Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implantations distribuées de modèles à base de composants communicants par interactions multiparties avec priorités : application au langage BIP. (Distributed Implementations of Component-based Systems with Prioritized Multiparty Interactions : Application to the BIP Framework.)

Distributed software is often required for new systems, because of efficiency and physical distribution and sensors and actuators. Ensuring correctness of a distributed implementation is hard due to the interleaving of actions belonging to distinct processes. This thesis proposes a method for generating a correct and efficient distributed implementation from a high-level model of an application. The input model is described as a set of components communicating through prioritized multiparty interactions. Such primitives change the state of all components involved in an interaction during a single atomic execution step. We assume that a distributed implementation is a set of processes communicating through asynchronous message-passing. The main challenge is to produce a correct and efficient distributed implementation of prioritized multiparty interactions, relying only on message-passing. The method relies on a rigorous design flow refining the high-level model of the application into a low-level model, from which code for a given platform is generated. All intermediate models appearing in the flow are expressed using the same semantics as the input model. Complex interactions are replaced with constructs using simpler interactions at each step of the design flow. In particular, the last model obtained before code generation contains only interactions modeling asynchronous message passing. The correctness of the implementation is obtained by construction. Using multiparty interaction reduces drastically the set of reachable states, compared to an equivalent model expressed with lower level primitives. Essential properties of the system are checked at this abstraction level. Each transformation of the design flow is simple enough to be fully formalized and proved by showing observational equivalence or trace equivalence between the input and output models. The obtained implementation is correct with respect to the original model, which avoids an expensive a posteriori verification. Performance can be optimized through adequate choice of the transformation parameters, or by augmenting the knowledge of components. The latter solution requires to analyze the original model to compute the knowledge, that is reused at subsequent steps of the decentralization. The various transformations and optimizations constituting the design flow have been implemented using the BIP framework. The implementation has been used to evaluate the different possibilities, as well the influence of parameters of the design flow, on several examples. The generated code uses either Unix sockets, MPI or pthreads primitives for communication between processes.
A critical role for CCR 2 / MCP-1 interactions in the development of idiopathic pneumonia syndrome after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

Idiopathic pneumonia syndrome (IPS) is a major complication after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (allo-BMT) and involves the infiltration of donor leukocytes and the secretion of inflammatory cytokines. We hypothesized that leukocyte recruitment during IPS is dependent in part upon interactions between chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) and its primary ligand monocyte chemoattractant protein–1 (MCP-1). To test this hypothesis, IPS was induced in a lethally irradiated parent3 F1 mouse BMT model. Compared with syngeneic controls, pulmonary expression of MCP-1 and CCR2 mRNA was significantly increased after allo-BMT. Transplantation of CCR2-deficient (CCR2 / ) donor cells resulted in a significant reduction in IPS severity compared with transplantation of wild-type (CCR2 / ) cells and in reduced bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid cellularity and BAL fluid levels of tumor necrosis factor– (TNF) and soluble p55 TNF receptor (sTNFRI). In addition, neutralization of MCP-1 resulted in significantly decreased lung injury compared with control-treated allogeneic recipients. Experimental data correlated with preliminary clinical findings; patients with IPS have elevated levels of MCP-1 in the BAL fluid at the time of diagnosis. Collectively, these data demonstrate that CCR2/MCP-1 interactions significantly contribute to the development of experimental IPS and suggest that interventions blocking these receptor-ligand interactions may represent novel strategies to prevent or treat this lethal complication after allo-BMT. (Blood. 2004;103: 2417-2426)
A Benchmark Test Suite for Dynamic Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization

Growing trend of the dynamic multiobjective optimization research in the evolutionary computation community has increased the need for challenging and conceptually simple benchmark test suite to assess the optimization performance of an algorithm. This paper proposes a new dynamic multiobjective benchmark test suite which contains a number of component functions with clearly defined properties to assess the diversity maintenance and tracking ability of a dynamic multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). Time-varying fitness landscape modality, tradeoff connectedness, and tradeoff degeneracy are considered as these properties rarely exist in the current benchmark test instances. Cross-problem comparative study is presented to analyze the sensitivity of a given algorithm to certain fitness landscape properties. To demonstrate the use of the proposed benchmark test suite, three evolutionary multiobjective algorithms, namely nondominated sorting genetic algorithm, decomposition-based MOEA, and recently proposed Kalman-filter-based prediction approach, are analyzed and compared. Besides, two problem-specific performance metrics are designed to assess the convergence and diversity performances, respectively. By applying the proposed test suite and performance metrics, microscopic performance details of these algorithms are uncovered to provide insightful guidance to the algorithm designer.
Functional Outcomes in the Treatment of Adults With ADHD

