Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reproductive and Exogenous Hormone Factors in Relation to Risk of Meningioma in Women: A Meta-Analysis

Background and Objective A number of studies have focused on the association between oral contraceptive (OC), hormonal replacement therapy (HRT) and reproductive factors and meningioma risk, but the results were inconsistent. Thus, a meta-analysis was performed to obtain more precise estimates of risk. Methods We conducted a literature search using PubMed and EMBASE databases to July2013, without any limitations. Random effects models were used to summarize results. Results Twelve case-control and six cohort studies were included in this meta-analysis. We found that an increased risk of meningioma was associated with HRT use(RR = 1.19, 95% CI = 1.01–1.40), postmenopausal women(RR = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.07–1.64) and parity(RR = 1.18, 95% CI = 1.00–1.40). No significant associations were observed for OC use (RR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.83–1.03), age at menarche(RR = 1.06, 95% CI = 0.92–1.21), age at menopause(RR = 1.03, 95% CI = 0.81–1.30), or age at first birth(RR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.80–1.10). Conclusion In conclusion, the results of our study support the hypothesis that longer exposure to effect of female sex hormones may increase the risk of meningioma in women, yet additional studies are warranted to confirm our findings and identify the underlying biological mechanisms.
Security and quality of service (QoS) co-design using game theory in cooperative wireless ad hoc networks

Cooperative communication can improve communication quality in wireless communication networks through strategic relay selection. However, wireless cooperative communication networks are vulnerable to the attacks initiated on relays. Although applying authentication protocols can secure cooperative communication when the selected relay is malicious, better system throughput could be obtained without executing authentication protocol when the selected relay is free from attacker's attack. In this paper, a game theoretic approach is proposed to quantitatively analyze the attacking strategies of the attacker who chooses one relay to attack so as to make rational decision on relay selection and extent of applying authentication protocols, which reaches the trade-off between system security requirement and quality of service (QoS) in wireless cooperative communication networks.
Segmentation on moving shadow detection and removal by symlet transform for vehicle detection

Shadow detection and Shadow removal is major issue in computer vision group. Real research in shadow detection and removal for moving objects includes verification of moving shadow points which are many times mis-classified as moving object points in a live video sequences. A large number of shadow detection and shadow removal algorithms are introduced for images but only a few researches has been done for moving objects. A novel method for shadow detection and removal is introduced using discrete wavelet transform by symlet wavelet transform. The multi-resolution property of DWT decomposes an image into four sub bands with no loss of the spatial information. Standard deviation divide by mean by symlet transform technique is proposed. The threshold point is self-executed. The proposed method is efficient and depends on symlet wavelet coefficients.
Periodicity of Cell Attachment Patterns during Escherichia coli Biofilm Development

ABSTRACT The complex architecture of bacterial biofilms inevitably raises the question of their design. Microstructure of developing Escherichia coli biofilms was analyzed under static and laminar flow conditions. Cell attachment during early biofilm formation exhibited periodic density patterns that persisted during development. Several models for the origination of biofilm microstructure are considered, including an activator-inhibitor or Turing model.
Multi-Dimensional Input Devices and Interaction Techniques for a Modeler-Animator

As powerful computers become less expensive, applications such as interactive three-dimensional modeling and animation systems, currently used by relatively few people, will become available to a much wider audience. It is therefore important to find ways to make these systems easier and more intuitive to use. One of the problems with current systems is that they typically provide users with one- or two-degree-of-freedom input devices with which to perform three-dimensional interaction tasks. This paper explores currently available multi-dimensional input devices as an alternative. It also describes experiments with using a six-degree-of-freedom input device for the tasks of point location, translation, rotation, camera placement, and path drawing in a modeling and animation system. However, even with multi-dimensional input devices, certain tasks, such as precisely placing one object in relation to another, are difficult to accomplish using only basic transformations such as translation and rotation. Accordingly, this paper also investigates a snapping technique, independent of input device, which allows users to position one object at a specific point on the surface of another.
Report of Design Patterns

Design pattern is a term of the abstraction from a concrete form that keeps recurring in specific non-arbitrary contexts. Design Patterns are devices that allow programs to share knowledge about their designs. It seems that the benefits of design pattern are so obvious. However, design pattern is so complicated that it makes the software even more difficult to be maintained. In this report, we show how we documented patterns, and the advantages and disadvantages of documenting design patterns. Finally, we get some
Corleone: hands-off crowdsourcing for entity matching

