Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An improvement of PageRank algorithm based on the time-activity-curve

We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional PageRank algorithm first and find it is unreasonable to calculate the important degree of Web pages simply by links between Web pages. Through studying the changing regulations of some typical time-activity-curve of Web sources based on the time characteristics of information, we give the calculation method for the time important degree of Web pages using sub-curve fitting. Combined with the traditional PageRank algorithm, the Web pages ranking method has some advanced improvement.
Increasing the Opportunity of Live Kidney Donation by Matching for Two- and Three-Way Exchanges

Background. To expand the opportunity for paired live donor kidney transplantation, computerized matching algorithms have been designed to identify maximal sets of compatible donor/recipient pairs from a registry of incompatible pairs submitted as candidates for transplantation. Methods. Demographic data of patients who had been evaluated for live donor kidney transplantation but found to be incompatible with their potential donor (because of ABO blood group or positive crossmatch) were submitted for computer analysis and matching. Data included ABO and HLA types of donor and recipient, %PRA and specificity of recipient alloantibody, donor/recipient relationship, and the reason the donor was incompatible. The data set used for the initial simulation included 29 patients with one donor each and 16 patients with multiple donors for a total of 45 patients and 68 donor/patient pairs. In addition, a simulation based on OPTN/SRTR data was used to further assess the practical importance of multiple exchange combinations. Results. If only exchanges involving two patient-donor pairs were allowed, a maximum of 8 patient-donor pairs in the data set could exchange kidneys. If three-way exchanges were also allowed, a maximum of 11 pairs could exchange kidneys. Simulations with OPTN/SRTR data demonstrate that the increase in the number of potential transplants if three-way exchanges are allowed is robust, and does not depend on the particular patients in our sample. Conclusions. A computerized matching protocol can be used to identify donor/recipient pairs from a registry of incompatible pairs who can potentially enter into donor exchanges that otherwise would not readily occur.
Bridging the Gap between FPGAs and Multi-Processor Architectures: A Video Processing Perspective

This work explores how the graphics processing unit (GPU) pipeline model can influence future multi-core architectures which include reconfigurable logic cores. The design challenges of implementing five algorithms on two field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and two GPUs are explained and performance results contrasted. Explored algorithm features include data dependence, flexible data reuse patterns and histogram generation. A customisable systemC model, which demonstrates that features of the GPU pipeline can be transferred to a general multi-core architecture, is implemented. The customisations are: choice of processing unit (PU); processing pattern; and on-chip memory organisation. Example tradeoffs are: the choice of processing pattern for histogram equalisation; choice of number of PUs; and memory sizing for motion vector estimation. It is shown that a multi-core architecture can be optimised for video processing by combining a GPU pipeline with cores that support reconfigurable datapath operations.
Intention prediction approach to interact naturally with the microworld

Micromanipulation tools are not yet commonly used in the industry or in the research due to the lack of natural and intuitive human-computer interfaces. This work proposes a vision based approach using a Kinect RGB-Depth sensor to provide a “metaphor-free” interface. An intention prediction approach is proposed, based on a cognitive science computational model, to allow a more natural interaction without any prior instructions. This model is compared to a vision based gesture recognition approach in terms of naturalness and intuitiveness. It shows an improvement in user performance in terms of duration and success of the task, and a qualitative preference for the proposed approach evaluated by a user survey.
Respuestas de enfrentamiento e indicadores de salud mental en esposas de emigrantes a los Estados Unidos