Objective: ADHD is associated with significant functional impairment in adults. The present study examined functional outcomes following 6-month double-blind treatment with either atomoxetine or placebo. Method: Patients were 410 adults (58.5% male) with DSM-IV—defined ADHD. They were randomly assigned to receive either atomoxetine 40 mg/day to 80 mg/day (n = 271) or placebo (n = 139). The primary functional outcome measure was the Endicott Work Productivity Scale (EWPS), and the secondary measure was the Adult ADHD Quality of Life (AAQoL). Patients were seen for four visits in 6 months. Results: At 6 months, both groups had nonsignificantly different improvements in EWPS total scores. Atomoxetine-treated patients showed significantly greater improvement than placebo-treated patients on the AAQoL after controlling for baseline severity of ADHD. Both treatment groups had low 6-month study completion rates. Conclusion: Following 6-month treatment with atomoxetine, adults with ADHD showed significantly greater improvement in functioning on disease-specific measures of quality of life than patients treated with placebo. (J. of Att. Dis. 2008; 11(6) 720-727)
Monocytes That Have Ingested Yersinia enterocoliticaSerotype O:3 Acquire Enhanced Capacity To Bind to Nonstimulated Vascular Endothelial Cells via P-Selectin

ABSTRACT Reactive arthritis is usually a self-limiting polyarthritis which develops after certain gastrointestinal or urogenital infections. Microbial antigens found in the inflamed joints are thought to play a key role in the development of this disease. It is not known how antigens of the pathogenic organisms migrate from the mucosal tissues into the joints. The data presented here show that mononuclear phagocytes which mediate the dissemination of several intracellular pathogens acquire an enhanced capacity to bind to nonstimulated vascular endothelial cells after phagocytosis ofYersinia enterocolitica O:3, one of the causative organisms of reactive arthritis. The increased binding to previously nonstimulated endothelial cells was mediated by P-selectin, whose translocation to the endothelial cell surface was induced by monocytes with intracellular Yersinia bacteria. These results suggest that mononuclear phagocytes may be responsible for the dissemination of bacterial antigens and the initiation of the joint inflammation in reactive arthritis.
Finding the exact delay bound for consensus of linear multi-agent systems

This paper focuses on consensus problems for high-order, linear multi-agent systems. Undirected communication topologies along with a fixed and uniform communication time delay are taken into account. This class of problems has been widely studied in the literature, but there are still gaps concerning the exact stability bounds in the domain of the delays. The novelty of this paper lies in the determination of an exact and explicit delay bound for consensus. This is done in a very efficient manner by using the cluster treatment of characteristic roots (CTCR) paradigm. Before the stability analysis, a state transformation is performed to decouple the system and simplify the problem. CTCR is then deployed to the individual subsystems to obtain the stability margin in the domain of the delays without the conservatism introduced by other approaches more frequently found in the literature. Simulation results are presented to support the analytical claims.
Quantifying the power spectrum of fetal heart rate variability

We are delighted with the interest from Casati & Frasch (2014) in our study of the development of the power spectrum of fetal heart rate variability (FHRV). We are confused by the call to adhere to a fetal standard when there is currently no consensus or a strong evidence base to justify a fetal range. Our goal was systematically to quantify changes in FHRV spectral power in the last third of gestation to see whether these changes could be related to the known maturation of sympathetic activity (Booth et al. 2011). The most striking finding was that there is very little high-frequency activity over the last third of gestation in the fetal sheep. This is consistent with previous reports in human pregnancy from magnetocardiogram recordings that included assessment of higher frequency activity from 0.4 to 1.7 Hz that nearly all FHR power was less than 0.2 Hz, showing that there is relatively limited additional value in measuring power above 0.4 Hz (David et al. 2007). Given that lower frequency FHRV power represented a mixture of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, the small amount of (primarily) parasympathetic-mediated high-frequency activity must limit the utility of FHR power spectral analysis. Although it is of considerable interest to measure the maturation of autonomic activity in multiple regions (Booth et al. 2011), this would be a very indirect way of assessing control of FHR. The respondents may wish to reflect that they are hypothesizing that sympathetic activity does not contribute to the high-frequency band and thus they do not anticipate a correlation between high-frequency activity and changes in sympathetic activity. Instead, we used sympathectomy and parasympathetic blockade to induce large, categorical changes in autonomic activity to show unequivocally the limited impact on high-frequency spectral power after either intervention. This finding is robust. If the reference to subtle changes in the FHR simply means high frequency activity, then we respectfully disagree. We recorded the fetal ECG at 1024 Hz, which is more than sufficient to resolve beat-to-beat variation to less than 1 ms. Given how little high-frequency activity we observed even at 0.85 gestation, in practice the difference from estimates derived from lower frequency recordings would be trivial. Could this conclusion be affected by breathing movements? Irrespective of whether non-ventilatory fetal breathing movements are sufficient to induce changes in heart rate, near-term fetuses show no breathing movements in high-voltage sleep, and the greatest rate of movements occurs in low-voltage sleep, at a mean of 56 breaths min−1 (Bennet et al. 1990). Preterm fetuses ‘breathe’ more or less continuously, but at a lower overall rate. Given that in our study the mean FHR at 0.85 gestation in low-voltage sleep was 173 beats min−1 in control fetuses and 159 beats min−1 after sympathectomy, we can be confident that breathing movements were consistently much less than half mean FHR, and so according to the Nyquist criterion, that no aliasing occurred that would reduce measured frequency of FHRV.
Vertebral growth and its mechanical control.

