Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Food-producing animals and their health in relation to human health

The fields of immunology, microbiology, and nutrition converge in an astonishing way. Dietary ingredients have a profound effect on the composition of the gut microflora, which in turn regulates the physiology of metazoans. As such, nutritional components of the diet are of critical importance not only for meeting the nutrient requirements of the host, but also for the microbiome. During their coevolution, bacterial microbiota has established multiple mechanisms to influence the eukaryotic host, generally in a beneficial fashion. The microbiome encrypts a variety of metabolic functions that complements the physiology of their hosts. Over a century ago Eli Metchnikoff proposed the revolutionary idea to consume viable bacteria to promote health by modulating the intestinal microflora. The idea is more applicable now than ever, since bacterial antimicrobial resistance has become a serious worldwide problem both in medical and agricultural fields. The impending ban of antibiotics in animal feed due to the current concern over the spread of antibiotic resistance genes makes a compelling case for the development of alternative prophylactics. Nutritional approaches to counteract the debilitating effects of stress and infection may provide producers with useful alternatives to antibiotics. Improving the disease resistance of animals grown without antibiotics will benefit the animals’ health, welfare, and production efficiency, and is also a key strategy in the effort to improve the microbiological safe status of animal-derived food products (e.g. by poultry, rabbits, ruminants, or pigs). This review presents some of the alternatives currently used in food-producing animals to influence their health in relation to human health.
Reference Values for Acoustic Rhinometry in Subjects without Nasal Symptoms

Reference values for acoustic rhinometry are presented from 334 individuals without nasal symptoms between 4 years and 61 years old. There was a significant correlation between the minimal cross-sectional area (MCA) and nasal volume. Although the reproducibility of the method was good, the MCA varied widely. MCA correlated weakly to weight, height, age, and body mass index. Our data suggest that acoustic rhinometry is valuable for inter-individual comparisons.
Paranoia in the nonclinical population

4 1 Chapter One Introduction . 15 1.1 Overview of Introduction Chapter . 15 1.2 What is Paranoia? 16 1.2. 1 Historical Accounts . 16 1.2. 2 Operational Accounts of Paranoia . 16 1.2. 3 Problems with Operational Accounts . 18 1.3 Freeman and Garety’s Definition . 19 1.3. 1 Current Usage of the Term . 21 1.4 Current Models of Paranoia . 21 1.4. 1 Paranoia as Defence, and Emotional Consistent Accounts. 22 1.4. 2 Freeman’s Emotional Consistent Account . 24 1.4. 3 Poor Me and Bad Me Paranoia . 25 1.5 Continuum views of Paranoia . 27 1.5. 1 The Phenomenological and Vulnerability Distinction . 29 1.5. 2 The Continuous and Quasi-continuous Distinction . 29 1.5. 3 Support for the Continuum Approach . 30 1.6 Prevalence Studies of Psychosis in Nonclinical Populations . 31 1.6. 1 Paranoia in Nonclinical Populations . 32 6 1.6. 2 Criticisms of Prevalence Research . 41 1.7 Questionnaire based Research . 42 1.7. 1 Questionnaire Measures of Paranoia in Nonclinical Groups . 44 1.7. 2 Social Cognitive Biases and Nonclinical Paranoia . 47 1.7. 3 Criticisms of Self Report Data . 48 1.8 Experimental Approaches to Paranoia . 50 1.8. 1 The Camera Paradigm . 50 1.8. 2 Virtual Reality Studies . 53 1.8. 3 Green, Freeman & Kuipers, 2011 . 55 1.8. 4 Limitations with Experimental Approaches to Date . 57 1.9 Research Questions & Implications . 58 1.10 Thesis Plan . 59 2 Chapter Two – Prisoner’s Dilemma Game and Paranoia . 62 2.
Implementation Brief: Medical i2b2 NLP Smoking Challenge: The A-Life System Architecture and Methodology

We describe the architecture of LifeCode (A-Life Medical, Inc.), a natural language processing system for free-text clinical information extraction, our methodology in applying LifeCode to the i2b2 smoking challenge, and statistical measures for performance evaluation. Due to the limited test size and the coefficient of variation in the test standard, it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding the relative efficacy of approaches that were applied to this challenge.
A Survey of Methods for Collective Communication Optimization and Tuning

New developments in HPC technology in terms of increasing computing power on multi/many core processors, high-bandwidth memory/IO subsystems and communication interconnects, pose a direct impact on software and runtime system development. These advancements have become useful in producing high-performance collective communication interfaces that integrate efficiently on a wide variety of platforms and environments. However, number of optimization options that shows up with each new technology or software framework has resulted in a \emph{combinatorial explosion} in feature space for tuning collective parameters such that finding the optimal set has become a nearly impossible task. Applicability of algorithmic choices available for optimizing collective communication depends largely on the scalability requirement for a particular usecase. This problem can be further exasperated by any requirement to run collective problems at very large scales such as in the case of exascale computing, at which impractical tuning by brute force may require many months of resources. Therefore application of statistical, data mining and artificial Intelligence or more general hybrid learning models seems essential in many collectives parameter optimization problems. We hope to explore current and the cutting edge of collective communication optimization and tuning methods and culminate with possible future directions towards this problem.
GENDER, EQUITY, AND JOB SATISFACTION RECONSIDERED

