Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vitamin A deficiency in patients with hepatitis C virus-related chronic liver disease

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with oxidative stress and vitamin A possesses antioxidant activity. The objective of the present study was to investigate vitamin A nutritional status in chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), according to biochemical, functional and dietetic indicators correlating these findings with liver function, liver damage and death. Vitamin A nutritional status was analysed by serum retinol levels, dietetic indicators and functional indicators. A total of 140 patients with HCV-related liver disease were enrolled. Vitamin A deficiency was detected in 54·3 % of all patients, and there was a progressive drop in serum retinol levels from chronic hepatitis C patients towards cirrhosis and HCC patients. Increased total bilirubin, liver transaminases and prothrombin time, presence of hepatic encephalopathy and ascites were related to reduced serum retinol levels, and values ≤ 0·78 μmol/l of serum retinol were associated with liver-related death. A high prevalence of inadequate intake of vitamin A was observed in all stages of chronic liver disease. The functional indicator was not an adequate parameter for evaluating the vitamin A nutritional status. Therefore, serum retinol concentration is related to severity of the disease, liver complications and mortality. The effectiveness of nutritional counselling and measures of intervention in this group in improving vitamin A nutritional status should be examined further in a controlled study.
Strain-specific and common epitopes of gonococcal pili

The antigenic structure of gonococcal pilin, strain MS11 (Tr), was investigated by assaying the binding of antisera engendered by intact pili from strains MS11 and R10 and their two major cyanogen bromide- generated fragments, CNBr-2 (residues 9-92) and CNBr-2 (residues 93- 159), to synthetic peptides corresponding to the amino acid sequence of MS11 pilin. Four peptides were synthesized corresponding to regions of sequence variation between MS11 and R10 gonococcal pilin. Antisera against the homologous pilus filament and against its CNBr-3 fragment bind peptides equivalent to residues 121-134 and 135-151, which comprise the 30 amino acid disulfide loop near the carboxyl terminus of the protein. Heterologous pili antisera did not bind these peptides. Absorption studies proved that each peptide contained an independent, strain-specific epitope. Synthetic peptides corresponding to regions of identical sequence between MS11 and R10 pilin were used in similar binding experiments to localize a weakly immunogenic, common determinant between residues 48 and 60. less than 15% of the antibodies raised against intact pili were directed at this site. Antisera raised against MS11 or R10 CNBr-2 bind a separate peptide, residues 69-80. This region is immunogenic only as a fragment, not in the intact pilus filament.
System/370 Extended Architecture: Facilities for Virtual Machines

This paper describes the evolution of facilities for virtual machines on IBM System/370 computers, and presents the elements of a new architectural facility designed for the virtual-machine environment. Assists that have been added to various System/370 models to support the use of virtual machines are summarized, and a general facility for this purpose which was introduced with the System/370 Extended Architecture (370-XA) is described. A new instruction of the 370-XA architecture places the machine in a specific mode in which several special capabilities are enabled. These allow the machine to provide execution in the virtual-machine environment of most of the instructions (including many privileged instructions) and most of the facilities (such as dynamic address translation) of both the System/370 and the 370-XA architectures. The major features of this new facility are individually discussed and summarized.
Utilization of a lexicon for spelling correction in modern Greek

In this paper we present an interactive spelling correction system for Modern Greek. The entire system is based on a morphological lexicon. Emphasis is given to the development of the lexicon, especially as far as storage economy, speed efficiency and dictionary coverage is concerned. Extensive research was conducted from both the computer engineering and linguisting fields, in order to describe inflectional morphology as economically as possible.
Power line carrier communications and its interest in the current power grid scenario

During the last years PLC technologies have been widely developed mainly due to new modulation techniques used for wireless telecommunication systems that can also be applied to PLC systems. The current state of the art of PLC communications is presents many possibilities and opportunities for the utilities. Besides the Distributed Energy Resources integration to the distribution grid is The aim of this paper is to make a review of the existing PLC technologies as well as the analysis of an interesting range of electric applications of PLC.
Improving visual features for lip-reading