1. Some of the factors responsible for vertebral growth have been discussed. 2. In kyphosis and scoliosis it is important to prevent progressive epiphysial damage. 3. In selected cases of progressive scoliosis, epiphysiodesis on the convex side will correct unequal growth. 4. The technique of spinal epiphysiodesis is described and the results that may be expected are discussed.
Prospective Study on Physical Activity and Risk of In Situ Breast Cancer

Background: Physical activity has been identified as protective factor for invasive breast cancer risk, whereas comparable studies on in situ carcinoma are rare. Methods: The study included data from 283,827 women of the multinational European Prospective Investigation into C7ancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-cohort study. Detailed information on different types of physical activity conducted during the prior year, such as occupational, recreational, and household activity, as well as on important cofactors, was assessed at baseline. Adjusted HRs for in situ breast cancer were estimated by Cox proportional hazards models. Results: During a median follow-up period of 11.7 years, 1,059 incidents of breast carcinoma in situ were identified. In crude and adjusted multivariable models, no associations were found for occupational, household, and recreational physical activity. Furthermore, total physical activity was not associated with risk of in situ breast cancer. Comparing moderately inactive, moderately active, and active participants with inactive study participants resulted in adjusted HRs of 0.99 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.83–1.19], 0.99 (95% CI, 0.82–1.20), and 1.07 (95% CI, 0.81–1.40), respectively (P value of trend test: 0.788). No inverse associations were found in any substrata defined by age at diagnosis or body mass index (BMI) status. Conclusions: In this large prospective study, we did not find any evidence of an association between physical activity and in situ breast cancer risk. If not by chance, the contrast between our results for carcinoma in situ and the recognized inverse association for invasive breast cancer suggests that physical activity may have stronger effects on proliferation and late stage carcinogenesis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(12); 2209–19. ©2012 AACR.
Facilitation of Declarative Memory and Congruent Brain States by Applications of Weak, Patterned Magnetic Fields: The Future of Memory Access?

Modern communication and electronic technology have produced a complex secondary electromagnetic environment within which we are all immersed. Ultimately patterns will be generated that are intimately congruent with those generated by the human brain during memory consolidation. Their strategic patterning within educational contexts could facilitate learning and memory consolidation. Human volunteers exposed to a weak patterned magnetic field whose electrical equivalent produces long-term potentiation or memory enhancement in a variety of contexts, showed a significant increase in the retention of narrative details 20 min after the field was applied over the left temporal lobe but not the right temporal lobe; scores for the latter group did not differ from sham-field subjects. The effect size of the memory enhancement was sufficiently large, accommodating 60% of the variance, to have educational and practical applications. The changes required about 15 minutes to be apparent and were related to the expected quantitative changes in brain activity. These results, which replicate previous experiments, indicate there is a potential technology that could be developed to enhance memory capacity and to promote vocational advantages for the average person in the 21 st century.
Basement Membrane and Cell Integrity of Self-Tissues in Maintaining Drosophila Immunological Tolerance

