGF-β. In contrast, treatment with the higher dose (40 mg/kg) of the formulation caused moderate up-regulation of IFN-γ and TNF-α and strong suppression of TGF-β. Treatment of noninfected animals did not alter the cytokine expression pattern with regard to untreated controls. Our results suggest that treatment of L. infantum-infected Syrian hamsters with highly effective nontoxic doses of AMB-HSA causes deactivation of the anti-inflammatory cytokine TGF-β, which in turn results in up-regulation of the Th1 cytokines IFN-γ and TNF-α.
A Web-Based Nutrition Program Reduces Health Care Costs in Employees With Cardiac Risk Factors: Before and After Cost Analysis

Background Rising health insurance premiums represent a rapidly increasing burden on employer-sponsors of health insurance and their employees. Some employers have become proactive in managing health care costs by providing tools to encourage employees to directly manage their health and prevent disease. One example of such a tool is DASH for Health, an Internet-based nutrition and exercise behavior modification program. This program was offered as a free, opt-in benefit to US-based employees of the EMC Corporation. Objective The aim was to determine whether an employer-sponsored, Internet-based diet and exercise program has an effect on health care costs. Methods There were 15,237 total employees and spouses who were included in our analyses, of whom 1967 enrolled in the DASH for Health program (DASH participants). Using a retrospective, quasi-experimental design, study year health care costs among DASH participants and non-participants were compared, controlling for baseline year costs, risk, and demographic variables. The relationship between how often a subject visited the DASH website and health care costs also was examined. These relationships were examined among all study subjects and among a subgroup of 735 subjects with cardiovascular conditions (diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia). Multiple linear regression analysis examined the relationship of program use to health care costs, comparing study year costs among DASH participants and non-participants and then examining the effects of increased website use on health care costs. Analyses were repeated among the cardiovascular condition subgroups. Results Overall, program use was not associated with changes in health care costs. However, among the cardiovascular risk study subjects, health care costs were US$827 lower, on average, during the study year (P = .05; t 729 = 1.95). Among 1028 program users, increased website use was significantly associated with lower health care costs among those who visited the website at least nine times during the study year (US$14 decrease per visit; P = .04; t 1022 = 2.05), with annual savings highest among 80 program users with targeted conditions (US$55 decrease per visit; P < .001; t 74 = 2.71). Conclusions An employer-sponsored, Internet-based diet and exercise program shows promise as a low-cost benefit that contributes to lower health care costs among persons at higher risk for above-average health care costs and utilization.
Monoids and Computations

This contribution wishes to argue in favor of increased interaction between experts on finite monoids and specialists of theory of computation. Developing the algebraic approach to formal computations as well as the computational point of view on monoids will prove to be beneficial to both communities. We give examples of this two-way relationship coming from temporal logic, communication complexity and Boolean circuits. Although mostly expository in nature, our paper proves some new results along the way.
Semantic Similarity Search Model for Obfuscated Plagiarism Detection in Marathi Language using Fuzzy and Naïve Bayes Approaches Ms

Plagiarism detection (PD) in natural language texts is an example of NLP applications that is linked with information retrieval (IR) and soft computing (SC) approaches. Obfuscated plagiarism cases contain invisible texts, which is difficult to find in existing plagiarism detection methods. In this paper fuzzy semanticbased similarity search model and Naïve Bayes model for uncovering obfuscated plagiarism for English and Marathi language are presented and compared with different state-of-the-art baselines (B1-W1G, B2W3G, B3W5G, B4-S2S). The fuzzy model identification is based on ‘If-then’ fuzzy rules. Semantic relatedness between words is studied based on the part-of-speech (POS) tags and WordNet-based similarity measures. Naïve Bayes classifier is used to achieve better detection performance. Results are assessed using precision, recall, Fmeasure and granularity for Fuzzy and Naïve approaches and it is observed that Naïve Bayes model gives more appropriate result than fuzzy semantic based model.
Androgen synthesis in the gonadotropin-suppressed human testes can be markedly suppressed by ketoconazole.