Automatic speech recognition systems that utilise the visual modality of speech often are investigated within a speakerdependent or a multi-speaker paradigm. That is, during training the recogniser will have had prior exposure to example speech from each of the possible test speakers. In a previous paper we highlighted the danger of not using different speakers in the training and test sets, and demonstrated that, within a speakerindependent configuration, lip-reading performance degrades dramatically due to the speaker variability encoded in the visual features. In this paper, we examine feature improvement techniques to reduce speaker variability. We demonstrate that, by careful choice of technique, the effects of inter-speaker variability in the visual features can be reduced, which improves significantly the recognition accuracy of an automated lip-reading system. However, the performance of the lip-reading system still is significantly below that of acoustic speech recognition systems, and an analysis of the confusion matrices generated by the recogniser suggests this largely is due to the number of deletions apparent in a visual-only system.
A digital PLL with two-step closed-locking for multi-mode/multi-band SAW-less transmitter

This paper presents a digital phase locked loop (DPLL) with two-step closed-locking technique. The two-step locking allows us to use a simple phase detector, which achieves wide phase detect range and has no complex circuits for glitch compensation. The DPLL has three digital controlled oscillators (DCO) for multi-mode/multi-band operation. The DPLL covers GSM quad-band, and several bands of WCDMA / LTE. The DPLL improves a close-in noise by 17 dB compared with the conventional count-assisted locking, which causes glitch error substantially. The phase error is less than 3.0 degrees in all bands for various conditions. The faraway phase noise is -165dBc/Hz at 20MHz, -161dBc/Hz at 190MHz, and -158dBc/Hz at 120MHz in each TX output, respectively.
Securing web applications with static and dynamic information flow tracking

SQL injection and cross-site scripting are two of the most common security vulnerabilities that plague web applications today. These and many others result from having unchecked data input reach security-sensitive operations. This paper describes a language called PQL (Program Query Language) that allows users to declare to specify information flow patterns succinctly and declaratively. We have developed a static context-sensitive, but flow-insensitive information flow tracking analysis that can be used to find all the vulnerabilities in a program. In the event that the analysis generates too many warnings, the result can be used to drive a model-checking system to analyze more precisely. Model checking is also used to automatically generate the input vectors that expose the vulnerability. Any remaining behavior these static analyses have not isolated may be checked dynamically. The results of the static analyses may be used to optimize these dynamic checks. Our experimental results indicate the language is expressive enough for describing a large number of vulnerabilities succinctly. We have analyzed over nine applications, detecting 30 serious security vulnerabilities. We were also able to automatically recover from attacks as they occurred using the dynamic checker.
Quartz

Most datacenter network (DCN) designs focus on maximizing bisection bandwidth rather than minimizing server-to-server latency. We explore architectural approaches to building low-latency DCNs and introduce Quartz, a design element consisting of a full mesh of switches. Quartz can be used to replace portions of either a hierarchical network or a random network. Our analysis shows that replacing high port-count core switches with Quartz can significantly reduce switching delays, and replacing groups of top-of-rack and aggregation switches with Quartz can significantly reduce congestion-related delays from cross-traffic. We overcome the complexity of wiring a complete mesh using low-cost optical multiplexers that enable us to efficiently implement a logical mesh as a physical ring. We evaluate our performance using both simulations and a small working prototype. Our evaluation results confirm our analysis, and demonstrate that it is possible to build low-latency DCNs using inexpensive commodity elements without significant concessions to cost, scalability, or wiring complexity.
Approximate VCCs: a new characterization of multimedia workloads for system-level MpSoC design