El tema de la migracion internacional ha sido estudiado extensamente desde una perspectiva multidisciplinaria. Sin embargo conocemos muy poco sobre los miembros de la familia que se quedan en la comunidad de origen, particularmente las esposas de los emigrantes a los Estados Unidos. Multiples responsabilidades pesan sobre estas mujeres como consecuencia de la migracion de sus esposos. El tipo de problemas que enfrentan estan relacionados con sus multiples roles como esposas, madres, jefes de hogar y, en general, como responsables de la supervivencia del grupo familiar. La muestra de este estudio consistio en 202 mujeres mexicanas radicadas en comunidades rurales y semirurales en los estados de Jalisco y Michoacan, quienes estaban casadas con emigrantes internacionales que residian en los Estados Unidos. El objetivo de este estudio fue investigar las respuestas de enfrentamiento utilizadas con mayor frecuencia en contextos especificos por las esposas de emigrantes, y relacionar estas respuestas con indicadores positivos (autoestima) y negativos (estres, malestar psicologico generalizado y ansiedad) de salud mental. Las respuestas de enfrentamiento fueron categorizadas en los siguientes apartados: a) solucion directa del problema; b) internalizacion de la emocion; c) evitacion, y d) negacion del problema. Las areas de conflicto exploradas fueron seis: a) con los hijos; b) con el esposo; c) con la familia extendida; d) con los amigos; e) con problemas personales, y f) con su situacion economica. Los resultados indicaron que los tipos de respuestas de enfrentamiento relacionadas con niveles bajos de malestar psicologico generalizado y niveles altos de autoestima, fueron las respuestas dirigidas hacia la solucion del problema, asi como las respuestas caracterizadas por pasividad, tales como la internalizacion de la emocion, negacion, y evitacion. Tambien se encontro que el tipo de respuesta utilizado dependia del area de conflicto. Los resultados sugieren que, en general, esta muestra de mujeres tiende a favorecer respuestas de enfrentamiento acordes con el rol tradicional asignado a la mujer en estas comunidades, que se caracteriza por la pasividad y la abnegacion.
Strengthen , Widen , Get Semaphores

Many parallel programs are expressed in terms of conditional atomic actions with different degrees of atomicity. It is known that these synchronization primitives are expensive to implement in its fully generality [2]. Many platforms provide an efficient set of synchronization primitives. Semaphores are a very special case of conditional atomic actions which can be considered a canonical synchronization primitive. There exist methods to transform general conditional atomic actions into these very special ones. One of the simplest is the Change of Variables method introduced in [1,2] and generalized in [10]. We review and improve this method in the context of formal development of multiprograms [4,7].
Endoscopic forehead surgery for migraine therapy Personal technique.

AIM The aim of this study is to prove the therapeutic effectiveness of nerve decompression, performed endoscopically for frontal migraine and by open surgery for occipital migraine. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty patients were enrolled and underwent surgery for endoscopic resection of the glabellar muscle group, including the corrugator supercilii, depressor supercilii, and procerus muscles, while the occipital decompression was performed in open surgery through decompression of occipital nerves from occipital, semispinalis capitis, trapezius and sternocleidomastoid muscles. Every patient was diagnosed with: migraine without aura, chronic tensiontype headache and new daily persistent headache, refractory to medical management. RESULTS Analyzing the answers given by the patients to validated questionnaires, 9 referred alleviation of migraine symptoms (45%), 8 described elimination of their migraine headaches (40%) while 3 didn't report any improvement. DISCUSSION Our data confirmed the results of previous studies, pointing out the effectiveness of trigeminal branches and occipital nerves (trigger points) decompression from the surrounding muscles. Moreover, our technique has the same results but it's less invasive and has less collateral effects. CONCLUSIONS Our results highlight migraine surgery as an effective treatment for patients with migraine headaches who do not tolerate or do not wish to continue medical interventions. KEY WORDS Endoscopic surgery, Headache migraine.
Transparent mutable replay for multicore debugging and patch validation