Recent approaches to crowdsourcing entity matching (EM) are limited in that they crowdsource only parts of the EM workflow, requiring a developer to execute the remaining parts. Consequently, these approaches do not scale to the growing EM need at enterprises and crowdsourcing startups, and cannot handle scenarios where ordinary users (i.e., the masses) want to leverage crowdsourcing to match entities. In response, we propose the notion of hands-off crowdsourcing (HOC)}, which crowdsources the entire workflow of a task, thus requiring no developers. We show how HOC can represent a next logical direction for crowdsourcing research, scale up EM at enterprises and crowdsourcing startups, and open up crowdsourcing for the masses. We describe Corleone, a HOC solution for EM, which uses the crowd in all major steps of the EM process. Finally, we discuss the implications of our work to executing crowdsourced RDBMS joins, cleaning learning models, and soliciting complex information types from crowd workers.
A validity and reliability study for a new scale of teachers stereotypes in educational context

Stereotyping is defined as making overgeneralizations about a group of people by attributing same characteristics to almost all members of that group without considering their differences. Stereotyping which is typical of every person and is harmless under normal conditions has the potential to have harmful consequences such as lowering academic achievement and increasing absence and dropout rate. Therefore, the stereotyping threat in education is a phenomenon of which teachers should be cognizant. There is also a need for developing instruments that will measure the influence of stereotyping threat which will help to present evidence for those studies aiming to increase teachers’ awareness. In order to address the above-mentioned need, this study aimed to develop a scale of “Teachers’ Stereotypes in Educational Context” and report validity and reliability analyses with an aim to determine the stereotypes possessed by teachers in educational contexts. The sample of the study comprised 442 teachers from 25 districts in İstanbul who worked at primary, secondary or high school level in the spring term of 2013-2014 academic year. The first form of the scale had 73 items but with the exclusion of 35 items as a result of exploratory factor analysis, a 38-item scale was obtained. Eigen values of eight factors were between 1.61 and 4.92 and factor loadings were between 4.35 and 13.29 whereas total loadings value was 55.98. Internal consistency of the scale which was calculated with Cronbach alfa was found to be 0.87. Cronbach alfa values for factors ranged between 0.89 and 0.74. Correlations between 8 factors ranged between 0.34 and 0.004. Additionally, the 8-factor structure was also supported by confirmatory factor analysis. In accordance with the findings of the study, we conclude that the developed scale with 38 items can be used to determine teachers’ stereotyping in educational environments.
The Research on Intrusion Feature Selection Algorithm Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

High-dimensional intrusion detection data concentration information redundancy results in low processing velocity of intrusion detection algorithm. Accordingly, the current study proposes an intrusion feature selection algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Analyzing the features of the relevance between network intrusion data allows the PSO algorithm to optimally search in a featured space and autonomously select effective feature subset to reduce data dimensionality. Experimental results reveal that algorithm can effectively eliminate redundancy and reduce intrusion feature selection time to effectively increase the detection velocity of the system while ensuring detection accuracy rate.
Characterization of EEG under anesthesia and a comparative study with BIS

This paper investigates the problem of automatic depth of sedation (DOS) estimation from electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. Bispectral index (BIS) is used as a criterion to estimate the new modeling and calculation methods in this paper. Estimation of DOS contains two steps. First, time-frequency domain signal processing technique and nonlinear dynamical techniques based on the concept of chaos have been used to extract multiple features; Second, these features have been employed and modeled by Lasso technique, DOS is calculated and the evaluation models for specific EEG samples are obtained as a result. In emulation and clinical application, DOS are calculated and compared with BIS. Result shows that estimation including the nonlinear features are much closer to BIS than that without nonlinear features, it shows that the nonlinear chaos features have a great advantage in reflecting the chaotic characteristics of the brain during the anesthesia process.
Using Biologic Markers in Blood to Assess Exposure to Multiple Environmental Chemicals for Inner-City Children 3–6 Years of Age

We assessed concurrent exposure to a mixture of > 50 environmental chemicals by measuring the chemicals or their metabolites in the blood of 43 ethnically diverse children (3–6 years of age) from a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood in Minneapolis. Over a 2-year period, additional samples were collected every 6–12 months from as many children as possible. We analyzed blood samples for 11 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 2 heavy metals (lead and mercury, 11 organochlorine (OC) pesticides or related compounds, and 30 polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners. The evidence suggests that numerous VOCs originated from common sources, as did many PCBs. Longitudinal measurements indicate that between-child variance was greater than within-child variance for two VOCs (benzene, toluene), for both heavy metals (Pb, Hg), for all detectable OC pesticides, and for 15 of the measured PCB congeners (74, 99, 101, 118, 138–158, 146, 153, 156, 170, 178, 180, 187, 189, 194, 195). Despite the relatively small sample size, highest measured blood levels of 1,4-dichlorobenzene, styrene, m-/p-xylene, Pb, Hg, heptachlor epoxide, oxychlordane, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethene (p,p′-DDE), trans-nonachlor, and PCB congeners 74, 99, 105, 118, 138, 146, 153, 156, 170, and 180 were comparable with or higher than 95th percentile measurements of older children and adults from national surveys. Results demonstrate that cumulative exposures to multiple environmental carcinogens and neurotoxins can be comparatively high for children from a poor inner-city neighborhood.
CLARAty and challenges of developing interoperable robotic software