System-level design methods specifically targeted towards multimedia applications have recently received a lot of attention. Multimedia workloads are known to have a high degree of variability. Therefore, designs based on a worst-case analysis of such workloads tend of be overly pessimistic. We address this issue by introducing a new concept called approximate variability characterization curves (or approximate VCCs), to characterize the "average-case" behavior of multimedia workloads in a parameterized fashion. Since most multimedia applications only have soft real-time constraints, it is often possible to tolerate a small amount of performance degradation. By allowing such small degradations in the performance, large amounts of resource savings are possible. The concept of approximate VCCs that we present in this paper allows a designer to quantitatively account for the performance degradation and the associated resource savings. We illustrate this using two typical system design cases.
Generic techniques for multilingual speech technology applications

This paper is concerned with generic techniques for representing and evaluating phonological information in multilingual speech technology applications. A computational linguistic model of phonological interpretation is enhanced by a framework for constructing and evaluating phonotactic automata and by a generic lexicon model. The techniques make way for the extension of current speech technology to languages which have received little attention thus far.
Performance of B-tree concurrency control algorithms

A number of algorithms have been proposed to access B+-trees concurrently, but they are not well understood. In this article, we study the performance of various B+-tree concurrency control algorithms using a detailed simulation model of B+-tree operations in a centralized DBMS. Our study covers a wide range of data contention situations and resource conditions. In addition, based on the performance of the set of B+-tree concurrency control algorithms, which includes one new algorithm, we make projections regarding the performance of other algorithms in the literature. Our results indicate that algorithms with updaters that lock-couple using exclusive locks perform poorly as compared to those that permit more optimistic index descents. In particular, the B-link algorithms are seen to provide the most concurrency and the best overall performance. Finally, we demonstrate the need for a highly concurrent long-term lock holding strategy to obtain the full benefits of a highly concurrent algorithm for index operations.
MARS-C: modeling and reduction of soft errors in combinational circuits

Due to the shrinking of feature size and reduction in supply voltages, nanoscale circuits have become more susceptible to radiation induced transient faults. In this paper, we present a symbolic framework based on BDDs and ADDs that enables analysis of combinational circuit reliability from different aspects: output susceptibility to error, influence of individual gates on individual outputs and overall circuit reliability, and the dependence of circuit reliability on glitch duration, amplitude, and input patterns. This is demonstrated by the set of experimental results, which show that the mean output error susceptibility can vary from less than 0.1%, for large circuits and small glitches, to about 30% for very small circuits and large enough glitches. The results obtained with the proposed symbolic framework are within 7% average error and up to 5000times speedup when compared to HSPICE detailed circuit simulation. The framework can be used for selective gate sizing targeting radiation hardening which is done only for gates with error impact exceeding a certain threshold. Using such a technique, soft error rate (SER) can be reduced by 25-67% for various threshold values, when applied to a subset of ISCAS'85 and mcnc '91 benchmarks
A comparison of the effects of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment and traditional therapy on intelligibility, perceptual speech features, and everyday communication in nonprogressive dysarthria

The current study aimed to compare the effects of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT®) with traditional dysarthria therapy (TRAD) on speech intelligibility, perceptual speech features, and everyday communication in nonprogressive dysarthria. Twenty-six participants with nonprogressive dysarthria were randomly allocated to receive either LSVT (n = 13) or TRAD (n = 13), with both treatments being provided during 16 hourly sessions over 4 weeks. An ABAA experimental design was used with participants being assessed on perceptual and self-report measures prior to treatment, immediately post treatment, and 6 months posttreatment (follow-up). A limited number of significant differences between the two treatments were identified. Differences included a slower speaking rate (words per minute) and reports of an increase in conversation initiation with strangers at follow-up in the LSVT group and reduced slurring of speech at follow-up in the TRAD group. Although certain improvements to intelligibility, rate, and loudness were found exclusively after LSVT, a comparable pattern of long-term improvements in participation and well-being as determined by the AusTOMs (the Australian version of the Therapy Outcome Measures), was demonstrated in participants after both treatments. The study demonstrated that the LSVT as a treatment option for individuals with nonprogressive dysarthria resulted in comparable effects to intensive TRAD. Because of the relatively small participant numbers and subjective nature of variables, it was suggested that the LSVT be trialed on an individual basis in this population until further research is undertaken. The positive effects of LSVT on dysarthric speakers and the importance of applying motor learning principles in dysarthria management are highlighted. Copyright
Typing candidate answers using type coercion

