Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FGF23 is associated with early post-transplant hypophosphataemia and normalizes faster than iPTH in living donor renal transplant recipients: a longitudinal follow-up study

Background We aimed to longitudinally analyse changes in the levels of serum fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23), intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) and associated minerals in patients undergoing renal transplantation. Methods Sixty-three patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who underwent living donor transplantation were recruited. Serum FGF23, iPTH, uric acid, inorganic phosphorous (iP), blood urea nitrogen and serum creatinine were measured pre-transplant and at 1 (M1), 3 (M3) and 12 months (M12) post-transplantation. Results FGF23 levels were decreased at M1, M3 and M12 by 93.81, 96.74 and 97.53%, respectively. iPTH levels were decreased by 67.95, 74.95 and 84.9%, respectively. The prevalence of hyperparathyroidism at M1, M3 and M12 post-transplantation was 63.5, 42.9 and 11.1%, respectively. FGF23 and iP levels remained above the normal range in 23 (36.5%) and 17 (27%) patients at M1, 10 (15.9%) and 5 (8%) at M3 and in none at M12 post-transplantation, respectively. A multivariate regression model revealed that, pre-transplant, iP was positively associated with iPTH (P = 0.016) but not with FGF 23; however, post-transplant, iP level was negatively associated with FGF23 (P < 0.001) but not with iPTH. Conclusions Post-transplant FGF23 levels settle faster than those of iPTH. However, 11% of patients continued to have hyperparathyroidism even after 12 months.
How do doctors use information in real-time? A qualitative study of internal medicine resident precepting.

BACKGROUND Despite the importance of evidence-based medicine in medical education, little observational research exists on how doctors-in-training seek and use evidence from information resources in ambulatory care. OBJECTIVE To describe information exchange behaviour by internal medicine residents and attendings in ambulatory resident clinic precepting rooms. DESIGN We observed resident behaviour and audiotaped resident-attending doctor interactions during precepting sessions. PARTICIPANTS Participating residents included 70 of an eligible 89 residents and 28 of 34 eligible attendings from one large academic internal medicine residency programme in the Midwestern USA. Residents were observed during 95 separate precepting interactions at four ambulatory sites. APPROACH Using a qualitative approach, we analysed transcripts and field notes of observed behaviours and interactions looking for themes of information exchange. Coders discussed themes which were refined using feedback from an interdisciplinary panel. RESULTS Four themes of information exchange behaviour emerged: (i) questioning behaviours that were used as part of the communication process in which the resident and attending doctor could reason together; (ii) searching behaviour of non-human knowledge sources occurred in a minority of precepting interations; (iii) unsolicited knowledge offering and (iv) answering behaviours were important means of exchanging information. CONCLUSIONS Most clinic interactions between resident and attending doctors relied heavily on spoken deliberation without resorting to the scientific literature or other published information resources. These observations suggest a range of factors that may moderate information exchange behaviour in the precepting context including relationships, space and efficiency. Future research should aim to more readily adapt information resources to the relationships and practice context of precepting.
Design of Minimum-Cost Deadlock-Free Systems

Consider a system consisting of a set ofn processes, P~, P2 . Pn, and a set of serially reusable resources of m different types, R1, R~ . R,~. It is assumed that the system is "claim-limited," that is, its "claim matrix" C, whose (i, j ) element C(i, j) is the maximum number of units of R: that may be needed by P, at the same time, is known a priori. It is desired to design a deadlock-free system, that is, one which never deadlocks for any allocation sequence within the limits given by C. For j ffi 1, 2 . m, let a, (>0) be the cost of one unit of Rj. An algorithm for designing a deadlock-free system with the minimum resource cost is presented. Its running time is bounded by O(ca(m) + mlogm), where e ts the number of nonzero elements in C and a, is the inverse of Ackermann's function, which is very slowly growing
Biased-Irradiation Characteristics of the Floating Gate Switch in FPGA

The radiation characteristic of the floating-gate switch in a 0.22 mum flash-based FPGA is investigated by measuring the threshold voltage after each stage of X-ray irradiation. The focus is on the applied bias on the floating-gate device during irradiation. A two-parameter, semi-physical model is used to fit the experimental results. For an erase or write state with a particular irradiation-bias, a set of two fitting parameters can accurately determine the threshold voltage with respect to total radiation dose. The modeling result can be easily integrated into the SPICE simulator for circuit design purposes
Implementation of GA in Designing Control System for Paraplegic Walking Movement using Walker

