Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computational intelligence technique for early diagnosis of heart disease

Computational intelligence plays a vital role in heart disease diagnosis. Researchers have been using several intelligence techniques to improve the heart disease diagnosis accuracy. Data mining plays an important role in the field of heart disease prediction. Classification is a supervised learning in data mining, used to accurately predict the target class for each case in the data. Naive bayes classifier belongs to a family of linear classifiers and classifier learning is relatively stable with respect to small changes in training data. Heart disease is a leading cause of death over the decade. Heart disease classification involves to identify healthy and sick individuals. In this paper, we attempted to increase the predictive accuracy of the naïve bayes to classify heart disease data. We used a discretization method and genetic search to remove redundant features. Genetic search is used for optimization problem. Finally we performed a comparison with other approaches that have tried to improve the accuracy of naïve bayes classifier for heart disease classification.
Online QoS Prediction for Runtime Service Adaptation via Adaptive Matrix Factorization

Cloud applications built on service-oriented architectures generally integrate a number of component services to fulfill certain application logic. The changing cloud environment highlights the need for these applications to keep resilient against QoS variations of their component services so that end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS) can be guaranteed. Runtime service adaptation is a key technique to achieve this goal. To support timely and accurate adaptation decisions, effective and efficient QoS prediction is needed to obtain real-time QoS information of component services. However, current research has focused mostly on QoS prediction of working services that are being used by a cloud application, but little on predicting QoS values of candidate services that are equally important in determining optimal adaptation actions. In this paper, we propose an adaptive matrix factorization (namely AMF) approach to perform online QoS prediction for candidate services. AMF is inspired from the widely-used collaborative filtering techniques in recommender systems, but significantly extends the conventional matrix factorization model with new techniques of data transformation, online learning, and adaptive weights. Comprehensive experiments, as well as a case study, have been conducted based on a real-world QoS dataset of Web services (with over 40 million QoS records). The evaluation results demonstrate AMF’s superiority in achieving accuracy, efficiency, and robustness, which are essential to enable optimal runtime service adaptation.
Na, an autoproteolytic product of the herpes simplex virus type 1 protease, can functionally substitute for the assembly protein ICP35

The herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) protease and its substrate, the assembly protein ICP35, are involved in virion maturation. Both proteins are encoded by a single open reading frame but are translated independently from 3'-coterminal mRNAs of different sizes and are in frame. The herpesvirus shell assembles around an internal scaffold which is subsequently lost during packaging of the viral genome. The scaffold is composed of ICP35, which is the major component, and autoproteolytically processed forms of the viral protease containing sequences common to ICP35 (Nb). In the baculovirus system, HSV-1 intact capsids can be formed in the presence of the protease or ICP35, indicating that the protease may substitute for ICP35 (Thomsen et al., J. Virol. 68:2442-2457, 1994). This is further supported by the fact that ICP35, in contrast to the protease, is not absolutely essential for viral growth. The processed intermediate of the protease analogous to ICP35 is the 388-amino-acid (aa) protein, Na, which is an N-terminal 59-aa extension of the 329-aa ICP35. To directly examine whether Na can functionally substitute for ICP35 during viral replication, we first constructed a mutant virus, Na delta35, in which 35 aa from the N terminus of Na were deleted. Phenotypic analysis of the mutant showed that this deletion had no effect on protease function. The function of Na was further examined by construction of a plasmid expressing Na alone and testing its ability to complement the growth of the mutant Prb virus in the absence of ICP35. Our results demonstrate that Na can functionally substitute for ICP35 during viral replication.
Oral Flurbiprofen Spray for Posttonsillectomy Pain

