Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of body composition on fasting heat production in pigs.

Ten sets of three litter mate barrows from each of three genetic stocks, Beltsville Highfat (HF) and Lowfat (LF) Duroc-Yorkshire composites and a Hampshire X Large White cross (CX), were used to investigate effects of body composition on fasting heat production (FHP). Pigs from each set were fasted for 24 h at 10, 17 or 24 wk of age before measuring respiratory exchange for 24 h in an open-circuit calorimeter. Average heat production during night hours (8 h) in the calorimeter was used to estimate FHP. Each pig was then slaughtered and dissected into three fractions: carcass, head and feet, viscera and blood. Each fraction was frozen, ground, sampled and analyzed for protein, fat, water and ash. Correlations within ages of FHP with calorimeter live weight (CLWT) were lower than with total weight of lean, protein or water, but near zero with fat at all ages. Coefficients of determination (R2) for linear and nonlinear predictors of FHP from lean were: . 58, . 89 and . 91 at 10, 17 and 24 wk, respectively, but from CLWT were: . 52, . 74 and . 82, respectively. Negative partial regressions of FHP on fat improved R2 slightly at 10 and 17 wk but not at 24 wk, suggesting that fatter pigs were better insulated. Viscera and blood influenced FHP more than carcass or head and feet. Estimated exponents relating lean mass to FHP ranged from . 79 to . 86 and FHP (kcal/d) = (86 +/- 20) X lean kg X 84 (+/- X 06) at 24 wk. There was some evidence of stock differences in FHP independent of body composition.
Virtualized Hadoop Performance with VMware vSphere® 6 on HighPerformance Servers - White Paper: VMware, Inc

Large advances have been made in hardware and every level of the software stack since the virtualized Hadoop tests published in April 2013. This paper shows how to take advantage of these advances to achieve maximum performance. The cluster size remains at 32 two-processor 2U hosts; however, the processor, memory, network, and storage capabilities are all roughly doubled from those reported in the earlier paper. The performance of native and several VMware vSphere® 6 virtualized configurations were compared using the same TeraSort application suite as before. It was found that the more powerful hosts give a larger advantage to multi-VM per host configurations: virtualized TeraSort is now up to 12% faster than the optimized native configuration. The apples-to-apples case of a single virtual machine per host again shows performance close to that of native Linux. The origins of the improvements are examined and recommendations for optimal hardware and software configurations are given.
Connecting OGC web services and the Grid using Globus Toolkit 4 and OGSA-DAI

Adapting existing distributed infrastructures to the Grid is a major aim of Germany's D-Grid initiative. As generic compute and data storage resources as well as management services for Virtual Organizations are well established in the D-Grid infrastructure, it is now possible for existing research communities to use these resources to enhance their existing infrastructures or develop new ones that had not been possible without the enormous amount of compute power and storage provided by the Grid. GDI-Grid is one of these communities and adaptation of existing geospatial infrastructures, especially those based upon the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services, is subject to current research. We present the results of this research and the resulting implementations in this paper. Special focus hereby lies on compute services, data management, and security.
An Accurate, Fast Embedded Feature Selection for SVMs

Feature selection is still a vital area for research in the machine learning field. After the emergence of big data, the need for mining large data sizes has increased to provide faster and more accurate predictions. Feature selection is concerned with selecting the most important features from a set of input features since some datasets may contain irrelevant and/or redundant features. In this paper, a new feature selection method of type embedded is presented and discussed with some preliminary results using existing benchmark datasets. The new method is called Recursive Feature Addition which works in a forward fashion and is based on Support Vector Machines. The new method has been applied to five different benchmark datasets and for which it has shown superior performance in terms of accuracy and time as compared to Filter, Wrapper and other Embedded methods.
Streptococcus Dysgalactiae Subspecies Dysgalactiae Infection after Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Case Report

Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies dysgalactiae (SDSD), Lancefield group C streptococcus, is an animal pathogen which often causes pyogenic infection in domestic animals. Human infection by SDSD has been reported as a cellulitis on the upper arm, but a prosthetic joint infection caused by SDSD after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) has not yet been reported in the literature demonstrating that its clinical manifestation and management have not been well established. In this case report, we aimed to present a case of SDSD prosthetic joint infection after TKA, which was successfully treated by two-stage re-implantation with an application of antibiotic-impregnated cement spacer.
Design and Evaluation of an Energy-Saving Real-Time Microprocessor

Today, many embedded applications are real time systems. Therefore, besides correct functionality they have to guarantee execution time bounds. To put it in other words, an embedded real-time system needs a good worst case performance. Additionally, the power and energy consumption is of great importance. Usually dynamic power and frequency scaling techniques are used to ensure this goal. However, standard dynamic power and frequency scaling techniques sacrifice performance thus saving power and energy. In this paper we present an architecture of a microprocessor core enhanced with a closed control loop on hardware level. This design is able to deliver an aimed performance, thus holding execution time bonds. Additionally, the controller is used to reduce the supply voltage and clock frequency whenever possible without sacrificing the thread performance.
The degree of color change, rebound effect and sensitivity of bleached teeth associated with at-home and power bleaching techniques: A randomized clinical trial