We present Dora, a mutable record-replay system which allows a recorded execution of an application to be replayed with a modified version of the application. This feature, not available in previous record-replay systems, enables powerful new functionality. In particular, Dora can help reproduce, diagnose, and fix software bugs by replaying a version of a recorded application that is recompiled with debugging information, reconfigured to produce verbose log output, modified to include additional print statements, or patched to fix a bug. Dora uses lightweight operating system mechanisms to record an application execution by capturing nondeterministic events to a log without imposing unnecessary timing and ordering constraints. It replays the log using a modified version of the application even in the presence of added, deleted, or modified operations that do not match events in the log. Dora searches for a replay that minimizes differences between the log and the replayed execution of the modified program. If there are no modifications, Dora provides deterministic replay of the unmodified program. We have implemented a Linux prototype which provides transparent mutable replay without recompiling or relinking applications. We show that Dora is useful for reproducing, diagnosing, and fixing software bugs in real-world applications, including Apache and MySQL. Our results show that Dora (1) captures bugs and replays them with applications modified or reconfigured to produce additional debugging output for root cause diagnosis, (2) captures exploits and replays them with patched applications to validate that the patches successfully eliminate vulnerabilities, (3) records production workloads and replays them with patched applications to validate patches with realistic workloads, and (4) maintains low recording overhead on commodity multicore hardware, making it suitable for production systems.
Mitochondrial uncoupling proteins and energy metabolism

Understanding the metabolic factors that contribute to energy metabolism (EM) is critical for the development of new treatments for obesity and related diseases. Mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation is not perfectly coupled to ATP synthesis, and the process of proton-leak plays a crucial role. Proton-leak accounts for a significant part of the resting metabolic rate (RMR) and therefore enhancement of this process represents a potential target for obesity treatment. Since their discovery, uncoupling proteins have stimulated great interest due to their involvement in mitochondrial-inducible proton-leak. Despite the widely accepted uncoupling/thermogenic effect of uncoupling protein one (UCP1), which was the first in this family to be discovered, the reactions catalyzed by its homolog UCP3 and the physiological role remain under debate. This review provides an overview of the role played by UCP1 and UCP3 in mitochondrial uncoupling/functionality as well as EM and suggests that they are a potential therapeutic target for treating obesity and its related diseases such as type II diabetes mellitus.
Highly effective photothermal chemotherapy with pH-responsive polymer-coated drug-loaded melanin-like nanoparticles

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter commonly used in clinical treatment. Polydopamine (PDA) has excellent histocompatibility and biosafety and can efficiently convert near-infrared reflection (NIR) to thermal energy. In this study, PDA was used as a promising carrier, and pH-responsive polymer-coated drug-loaded PDA nanoparticles (NPs; doxorubicin@ poly(allylamine)-citraconic anhydride [Dox@PAH-cit]/PDA NPs) were developed. As expected, the Dox@PAH-cit/PDA NPs exhibited excellent photothermal efficiency. In addition, at a low pH condition, the loaded Dox was released from the NPs due to the amide hydrolysis of PAH-cit. Upon NIR exposure (808 nm), the temperature of the NP solution rapidly increases to kill tumor cells. Compared with unbound chemotherapy drugs, the NPs have a stronger cell uptake ability. In vivo, the PDA NPs were able to efficiently accumulate at the tumor location. After intravenous administration and NIR exposure, tumor growth was significantly inhibited. In summary, the present investigation demonstrated that the Dox@PAH-cit/PDA NPs presented highly effective photothermal chemotherapy for prostate cancer.
Long‐term subarachnoid haemorrhage survivors still die due to cerebrovascular causes

Subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) is associated with sympathetic nervous activation and inflammation. SAH could therefore theoretically be a risk factor for development of cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to investigate whether long‐term (≥1 year) SAH survivors had an increased risk of death due to cardiovascular causes.
Amplitude equation and pattern selection in Faraday waves.