Due to the complex nature of the humanoid model structure and unavailability of its mathematical model, the model of humanoid structure is developed and then simulated in MSC Visual Nastran to find the dynamics of humanoid model walk with walker and the reference trajectories for normal walk are obtained. Further estimation of the joint torques and the development of a controller to control the movement of the humanoid model with walker is being done. To guide the humanoid model according to the reference trajectories, the controllers are designed. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed to optimize the PID controller's parameters so that the developed model follows the reference trajectories.
Drought Stress Responses in Soybean Roots and Nodules

Drought is considered to be a major threat to soybean production worldwide and yet our current understanding of the effects of drought on soybean productively is largely based on studies on above-ground traits. Although the roots and root nodules are important sensors of drought, the responses of these crucial organs and their drought tolerance features remain poorly characterized. The symbiotic interaction between soybean and rhizobia facilitates atmospheric nitrogen fixation, a process that provides essential nitrogen to support plant growth and development. Symbiotic nitrogen fixation is important for sustainable agriculture, as it sustains plant growth on nitrogen-poor soils and limits fertilizer use for crop nitrogen nutrition. Recent developments have been made in our understanding of the drought impact on soybean root architecture and nodule traits, as well as underpinning transcriptome, proteome and also emerging metabolome information, with a view to improve the selection of more drought-tolerant soybean cultivars and rhizobia in the future. We conclude that the direct screening of root and nodule traits in the field as well as identification of genes, proteins and also metabolites involved in such traits will be essential in order to gain a better understanding of the regulation of root architecture, bacteroid development and lifespan in relation to drought tolerance in soybean.
Service Dogs: Between Animal Studies and Disability Studies

For at least the last thirty years, there has been an ongoing debate between animal studies and disability studies on the comparative status of highly intelligent animal species versus severely cognitively disabled human beings when it comes to membership in the moral community, which was spearheaded by Peter Singer’s claims that some animals should have more rights than some humans based on their intelligence and functionality (see Singer 1999, 2009; see also McMahan 2009). Eva Kittay and other disability scholars, especially feminists, have responded with outrage, along with compelling arguments. In this essay, I consider beings whose intelligence and functionality put them at the intersection of animal studies and disability studies, and embody some of the contradictions within both discourses, namely, service dogs. Obliquely engaging the Singer-Kittay debates, I suggest that both sides make questionable assumptions about humans and animals, which come to the fore when considering service dogs and their human companions. Specifically, I focus on the notion of functionality in relation to issues of dependence and independence in order to rethink the human-animal divide in terms of what feminist philosopher Cynthia Willett calls “interspecies ethics” (2014). While endorsing Kittay’s claim that we have an ethical responsibility to that which sustains us, I challenge her feminist ethics of dependence insofar as it is limited to interdependence between humans and discounts or disavows our dependence on nonhuman animals. The feminist insistence on acknowledging the fact that women perform most of the labor of dependence
Semantic Technology for Financial Awareness

This paper sheds light on how semantic technology can be a key driver for promoting financial awareness and capability, through the presentation of the ideas behind the PROFIT platform and its functionalities. The PROFIT platform is designed by the newly funded namesake EU project, as a solution catering to the exact need of action enhancement for greater financial awareness and capability that has been identified as a major target for improved social performance, personal and household finance protection and, ultimately, greater societal well-being. Towards this goal, the platform will provide the following functionalities that are based on semantic technology: a) a novel financial education toolkit available to the wider public (b) advanced crowd-sourcing tools to process financial data, extract and present collective knowledge, (c) financial forecasting models exploiting the market sentiment to identify market trends and threats, (d) novel personalized recommendation systems to support financial decisions according to the user’s profile (financial literacy level, interests, demographic characteristics etc.) (e) a reputation-based incentive scheme to motivate good quality contributions to the platform.
Simultaneous inversion for dispersion coefficients and space-dependent source magnitude in 2 D solute transportation

This paper deals with an inverse problem of simultaneously determining the dispersion coefficients and the space-dependent source magnitude in 2D advection dispersion equation with finite observations at the final time. The forward problem is solved by using the alternating direction implicit (ADI) finite difference scheme, and then the optimal perturbation algorithm with the regularization parameter chosen by a Sigmoid-type function is introduced to solve the simultaneous inversion problem numerically. Numerical inversions are presented, and several factors having influences on realization of the algorithm are discussed. The inversion solutions are in good approximations to the exact solutions demonstrating that the optimal perturbation algorithm with the Sigmoid-type regularization parameter is efficient for the simultaneous inversion problem in 2D solute transportation. Key–Words: 2D advection dispersion equation, simultaneous inversion, optimal perturbation algorithm, regularization parameter, numerical simulation
Mutations in High-Voltage-Activated Calcium Channel Genes Stimulate Low-Voltage-Activated Currents in Mouse Thalamic Relay Neurons