Empirical research suggests that gender may affect the utility of equity theory in explaining organizational behaviors. Studies have indicated that men are more likely than women to distribute outcomes to individuals in direct proportion to their input. Brockner and Adsit (1986) noted an important but untested implication that the equity norm is more salient for men than it is for women in work groups and in supervisor-subordinate interactions. They argued that men's satisfaction with an exchange relationship should be influenced by the presence or absence of equity more so than women's satisfaction. They reported data indicating that the equity-satisfaction relationship was considerably stronger among men than among women. The Brockner and Adsit finding has an important implication for organizational theory, namely that equity perceptions may be more salient among men than women in the development of job satisfaction. Replication of their findings would suggest a need for further research in this area and a possible utility of different strategies for managing men and women for purposes of promoting job satisfaction with a focus on equity-related issues and antecedents. Contrary results, however, would suggest a need for caution in considering such strategies. The present study tested the hypothesis that the equity-satisfaction relationship would be higher for men than for women. Meta-analyses conducted on data collected from Federal Aviation Administration personnel failed to confirm the hypothesis. However, the results reinforced the importance of equity as a correlate of job satisfaction.
Integrating Function , Geometry , Appearance for Scene Parsing

In this paper, we present a Stochastic Scene Grammar (SSG) for parsing 2D indoor images into 3D scene layouts. Our grammar model integrates object functionality, 3D object geometry, and their 2D image appearance in a Function-Geometry-Appearance (FGA) hierarchy. In contrast to the prevailing approach in the literature which recognizes scenes and detects objects through appearance-based classification using machine learning techniques, our method takes a different perspective to scene understanding and recognizes objects and scenes by reasoning their functionality. Functionality is an essential property which often defines the categories of objects and scenes, and decides the design of geometry and scene layout. For example, a sofa is for people to sit comfortably, and a kitchen is a space for people to prepare food with various objects. Our SSG formulates object functionality and contextual relations between objects and imagined human poses in a joint probability distribution in the FGA hierarchy. The latter includes both functional concepts (the scene category, functional groups, functional objects, functional parts) and geometric entities (3D/2D/1D shape primitives). The decomposition of the grammar is terminated on the bottom-up detected lines and regions. We use a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to optimize the Bayesian a posteriori probability and the output parse tree includes a 3D description of the 2D image in the FGA hierarchy. Experimental results on two Yibiao Zhao University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA E-mail: ybzhao@ucla.edu www.yibiaozhao. com Song-Chun Zhu University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA E-mail: sczhu@stat.ucla.edu http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~sczhu challenging indoor datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach not only significantly widens the scope of indoor scene parsing from traditional scene segmentation, labeling, and 3D reconstruction to functional object recognition, but also yields improved overall performance.
Automatic testing equivalent system design of manned spacecraft

Interface test between spacecraft and electrical ground testing system(EGTS) before assembly integration and testing (AIT) is time-consuming and over ties up manpower. An equivalent system has been designed based on PXI instrument and auto-test programming in order to increase the system efficiency and automation. The system could simulate actual spacecraft to send pyrotechnic device state signal, analog signal, and execute the result of ground controlling order, and exchange testing data with EGTS to realize the user-defined automatic test. A typical application result shows that the consuming time of the automatic system falls to 6 minutes from 65 minutes and tied-up manpower declines from 4 to 2 compared with conventional equivalent system, which achieves a big step forward in system efficiency and configuration.
Error resilient content-based image authentication over wireless channel

The pervasive distribution of digital images triggers an emergent need for authenticating degraded images by lossy compression and transmission. This paper proposes a robust content-based image authentication scheme for image transmissions over wireless channels. A robust multiscale based feature is used to generate the digital signature. The feature vector is reduced, encoded, and encrypted as signature of the image. This signature is then embedded into the image using a blind quantization based watermarking algorithm. Typical distortion patterns of malicious image manipulations and image transmissions over lossy channels are used for image authenticity verification. This scheme is also able to detect tampering areas in the attacked image. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of our scheme.
Modeling the role of songbirds and rodents in the ecology of Lyme disease