A nonlinear theory of pattern selection in parametric surface waves (Faraday waves) is presented that is not restricted to small viscous dissipation. By using a multiple scale asymptotic expansion near threshold, a standing wave amplitude equation is derived from the governing equations. The amplitude equation is of gradient form, and the coefficients of the associated Lyapunov function are computed for regular patterns of various symmetries as a function of a viscous damping parameter gamma. For gamma approximately 1, the selected wave pattern comprises a single standing wave (stripe pattern). For gamma<<1, patterns of square symmetry are obtained in the capillary regime (large frequencies). At lower frequencies (the mixed gravity-capillary regime), a sequence of sixfold (hexagonal), eightfold, . patterns are predicted. For even lower frequencies (gravity waves) a stripe pattern is again selected. Our predictions of the stability regions of the various patterns are in quantitative agreement with recent experiments conducted in large aspect ratio systems.
The Transcription Factor GATA-6 Regulates Pathological Cardiac Hypertrophy

Rationale: The transcriptional code that programs maladaptive cardiac hypertrophy involves the zinc finger–containing DNA binding factor GATA-4. The highly related transcription factor GATA-6 is also expressed in the adult heart, although its role in controlling the hypertrophic program is unknown. Objective: To determine the role of GATA-6 in cardiac hypertrophy and homeostasis. Methods and Results: Here, we performed a cardiomyocyte-specific conditional gene targeting approach for Gata6, as well as a transgenic approach to overexpress GATA-6 in the mouse heart. Deletion of Gata6-loxP with Nkx2.5-cre produced late embryonic lethality with heart defects, whereas deletion with &bgr;-myosin heavy chain-cre (&bgr;MHC-cre) produced viable adults with >95% loss of GATA-6 protein in the heart. These latter mice were subjected to pressure overload–induced hypertrophy for 2 and 6 weeks, which showed a significant reduction in cardiac hypertrophy similar to that observed Gata4 heart-specific deleted mice. Gata6-deleted mice subjected to pressure overload also developed heart failure, whereas control mice maintained proper cardiac function. Gata6-deleted mice also developed less cardiac hypertrophy following 2 weeks of angiotensin II/phenylephrine infusion. Controlled GATA-6 overexpression in the heart induced hypertrophy with aging and predisposed to greater hypertrophy with pressure overload stimulation. Combinatorial deletion of Gata4 and Gata6 from the adult heart resulted in dilated cardiomyopathy and lethality by 16 weeks of age. Mechanistically, deletion of Gata6 from the heart resulted in fundamental changes in the levels of key regulatory genes and myocyte differentiation–specific genes. Conclusions: These results indicate that GATA-6 is both necessary and sufficient for regulating the cardiac hypertrophic response and differentiated gene expression, both alone and in coordination with GATA-4.
Effect of Maternal Fluoxetine Administration on Uterine Blood Flow, Fetal Blood Gas Status, and Growth

Clinical depression, diagnosed in 5–15% of women during pregnancy, increases the risk of negative pregnancy outcomes including an increased incidence of low birth weight newborns and preterm delivery. Fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, is often prescribed to treat depression due to its efficacy, high margin of safety, and mild side effects. However, fluoxetine initially increases plasma serotonin concentration, and serotonin causes uterine vasoconstriction in sheep, which could result in fetal hypoxemia. To assess fetal fluoxetine effects, late-gestation pregnant sheep were surgically prepared for the measurement of blood gases, heart rate, blood pressure, and uterine artery blood flow (n = 29). Ewes received a 70-mg bolus i.v. infusion of fluoxetine over 2 min in 10 mL of sterile water followed by continuous infusion at a rate of 100 μg/min for 8 d (n = 14), or continuous infusion of sterile water (n = 15). Transient decreases in uterine artery blood flow, fetal Po2, and oxygen saturation were observed within the first 15 min after fluoxetine exposure, which did not return to normal values by 24 h. Fetal pH decreased and Pco2 increased over the first 4 h with a return to normal by 24 h. However, there were no differences in uterine artery blood flow, blood gas status, or cardiovascular measures between the control and fluoxetine group over the rest of the 8-d infusion period. Thus, fluoxetine exposure during pregnancy has transient effects on fetal status that may be of developmental consequence if they occur repetitively.
Gene structure identification with MyGV using cDNA evidence and protein homologs to improve ab initio predictions