Many questions explicitly indicate the type of answer required. One popular approach to answering those questions is to develop recognizers to identify instances of common answer types (e.g., countries, animals, and food) and consider only answers on those lists. Such a strategy is poorly suited to answering questions from the Jeopardy! ™ television quiz show. Jeopardy! questions have an extremely broad range of types of answers, and the most frequently occurring types cover only a small fraction of all answers. We present an alternative approach to dealing with answer types. We generate candidate answers without regard to type, and for each candidate, we employ a variety of sources and strategies to judge whether the candidate has the desired type. These sources and strategies provide a set of type coercion scores for each candidate answer. We use these scores to give preference to answers with more evidence of having the right type. Our question-answering system is significantly more accurate with type coercion than it is without type coercion; these components have a combined impact of nearly 5% on the accuracy of the IBM Watson™ question-answering system.
Involvement of the CXCR7/CXCR4/CXCL12 Axis in the Malignant Progression of Human Neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma (NB) is a typical childhood and heterogeneous neoplasm for which efficient targeted therapies for high-risk tumors are not yet identified. The chemokine CXCL12, and its receptors CXCR4 and CXCR7 have been involved in tumor progression and dissemination. While CXCR4 expression is associated to undifferentiated tumors and poor prognosis, the role of CXCR7, the recently identified second CXCL12 receptor, has not yet been elucidated in NB. In this report, CXCR7 and CXCL12 expressions were evaluated using a tissue micro-array including 156 primary and 56 metastatic NB tissues. CXCL12 was found to be highly associated to NB vascular and stromal structures. In contrast to CXCR4, CXCR7 expression was low in undifferentiated tumors, while its expression was stronger in matured tissues and specifically associated to differentiated neural tumor cells. As determined by RT-PCR, CXCR7 expression was mainly detected in N-and S-type NB cell lines, and was slightly induced upon NB cell differentiation in vitro. The relative roles of the two CXCL12 receptors were further assessed by overexpressing CXCR7 or CXCR4 receptor alone, or in combination, in the IGR-NB8 and the SH-SY5Y NB cell lines. In vitro functional analyses indicated that, in response to their common ligand, both receptors induced activation of ERK1/2 cascade, but not Akt pathway. CXCR7 strongly reduced in vitro growth, in contrast to CXCR4, and impaired CXCR4/CXCL12-mediated chemotaxis. Subcutaneous implantation of CXCR7-expressing NB cells showed that CXCR7 also significantly reduced in vivo growth. Moreover, CXCR7 affected CXCR4-mediated orthotopic growth in a CXCL12-producing environment. In such model, CXCR7, in association with CXCR4, did not induce NB cell metastatic dissemination. In conclusion, the CXCR7 and CXCR4 receptors revealed specific expression patterns and distinct functional roles in NB. Our data suggest that CXCR7 elicits anti-tumorigenic functions, and may act as a regulator of CXCR4/CXCL12-mediated signaling in NB.
Impact of Kidney Function on Effects of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (Dash) Diet