Small rodents such as the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and the eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus) efficiently transmit Borrelia burgdorferi, the etiologic agent of Lyme disease, to feeding ticks, whereas other hosts of ticks are less efficient reservoirs of B. burgdorferi. We examined the roles of ground-foraging and ground-nesting songbirds as alternative hosts for ticks, focusing on their potential to dilute the infection prevalence of ticks (Ixodes scapularis, the black-legged tick) with B. burgdorferi. We developed a mathematical model based on the relative use by ticks of rodent and bird hosts across varying host densities. We parameterized the model for sites in southeastern New York State using original data and for the northeastern United States using published values. Our results indicate that American robins (Turdus migratorius), ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapillus), veeries (Catharus fuscescens), and wood thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) have a low capacity to dilute the prevalence of ti.
On refining dissimilarity matrices for an improved NN learning

Application-specific dissimilarity functions can be used for learning from a set of objects represented by pairwise dissimilarity matrices in this context. These dissimilarities may, however, suffer from various defects, e.g. when derived from a suboptimal optimization or by the use of non-metric or noisy measures. In this paper, we study procedures for refining such dissimilarities. These methods work in a representation space, either a dissimilarity space or a pseudo-Euclidean embedded space. On a series of experiments we show that refining may significantly improve the nearest neighbor classifications of dissimilarity measurements.
Genome-Wide Analysis of Promoter Methylation Associated with Gene Expression Profile in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Purpose: The goal of this study was to comprehensively identify CpG island methylation alterations between pancreatic cancers and normal pancreata and their associated gene expression alterations. Experimental Design: We employed methylated CpG island amplification followed by CpG island microarray, a method previously validated for its accuracy and reproducibility, to analyze the methylation profile of 27,800 CpG islands covering 21 MB of the human genome in nine pairs of pancreatic cancer versus normal pancreatic epithelial tissues and in three matched pairs of pancreatic cancer versus lymphoid tissues from the same individual. Results: This analysis identified 1,658 known loci that were commonly differentially methylated in pancreatic cancer compared with normal pancreas. By integrating the pancreatic DNA methylation status with the gene expression profiles of the same samples before and after treatment with the DNA methyltransferase inhibitor 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine, and the histone deacetylase inhibitor, trichostatin A, we identified dozens of aberrantly methylated and differentially expressed genes in pancreatic cancers including a more comprehensive list of hypermethylated and silenced genes that have not been previously described as targets for aberrant methylation in cancer. Conclusion: We expected that the identification of aberrantly hypermethylated and silenced genes will have diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic applications. Clin Cancer Res; 17(13); 4341–54. ©2011 AACR.
IARank: Ranking Users on Twitter in Near Real-Time, Based on Their Information Amplification Potential

This work introduces IARank, a novel, simple and accurate model to continuously rank influential Twitter users in real-time. Our model is based on the information amplification potential of a user, the capacity of the user to increase the audience of a tweet or another username that they find interesting, by retweets or mentions. We incorporate information amplification using two factors, the first of which indicates the tendency of a user to be retweeted or mentioned, and the second of which is proportional to the size of the audience of the retweets or mentions. We distinguish between cumulative influence acquired by a user over time, and an important tweet made by an otherwise not-important user, which deserves attention instantaneously, and devise our ranking scheme based on both notions of influence. We show that our methods produce rankings similar to PageRank, which is the basis for several other successful rankings of Twitter users. However, as opposed to PageRank-like algorithms, which take non-trivial time to converge, our method produces rankings in near-real time. We validate our results with a user-study, which shows that our method ranks top users similar to a manual ranking produced by the users themselves. Further, our ranking marginally outperformed PageRank, with 80% of the Top 5 most important users being classified as relevant to the event, whereas, PageRank had 60% of the Top 5 users marked as relevant. However, PageRank produces slightly better rankings, which correlates better with the user-produced rankings, when considering users beyond the top 5.
Precision Alignment of Two mm-Wave Antennas Using an Improved Optical Alignment Tool

In this paper, we present an optical imaging tool, the Overlay Imaging Aligner (OIA), developed to aid in the mechanical alignment of antenna components in the mm-wave and low-THz frequency regimes (50-500 GHz). In these regimes, the millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths pose significant challenges for alignment. The OIA uses a polarization-selective, machine-vision approach to generate two simultaneous and overlaid real-time digital images along a common axis. This allows for aligning two antenna components to within fractions of a wavelength in the mm-wave and THz frequency regimes. The overall concept, optical design, function, performance characteristics, and application examples are presented. Preliminary data at specific frequencies in the WR-2.2 band are presented that compare the alignment achieved with the OIA to an electrical alignment.
Cross-Layer Approach to Survivable DWDM Network Design

