Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metabolism of maltitol by conventional rats and mice and germ-free mice, and comparative digestibility between maltitol and sorbitol in germ-free mice

The metabolism of maltitol (4-α-D-glucosylsorbitol) was assessed in fasting conventional (C) rats, C mice and germ-free (GF) mice, using [U-14C]maltitol. The radiorespirometric patterns of 14CO2 collected for 48 h after the administration of labelled maltitol were characterized by a constant rate of 14CO2 production lasting 4 h for both C rats and mice. The pattern for the GF mice showed a peak at the second hour followed immediately by a slow decrease. The percentage recovery of 14CO2 was significantly lower for the GF mice (59%) compared with C animals (72–74%). Urine, faeces and intestinal contents after 48 h totalled 19% of the administered radioactivity in the C rats and mice and 39% in the GF mice. The digestibility of maltitol and the absorption of sorbitol in GF mice was also assessed. The caecum and small intestine of GF mice, 3 h after administration of equimolar quantities of maltitol (140 mg/kg body-weight) or sorbitol (70 mg/kg body-weight), contained 39 and 51 % of the ingested dose respectively, present mostly in the caecum as sorbitol. The α-glucosidase (maltase) (EC 3.2.1.20) activity of the small intestine was appreciably higher (1·5–1·7 times) in the GF mice than in the C mice. These results suggest that the enzymic activities in the small intestine of mice and rats are sufficient to hydrolyse maltitol extensively. Consequently, the slow absorption of sorbitol seems to be an important factor limiting the overall assimilation of maltitol in the small intestine.
Strain Measurements with Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors in the Short Models of the HiLumi LHC Low-Beta Quadrupole Magnet MQXF

The replacement of the LHC Nb-Ti inner triplet magnets with more powerful quadrupole magnets based on Nb3 Sn superconductor, as foreseen by the HiLumi LHC Project, has pushed the technology advancement not only in the manufacturing process and tooling but also in the instrumentation. For the short model quadrupole magnet MQXFS-5, fabricated and tested at CERN, fiber optic sensors, based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) technology, have been proposed for monitoring the magnet mechanical behavior from its assembly to its operation in cryogenic conditions. After the experience gained with the FBG integration in short model racetrack coils, the paper deals with the first integration of 16 FBG sensors arranged into eight fibers and glued on the coils and on the support structure of the Nb3 Sn quadrupole. The advantages offered by the FBGs’ multiplexing capability has allowed the integration improvement of the FBG-based measuring system in the magnet structure as well as in the test facility. Examples of strain measurements during magnet assembly, cool-down and powering are presented in the paper and compared with strain gauges data.
Could the movie be cute? Understanding the user-generated word-of-mouth by implementing text mining analysis on the movie market

On the movie market, the user-generated word-of-mouth (WOM) impacts on the box office revenue and the span of the life-cycle of a film production. This article raises the question to what extent text mining can be useful tool in the process of understanding the consumers' experience and the evaluation of movie WOM. The results of the presented empirical study suggest that a text mining analysis of film reviews can offer both valuable insight about the viewer's vocabulary which indicates how consumers think about the movie, and insight about the general WOM valence. The managerial implication of the study is related mostly to the film promotion. In this article, the empirical study is presented within the broader context of other possible methods aimed at evaluating movie WOM.
Interactive Multimedia Learning On Health Care Among Lebanese Women: An Exploratory Study

Multimedia learning greatly enhanced the learning outcome and experience of learners exposed to it. The proposed study will explore the usefulness of multimedia learning software devised to educate Lebanese pregnant women who have a low level of formal education about pregnancy and early infant care. The study will be based on the media richness theory. It is expected that through media rich programs, communication of information is facilitated, promoting the resolving of indecisiveness and ambiguity that stems out of the lack of knowledge or information about a given a subject and the inability to convey a meaning of what is being said respectively.
Why Software Effort Estimation Needs SBSE

Industrial practitioners now face a bewildering array of possible configurations for effort estimation. How to select the best one for a particular dataset? This paper introduces OIL (short for optimized learning), a novel configuration tool for effort estimation based on differential evolution. When tested on 945 software projects, OIL significantly improved effort estimations, after exploring just a few configurations (just a few dozen). Further OIL's results are far better than two methods in widespread use: estimation-via-analogy and a recent state-of-the-art baseline published at TOSEM'15 by Whigham et al. Given that the computational cost of this approach is so low, and the observed improvements are so large, we conclude that SBSE should be a standard component of software effort estimation.
Emerging Treatment Models in Rheumatology: Challenges for Osteoarthritis Trials

