Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Helium ions for radiotherapy? Physical and biological verifications of a novel treatment modality.

PURPOSE Modern facilities for actively scanned ion beam radiotherapy allow in principle the use of helium beams, which could present specific advantages, especially for pediatric tumors. In order to assess the potential use of these beams for radiotherapy, i.e., to create realistic treatment plans, the authors set up a dedicated (4)He beam model, providing base data for their treatment planning system TRiP98, and they have reported that in this work together with its physical and biological validations. METHODS A semiempirical beam model for the physical depth dose deposition and the production of nuclear fragments was developed and introduced in TRiP98. For the biological effect calculations the last version of the local effect model was used. The model predictions were experimentally verified at the HIT facility. The primary beam attenuation and the characteristics of secondary charged particles at various depth in water were investigated using (4)He ion beams of 200 MeV/u. The nuclear charge of secondary fragments was identified using a ΔE/E telescope. 3D absorbed dose distributions were measured with pin point ionization chambers and the biological dosimetry experiments were realized irradiating a Chinese hamster ovary cells stack arranged in an extended target. RESULTS The few experimental data available on basic physical processes are reproduced by their beam model. The experimental verification of absorbed dose distributions in extended target volumes yields an overall agreement, with a slight underestimation of the lateral spread. Cell survival along a 4 cm extended target is reproduced with remarkable accuracy. CONCLUSIONS The authors presented a simple simulation model for therapeutical (4)He beams which they introduced in TRiP98, and which is validated experimentally by means of physical and biological dosimetries. Thus, it is now possible to perform detailed treatment planning studies with (4)He beams, either exclusively or in combination with other ion modalities.
Convergence Acceleration Operator for Multiobjective Optimization

A convergence acceleration operator (CAO) is described which enhances the search capability and the speed of convergence of the host multiobjective optimization algorithm. The operator acts directly in the objective space to suggest improvements to solutions obtained by a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). The suggested improved objective vectors are then mapped into the decision variable space and tested. This method improves upon prior work in a number of important respects, such as mapping technique and solution improvement. Further, the paper discusses implications for many-objective problems and studies the impact of the use of the CAO as the number of objectives increases. The CAO is incorporated with two leading MOEAs, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm and the strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm and tested. Results show that the hybridized algorithms consistently improve the speed of convergence of the original algorithm while maintaining the desired distribution of solutions. It is shown that the operator is a transferable component that can be hybridized with any MOEA.
Dimensions of the Depth Interview

The "depth interview" is defined in terms of social-psychological types of information conceived as "dimensions" of depth: (1) ego-threat, (2) fogetting, (3) consciousness of original experience, (4) generalization, (5) subjectivity, (6) trauma, (7) etiquette, and (8) chronology. Awareness of these types of problems may guide the interviewer in solving practical problems of interviewing and aid research by focusing attention on certain social-psychological barriers to free communication.
Fusion of tf.idf weighted bag of visual features for image classification

Image representation using bag of visual words approach is commonly used in image classification. Features are extracted from images and clustered into a visual vocabulary. Images can then be represented as a normalized histogram of visual words similarly to textual documents represented as a weighted vector of terms. As a result, text categorization techniques are applicable to image classification. In this paper, our contribution is twofold. First, we propose a suitable Term-Frequency and Inverse Document Frequency weighting scheme to characterize the importance of visual words. Second, we present a method to fuse different bag-of-words obtained with different vocabularies. We show that using our tf.idf normalization and the fusion leads to better classification rates than other normalization methods, other fusion schemes or other approaches evaluated on the SIMPLIcity collection.
The impact of globalisation on SME-subcontractors' supply chain strategies: A Danish case study

Globalisation and competition have impacted on not only large firms but also Small and Medium sizes Enterprises (SME) and these enterprises often act as subcontractors to larger firms operating in international markets. The impact of globalisation is severe on the SME-subcontractors due to supply chain linkages between large and SMEs through growing base of international customers. The new conditions impact on SME-subcontractors owing to supply chain connections and this paper using Danish case studies explores these conditions. The results of the study show that the SME-subcontractors are met with higher demands on all parameters but again the price has become decisive and the traditional customer relations no longer automatically generate new orders. Subcontractors in their turn try to meet these new conditions using various strategies, moving production facilities and accepting new roles in the supply chain, namely as orchestrator of a part of the supply chain themselves.
Gestação e a constituição da maternidade