Aim: The purpose of the present randomized clinical trial was to evaluate the color change, rebound effect and sensitivity of at-home bleaching with 15% carbamide peroxide and power bleaching using 38% hydrogen peroxide. Materials and Methods: For bleaching techniques, 20 subjects were randomized in a split mouth design (at-home and power bleaching): In maxillary and mandibular anterior teeth (n = 20). Color was recorded before bleaching, immediately after bleaching, at 2 weeks, 1, 3 and 6 month intervals. Tooth sensitivity was recorded using the visual analog scale. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare both groups regarding bleaching effectiveness (∆E 1 ), rebound effect (∆E 2 ) and color difference between the rebounded tooth color and unbleached teeth (∆E 3) while the Wilcoxon compared ∆E within each group. Distribution of sensitivity was evaluated using the Chi-square test (α =0.05). Results: There was no significant difference between groups regarding ∆E 1 and ∆E 3 (P > 0.05). Even though, ∆E 2 showed no significant difference between groups after bleaching as well as at 2 week, 1 month and 3 month follow-up periods (P > 0.05). Although, significant difference was found in ∆E 2 (P < 0.05 Mann-Whitney) between two methods after 6 months and a high degree of rebound effect was obtained with power bleaching. Within each group, there was no significant difference between ∆E 1 and ∆E 3 (P < 0.05 Wilcoxon). The distribution of sensitivity was identical with both techniques (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Bleaching techniques resulted in identical tooth whitening and post-operative sensitivity using both techniques, but faster color regression was found with power bleaching even though color regression to the baseline of the teeth in both groups was the same after 6 months.
Lung Toxicity of Ambient Particulate Matter from Southeastern U.S. Sites with Different Contributing Sources: Relationships between Composition and Effects

Background Exposure to air pollution and, more specifically, particulate matter (PM) is associated with adverse health effects. However, the specific PM characteristics responsible for biological effects have not been defined. Objectives In this project we examined the composition, sources, and relative toxicity of samples of PM with aerodynamic diameter ≥2.5 μm (PM2.5) collected from sites within the Southeastern Aerosol Research and Characterization (SEARCH) air monitoring network during two seasons. These sites represent four areas with differing sources of PM2.5, including local urban versus regional sources, urban areas with different contributions of transportation and industrial sources, and a site influenced by Gulf of Mexico weather patterns. Methods We collected samples from each site during the winter and summer of 2004 for toxicity testing and for chemical analysis and chemical mass balance–based source apportionment. We also collected PM2.5 downwind of a series of prescribed forest burns. We assessed the toxicity of the samples by instillation into rat lungs and assessed general toxicity, acute cytotoxicity, and inflammation. Statistical dose–response modeling techniques were used to rank the relative toxicity and compare the seasonal differences at each site. Projection-to-latent-surfaces (PLS) techniques examined the relationships among sources, chemical composition, and toxicologic end points. Results and conclusions Urban sites with high contributions from vehicles and industry were most toxic.
Usefulness of ELISA Methods for Assessing LPS Interactions with Proteins and Peptides

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the major constituent of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, can trigger severe inflammatory responses during bacterial infections, possibly leading to septic shock. One approach to combatting endotoxic shock is to neutralize the most conserved part and major mediator of LPS activity (lipid A) with LPS-binding proteins or peptides. Although several available assays evaluate the biological activity of these molecules on LPS (e.g. inhibition of LPS-induced TNF-α production in macrophages), the development of simple and cost-effective methods that would enable preliminary screening of large numbers of potential candidate molecules is of great interest. Moreover, it would be also desirable that such methods could provide information about the possible biological relevance of the interactions between proteins and LPS, which may enhance or neutralize LPS-induced inflammatory responses. In this study, we designed and evaluated different types of ELISA that could be used to study possible interactions between LPS and any protein or peptide. We also analysed the usefulness and limitations of the different ELISAs. Specifically, we tested the capacity of several proteins and peptides to bind FITC-labeled LPSs from Escherichia coli serotypes O111:B4 and O55:B5 in an indirect ELISA and in two competitive ELISAs including casein hydrolysate (hCAS) and biotinylated polymyxin B (captured by deglycosylated avidin; PMX) as LPS-binding agents in the solid phase. We also examined the influence of pH, detergents and different blocking agents on LPS binding. Our results showed that the competitive hCAS-ELISA performed under mildly acidic conditions can be used as a general method for studying LPS interactions, while the more restrictive PMX-ELISA may help to identify proteins/peptides that are likely to have neutralizing properties in vitro or in vivo.
Genital Tuberculosis as the Cause of Tuboovarian Abscess in an Immunosuppressed Patient