At a time when advancing understanding of osteoarthritis (OA) has created opportunities for new treatments, development of treatments has remained considerably behind advances in other rheumatic diseases. We describe elements of trial design and measurements that have inhibited success and offer suggestions that may help break the log jam. Among the problems with trials that include pain as an outcome measure are reliance on a single, non‐optimal pain outcome, overestimation of likely effects of treatments on pain, and failure to identify patient subgroups most likely to respond to specific treatments. With regard to the use of structure modification as an outcome measure, demonstrating structure modification is often highly challenging, even with the use of magnetic resonance imaging. Many OA patients have advanced disease that is unlikely to respond to treatments that prevent cartilage loss. Further, prevention of cartilage loss and reduction of pain correlate weakly at best, and in at least some patients, reduction in pain may actually increase joint damage, making it impossible to demonstrate dual treatment effects on structure and pain in such scenarios. For structure outcomes, treatment effects on pain‐sensitive structures such as bone and synovium may be more achievable than preventing cartilage loss. We suggest that changes in trial design related to some of these issues may increase the chances that new exciting and effective OA treatments will become available.
Design and near field analysis of compact CPW-fed printed pseudo-monopole driven Yagi-type pattern diversity antenna

An approach to design a compact coplanar-waveguide (CPW)-fed printed pseudo-monopole antenna (PPMA)-driven Yagi-type pattern diversity antenna is proposed. In this work two types of reflector configurations, viz. straight and folded, are investigated. It is shown that the folded reflector configuration is 20% more compact and it results in about 1.5 dB improvement in front-to-back ratio w.r. t. the straight reflector configuration at the cost of slight degradation in the isolation level. The reason behind this degradation is further investigated by analyzing the near field along the antenna width. It is found that the gap between the reflector cause the near field coupling between the PPMAs in the case of folded reflector.
Understanding How GitHub Supports Curation Repositories

In recent years, software developers have started to appropriate GitHub repositories to curate resources, in order to systematically select, evaluate, and organize existing artifacts for preservation and future use. Curation behaviors in social media sites, such as users’ experiences to curate tweets from Twitter and pins on Pinterest, are well documented. However, GitHub, as a social coding platform, presents a new context for this activity, raising questions about the nature of curation on this task-driven online work site. To explore and understand curation on GitHub, we compared and contrasted curation repositories with software repositories using activity logs and analyzed the content of popular curation repositories. Our results show that: (1) curation repositories have become a favorite category of repositories in GitHub; (2) curation repositories leverage collaborative features and practices native to GitHub in new ways; (3) curation repositories collect and preserve high-quality resources for the software developers’ community. Our results suggest that curation is becoming increasingly important to the software developers’ community, and current practices can be better supported with tools designed specifically for curation.
The Maize ABA Receptors ZmPYL8, 9, and 12 Facilitate Plant Drought Resistance

Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses affecting world agriculture. Breeding drought-resistant crops is one of the most important challenges for plant biologists. PYR1/PYL/RCARs, which encode the abscisic acid (ABA) receptors, play pivotal roles in ABA signaling, but how these genes function in crop drought response remains largely unknown. Here we identified 13 PYL family members in maize (ZmPYL1-13). Changes in expression of these genes under different stresses indicated that ZmPYLs played important roles in responding to multiple abiotic stresses. Transgenic analyses of ZmPYL genes in Arabidopsis showed that overexpression of ZmPYL3, ZmPYL9, ZmPYL10, and ZmPYL13 significantly enhanced the sensitivity of transgenic plants to ABA. Additionally, transgenic lines overexpressing ZmPYL8, ZmPYL9, and ZmPYL12 were more resistant to drought. Accumulation of proline and enhanced expression of drought-related marker genes in transgenic lines further confirmed the positive roles of ZmPYL genes in plant drought resistance. Association analyses with a panel of 368 maize inbred lines identified natural variants in ZmPYL8 and ZmPYL12 that were significantly associated with maize drought resistance. Our results deepen the knowledge of the function of maize PYL genes in responses to abiotic stresses, and the natural variants identified in ZmPYL genes may serve as potential molecular markers for breeding drought-resistant maize cultivars.
Causally and Noncausally Information Bound in Discrete Memoryless Multicast Relay Network

The problem of relay channel (RC) with noncausal channel state information (CSI) available at the relay is considered. With the CSI, the relay can help communication in two ways: 1) by relaying message information; 2) by conveying the CSI to help the destination decode. In previous work, Zaidi et al. established a lower bound by letting the relay send message information by performing Gelfand-Pinsker (GP) coding. While in our schemes, we combine the two ways by letting the relay send message information as well as the compressed CSI to the receivers. We investigate three decodeforward (DF) lower bounds. The first two bounds are obtained by transmitting the message information and the CSI directly. We find this scheme is surprisingly equivalent to Zaidi's. The third bound is established by exploiting a new coding scheme. We show that the third bound is tighter than others. We show our optimal scheme for a class of deterministic SD-RC and give the capacity. We also generalize RC to discrete memoryless multicast network (DM-MN). We characterize the DF lower bound for DM-MN with noncausal CSI only at the relay nodes.
Enhanced Long Edge First Routing Algorithm and Evaluation in Large-Scale Networks-on-Chip