*# ¶ * RESUMO. Na gravidez ocorrem mudancas biologicas, somaticas, psicologicas e sociais que influenciam a dinâmica psiquica individual e as demais relacoes sociais da gestante, e maneira como ela vive estas mudancas repercute intensamente na constituicao da maternidade e na relacao mae-bebe. Assim sendo, o objetivo deste estudo foi investigar os sentimentos das gestantes sobre a maternidade, com destaque para a relacao entre o periodo gestacional e a constituicao da maternidade. Participaram do estudo 39 gestantes primiparas, entre 19 e 37 anos, no terceiro trimestre de gestacao. A analise de conteudo qualitativa das entrevistas mostrou que as gestantes passaram por importantes transformacoes corporais, pessoais e interpessoais durante a gestacao e vivenciaram intensos sentimentos em relacao ao tornar-se mae. Os achados sugerem que na gestacao o processo de constituicao da maternidade esta em intenso desenvolvimento, assim como o proprio exercicio ativo do papel materno. Palavras-chave : gestacao, maternidade, relacao mae-bebe. PREGNANCY AND MOTHERHOOD
The Genomic Island SGI1, Containing the Multiple Antibiotic Resistance Region of Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium DT104 or Variants of It, Is Widely Distributed in Other S. enterica Serovars

ABSTRACT The global dissemination of the multiply-antibiotic-resistant Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium DT104 clone with the resistance genes located in a class 1 integron, here designated In104, within genomic island SGI1 is a significant public health issue. Here, we have shown that SGI1 and variants of it carrying different combinations of resistance genes are found in several Salmonella enterica serovars. These are serovars Cerro, Derby, Dusseldorf, Infantis, Kiambu, and Paratyphi B dT+ isolated from human infections and serovar Emek from sewage effluent. Two new variants, SGI1-I and SGI1-J, both of which include the dfrA1-orfC cassette array, were identified.
Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R) und Hamburger Zwangsinventar-Kurzform (HZI-K) im Vergleich: Eine Validitätsstudie

Hintergrund: Das Hamburger Zwangsinventar-Kurzform (HZI-K) ist ein im deutschen Sprachraum weit verbreitetes Selbstberichtsinstrument zur Erfassung des Schweregrads und der Symptomatik von Zwangsstörungen. Das Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R), das sich im englischen Sprachraum gut etabliert hat und inzwischen auch in einer deutschsprachigen Version vorliegt, dient ebenfalls der dimensionalen Erfassung von Zwangssymptomen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung hat zum Ziel, einen Vergleich der beiden Instrumente im Hinblick auf Reliabilität und konvergente sowie diskriminante Validität zu liefern. Methode: Basierend auf einer Stichprobe von 41 Patienten mit Zwangsstörungen wurden Korrelationen zwischen OCIR, HZI-K und anderen Instrumenten zu zwangsrelevanten Konstrukten sowie zur Depression berechnet. Ergebnisse: Die Korrelationen des OCI-R mit dem HZI-K lagen in einem moderaten bis hohen Bereich, während die Korrelationen mit der fremdeingeschätzten Symptomschwere unerwartet niedrig ausfielen. Die Korrelationen zu den Depressionsmaßen lagen mit leicht erhöhten Werten in einem akzeptablen Bereich. Schlussfolgerungen: Insgesamt lieferten die Ergebnisse Belege für eine gute bis sehr gute konvergente Validität des OCI-R und HZI-K. Die beiden Instrumente erwiesen sich somit in vielen Aspekten als vergleichbar. Differenzen bestehen in der Anzahl der Items, den Symptombereichen der Subskalen und der diskriminanten Validität zur Depression. Zusammengefasst lässt sich für die Mehrzahl der Fälle eine systematische Anwendung des OCI-R ableiten.
Sickle‐cell haemoglobin polymerization: is it the primary pathogenic event of sickle‐cell anaemia?

Sickle cell anaemia is associated with a mutant haemoglobin, HbS, which forms polymers in the red blood cells of patients. The primary role of the HbS polymerization for the pathophysiology has been questioned: observations in patients and model organisms contradict deterministic scenarios of sickling crises triggered by polymerization. However, results with knock‐out sickle‐cell mice, which were cured by delaying HbS polymerization, reconfirm polymerization's primary role. To reconcile the contradictory observations, this article reviews recent findings on two steps in polymerization: homogeneous nucleation of fibres, and their growth. The fibre growth is faster by far than for any other protein ordered structure. This is due to a negligible free‐energy barrier for incorporation into a fibre, determined by an entropy gain, stemming from the release of water molecules structured around HbS. The kinetics of fibre nucleation have shown that the formation of the polymer nucleus is preceded by a metastable droplet of a dense liquid. The properties of the dense liquid are sensitive functions of solution composition, including components in micro‐ and nanomolar amounts. This mechanism allows low‐concentration solution components to strongly affect the nucleation kinetics, accounting for the high variability of the disease. These insights can potentially be utilized for control of HbS polymerization and treatment of the disease.
QUASI: A Pipeline for the Quality Assessment and Statistical Inference on Next Generation Sequencing Data from Pooled shRNA Library Screens