Ca2+ currents, especially those activated at low voltages (LVA), influence burst generation in thalamocortical circuitry and enhance the abnormal rhythmicity associated with absence epilepsy. Mutations in several genes for high-voltage-activated (HVA) Ca2+ channel subunits are linked to spike-wave seizure phenotypes in mice; however, none of these mutations are predicted to increase intrinsic membrane excitability or directly enhance LVA currents. We examined biophysical properties of both LVA and HVA Ca2+ currents in thalamic cells oftottering (tg; Cav2.1/α1A subunit), lethargic (lh; β4 subunit), and stargazer (stg; γ2 subunit) brain slices. We observed 46, 51, and 45% increases in peak current densities of LVA Ca2+ currents evoked at −50 mV from −110 mV in tg, lh, andstg mice, respectively, compared with wild type. The half-maximal voltages for steady-state inactivation of LVA currents were shifted in a depolarized direction by 7.5–13.5 mV in all three mutants, although no alterations in the time-constant for recovery from inactivation of LVA currents were found. HVA peak current densities intg and stg were increased by 22 and 45%, respectively, and a 5 mV depolarizing shift of the activation curve was observed in lh. Despite elevated LVA amplitudes, no alterations in mRNA expression of the genes mediating T-type subunits, Cav3.1/α1G, Cav3.2/α1H, or Cav3.3/α1I, were detected in the three mutants. Our data demonstrate that mutation of Cav2.1 or regulatory subunit genes increases intrinsic membrane excitability in thalamic neurons by potentiating LVA Ca2+ currents. These alterations increase the probability for abnormal thalamocortical synchronization and absence epilepsy in tg, lh, andstg mice.
DiSCO: A Distributed Semantic Cache Overlay for Location-Based Services

Location-based services (LBS) have gained tremendous popularity with millions of simultaneous users daily. LBS handle very large data volumes and face enormous query loads. Both the data and the queries possess high locality: spatial data is distributed very unevenly around the globe, query load is different throughout the day, and users often search for similar things in the same places. This causes high load peaks at the data tier of LBS, which may seriously degrade performance. To cope with these load peaks, we present DiSCO, a distributed semantic cache overlay for LBS. DiSCO exploits the spatial, temporal and semantic locality in the queries of LBS and distributes frequently accessed data over many nodes. Based on the Content-Addressable Network (CAN) peer-to-peer approach, DiSCO achieves high scalability by partitioning data using spatial proximity. Our evaluation shows that DiSCO significantly reduces queries to the underlying data tier.
Text localization, extraction and inpainting in color images

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for subtitle text detection, extraction and text inpainting in color images. The proposed algorithm includes three stages. In the first stage, we localize text blocks to extract subtitles. We then extract the text characters precisely and in the third stage, we use an inpainting algorithm to recover the original texture of the image. To localize text blocks, we use stroke filter and new segmentation and verification algorithms based on the image profiles. To extract text character precisely, we estimate background and text color in the candidate blocks using the color histogram measured in different sub-blocks of the candidate text blocks. Finally, the inpainting algorithm based on matching algorithm is utilized to reconstruct the initial image contents in text areas. Our inpainting algorithm considers priority for inpainting of pixels, which results in perfect reconstruction in areas with texture variation. We tested the proposed algorithm with different image and video frames and compared the results with those of other methods. Experimental results showed the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Analysis of evolutionary algorithms for the phylogeny problem

In view of the strong increasing number of phylogeny problems and instances, the assessment of the respective optimization algorithms has become harder too. This paper contributes to this ongoing discussion by a first examination how the search dynamics are affected by the chosen algorithm and certain characteristics of the phylogeny problem. For this purpose a tunable problem generator is proposed and analyzed.
We Feel: Taking the emotional pulse of the world