We present an overview of the Coupled Layered Architecture for Robotic Autonomy. CLARAty develops a framework for generic and reusable robotic components that can be adapted to a number of heterogeneous robot platforms. It also provides a framework that will simplify the integration of new technologies and enable the comparison of various elements. CLARAty consists of two distinct layers: a functional layer and a decision layer. The functional layer defines the various abstractions of the system and adapts the abstract components to real or simulated devices. It provides a framework and the algorithms for low- and mid-level autonomy. The decision layer provides the system's high-level autonomy, which reasons about global resources and mission constraints. The decision layer accesses information from the functional layer at multiple levels of granularity. We also present some of the challenges in developing interoperable software for various rover platforms.
Lidocaine reversibly inhibits fertilization in Chlamydomonas: a possible role for calcium in sexual signalling

A flagellar adhesion-induced signal sent during the mating reaction of the biflagellate alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, initiates release of cell-wall-degrading enzymes, activation of mating structures, and cell fusion. The nature of this signal is unknown, but it may be mediated by an adhesion-induced change (activation) of flagellar tips. The studies reported here show that lidocaine, a local anesthetic that is reported to interfere with the movement of divalent cations across cell membranes, reversibly blocks cell wall loss and gametic fusion without blocking adhesion or flagellar tip activation. In these experiments lidocaine inhibited both the initial rates and the extent of wall loss and zygote formation. Studies with gametes of a paralyzed flagellar mutant, pf 17, revealed that lidocaine also blocked flagellar surface motility (visualized as movement of polystyrene beads) at concentrations of the inhibitor which also prevented gametic fusion. The concentration of lidocaine required to block cell fusion was dependent on the concentration of calcium or magnesium in the medium. In the absence of added calcium, 0.5 mM lidocaine inhibited fusion by 70%. In 0.5 mM calcium, 0.5 mM lidocaine had no effect on fusion and 2 mM lidocaine was required for 90% inhibition. The results suggest that divalent cations may play a critical role in sexual signalling in Chlamydomonas.
Idiom networks for short constituent sequences of amino acids

This paper introduces idiom networks of SCS (Short Constituent Sequences) for amino acid sequence analysis, where an idiom represents co-occurrence of two SCSs in a sequence. Thus, the idiom network proposed in this paper shows relations among idioms in an amino acid sequence. The authors also present an idiom network alignment problem, which may useful for protein sequence motif detection and its related purposes.
Differential regulation of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II and p42 MAP kinase activity by synaptic transmission

Calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMK) and p42 mitogen- activated protein kinase (MAPK) are enriched in neurons and possess the capacity to become persistently active, or autonomous, following removal of the activating stimulus. Since persistent kinase activation may be a mechanism for information storage, we have used primary cultures of cortical neurons to investigate whether kinase autonomy can be triggered by bursts of spontaneous synaptic activity. We and others have found that both these kinases respond to synaptic stimulation, but differ markedly in their kinetics of activation and inactivation, as well as in their sensitivity to NMDA receptor blockade. While 90% of maximal CaMK activation was observed after only 10 sec of synaptic bursting, MAPK activity was unaffected at this early time and rose to only 30% of maximal after 2 min of stimulation. Following blockade of synaptic stimulation, CaMK activity decreased by 50% in 10–30 sec, while MAPK activity decayed by 50% within 6–10 min. Although MAPK exhibited relatively slow activation, short periods of synaptic activity could trigger the MAPK activation process, which persisted in the absence of synaptic stimulation. Comparison of the effect of NMDA receptor blockade on synaptic activation of these kinases revealed that CaMK activity is preferentially suppressed. As previous immunocytochemical studies indicate that CaMK is concentrated in dendritic processes in the vicinity of synapses, we measured synaptic calcium transients in fine dendritic processes (approximately 1 microns diameter) to assess their sensitivity to NMDA receptor blockade. Calcium transients in these fine processes were reduced by up to 90% by NMDA receptor blockade, possibly accounting for the profound sensitivity of CaMK to this treatment. The sharp contrast between the regulation of CaMK and MAPK by synaptic activity indicates that they may mediate neuronal responses to different patterns of afferent stimulation. The relatively slow activation and inactivation of MAPK suggests that it may be able to integrate information from multiple, infrequent bursts of synaptic activity.
Effect of Hearing Loss on Semantic Access by Auditory and Audiovisual Speech in Children