Background. Although tuberculosis (TB) is a major health problem worldwide, primary extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB), and in particular female genital tract infection, remains a rare event. Case Report. A 35-year-old human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seropositive woman of African descent with lower abdominal pain and fever of two days duration underwent surgery due to left adnexal mass suggesting pelvic inflammatory disease. The surgical situs showed a four quadrant peritonitis, consistent with the clinical symptoms of the patient, provoked by a tuboovarian abscess (TOA) on the left side. All routine diagnostic procedures failed to determine the causative organism/pathogen of the infection. Histopathological evaluation identified a necrotic granulomatous salpingitis and specific PCR analysis corroborated Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. Tb). Consequently, antituberculotic therapy was provided. Conclusion. In the differential diagnosis of pelvic inflammatory disease, internal genital tuberculosis should be considered. Moreover, physicians should consider tuberculous infections early in the work-up of patients when immunosuppressive conditions are present.
Development of the 1998 OGI-FONIX broadcast news transcription system

This paper describes the OGI-FONIX large vocabulary system developed for the 1998 broadcast news evaluation. The main differences from our last year’s system [1] are: (1) A multiple pass decoder is used. (2) Long periods of silence are deleted in both training and decoding features. Cepstral mean subtraction is applied individually to automatically derived speaker clusters. These methods result in a 3% absolute improvement on a self-constructed 1000 seconds test set. (3) Different dictionaries are used for the within word and crossword decoding passes. Long segments from the first pass are chopped at hypothesized word boundaries and then merged back in the crossword decoding pass. These two methods yield 2.3% absolute improvement on the hub4e 97 evaluation set. (4) The system vocabulary size has been increased from 25K to 56K. With these changes, our 1998 system achieves a word error rate 27.9% on the h4e98 1 test set, and 23.6% on the h4e 98 2 test set for the hub4e98 evaluation.
It's not the economy, stupid! How social capital and GDP relate to happiness over time

What predicts the evolution over time of subjective well-being? We correlate the trends of subjective well-being with the trends of social capital and/or GDP. We find that in the long and medium run social capital largely predicts the trends of subjective wellbeing in our sample of countries. In the short-term this relationship weakens. Indeed, in the short run, changes in social capital predict a much smaller portion of the changes in subjective well-being than over longer periods. GDP follows a reverse path, thus confirming the Easterlin paradox: in the short run GDP is more positively correlated to well-being than in the medium-term, while in the long run this correlation vanishes.
The left inferior frontal gyrus is involved in adjusting response bias during a perceptual decision-making task

Changing the way we make decisions from one environment to another allows us to maintain optimal decision‐making. One way decision‐making may change is how biased one is toward one option or another. Identifying the regions of the brain that underlie the change in bias will allow for a better understanding of flexible decision‐making.
Information and Communication for Rural Innovation and Development: Context, Quality and Priorities in Southeast Uganda

Abstract Purpose: To examine the status and priorities for agricultural information generation, dissemination and utilization in the context of agricultural innovation systems in southeast Uganda. Design/Methodology/Approach: Group discussions were conducted with six communities in Kamuli district, southeast Uganda. The focus was on information sources and linkages, reliability, applicability and gaps. Data were analyzed with NVIVO software. Findings: Rural community members access information from a variety of sources but its reliability and application varies according to the nature of relations with and level of trust in the various sources. Further, community members lack means and capacity to hold accountable providers of low quality information. Information linkages among actors (farmers, extension, private sector and local leaders) were also minimal. Practical Implications: Establishment of feedback loops and partnerships among actors is necessary to ensure improvements in information generation and dissemination for rural development. Originality/Value: This study demonstrates the need for efforts to improve information and communication for rural development in developing countries. Trustworthiness of information sources, strengthening partnerships among actors, continuously reviewing approaches, and addressing emerging information gaps are key priorities. In agricultural innovation systems, involvement of multiple actors in information generation and dissemination is essential.
An intrusion-resilient signature scheme based on ECDLP

Intrusion-resilient signature schemes guarantee stronger security than forward-secure and key-insulated signature scheme. A novel intrusion-resilient signature scheme based on Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) is proposed. The proposed scheme combines the advantages of Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and intrusion-resilient security mechanism. It achieves mitigating the harmful effects caused by key exposure while preserving the efficiency and interoperability of ECDSA.
System performance management for the S/390 Parallel Enterprise Server G5

System performance management is a broad category of techniques that cover all aspects of obtaining maximum performance or speed from a given design. Items such as sorting methodology, critical path improvements, semiconductor line optimization, power-supply optimization, clock tuning, and cooling are part of performance management. Logic or architecture improvements that have a major effect on design, such as increasing cache size, are usually not included.
Speculation and Decentralized Scheduling