Objective Tonsillectomy is still one of the most common surgical procedures, but there exists no standard guideline for pain management after tonsillectomy. Our aim is to determine whether oral spray of flurbiprofen reduces pain and has an influence on other morbid outcomes following tonsillectomy. Study Design Prospective, double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled. Setting Patients at Ataturk Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey. Subjects and Methods This study was performed on 84 patients (45 in flurbiprofen group, 39 in placebo group) who underwent tonsillectomy. The patients were randomly chosen, and each used oral spray of flurbiprofen 3 times daily or placebo solution at the same regimen. Efficacy was assessed by changes in Numeric Pain Rating Scale. Data were collected at postoperative days 1, 3, 5, and 7 for pain, bleeding, and healing. Data for Mallampati scores were also collected. Results There were no significant difference between groups with respect to the demographic data. The flurbiprofen group had statistically significant lower pain scores at days 1, 3, 5, and 7 (P = .000, P = .002, P = .001, P = .000, respectively). On days 3 and 7, pain scores were significantly different between different Mallampati groups (P = .049, P = .015, respectively). The flurbiprofen group required less analgesic than the placebo group during the study period on days 1, 3, 5, and 7 (P = .001, P = .001, P = .03, P = .001, respectively). Healing and side effects were not significantly different between the groups. Conclusion In this study, topical use of flurbiprofen may reduce posttonsillectomy pain without any evidence of additional complications.
How Well Has the New Deal for Young People Worked in the UK Regions?

The UK New Deal for Young People (NDYP) is a mandatory active labour market programme aimed at helping unemployed young people into jobs. This paper examines how the programme affected hazard rates for unemployment exits across the UK regions in its first few years. The regional focus is motivated by the belief that differences between regional labour markets, between claimants, and differences in implementation may have led to differences in programme outcomes. The paper shows that NDYP increased outflows from unemployment in all regions but that its impact was larger in some regions than in others. The paper also shows differential NDYP impacts across the regions on destination-specific hazard rates from unemployment to employment, to education/training, to inactivity and to ‘other’. Possible explanations for these results are then discussed.
Expression and characterization of recombinant rat alpha 3(IV)NC1 and its use in induction of experimental autoimmune glomerulonephritis.

BACKGROUND The autoantigen in Goodpasture's disease is known to be the non-collagenous domain of the alpha3 chain of type IV collagen, alpha 3(IV)NC1. There is mounting evidence that alpha 3(IV)NC1 is also a target of autoimmunity in experimental autoimmune glomerulonephritis (EAG). Sado et al. [Kidney Int 1998; 53, 664-671] have reported that recombinant human alpha 3(IV)NC1 and alpha4(IV)NC1 are nephritogenic in WKY rats. We have proposed that immunization with homologous antigen is more appropriate for detailed investigation of autoimmunity in EAG. METHODS To this end, we have cloned and sequenced rat alpha 3(IV)NC1 and expressed it in COS-7 cells. Recombinant rat alpha 3(IV)NC1, secreted into the COS-7 cell supernatant, was purified on an anti-M2 FLAG affinity column and characterized by western blotting. Recombinant antigen was then used to immunize WKY rats, in order to induce EAG. RESULTS The recombinant material was antigenic as judged by binding to sera from patients with Goodpasture's disease and a mAb to alpha 3(IV)NC1. Immunization of WKY rats (n=5), with recombinant rat alpha 3(IV)NC1 in FCA at a dose of 1 mg/kg resulted in circulating anti-GBM antibodies directed towards alpha 3(IV)NC1, linear deposits of IgG on the GBM, albuminuria, deposits of fibrin in the glomeruli, severe focal necrotizing glomerulonephritis with crescent formation, and glomerular influx of CD8+ T cells and macrophages. Western blot analysis demonstrated that sera from these rats bound strongly to recombinant rat alpha 3(IV)NC1, as well as to collagenase-solubilized human and rat GBM. The pattern of binding was indistinguishable from that of sera from patients with Goodpasture's disease. CONCLUSIONS This purified recombinant rat alpha 3(IV)NC1, which is both antigenic and nephritogenic, will be of value in analysing autoimmune responses in experimental anti-GBM disease.
Construction and Use of a Relational Database to Analyze the Careers of Professional Politicians in Poland, 1985–2007