With the development of next generation high-throughput sequencing solutions to expression profiling, the efficient and effortless handling of such profiling data became a key challenge for bioinformaticians and biologists alike. We therefore present a "fire and forget" style pipeline implemented in C and R, named QUASI. It is capable of quality assessments, sequence alignments, shRNA quantification and statistically inferring significant differential sequence abundance from datasets presented to it. Through blackboxing the often complex and laborious steps, QUASI presents itself as a user-friendly and time-efficient solution to handle pooled shRNA library screening data.
agr-Dependent Bacterial Interference Has No Impact on Long-Term Colonization of Staphylococcus aureus during Persistent Airway Infection of Cystic Fibrosis Patients

ABSTRACT The agr specificity group distribution of persistent Staphylococcus aureus clones recovered from the airways of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients did not differ from that of isolates recovered from various clinical infections and healthy nasal carriers. The success of CF clones in terms of cocolonization and/or infection with S. aureus, prevalence of clones, or persistence appeared to be independent of agr group specificity.
APRICODD: Approximate Policy Construction Using Decision Diagrams

We propose a method of approximate dynamic programming for Markov decision processes (MDPs) using algebraic decision diagrams (ADDs). We produce near-optimal value functions and policies with much lower time and space requirements than exact dynamic programming. Our method reduces the sizes of the intermediate value functions generated during value iteration by replacing the values at the terminals of the ADD with ranges of values. Our method is demonstrated on a class of large MDPs (with up to 34 billion states), and we compare the results with the optimal value functions.
A study on cooperative SVC Video streaming over hybrid residential and wireless networks

Residential networks such as ADSL have limited upstream capabilities. This research work presents a simulation study on how video stream in the uplink direction can be optimized using H.264 SVC coding through a combination of hybrid and residential networks. In this work, a cooperative mechanism for SVC video streaming over residential wireless networks is studied. In the proposed architecture we aim to examine how the same content can me transmitted through a cooperative scheme using information regarding the uplink bandwidth along with video packet importance. The available infrastructure is used to enhance SVC video streaming performance by offering access to an aggregated upstream channel formed by the individual wired connections of the participating wireless nodes. The simulation study shows how the transmission schedule and the node selection affect the video quality.
A new cluster validity criterion for the cross iterative fuzzy clustering algorithm

Many criteria have been proposed for clustering validity analysis in the literature. With a new definition of fuzzy compactness and fuzzy separation, a new cluster validity criterion is proposed for the cross iterative fuzzy clustering algorithm, which considers two kinds of outputs of fuzzy clustering: the geometrical properties of data and the fuzzy memberships, and has two terms: the ratio of fuzzy compactness to average fuzzy separation and the ratio of fuzzy union to fuzzy intersection of clusters. A weighting parameter is introduced to reflect the role of these two terms in validity analysis. The experimental analysis testifies that the minimum of the proposed criterion is a fine indicator for a compact and well-separated partition.
Towards Payment-Bound Analysis in Cloud Systems with Task-Prediction Errors

In modern cloud systems, how to optimize user service level based on virtual resources customized on demand is a critical issue. In this paper, we comprehensively analyze the payment bound under a cloud model with virtual machines (VMs), by taking into account that task's workload may be predicted with errors. The analysis is based on an optimized resource allocation algorithm with polynomial time complexity. We theoretically derive the upper bound of task payment based on a particular margin of workload prediction-error. We also extend the payment-minimization algorithm to adapt to the dynamic changes of host availability over time, and perform the evaluation by a real-cluster environment with 56 VMs deployed. Experiments confirm the correctness of our theoretical inference, and show that our payment-minimization solution can keep 95% of user payments below 1.15 times as large as the theoretical values of the ideal payment with hypothetically accurate information. The ratio for the rest user payments can be limited to about 1.5 at the worst case.
Destinations as Products? A Reflection on Butler's Life cycle

This department has been specifically introduced to include findings of special significance and problem areas of subtle nuances in tourism research. Insightful contributions presenting the state-of-the-art preferably from the developing societies will be appreciated. It will also encourage scholars and authors to think against the grain, probing the consistency of theoretical notions and research trends whose heuristic value is all too often taken for granted. For details contact Section Editor, Professor Julio Aramberri, Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. e-mail: jraramberri@hotmail.com.
Writing about Everyday Beauty: Anthropomorphizing and Distancing as Literary Practices

In this paper two ways to communicate a relation to one's everyday life environment are discussed: anthropomorphizing and distancing. Both are often thought to convey hierarchically anthropocentric relations to nature and as such to be undesired. The basis of this paper is empirical research conducted in a small northern Finnish village. Four villagers participated in writing letters about beauty in their everyday lives. In this paper the letters of two participants are discussed in detail. I conclude that anthropomorphism and distancing serve as literary practices of negotiating a meaningful relation to one's everyday life environment by conceptually framing the interplay of one's perceived proximity to and distance from the not-her.
Bootstrapping machine translation for the language pair English-Kiswahili