CONTEXT The concentration of intratesticular testosterone (IT-T) required for human spermatogenesis is unknown because spermatogenesis can persist despite the markedly reduced IT-T concentrations observed with LH suppression. Methods to lower IT-T further are needed to determine the relationship between IT-T and spermatogenesis. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to determine the effect of inhibiting the synthesis and metabolism of testosterone (T) on IT-T in gonadotropin-suppressed human testes. DESIGN/SETTING/PATIENTS Forty normal men participated in a blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized trial at an academic center. INTERVENTION/OUTCOME MEASURES: All men were first administered the GnRH antagonist acyline to suppress LH. Forty-eight hours after acyline administration, subjects were randomly assigned to placebo, ketoconazole (to inhibit T synthesis) at 400 or 800 mg, dutasteride (to inhibit T metabolism) 2.5 mg, or anastrazole (to inhibit T metabolism) 1 mg, daily for 7 days (n = 8/group). Intratesticular steroid concentrations were measured 48 hours after acyline administration alone and again after 7 days of combination treatment. RESULTS After 7 days of combination treatment, the median IT-T (25th, 75th percentile) in the placebo group was 14 (8.0, 21.2) ng/mL. IT-T was reduced to 3.7 (2.5, 7.1) ng/mL in the ketoconazole 400 mg group and 1.7 (0.8, 4.0) ng/mL in the ketoconazole 800 mg group (P < .001 vs placebo for both comparisons). IT-T concentrations in the dutasteride and anastrazole groups were similar to placebo. CONCLUSION Combining inhibition of steroidogenesis with gonadotropin suppression lowers IT-T more than gonadotropin suppression alone. This combination might be useful to determine the minimum IT-T concentration necessary for human spermatogenesis, information essential for developing male hormonal contraceptives.
The Less Communicated Story of Location Based Service in Retail Applications

- Location based applications have been on the front pages of technological innovations and business transformations in recent years. Retail among all has been the most mature industry where LBS have flourished. The ability to weave consumer location context into browsing, social sharing and buying activities is the common mandate of LBS, which presumably will drive online clicks into increased offline sales. It has become an inseparable part of behaviour based personalization in mobile marketing & commerce. This paper starts with a summary of major commercial LBS providers in this sector. To reach necessary depth of understanding, we have implemented a wireless indoor positioning system in an actual retail venue in Singapore to gather consumer location data. A mobile app is developed and rolled out in a small scale to connect customer location data with their loyalty status and the retailer’s product sales. Through this research attempt we have discovered the less communicated aspects of LBS including the lack of accuracy, the response time lag, and most importantly the privacy concern which is beyond the help of technology advancement. We have found people to be far less willing to share their locations than expected or assumed in previous reports. It could turn out to be the ultimate road blocker for LBS applications to make significant market impact or drive noticeable behaviour change.
Locating Learning in In-Service Education for Preschool Teachers

Discourse analysis of interaction in a course on language and literacy development elucidates and exemplifies how preschool teachers constructed new knowledge that can be assumed to contribute to the improved literacy instruction observed in their classrooms. An analytic framework rooted in socio-cultural theory and interactional sociolinguistic methods foregrounds the issues of whose sentiments and knowledge got taken up on the conversational floor and what specific new knowledge was conversationally constructed. We use this framework to explicate a discussion in which the teachers and the instructor assembled a knowledge structure. The group’s emergent response to a question gained propositional content as participants jointly created and used social and informational resources. This approach allows insight into the sociolinguistic processes that contribute to effective professional development experiences.
Sinop, Ordu ve Samsun İllerinin Sıcaklık Verilerinde Trend Analizi

Atmosferdeki sera gazi birikimlerinin artisina bagli olarak iklim degisikliginin, Turkiye’de neden olabilecegi cevresel etkilerin en onemli sonuclari kuraklik ve taskin olaylarinin sikliginin ve siddetinin artmasidir. Iklim degisikligi ile ilgili calismalar icerisinde sicaklik parametreleri uzerinde yapilan analizler onemli bir yere sahiptir. Bu calismada, Orta Karadeniz Bolgesi kiyi seridinde bulunan Sinop, Ordu ve Samsun illerinin sicaklik verileri analiz edilmistir. Kullanilan veri setleri Meteoroloji Genel Mudurlugu’nden temin edilmistir. Verilerin zaman icerisindeki degisimlerinin ortaya konulmasi icin Mann-Kendall Trend Testi ve Sen’in Trend Egim Testi uygulanmistir. Sonuclar, bolgede beklendigi gibi sicakligin genellikle artis trendine sahip oldugunu gostermistir.
The Impact of Human‐Induced Climate Change on Regional Drought in the Horn of Africa