Objectives Although the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet lowers blood pressure in adults with hypertension, how kidney function impacts this effect is not known. We evaluated whether Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR) modifies the effect of the DASH diet on blood pressure, markers of mineral metabolism, and markers of kidney function. Methods Secondary analysis of the DASH-Sodium trial, a multicenter, randomized, controlled human feeding study that evaluated the blood pressure lowering effect of the DASH diet at three levels of sodium intake. Data from 92 participants with pre-hypertension or stage 1 hypertension during the 3450 mg /day sodium diet assignment contributed to this analysis. Stored frozen plasma and urine specimens were used to measure kidney related laboratory outcomes. Results Effects of the DASH diet on blood pressure, phosphorus, intact parathyroid hormone, creatinine, and albuminuria were not modified by baseline eGFR (mean 84.5 ± 18.0 ml/min/1.73 m2, range 44.1 to 138.6 ml/min/1.73 m2) or the presence of chronic kidney disease (N=13%). Conclusions The impact of the DASH diet on blood pressure, markers of mineral metabolism, and markers of kidney function does not appear to be modified by eGFR in this small subset of DASH-Sodium trial participants with relatively preserved kidney function. Whether greater reduction in eGFR modifies the effects of DASH on kidney related measures is yet to be determined. A larger study in individuals with more advanced kidney disease is needed to establish the efficacy and safety of the DASH diet in this patient population.
Time‐varying changes in corticospinal excitability accompanying the triphasic EMG pattern in humans

1 Nine healthy subjects performed single rapid wrist movements from neutral to targets at 20 deg of flexion or extension in response to an auditory cue. Surface EMG was recorded from the wrist flexors and extensors together with wrist position. Movements in both directions were characterised by the usual triphasic pattern of EMG activity in agonist (AG1), antagonist (ANTAG) and again in agonist (AG2) muscles. 2 Single pulses of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) were applied over the motor cortex at an intensity of 80 % of resting threshold at random times between 80 and 380 ms after the cue. We measured the peak‐to‐peak amplitude of the evoked motor potential (MEP) and the integrated EMG (IEMG) activity that preceded the MEP. In a separate set of experiments H reflexes were elicited in the wrist flexors instead of MEPs. 3 MEP amplitudes in the agonist muscle increased by an average of 10 ± 8 ms (range −1 to 23 ms) prior to the onset of the AG1 burst and were associated with an increase of over sevenfold in the MEP:IEMG ratio, irrespective of movement direction. Agonist H reflex amplitudes were linearly related to, and increased at the same time as, changes in agonist IEMG. 4 The principal ANTAG burst was not preceded by an increase in the antagonist muscle MEP:IEMG ratio. No relationship was found between the amplitude of the antagonist H reflexes and the preceding antagonist IEMG. 5 Five subjects showed an increase in the MEP:IEMG ratio preceding and during the initial part of the AG2 burst. 6 Our method of analysis shows that changes in motor cortical excitability mediating the initiation of movement occur much closer to the onset of EMG activity (less than 23 ms) than the 80–100 ms lead time previously reported. The lack of such changes before the onset of the ANTAG burst suggests that this may be initiated by a different, perhaps subcortical, mechanism.
Zinc Cluster Proteins Leu3p and Uga3p Recognize Highly Related but Distinct DNA Targets*

Members of the family of fungal zinc cluster DNA-binding proteins possess 6 highly conserved cysteines that bind to two zinc atoms forming a structure (Zn2Cys6) that is required for recognition of specific DNA sequences. Many zinc cluster proteins have been shown to bind as homodimers to a pair of CGG triplets oriented either as direct (CGG NX CGG), inverted (CGG NXCCG), or everted repeats (CCG NX CGG), where N indicates nucleotides. Variation in the spacing between the CGG triplets also contributes to the diversity of sites recognized. For example, Leu3p binds to the everted sequence CCG N4 CGG with a strict requirement for a 4-base pair spacing. Here, we show that another member of the family, Uga3p, recognizes the same DNA motif as Leu3p. However, these transcription factors have distinct DNA targets. We demonstrate that additional specificity of binding is provided by nucleotides located between the two everted CGG triplets. Altering the 4 nucleotides between to the two everted CGG triplets switches the specificity from a Uga3p site to a Leu3p site in both in vitro and in vivo assays. Thus, our results identify a new mechanism that expands the repertoire of DNA targets of the family of zinc cluster proteins. These experiments provide a model for discrimination between targets of zinc cluster proteins.