Objectives: This research studied whether the mode of input (auditory versus audiovisual) influenced semantic access by speech in children with sensorineural hearing impairment (HI). Design: Participants, 31 children with HI and 62 children with normal hearing (NH), were tested with the authors’ new multimodal picture word task. Children were instructed to name pictures displayed on a monitor and ignore auditory or audiovisual speech distractors. The semantic content of the distractors was varied to be related versus unrelated to the pictures (e.g., picture distractor of dog-bear versus dog-cheese, respectively). In children with NH, picture-naming times were slower in the presence of semantically related distractors. This slowing, called semantic interference, is attributed to the meaning-related picture-distractor entries competing for selection and control of the response (the lexical selection by competition hypothesis). Recently, a modification of the lexical selection by competition hypothesis, called the competition threshold (CT) hypothesis, proposed that (1) the competition between the picture-distractor entries is determined by a threshold, and (2) distractors with experimentally reduced fidelity cannot reach the CT. Thus, semantically related distractors with reduced fidelity do not produce the normal interference effect, but instead no effect or semantic facilitation (faster picture naming times for semantically related versus unrelated distractors). Facilitation occurs because the activation level of the semantically related distractor with reduced fidelity (1) is not sufficient to exceed the CT and produce interference but (2) is sufficient to activate its concept, which then strengthens the activation of the picture and facilitates naming. This research investigated whether the proposals of the CT hypothesis generalize to the auditory domain, to the natural degradation of speech due to HI, and to participants who are children. Our multimodal picture word task allowed us to (1) quantify picture naming results in the presence of auditory speech distractors and (2) probe whether the addition of visual speech enriched the fidelity of the auditory input sufficiently to influence results. Results: In the HI group, the auditory distractors produced no effect or a facilitative effect, in agreement with proposals of the CT hypothesis. In contrast, the audiovisual distractors produced the normal semantic interference effect. Results in the HI versus NH groups differed significantly for the auditory mode, but not for the audiovisual mode. Conclusions: This research indicates that the lower fidelity auditory speech associated with HI affects the normalcy of semantic access by children. Further, adding visual speech enriches the lower fidelity auditory input sufficiently to produce the semantic interference effect typical of children with NH.
A Discretization Method Based on Maximizing the Area under Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve

Many machine learning algorithms require the features to be categorical. Hence, they require all numeric-valued data to be discretized into intervals. In this paper, we present a new discretization method based on the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) Curve (AUC) measure. Maximum area under ROC curve-based discretization (MAD) is a global, static and supervised discretization method. MAD uses the sorted order of the continuous values of a feature and discretizes the feature in such a way that the AUC based on that feature is to be maximized. The proposed method is compared with alternative discretization methods such as ChiMerge, Entropy-Minimum Description Length Principle (MDLP), Fixed Frequency Discretization (FFD), and Proportional Discretization (PD). FFD and PD have been recently proposed and are designed for Naive Bayes learning. ChiMerge is a merging discretization method as the MAD method. Evaluations are performed in terms of M-Measure, an AUC-based metric for multi-class classification, and accuracy values obtained from Naive Bayes and Aggregating One-Dependence Estimators (AODE) algorithms by using real-world datasets. Empirical results show that MAD is a strong candidate to be a good alternative to other discretization methods.
A small Heat Shock Protein is Essential for Thermotolerance and Intracellular Survival of 1 Leishmania donovani 2 3

10 Leishmania parasites must survive and proliferate in two vastly different environs – the guts of 11 poikilothermic sandflies and the antigen-presenting cells of homeothermic mammals. The change of 12 temperature during transmission from sandflies to mammals is both a key trigger for the 13 progression of their life cycle and for elevated synthesis of heat shock proteins which have been 14 implicated in survival at higher temperatures. While the main heat shock protein families have been 15 studied for their function in the Leishmania life cycle, nothing is known about the roles played by 16 small heat shock proteins. Here, we present first evidence for the pivotal role played by the 17 Leishmania donovani 23-kD heat shock protein which is expressed preferentially in the mammalian 18 stage where it assumes a perinuclear localisation. Loss of HSP23 causes increased sensitivity to 19 chemical stressors, but renders L. donovani incapable of surviving at 37°C. Consequently, HSP23 20 null mutants are non-infectious to primary macrophages in vitro. All phenotypic effect can be 21 abrogated by the introduction of a functional HSP23 transgene into the null mutant, confirming the 22 specificity of the mutant phenotype. Thus, HSP23 expression is a prerequisite for L. donovani 23 survival at mammalian host temperatures and a crucial virulence factor. 24