This article describes a unique version of a longitudinal database featuring the Eastern Europe Parliamentarian and Candidate Database (EAST PaC). This version contains contextual and biographical information on career politicians from Poland, 1985-2007. I define career politicians as those who, three times during the period covered in the data, were granted a parliamentary seat in either the upper (Senat) or lower house (Sejm). As part of this project, I reconstructed the political biographies of career politicians. Based on practical experience in using these data, I propose the use of relational databases as a best practices approach to manage data of this type. I describe the need for relational databases in general, and describe in detail how to apply them to longitudinal data consisting of parliamentarians and their contexts.
An Analysis of Exports and Growth in India: Some Empirical Evidence (1971-2001)

The relationship between exports and economic growth has been analysed by a number of recent empirical studies. This paper re-examines the sources of growth for the period 1971-2001 for India. It builds upon Feder´s model to investigate empirically the relationship between export growth and GDP growth (the export led growth hypothesis), using recent data from the Reserve Bank of India, and by focusing on GDP growth and GDP growth net of exports. We investigate the following hypotheses: i) whether exports and GDP are cointegrated using both the Engle-Granger and the Johansen approach, ii) whether export growth Granger causes GDP growth, iii) and whether export growth Granger causes investment. Finally, a VAR is constructed and impulse response functions (IRFs) are employed to investigate the effects of macroeconomic shocks.
Opportunistic Energy-Aware Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Systems With Imperfect CSI

Recently, much attention has been paid to the green design of wireless communication systems using energy efficiency (EE) metrics that should capture all energy consumption sources to deliver the required data. In this paper, we design an energy-efficient relay-assisted communication system based on estimated channel state information (CSI). It employs amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying and switches between different communication schemes, which are known as direct-transmission, two-hop, and cooperative-transmission schemes, using the estimated CSI to maximize EE. Two estimation strategies are assumed, namely, disintegrated channel estimation and cascaded channel estimation. To formulate an accurate EE metric for the proposed opportunistic AF (OAF) system, the channel estimation cost is reflected on the EE metric by including its impact in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) term and in the energy consumption during the channel estimation phase. Based on the formulated EE metric, we propose an adaptive power allocation algorithm to maximize the EE of the proposed OAF system with channel estimation. Furthermore, we study the impact of the estimation parameters on the proposed system via simulation examples.
A novel fault diagnostic technique for photovoltaic systems based on cascaded forest

A variety of faults often occur during the operation of PV arrays, which may seriously affect the normal operation of the system, the machine diagnosis of the types of fault has become a hotspot in the field of photovoltaic power generation. This paper proposes a novel fault diagnostic technique for photovoltaic systems based on Cascaded Forest. Through the in-depth analysis of the output of PV arrays from a data platform of Shijiazhuang Kelin Electric Co, the input variables of the diagnosis model are obtained. Compared with other fault diagnosis methods for the PV array, the proposed method can work under a small number of tagged data and the system can be run online and real-time. Finally, the experimental results show that the fault diagnosis method for the PV array based on the cascading forests can effectively detect four types of fault for PV array such as short-circuit, open-circuit, abnormal degradation and partial shading. This method has a good value for the intelligent fault diagnosis of PV.
Delta Rhythm Orchestrates the Neural Activity Underlying the Resting State BOLD Signal via Phase–amplitude Coupling

Spontaneous ongoing neuronal activity is a prominent feature of the mammalian brain. Temporal and spatial patterns of such ongoing activity have been exploited to examine large-scale brain network organization and function. However, the neurophysiological basis of this spontaneous brain activity as detected by resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) remains poorly understood. To this end, multi-site local field potentials (LFP) and blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI were simultaneously recorded in the rat striatum along with local pharmacological manipulation of striatal activity. Results demonstrate that delta (δ) band LFP power negatively, while beta (β) and gamma (γ) band LFPs positively correlated with BOLD fluctuation. Furthermore, there was strong cross-frequency phase-amplitude coupling (PAC), with the phase of δ LFPs significantly modulating the amplitude of the high frequency signal. Enhancing dopaminergic neuronal activity significantly reduced ventral striatal functional connectivity, δ LFP-BOLD correlation, and the PAC effect. These data suggest that different frequency bands of the LFP contribute distinctively to BOLD spontaneous fluctuation and that PAC is the organizing mechanism through which low frequency LFPs orchestrate neural activity that underlies resting state functional connectivity.
Effect of nanoparticle-rich diesel exhaust on testosterone biosynthesis in adult male mice