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) have been developed to be the on-chip interconnects of many-core systems. Routing is one of the most important factors that determine NoC performance. In this paper, we enhance LEF (Long Edge First), a routing algorithm proposed for the commonly used 2D meshes. LEF chooses one of the two dimension-ordered routing algorithms (XY or YX) for each packet based on the relative position between the source node and the destination node. LEF avoids deadlock by restricting the use of certain virtual channels (VCs). In particular, one VC of each channel in the X (Y) dimension is reserved exclusively for packets routed with the YX (XY) algorithm. However, we found that it is not necessary to restrict the use of VCs in both X and Y dimensions. We prove that restricting the use of VCs in only one dimension is enough for deadlock avoidance. In this way, the VCs in one dimension can be allocated to any packet. We also modify the method of choosing XY or YX routing to further improve the VC utilization.Our evaluation using a fast and cycle-accurate FPGA-based NoC simulator shows that, in small-scale NoCs (8x8 and 16x8), the enhanced LEF (LEF++) outperforms both the original LEF and the dimension-ordered routing algorithms. Under a uniform traffic, LEF++ achieves a maximum of 6% improvement of throughput than LEF. Under a non-uniform traffic, LEF++ also performs better than LEF and provides up to 36.7% higher throughput than the dimension-ordered routing algorithms. The FPGA-based NoC simulator enables us to investigate how the routing algorithms behave in large-scale NoCs with thousands of nodes. Like in small-scale NoCs, both LEF and LEF++ can achieve higher throughputs than the dimension-ordered routing algorithms under the hotspot traffic. However, we observe a phenomenon that does not occur in small-scale NoCs. Large-scale NoCs adopting LEF/LEF++ are generally unstable at extremely high loads. This is evident in that simulation results of small-scale NoCs cannot be applied directly to large-scale NoCs.
Negative margin technique — a novel planning strategy to improve dose conformation in SBRT using dynamic conformal arc delivery

The purpose of this study was to introduce a planning strategy for dynamic conformal arc therapy (DCAT), named negative margin technique (NMT), and evaluate its dosimetric gain in lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). In DCAT, the field aperture is continuously conformed to the planning target volume (PTV) with an aperture margin (AM) to compensate for the penumbra effect with gantry rotation. It is a common belief the AM should be positive (or at least ‘zero'). However, the radial penumbra width becomes significantly wider because of continuously overlapped beams in arc delivery. Therefore, we hypothesize if the ‘negative margin’ is applied in the radial direction, it would improve the PTV dose conformation while reducing normal tissue dose. For verification, trial plans were made using the NMT and compared with ‘zero margin (ZM)’ plans for five lung SBRT cases representing different situations depending on the location of the PTV and organs at risk. All plans met 95% PTV coverage with the prescription dose and spared the spinal cord below the tolerance. Two conventional conformation indices (the ratio of prescription isodose volume to the PTV (CI100) and the ratio of 50% prescription isodose volume to the PTV (CI50)) and a modified conformation index were investigated. The maximum dose at 2 cm from the PTV (Dmax‐2cm) and the percent of lung volume receiving 20 Gy (V20) were also evaluated. Another planning simulation was performed with a total of ten randomly selected lung SBRT cases to mimic actual practice. In this simulation, optimization with ZM was first performed and further optimization using the NMT was processed for cases that could not meet a goal of CI100 = 1.2 with the ZM optimization. In all cases, both the CI100 and CI50 values were significantly reduced (overall, 9.4% ± 4.1% and 5.9% ± 3.1% for CI100 and CI50, respectively). The modified conformation index values also showed similar improvement (overall, 10.1% ± 5.7% increase). Reduction of Dmax‐2cm was also observed in all cases (4.5% ± 2.2%). V20 values decreased in all cases but one (5.7% ± 3.9%, excluding the increased case). In the random group simulation, it was possible to achieve the goal with just one NMT trial for five out of six cases that did not meet the goal in the ZM optimization. Interestingly, however, one case needed as many as six iterations to get the CI100 = 1.2 goal. The NMT turned out to be an effective planning strategy that could bring significant improvement of dose conformation. The NMT can be easily implemented in most clinics with no prerequisite. PACS number: 87.55. D‐
Retina-specific protein fascin 2 is an actin cross-linker associated with actin bundles in photoreceptor inner segments and calycal processes.