Social media has become a major channel of communication, used to disseminate information, opinions, announcements, and behaviour. This results in a wealth of data that researchers are trying to harvest for a number of purposes, including public health issues -- e.g., (Leaman et al., 2010; Paul and Dredze, 2011; Bian et al, 2012; Sadilek et al, 2012; De Choudhury et al., 2013). Similarly, we are investigating whether that data can be mined to help further research in mental health. Our aim is to monitor social media to take the pulse of the world, to ultimately better understand the prevalence of mental health problems. To this end, we built We Feel which constantly monitors Twitter, looking for English tweets with emotional content (wefeel.csiro.au). Summary We Feel (wefeel.csiro.au) is an online tool that passively analyses a ‘massive pipe’ of Tweets, using language processing to look at the English words people use and mapping them to a hierarchy or ‘wheel of emotions’. These are based on Parrott’s (2001) list of basic emotions and include love, joy, anger, sadness. Each of these emotions is then segmented further to more specific secondary emotions. For example, the primary emotion of sadness includes suffering, disappointment, neglect and sympathy. A screen shot of We Feel is shown in Figure 1. This screen shot was taken for Australia, for the week of November 27th, the date of the death of cricketer Phillip Hughes. The “wheel of emotions” is displayed on the left, and a map of the world on the right. In the centre is the visualisation of the emotions of the tweets captured, colour-coded by emotions. Note here the peak in sadness. The tool also provides an indication of the posts’ gender (when identifiable). The interface enables the exploration of these emotional tweets: by selecting a specific area of the world, an emotion or gender, the visualisation focuses on the posts from that region/emotion/gender. By automatically processing the tweets by emotions and presenting the aggregate results visually, the tool enables researchers to examine the emotional state of the world (or a country) at any time, including during or after specific events, without having to examine individual tweets.
Ha ha? Assessing individual differences in humor production ability.

Humor is one of the most salient examples of verbal creativity in everyday life, but relatively little is known about individual differences in the ability to be funny. The present research examines the assessment of humor production ability—the ability to generate funny ideas on the spot. With only a few exceptions, humor ability research has relied on a single task: asking people to write captions for single-panel cartoons. In three studies, we evaluate the cartoon-captions task alongside a recent résumé-completion task developed by Howrigan and MacDonald (2008) and two new tasks that we developed: a joke-completion task (writing a funny conclusion to a joke set up by the researcher) and a definitions task (writing a funny definition for an odd noun-noun pair, such as yoga bank and cereal bus). In all three studies, the newer tasks covaried strongly with the cartoon captions task, suggesting that they measure the same underlying humor production ability. Of the major personality factors, measured based on the NEO (Studies 1 and 2) and HEXACO (Study 3) models, only openness to experience significantly predicted humor ability, and its effects were medium and large in size (β = .48 [.34, .63]; β = .54 [.39, .70]; β = .36 [.22, .50]). The findings suggest that humor ability shares much in common with other forms of verbal creativity, and that researchers could adopt a multimethod approach to measuring it.
Krüppel-Like Factor 12 Promotes Colorectal Cancer Growth through Early Growth Response Protein 1

Krüppel-like factor 12 (KLF12) is a transcription factor that plays a role in normal kidney development and repression of decidualization. KLF12 is frequently elevated in esophageal adenocarcinoma and has been reported to promote gastric cancer progression. Here, we examined the role of KLF12 in colorectal cancer (CRC). Indeed, KLF12 promotes tumor growth by directly activating early growth response protein 1 (EGR1). The levels of KLF12 and EGR1 correlate synergistically with a poor prognosis. These results indicate that KLF12 likely plays an important role in CRC and could serve as a potential prognostic marker and therapeutic target.
Using Description Logic and Rules to Determine XML Access Control

The quantity of generated information we store and need to access is colossal. Security of this information is becoming an issue of greater importance as the techniques and granularity with which it can be accessed become more advanced. Availability of information is a key component of any security system, although the information must be protected, it must also be available to the people who need it as and when they request it. However, increasing the methods by which it is accessable automatically increases the chance it may be compromised. Security systems are now using advanced levels of encryption, digital signatures containing biometric data and highly complex access control policies. We are proposing an access control system which reduces the complexity involved in defining authorisation permissions, particularly in structured documents such as XML where the user may be granted restricted access. Our solution employs techniques usually reserved for intelligent systems and the semantic web.
The emission factor of volatile isoprenoids: stress, acclimation, and developmental responses

Abstract. The rate of constitutive isoprenoid emissions from plants is driven by plant emission capacity under specified environmental conditions (ES, the emission factor) and by responsiveness of the emissions to instantaneous variations in environment. In models of isoprenoid emission, ES has been often considered as intrinsic species-specific constant invariable in time and space. Here we analyze the variations in species-specific values of ES under field conditions focusing on abiotic stresses, past environmental conditions and developmental processes. The reviewed studies highlight strong stress-driven, adaptive (previous temperature and light environment and growth CO2 concentration) and developmental (leaf age) variations in ES values operating at medium to long time scales. These biological factors can alter species-specific ES values by more than an order of magnitude. While the majority of models based on early concepts still ignore these important sources of variation, recent models are including some of the medium- to long-term controls. However, conceptually different strategies are being used for incorporation of these longer-term controls with important practical implications for parameterization and application of these models. This analysis emphasizes the need to include more biological realism in the isoprenoid emission models and also highlights the gaps in knowledge that require further experimental work to reduce the model uncertainties associated with biological sources of variation.