All-optical networks, in which the electrical regeneration bottlenecks are removed, are seen as the next-generation backbone networks. Any link failure in these high-speed environments, if not dealt with promptly, is catastrophic and can cause the loss of gigabits of data. While techniques to improve the survivability of optical networks are now well-established, such is not the case with all-optical networks. In these environments, the absence of regeneration implies that physical impairments accumulate over long paths. So-called cross-layer techniques mitigate the physical impairments’ impact on the network layer performance. In this work, we apply cross-layer techniques, previously successfully applied to the impairment-constrained routing and wavelength assignment problem [IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. , vol. 26, p. 32, 2008], to the problem of improving the survivability of all-optical networks facing link failures. To the best of our knowledge, cross-layer survivability of all-optical networks has never been studied before. We present algorithms that improve the network survivability over non-cross-layer algorithms by decreasing both the blocking probability and the vulnerability of the network to failures. Our mechanisms are evaluated with extensive simulations for a realistic regional-sized network. The cross-layer algorithms are computationally intensive, and to alleviate this issue we propose two new compound restoration algorithms as well as two novel quality-of-transmission-aware protection schemes that exhibit low blocking probability and have a moderate vulnerability ratio and time complexity.
Structure Preserving Large Imagery Reconstruction

With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as image clustering, 3D scene reconstruction, and other big data applications. However, such tasks are not easy due to the fact the retrieved photos can have large variations in their view perspectives, resolutions, lighting, noises , and distortions. Furthermore, with the occlusion of unexpected objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image completion algorithm for object removal that produces visually plausible content with consistent structure and scene texture. We use an edge matching technique to infer the potential structure of the unknown region. Driven by the estimated structure, texture synthesis is performed automatically a long the estimated curves. We evaluate the proposed method on different types of images: from
Final Report of the Technology Transfer Project ”Wireless Mesh Networks for Interconnection of Remote Sites to Fixed Broadband Networks (Feasibility Study)”

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) operating in the 5GHz band (IEEE 802.11 a/h) offer a great opportunity to function as wireless access networks. Remote sites that lack direct access to a ﬁbre network may beneﬁt from this technology, as it can be used to bridge potentially large distances. The high gain of directional antennas improves the reception of signals in focused directions and reduces interference from unwanted sources. Therefore, they are the preferred choice for such bridging scenarios. In this document, we report the results of the feasibility study ”Wireless Mesh Networks for Interconnection of Remote Sites to Fixed Broadband Networks (Feasibility Study)”. We present our experiences with setting up such a Wireless Access Network using directional antennas in the area of Neuchˆatel, Switzerland. We describe the necessary equipment and planning steps, highlight common pitfalls and discuss gained insights as well as experimental results. Measured data supports the feasibility of our networking approach, yet reveals the high impact of general challenges that have to be overcome in real-world deployments. Moreover, the project results are discussed from the viewpoint of the project partners.
Qi-Shen-Yi-Qi Dripping Pills Promote Angiogenesis of Ischemic Cardiac Microvascular Endothelial Cells by Regulating MicroRNA-223-3p Expression

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) research shows that Qi-Shen-Yi-Qi Dripping Pills (QSYQ) can promote ischemic cardiac angiogenesis. Studies have shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) are the key component of gene regulation networks, which play a vital role in angiogenesis and cardiovascular disease. Mechanisms involving miRNA by which TCM promotes ischemic cardiac angiogenesis have not been reported. We found that microRNA-223-3p (mir-223-3p) was the core miRNA of angiogenesis of rats ischemic cardiac microvascular endothelial cells (CMECs) and inhibited angiogenesis by affecting RPS6KB1/HIF-1α signal pathway in previous study. Based on the results, we observed biological characteristics and optimal dosage for QSYQ intervening in rats ischemic CMECs angiogenesis and concluded that QSYQ low-dose group had the strongest ability to promote angiogenesis of ischemic myocardium. Using miRNA chip and real-time PCR techniques in this study, we identified mir-223-3p as the pivotal miRNA in QSYQ that regulated angiogenesis of ischemic CMECs. From real-time PCR and western blot analysis, research showed that gene and protein expression of factors located RPS6KB1/HIF-1α signaling pathway, including HIF-1α, VEGF, MAPK, PI3K, and AKT, were significantly upregulated by QSYQ to regulate angiogenesis of ischemic CMECs. This study showed that QSYQ promote ischemic cardiac angiogenesis by downregulating mir-223-3p expression in rats ischemic CMECs.
Towards Replanning for Mobile Service Robots with Shared Information

Currently, multiple mobile robots, called CoBots, are deployed in an office building performing tasks for users such as delivering items and escorting visitors. Tasks for these robots are scheduled in parallel, but aside from the scheduling, the robots act entirely independently. In this work we explore how the robots can communicate dynamic changes in the environment, such as blocked corridors, closed doors at delivery locations, and robot failures, to accomplish their tasks more effectively. We introduce the concept of a “rationale graph” which documents the relationships between dynamic conditions and scheduling decisions. We propose to use the rationale graph to decide which information to share with which robots, and to replan for tasks which have rationales that are violated.