As clusters continue to grow in size and complexity, providing scalable and predictable performance is an increasingly important challenge. A crucial roadblock to achieving predictable performance is stragglers, i.e., tasks that take significantly longer than expected to run. At this point, speculative execution has been widely adopted to mitigate the impact of stragglers. However, speculation mechanisms are designed and operated independently of job scheduling when, in fact, scheduling a speculative copy of a task has a direct impact on the resources available for other jobs. In this work, we present Hopper, a job scheduler that is speculationaware, i.e., that integrates the tradeoffs associated with speculation into job scheduling decisions. We implement both centralized and decentralized prototypes of the Hopper scheduler and show that 50% (66%) improvements over state-of-the-art centralized (decentralized) schedulers and speculation strategies can be achieved through the coordination of scheduling and speculation. CCS Concepts Networks → Cloud computing; Computer systems organization → Distributed architectures;
Fast reconstruction of subband decomposed signals for progressive transmission

We propose a fast reconstruction method for a progressive subband-decomposed signal coding system. It is shown that unlike the normal approach which contains a fixed computational complexity, the computational complexity of the proposed approach is proportional to the number of refined coefficients. Therefore, using the proposed approach in image coding applications, we can update the image after receiving each new coefficient and create a continuously refined perception. This can be done without any extra computational cost compared to the normal case where the image is reconstructed after receiving a predefined number of bits. The idea for complexity reduction is extended to general filter banks.
NOTE ON WEIGHTED AVERAGE STRIKE ASIAN OPTIONS

Asian options are path-dependent and have payoffs which depend on the average price over a fixed period leading up to the maturity date. This option is of interest and important for thinly-traded assets since price manipulation is prohibited, and both the investor and issuer may enjoy a certain degree of protection from the caprice of the market. There are several nice results for the average options with different approaches. In this paper, we consider to propose a more general weight instead of usual simple average, for which it may be possible to control the weights in the light of unexpected situation incurred. In particular, we focus on strike Asian option with weighted average of asset prices.
Work Engagement, Job Satisfaction, and Nurse Turnover Intention

Work Engagement, Job Satisfaction, and Nurse Turnover Intention by Yolanda Edwards-Dandridge MBA, Iona College, 2005 MPA, Long Island University, 1994 BS, Herbert H. Lehman College, 1984 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Business Administration
Selective enhancement of hypoxic cell killing by tempol-regulated suicide gene expression

The presence of hypoxic regions within solid tumors is caused by an imbalance between cell proliferation and angiogenesis. Such regions may facilitate the onset of recurrence after radiation therapy and chemotherapy, as hypoxic cells show resistance to these treatments. We found that tempol, a nitroxide, strongly induces the accumulation of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α, particularly under conditions of hypoxia. We, therefore, evaluated whether tempol enhances the gene expression via HIF-1α, potentially leading to various applications for cancer gene therapy targeting hypoxic cells. Consequently, following treatment with tempol under hypoxia, the luciferase (Luc) activity in the cells transfected with the plasmid containing the luc gene with the oxygen-dependent degradation domain and a promoter composed of hypoxia-responsive elements increased up to approximately 10-fold compared to that observed in cells treated identically with the exception of tempol. The plasmid constructed by replacing the luc gene with the fcy::fur fusion gene as a suicide gene, strongly induced the accumulation of the Fcy::Fur fusion protein, only when incubated in the presence of the hypoxic mimic CoCl2 and tempol. The transfected cells were successfully killed with the addition of 5-fluorocytosine to the cell culture according to the fcy::fur fusion gene expression. As similar but lesser enhancement of the Luc activity was also observed in solid tumor tissues in nude mice, this strategy may be applied for hypoxic cancer eradication.
A Three-Decade Outburst of the LMC Luminous Blue Variable R127 Draws to a Close

The paradigmatic luminous blue variable R127 in the Large Magellanic Cloud has been found in the intermediate, peculiar early-B state, and substantially fainter in visual light, signaling the final decline from its major outburst that began between 1978 and 1980. This transformation was detected in 2008 January, but archival data show that it began between early 2005 and early 2007. In fact, significant changes from the maximum, peculiar A-type spectrum, which was maintained from 1986 through 1998, had already begun the following year, coinciding with a steep drop in visual light. We show detailed correspondences between the spectrum and light, in which the decline mimics the rise. Moreover, these trends are not monotonic but are characterized by multiple spikes and dips, which may provide constraints on the unknown outburst mechanism. Intensive photometric and spectroscopic monitoring of R127 should now resume, to follow the decline presumably back to the quiescent Ofpe/WN9 state, in order to fully document the remainder of this unique observational opportunity.