The effect of nanoparticle-rich diesel exhaust (NR-DE) on the testicular function and factors related with the biosynthesis of testosterone gene expression were investigated in mice. Male C57BL/Jcl mice were exposed to clean air, low-dose NR-DE (Low NR-DE), high-dose NR-DE (High NR-DE) or filtered diesel exhaust (F-DE) for 8 weeks. We found that the mice exposed to High NR-DE had significantly higher testosterone levels than those in the control and F-DE groups. To determine the effects of NR-DE on testicular testosterone production, interstitial cells dissected from the male mice which were exposed to NR-DE, F-DE, or clean air for 8 weeks were incubated with or without human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG; 0.1 IU/mL) for 4 h. The concentrations of testosterone in the culture media were measured. The testosterone production was significantly increased in with or without hCG of High NR-DE exposed group, and significantly decreased in both with or without hCG of F-DE exposed groups. Moreover, several genes, which is associated with testicular cholesterol synthesis, HMG-CoA, LDL-R, SR-B1, PBR, and P450scc, P450 17α, and 17β-HSD were determined in the testis of adult male mice. The results showed High NR-DE exposure significantly increased the expression of these genes. Whereas, the levels in the F-DE exposure group returned to those in the control group, implicating that the nanoparticles in DE contribute to the observed reproductive toxicity. We conclude that enhancement of testosterone biosynthesis by NR-DE exposure may be regulated by increasing testicular enzymes of testosterone biosynthesis.
Risky but Effective Improvisations in Managing Information Systems

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a set of guidelines for the outsourcing of information systems services in health organizations. The paper shows that the outsourcing of the development of information systems is an option for hospitals in developing countries. It is emphasized that managers and information systems professionals working for these public organizations should bear in mind that what is important is to define the content, extent and length of the outsourced services. This paper offers a new angle, since it is often the case that hospital information systems in developing countries are either bought overseas or developed in house.
Outage probability analysis of the millimeter-wave relaying systems

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication is a promising technology for the next generation wireless networks. Motivated by the immense amount of bandwidth at these bands, it can be used to support the quality of service requirements for the bandwidth-intensive purposes, like the backhaul demands of the small cell base stations. However, the high path loss, the limited penetration ability and the intermittent connectivity necessitate utilizing the multi-hop transmission techniques to maintain network connectivity. In this paper, the outage performance of the mm-wave relaying systems is studied. We take into account the unique propagation characteristics of the mm-wave bands, namely the intermittent connectivity, and obtain the closed-form expression for the outage probability of the mm-wave multi-hop regenerative relaying system. Moreover, the closed-form approximation for the outage probability in a dual-hop nonregenerative case is also derived. The analytical expressions are verified by the simulation results.
Activation of the Yeast UBI4 Polyubiquitin Gene by Zap1 Transcription Factor via an Intragenic Promoter Is Critical for Zinc-deficient Growth*