UNLABELLED MyGV is an application to visualize (potentially genome-scale) gene structure annotation and prediction. The output of any external gene prediction program can be easily converted to a generalized format for input into MyGV. The application displays all input simultaneously in graphical representation, with a toggle option for a text-based view. Zooming capabilities allow detailed comparisons for specific genome locations. The tool is particularly helpful for refinement of ab initio predicted gene structures by spliced alignment with cDNA or protein homologs. AVAILABILITY The program was written in Java and is freely available to non-commercial users by electronic download from http://bioinformatics.iastate. edu/bioinformatics2go/MyGV.
Improvisational Puppets, Actors, and Avatars

We are investigating three kinds of advanced capabilities for computer game characters. First, we want characters to exhibit life-like qualities. They should show distinctive personalities, context-dependent moods, and normal variability in their behavior. Second, we want characters to follow directions . They should accept directions from various external sources, including game designers, game players, and other game components. They should follow both individual directions that are delivered interactively during a game and sets of directions organized into scenarios that are provided in advance. They should be able to follow directions that vary in specificity, ranging from those that prescribe specific behaviors to those that permit alternative interpretations. Finally, we want characters to i m p r o v i s e many different courses of behavior. Their improvisational choices should reflect their individual personalities, their current moods, their current directions, and the situation in their virtual world. Characters should surprise game players by improvising different courses of behavior in similar situations on different occasions.
Ribokinase from Leishmania donovani: purification, characterization and X-ray crystallographic analysis.

Leishmania is an auxotrophic protozoan parasite which acquires D-ribose by transporting it from the host cell and also by the hydrolysis of nucleosides. The enzyme ribokinase (RK) catalyzes the first step of ribose metabolism by phosphorylating D-ribose using ATP to produce D-ribose-5-phosphate. To understand its structure and function, the gene encoding RK from L. donovani was cloned, expressed and purified using affinity and size-exclusion chromatography. Circular-dichroism spectroscopy of the purified protein showed comparatively more α-helix in the secondary-structure content, and thermal unfolding revealed the Tm to be 317.2 K. Kinetic parameters were obtained by functional characterization of L. donovani RK, and the Km values for ribose and ATP were found to be 296 ± 36 and 116 ± 9.0 µM, respectively. Crystals obtained by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method diffracted to 1.95 Å resolution and belonged to the hexagonal space group P61, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 100.25, c = 126.77 Å. Analysis of the crystal content indicated the presence of two protomers in the asymmetric unit, with a Matthews coefficient (VM) of 2.45 Å3 Da-1 and 49.8% solvent content. Further study revealed that human counterpart of this protein could be used as a template to determine the first three-dimensional structure of the RK from trypanosomatid parasites.
Usability and user-centred design, a necessitiy for efficient e-learning!

The purpose of this paper is to give a review of the development and concept of usability and user centred design (UCD). It points out the development and benefits of usability and UCD and presents a case study when using this approach. It points out the principles of humancentred design, the main components and the five central activities that shall always take place during a human-centred design process. It reports a successful project, a prestudy for the Swedish Net University, using the user-centred approach. The pre-study was initiated with some overall requirements. • First, the process should encompass different stakeholders and different perspectives should be considered. • Second, it had to be conducted during a short period of time and was not allowed to become a "monstrous" government investigation ranging years. • Third, find solutions that avoided "reinventing the wheel", i.e., if possible find current systems or parts that could be purchased. • Fourth, students should be the most important user group. The approach with both a delegated decision-making process and a user-centred process, with numerous participants, has demonstrated several benefits that may be utilised in further work. • First, the big differences in the student population and how they conduct their studies. • Second, the value of participation and involvement cannot be stressed enough. • Third, the power of engagement and commitment has been demonstrated. In summary, the user-centred design has provided sufficient tools to meet the challenging demands that the Swedish Net University Agency put on the pre-study.