A severe drought hit the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) in 2014, but it remains unclear whether this extreme event was attributable to anthropogenic climate change or part of longer‐term natural cycles. Precipitation patterns are known to be changing across the GHA, but trajectories in land surface variables are much less well known. We simulated the GHA land surface environment to assess the balance between natural cycles and human‐induced climate change. Using a new form of event attribution study where we focused on both climate variables and also directly simulated land surface variables, we combined publicly volunteered distributed computing with land surface simulations to quantify land surface responses. Uncertainty was quantified both for climate model and land surface model outputs. We identified two distinct “drought trajectories” in the GHA bimodal seasonality area during the March–May (Long Rains season) of 2014. Human‐induced climate change may have resulted in regions from Lake Nalubaale (Lake Victoria) to Northern Kenya receiving less precipitation in this season and having up to 20% higher probability of drought‐level evapotranspiration rates (increasing drought). In contrast, the simulated anthropogenic climate change signal for this season induced somewhat wetter conditions and up to 20% lower probability of drought‐level evapotranspiration in Eastern Ethiopia, Southern Somalia, and coastal Kenya (decreasing drought). Uncertainties in our modeling system varied by region and variable of focus, but broadly we found that land surface simulation uncertainty neither added significantly to climate model uncertainty nor significantly reduced it.
Autoavaliação vocal, avaliação perceptivo-auditiva da voz e qualidade de vida em pacientes com suspeita de câncer tireoidiano: existe correlação?

Introduction: Multidimensional assessment of voice can be performed in patients with suspected thyroid cancer, considering that in this phase of the disease investigation, symptoms related to voice may be present. Purpose: To investigate the correlation between vocal self-assessment, auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice by speech and language pathologist and quality of life related to the voice in individuals with suspected thyroid cancer. method: Sample of 28 individuals with suspected thyroid cancer treated at the university hospital, mean age of 49.11 (± 14.50) years and predominantly female (n = 23, 82.1%). Vocal selfassessment and speech and language pathologist evaluation was realized through a visual analogue scale (VAS) consisting of a 100 mm line. Then, it was applied the Voice-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire (V-RQOL). It was used the nonparametric tests Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman correlation coefficient. The level of significance was 5%. Results: 14 (50%) subjects reported vocal complaints. The means were 36.43 (± 27.91) for vocal self-assessment, 30.25 (± 15.83) for evaluation of the speech and language pathologist, 85.00 (± 18.43) for the total score of the V-RQOL, 92.86 (± 10.29) for the socio-emotional score and 84.21 (± 18.61) for the physical functioning score. Moderate negative correlation was found between vocal self-assessment and V-RQOL total score (p <0.05) and between self-assessment and vocal and physical functioning score (p <0.05). Conclusions: In this sample, there was moderate negative correlation between vocal self-assessment and quality of life; there was no correlation between vocal self-assessment and evaluation of the speech and language pathologist.
Sympathy: fast exact minimization of fixed polarity Reed-Muller expressions for symmetric functions

In this paper a polynomial time algorithm for the minimization of Fixed Polarity Reed-Muller Expressions (FPRMs) for totally symmetric functions based on Ordered Functional Decision Diagrams (OFDDs) is presented. A generalization to partially symmetric functions is investigated. The algorithm has been implemented as the program Sympathy. Experimental results in comparison to previously published methods are given to show the efficiency of the approach. <<ETX>>
Accelerating Spatial Join Operations using Bit-Indices

Spatial join is a very expensive operation in spatial databases. In this paper, we propose an innovative method for accelerating spatial join operations using Spatial Join Bitmap (SJB) indices. The SJB indices are used to keep track of intersecting entities in the joining data sets. We provide algorithms for constructing SJB indices and for maintaining the SJB indices when the data sets are updated. We have performed an extensive study using both real and synthetic data sets of various data distributions. The results show that the use of SJB indices produces substantial speedup ranging from 25% to 150% when compared to Filter trees.
A Modified Embedded Zero-Tree Wavelet Method for Medical Image Compression

The Embedded Zero-tree Wavelet (EZW) is a lossy compression method that allows for progressive transmission of a compressed image. By exploiting the natural zero-trees found in a wavelet decomposed image, the EZW algorithm is able to encode large portions of insignificant regions of an still image with a minimal number of bits. The upshot of this encoding is an algorithm that is able to achieve relatively high peak signal to noise ratios (PSNR) for high compression levels. The EZW algorithm is to encode large portions of insignificant regions of an image with a minimal number of bits. Vector Quantization (VQ) method can be performed as a post processing step to reduce the coded file size. Vector Quantization (VQ) method can be reduces redundancy of the image data in order to be able to store or transmit data in an efficient form. It is demonstrated by experimental results that the proposed method outperforms several well-known lossless image compression techniques for still images that contain 256 colors or less.
Recent trends and progress in the immersed boundary method