Stability of many proteins requires zinc. Zinc deficiency disrupts their folding, and the ubiquitin-proteasome system may help manage this stress. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, UBI4 encodes five tandem ubiquitin monomers and is essential for growth in zinc-deficient conditions. Although UBI4 is only one of four ubiquitin-encoding genes in the genome, a dramatic decrease in ubiquitin was observed in zinc-deficient ubi4Δ cells. The three other ubiquitin genes were strongly repressed under these conditions, contributing to the decline in ubiquitin. In a screen for ubi4Δ suppressors, a hypomorphic allele of the RPT2 proteasome regulatory subunit gene (rpt2E301K) suppressed the ubi4Δ growth defect. The rpt2E301K mutation also increased ubiquitin accumulation in zinc-deficient cells, and by using a ubiquitin-independent proteasome substrate we found that proteasome activity was reduced. These results suggested that increased ubiquitin supply in suppressed ubi4Δ cells was a consequence of more efficient ubiquitin release and recycling during proteasome degradation. Degradation of a ubiquitin-dependent substrate was restored by the rpt2E301K mutation, indicating that ubiquitination is rate-limiting in this process. The UBI4 gene was induced ∼5-fold in low zinc and is regulated by the zinc-responsive Zap1 transcription factor. Surprisingly, Zap1 controls UBI4 by inducing transcription from an intragenic promoter, and the resulting truncated mRNA encodes only two of the five ubiquitin repeats. Expression of a short transcript alone complemented the ubi4Δ mutation, indicating that it is efficiently translated. Loss of Zap1-dependent UBI4 expression caused a growth defect in zinc-deficient conditions. Thus, the intragenic UBI4 promoter is critical to preventing ubiquitin deficiency in zinc-deficient cells.
Asymmetry of Information and the Finance-Growth Nexus in Emerging Markets: Empirical Evidence Using Panel VECM Analysis

This paper tests both the short and long term relationship between the real GDP, the equity amounts outstanding, the corporate bond amounts outstanding and bank credit to the private sector for five emerging markets. In particular, the finance-growth nexus is analysed with data collected from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand between 1994 and 2009 using panel VECM analysis. The cointegration technique is then used to examine the long run behavior based on the assumption that all the variables involved have the same degree of integration and the error correction model (ECM) and the Wald test are employed to determine the direction of causality. The empirical results suggest the existence of a stable relationship in the direction from economic growth to financial market development that is consistent with the information asymmetry arguments for emerging markets. The findings have implications for financial and economic policy makers and enable these stakeholders to determine which sectors should be encouraged to achieve overall economic growth and development. The results are also useful to investors as they show the level of the intensity of information asymmetry on which these relationships might vary in both the short and long run.
Ascaridoid nematodes of amphibians and reptiles: Gedoelstascaris n.g. and Ortleppascaris n.g.

ABSTRACT Two new genera, Gedoelstascarisand Ortleppascaris, are proposed for species of ascaridoid nematodes occurring in crocodilians and previously included in Dujardinascaris. Species included in Gedoelstascaris are vandenbrandeni Baylis, 1929 as type species and australiensis Baylis, 1931 (= salomonis Kreis, 1940). These species occur in Crocodylus spp. in Africa and Australia respectively and are characterised by lips with a rostral plate, without interlocking processes or dentigerous ridges, with well-developed interlabia, lobulated ventriculus, and excretory pore in front of the nerve ring. Species included in Ortleppascaris are: nigra Gedoelst, 1916 (= tasmani Ortlepp, 1932) as type species; alata Baylis, 1947; antipini Mozgovoy, 1950. These species occur in Crocodylus, Caiman and Alligator and are characterized by flat lips with alate margins, without anterior rostral plate, interlocking processes or dentigerous ridges, with weakly developed interlabia, by an irregular-shaped ventriculus, excretory pore behind or between the subventral lips, and by the presence of lateral alae or cuticular thickenings in the oesophageal region. The significance of this proposal is discussed in relation to the radiation and dispersal of ascaridoids of crocodilians.
Option Pricing with Normal Mixture Returns: Modelling Excess Kurtosis and Uncertanity in Volatility

his paper addresses the problem of uncertainty in volatility, and how this affects option prices. The volatility uncertainty adjustment to Black-Scholes option prices is quantified in this paper using a normal mixture model for the distribution of underlying returns, or equivalently, assuming a mixture of lognormal densities for the density of the asset price. The use of a lognormal mixture price process for pricing options is not new (Ritchey, 1990) but the local volatility that should be used in the lognormal mixture price process has only recently been established (Brigo and Mercurio, 2000a, 2001). Â