PURPOSE Fascin 2 is a retinal-specific member of the fascin family of actin filament-bundling proteins. Fascin 2 mutation in humans results in autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa or macular degeneration. To investigate the role of fascin 2 in photoreceptor survival, the authors examined its localization in photoreceptors and characterized its interactions with actin filaments in vitro. METHODS Fascin 2 localization was determined by immunohistochemistry and transgenic expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged fascin 2 in Xenopus laevis rods. Fascin 2 actin-binding and actin-bundling activity were examined in sedimentation assays using bacterially expressed fusion proteins and polymerized actin. To assess the role of phosphorylation of a conserved serine (amino acid 39) in fascin 2 on subcellular localization and actin-binding, effects of serine mutants were also examined in transgenic Xenopus and in in vitro assays. RESULTS Fascin 2 is localized to actin filament bundles of the photoreceptor inner segment and calycal processes. Like fascin 1, fascin 2 binds and cross-links actin filaments. Mutation of serine 39 to an aspartic acid reduced fascin 2 binding of actin filaments and abolished fascin 2 bundling of actin filaments in vitro but produced no detectable effect on GFP-tagged fascin 2 localization in transgenic Xenopus. CONCLUSIONS These observations suggest that fascin 2 plays a role in the assembly or stabilization of inner segment and calycal process actin filament bundles in photoreceptors and that serine 39 phosphorylation reduces actin-binding and cross-linking activity and, thus, is likely to regulate the inner segment actin cytoskeleton.
Lessons Learned from Implementing a Privacy-Preserving Smart Contract in Ethereum

Real-world smart contracts which preserve the privacy of both, their users and their data, have barely been proposed theoretically, let alone been implemented practically. In this paper, we are the first to implement a privacy-preserving protocol from the energy domain as a smart contract in Ethereum. We elaborate on and present our implementation as well as our practical findings, including more or less subtle traps and pitfalls. Despite major optimizations to our implementation, we find that while it is currently possible, it is not feasible to implement a privacy-preserving protocol of modest complexity in the Ethereum blockchain due to the high cost of operation and the lack of privacy by design.
Power flow control using FACTS device in modern power system

This paper aimed to apply the IPSO algorithm for optimizing the TCSC parameters as well as system parameters towards voltage stability enhancement. The case studies are performed on IEEE 14-bus test system. Since the role of FACTS devices is to control main power flows and hence the economics involved in congestion management are not focused in the simulations. Various operating conditions are considered to show the effectiveness of TCSC on power flow control in the network.
NMFDIV: A Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Approach for Search Result Diversification on Attributed Networks

Search result diversification is effective way to tackle query ambiguity and enhance result novelty. In the context of large information networks, diversifying search result is also critical for further design of applications such as link prediction and citation recommendation. In previous work, this problem has mainly been tackled in a way of implicit query intent. To further enhance the performance, we propose an explicit search result diversification method that explicitly encode query intent and represent nodes as representation vectors by a novel nonnegative matrix factorization approach, and the diversity of the results node account for the query relevance and the novelty w.r. t. these vectors. To learn representation vectors for networks, we derive the multiplicative update rules to train the nonnegative matrix factorization model. Finally, we perform a comprehensive evaluation on our proposals with various baselines. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our proposed solution, and verify that attributes do help improve diversification performance.
Curing kinetics and mechanical properties of epoxy nanocomposites based on different organoclays

The effect of different organoclays and mixing methods on the cure kinetics and properties of epoxy nanocomposites based on Epon828 and Epicure3046 was studied. The two kinds of organoclay used in this study, both based on natural montmorillonite but differing in intercalant chemistry, were I.30E (Nanomer I.30E—treated with a long-chain primary amine intercalant) and C.30B (Cloisite 30B—treated with a quaternary ammonium intercalant, less reactive with epoxy than the primary amine). The two mixing processes used to prepare the nanocomposites were (i) a room-temperature process, in which the clay and epoxy are mixed at room temperature, and (ii) a high-temperature process, in which the clay and epoxy are mixed at 120°C for 1 h by means of mechanical mixing. The nanocomposites were cured at room temperature and at high temperature. The quality of dispersion and intercalation/exfoliation were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. The heat evolution of the epoxy resin formulation and its nanocomposite systems was measured using differential scanning calorimetry at different heating rates of 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20°C min−1. The cure kinetics of these systems was modeled by means of different approaches. Kissinger and isoconversional models were used to calculate the kinetics parameters while the Avrami model was utilized to compare the cure behavior of the epoxy systems. The cure kinetics and mechanical properties were found to be influenced by the presence of nanoclay, by the type of intercalant, and by the mixing method. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 47:649–661, 2007. © 2007 Society of Plastics Engineers.