The mechanism underlying immune system recognition of different types of pathogens has been extensively studied over the past few decades; however, the mechanism by which healthy self-tissue evades an attack by its own immune system is less well-understood. Here, we established an autoimmune model of melanotic mass formation in Drosophila by genetically disrupting the basement membrane. We found that the basement membrane endows otherwise susceptible target tissues with self-tolerance that prevents autoimmunity, and further demonstrated that laminin is a key component for both structural maintenance and the self-tolerance checkpoint function of the basement membrane. Moreover, we found that cell integrity, as determined by cell-cell interaction and apicobasal polarity, functions as a second discrete checkpoint. Target tissues became vulnerable to blood cell encapsulation and subsequent melanization only after loss of both the basement membrane and cell integrity.
Computational Analysis of Stresses Acting on Intermodular Junctions in Thoracic Aortic Endografts

Purpose To evaluate the biomechanical and hemodynamic forces acting on the intermodular junctions of a multi-component thoracic endograft and elucidate their influence on the development of type III endoleak due to disconnection of stent-graft segments. Methods Three-dimensional computer models of the thoracic aorta and a 4-component thoracic endograft were constructed using postoperative (baseline) and follow-up computed tomography (CT) data from a 69-year-old patient who developed type III endoleak 4 years after stent-graft placement. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques were used to quantitate the displacement forces acting on the device. The contact stresses between the different modules of the graft were then quantified using computational solid mechanics (CSM) techniques. Lastly, the intermodular junction frictional stability was evaluated using a Coulomb model. Results The CFD analysis revealed that curvature and length are key determinants of the displacement forces experienced by each endograft and that the first 2 modules were exposed to displacement forces acting in opposite directions in both the lateral and longitudinal axes. The CSM analysis revealed that the highest concentration of stresses occurred at the junction between the first and second modules of the device. Furthermore, the frictional analysis demonstrated that most of the surface area (53%) of this junction had unstable contact. The predicted critical zone of intermodular stress concentration and frictional instability matched the location of the type III endoleak observed in the 4-year follow-up CT image. Conclusion The region of larger intermodular stresses and highest frictional instability correlated with the zone where a type III endoleak developed 4 years after thoracic stent-graft placement. Computational techniques can be helpful in evaluating the risk of endograft migration and potential for modular disconnection and may be useful in improving device placement strategies and endograft design.
Probing the molten globule state of alpha-lactalbumin by limited proteolysis.

Limited proteolysis has been used to probe the partially folded state of bovine alpha-lactalbumin (BLA) at acid pH (A-state) or dissolved in aqueous trifluoroethanol (TFE-state). The sites of proteolytic fission have been determined by isolation of the various BLA fragments and comparison of their N-terminal amino acid sequence and amino acid composition after acid hydrolysis, as well as their molecular mass determined by mass spectrometry, with the known sequence of BLA. Incubation of BLA with pepsin at 20-22 degrees C and pH 2.0 in the presence of 0.1 M NaCl results in very rapid cleavage of the 123-residue chain at peptide bond Ala40-Ile41 and subsequently at Leu52-Phe53, leading to a nicked species of BLA constituted by the two fragments 1-40 and 53-123 cross-linked by the four disulfide bridges of the protein. Much slower proteolytic cleavage occurs at Tyr103-Trp104. The highly helical conformational state acquired by BLA when dissolved in aqueous buffer (pH 7.0) containing 50% (v/v) TFE was probed by the TFE-resistant thermolysin. Proteolytic cleavage occurs at the peptide bond Ala40-Ile41 and much more slowly at Phe80-Leu81. Moreover, the peptide bond Gln2-Leu3 at the N-terminus of the chain is partially cleaved by thermolysin. Conversely, native BLA in a pH 7.0 buffer is rather resistant to proteolysis. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Histopathologically Proven Prevention of Post-Prostatectomy Cavernosal Fibrosis with Sildenafil

Aim: To evaluate whether a dose of 50 mg preserved the architecture of the corpora cavernosa biopsy in man. Methods: 21 patients (54–70 years old) who underwent radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer were treated with sildenafil citrate (50 mg, 3 times a week for 2 months) soon after surgery. They underwent cavernous biopsy before surgery and after 2 months of sildenafil treatment. Biopsy tissues were fixed in formalin, stained with Masson’s trichrome method, and evaluated with the Eureka Interface system with a per-area analysis, and elastic fibers were counted on 10–12 fields (×400) of five serial sections. Results: Two months after surgery the percent of connective tissue in cavernosa samples in all patients did not differ from that before surgery, being between 30 and 40% in the per-area analysis. Similarly, the elastic fiber count did not differ significantly before and after surgery. Conclusions: Sildenafil prevented the progression of fibrosis in prostatectomized patients. Its efficacy seems to result from an antiproliferative effect exerted on fibroblasts.