In recent years, research in Machine Translation has greatly benefited from the increasing availability of parallel corpora. Processing the same text in two different languages yields useful information on how words and phrases are translated from a source language into a target language. To investigate this, a parallel corpus is typically aligned by linking linguistic tokens in the source language to the corresponding units in the target language. An aligned parallel corpus therefore facilitates the automatic development of a machine translation system. In this paper, we describe data collection and annotation efforts and preliminary experiments with a parallel corpus English Kiswahili.
Fast time-series searching with scaling and shifting

Recently, it has been found that the technique of searching for similar patterns among time series data is very important in a wide range of scientific and business applications. In this paper, we first propose a definition of similarity based on scaling and shifting transformations. Sequence A is defined to be similar to sequence B if suitable scaling and shifting transformations can be found to transform A to B. Then, we present a geometrical view of the problem so that the scaling factor and the shifting offset can be determined. Moreover, sequence searching based on tree-based indexing structure can be performed. Finally, some technical aspects are discussed and some experiments are performed on real data (stock price movement) to measure the performance of our algorithm.
A Temporal-Probabilistic Database Model for Information Extraction

Temporal annotations of facts are a key component both for building a high-accuracy knowledge base and for answering queries over the resulting temporal knowledge base with high precision and recall. In this paper, we present a temporal-probabilistic database model for cleaning uncertain temporal facts obtained from information extraction methods. Specifically, we consider a combination of temporal deduction rules, temporal consistency constraints and probabilistic inference based on the common possible-worlds semantics with data lineage, and we study the theoretical properties of this data model. We further develop a query engine which is capable of scaling to very large temporal knowledge bases, with nearly interactive query response times over millions of uncertain facts and hundreds of thousands of grounded rules. Our experiments over two real-world datasets demonstrate the increased robustness of our approach compared to related techniques based on constraint solving via Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and probabilistic inference via Markov Logic Networks (MLNs). We are also able to show that our runtime performance is more than competitive to current ILP solvers and the fastest available, probabilistic but non-temporal, database engines.
Optimizing SQL queries for parallel execution

The optimization problem discussed in this paper is the translation of an SQL query into an efficient parallel execution plan for a multiprocessor database machine under the performance goal of reduced response times as well as increased throughput in a multiuser environment. We describe and justify the most important research problems which have to be solved to achieve this task, and we explain our approach to solve these problems.
Genome-Wide Assessment of Efficiency and Specificity in CRISPR/Cas9 Mediated Multiple Site Targeting in Arabidopsis

Simultaneous multiplex mutation of large gene families using Cas9 has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and plant sciences. The targeting of multiple genomic sites at once raises concerns about the efficiency and specificity in targeting. The model Arabidopsis thaliana is widely used in basic plant research. Previous work has suggested that the Cas9 off-target rate in Arabidopsis is undetectable. Here we use deep sequencing on pooled plants simultaneously targeting 14 distinct genomic loci to demonstrate that multiplex targeting in Arabidopsis is highly specific to on-target sites with no detectable off-target events. In addition, chromosomal translocations are extremely rare. The high specificity of Cas9 in Arabidopsis makes this a reliable method for clean mutant generation with no need to enhance specificity or adopt alternate Cas9 variants.
Gastric Polyp Growth during Endoscopic Surveillance for Esophageal Varices or Barrett's Esophagus.

BACKGROUND We recently observed patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) or chronic reflux symptoms (CRS) who developed gastric polyps (GPs) while undergoing surveillance gastroscopies for the detection of esophageal varices or Barrett's esophagus, respectively. OBJECTIVES To identify risk factors for GP growth and estimate its growth rate. METHODS GP growth rate was defined as the number of days since the first gastroscopy (without polyps) in the surveillance program, until the gastroscopy when a GP was discovered. RESULTS Gastric polyp growth rates in CLD and CRS patients were similar. However, hyperplastic gastric polyps (HGPs) were detected more often (87.5% vs. 60.5%, P = 0.051) and at a higher number (2.57 ± 1.33 vs. 1.65 ± 0.93, P = 0.021) in the CLD patients. Subgroup analysis revealed the following findings only in CLD patients with HGPs: (i) a positive correlation between the GP growth rate and the patient's age; the older the patient, the higher the GP growth rate (r = 0.7, P = 0.004). (ii) A negative correlation between the patient's age and the Ki-67 proliferation index value; the older the patient, the lower the Ki-67 value (r = -0.64, P = 0.02). No correlation was detected between Ki-67 values of HGPs in CLD patients and the presence of portal hypertension, infection with Helicobacter pylori, or proton pump inhibitor use. CONCLUSIONS In comparison with CRS patients, CLD patients developed HGPs more often and at a greater number. Young CLD patients may have a tendency to develop HGPs at a faster rate than elderly CLD patients.