The immersed boundary method is a methodology for dealing with boundary conditions at fluid–fluid and fluid–solid interfaces. The immersed boundary method has been attracting growing attention in the recent years due to its simplicity in mesh processing. Great effort has been made to develop its new features and promote its applications in new areas. This review is focused on assessing the immersed boundary method fundamentals and the latest progresses especially the strategies to address the challenges and the applications of the immersed boundary method. Various numerical examples are also presented for demonstrating the capability of the immersed boundary method, including blood flow and blood cells, flapping flag, flow around a hoverfly, turbulence flow over a wavy boundary, shock wave-induced vibration, and acoustic waves scattered by a cylinder and a sphere. The major challenges and several open issues in this field are highlighted.
The Maltese cross: A new simplistic model for memory

Abstract This paper puts forward a general framework for thought about human information processing. It is intended to avoid some of the problems of pipeline or stage models of function. At the same time it avoids the snare of supposing a welter of indefinitely many separate processes. The approach is not particularly original, but rather represents the common elements or presuppositions in a number of modern theories. These presuppositions are not usually explicit, however, and making them so reduces the danger of slipping back into earlier modes of thought. The key point is to distinguish between persisting representations and the processes that translate one representation into another. Various classes or groups of persisting representations can be distinguished by the experimental treatments that interfere with them. In particular, there now seem to be several kinds of short-term or temporary storage, different from each other as well as from longterm memory; the translating processes also have several different modes or kinds. A particularly important aspect of the current position is that a model of this general type no longer requires some external agent to direct and control long sequences of behaviour.
MACH: Fast Randomized Tensor Decompositions

Tensors naturally model many real world processes which generate multi-aspect data. Such processes appear in many different research disciplines, e.g, chemometrics, computer vision, psychometrics and neuroimaging analysis. Tensor decompositions such as the Tucker decomposition are used to analyze multi-aspect data and extract latent factors, which capture the multilinear data structure. Such decompositions are powerful mining tools, for extracting patterns from large data volumes. However, most frequently used algorithms for such decompositions involve the computationally expensive Singular Value Decomposition. In this paper we propose MACH, a new sampling algorithm to compute such decompositions. Our method is of significant practical value for tensor streams, such as environmental monitoring systems, IP traffic matrices over time, where large amounts of data are accumulated and the analysis is computationally intensive but also in "post-mortem" data analysis cases where the tensor does not fit in the available memory. We provide the theoretical analysis of our proposed method, and verify its efficacy in monitoring system applications.
Tracking control of surface vessels via adaptive type-2 fuzzy logic control

This paper presents an indirect adaptive type-2 fuzzy logic controller (FLC) as well as a direct adaptive type-2 FLC for tracking control of surface vessels under time-varying hydrodynamic disturbances. The combination of approximation-based adaptive control technique and type-2 fuzzy logic system (FLS) allows us to handle time-varying disturbances without exact information on them. The stability of the design is proved through Lyapunov analysis where globally asymptotical convergence of the tracking errors is guaranteed. Although designed from different points of view, both indirect and direct adaptive type-2 FLC yield same and passive closed-loop systems. Comparative simulations with their adaptive type-1 counterparts are carried out. The proposed techniques are found to be effective, robust, and reduce tracking errors.
Conformance Checking of Components Against Their Non-deterministic Specifications

Conformance checking of a component is a testing method to see if an implementation and its executable specification are behaviorally equivalent relative to any interactions performed on the implementation. Such checking is complicated by the presence of non-determinism in the specification: the specification may permit a set of possible behaviors. We present a new method to automatically derive a component that manages all of the angelic non-determinism for an arbitrary implementation/specification pair. The new component just plugs in; no instrumentation of any implementation is necessary. Conformance checking thus helps to keep high-level non-determinstic specifications of components and their low-level implementations in sync.
University of Groningen Towards a Psychological Construct of Being

The emotional state of being moved, though frequently referred to in both classical rhetoric and current language use, is far from established as a well-defined psychological construct. In a series of three studies, we investigated eliciting scenarios, emotional ingredients, appraisal patterns, feeling qualities, and the affective signature of being moved and related emotional states. The great majority of the eliciting scenarios can be assigned to significant relationship and critical life events (especially death, birth, marriage, separation, and reunion). Sadness and joy turned out to be the two preeminent emotions involved in episodes of being moved. Both the sad and the joyful variants of being moved showed a coactivation of positive and negative affect and can thus be ranked among the mixed emotions. Moreover, being moved, while featuring only low-to-mid arousal levels, was experienced as an emotional state of high intensity; this applied to responses to fictional artworks no less than to own-life and other real, but media-represented, events. The most distinctive findings regarding cognitive appraisal dimensions were very low ratings for causation of the event by oneself and for having the power to change its outcome, along with very high ratings for appraisals of compatibility with social norms and self-ideals. Putting together the characteristics identified and discussed throughout the three studies, the paper ends with a sketch of a psychological construct of being moved.