Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Dynamics of a Genetic Algorithm on a Model Hard Optimization Problem

A model of a hard optimization problem suggested in the literature is considered. The dynamics of a genetic algorithm (GA) using ranking selection, mutation and uniform crossover are completely modeled on this problem. These results are general and are valid for any symmetrical concave function of unitation. Full finite population effects are taken into account allowing a novel analytical comparison of roulette wheel and stochastic universal sampling. Closed form expressions are derived for the equilibrium population distribution of this model. The first passage time to move from a local to a global minimum in a two potential well landscape is calculated. A comparison is made with a stochastic hill climber and a GA without crossover. The GA with crossover is shown to perform orders of magnitude faster giving some insights into the nature of GA search and the crossover operator on these types of problem.
Resveratrol Induces Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Differentiation through Stimulation of SirT1 and AMPK

Phenotypic plasticity in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) is necessary for vessel maintenance, repair and adaptation to vascular changes associated with aging. De-differentiated VSMC contribute to pathologies including atherosclerosis and intimal hyperplasia. As resveratrol has been reported to have cardio- protective effects, we investigated its role in VSMC phenotypic modulation. We demonstrated the novel finding that resveratrol promoted VSMC differentiation as measured by contractile protein expression, contractile morphology and contraction in collagen gels. Resveratrol induced VSMC differentiation through stimulation of SirT1 and AMPK. We made the novel finding that low or high dose resveratrol had an initially different mechanism on induction of differentiation. We found that low dose resveratrol stimulated differentiation through SirT1-mediated activation of AKT, whereas high dose resveratrol stimulated differentiation through AMPK-mediated inhibition of the mTORC1 pathway, allowing activation of AKT. The health effects of resveratrol in cardiovascular diseases, cancer and longevity are an area of active research. We have demonstrated a supplemental avenue where-by resveratrol may promote health by maintaining and enhancing plasticity of the vasculature.
Max-Sum Goes Private

As part of the ongoing effort of designing secure DCOP algorithms, we propose P-MAX-SUM, the first private algorithm that is based on MAX-SUM. The proposed algorithm has multiple agents preforming the role of each node in the factor graph, on which the MAX-SUM algorithm operates. P-MAX-SUM preserves three types of privacy: topology privacy, constraint privacy, and assignment/decision privacy. By allowing a single call to a trusted coordinator, P-MAX-SUM also preserves agent privacy. The two main cryptographic means that enable this privacy preservation are secret sharing and homomorphic encryption. Our experiments on structured and realistic problems show that the overhead of privacy preservation in terms of runtime is reasonable.
MAP reconstruction from spatially correlated PET data

High sensitivity 3D PET data is often rebinned into 2D data sets in order to reduce the computation time of reconstructions. The need to precorrect the 3D data for attenuation, accidentals, scatter, and deadtime effects before rebinning along with the rebinning process itself changes the statistics of the data. This paper presents an approach for finding and using the statistics of Fourier rebinned (FORE) data. In particular, utilizing a space domain representation of FORE, we find the approximate covariance matrix of the rebinned data and model the data conditioned on the image as a low-order Markov field. This model is based on a quadratic approximation of the log-likelihood of dependent 2D PET data. The dependence relationship is then incorporated into a novel maximum a posteriori (MAP) 2D reconstruction method. Initial results show that this method is visually superior to traditional EM techniques and offers modest MSE improvements with a reference image over Poisson-based MAP methods.
Electricity consumption and economic growth in the European Union: A causality study using panel unit root and cointegration analysis

The climate change discussion and rising energy prices have resulted in an increase in the literature on the causal relationship between energy use and economic growth. In addition, there are also new developments in econometrics, most of all the use of panel unit root and cointegration techniques. However those techniques have not been applied in comparative studies covering the European electricity markets so far. The empirical investigation of the causality relationship between electricity demand and income for 15 European countries between 1978 and 2005 involves three steps. First, the order of integration is determined by applying standard ADF and panel unit root testing procedures. Second, cointegration techniques are performed in order to test for the long-run relationship between the variables in question. Finally, the existence and direction of causality in the short- and long-run will be assessed for each country by using vector error correction models and Granger causality tests.
Muscular adaptations to fatiguing exercise with and without blood flow restriction

The purpose of this study was to determine the muscular adaptations to low‐load resistance training performed to fatigue with and without blood flow restriction (BFR). Middle‐aged (42–62 years) men (n = 12) and women (n = 6) completed 18 sessions of unilateral knee extensor resistance training to volitional fatigue over 6 weeks. One limb trained under BFR, and the contralateral limb trained without BFR [free flow (FF)]. Before and after the training, measures of anterior and lateral quadriceps muscle thickness (MTh), strength, power and endurance were assessed on each limb. The total exercise training volume was significantly greater for the FF limb compared with the BFR limb (P<0·001). Anterior quadriceps thickness and muscle function increased following the training in each limb with no differences between limbs. Lateral quadriceps MTh increased significantly more (P<0·05) in the limb trained under BFR (BFR: 3·50 ± 0·61 to 3·67 ± 0·62 cm; FF: 3·49 ± 0·73 to 3·56 ± 0·70 cm). Low‐load resistance training to volitional fatigue both with and without BFR is viable options for improving muscle function in middle‐aged individuals. However, BFR enhanced the hypertrophic effect of low‐load training and reduced the volume of exercise needed to elicit increases in muscle function.
Adaptive Tile Coding for Value Function Approximation

Reinforcement learning problems are commonly tackled by estimating the optimal value function. In many real-world problems, learning this value function requires a function approximator, which maps states to values via a parameterized function. In practice, the success of function approximators depends on the ability of the human designer to select an appropriate representation for the value function. This paper presents adaptive tile coding, a novel method that automates this design process for tile coding, a popular function approximator, by beginning with a simple representation with few tiles and refining it during learning by splitting existing tiles into smaller ones. In addition to automatically discovering effective representations, this approach provides a natural way to reduce the function approximator’s level of generalization over time. Empirical results in multiple domains compare two different criteria for deciding which tiles to split and verify that adaptive tile coding can automatically discover effective representations and that its speed of learning is competitive with the best fixed representations.
A Mood-based Genre Classification of Television Content

The classification of television content helps users organise and navigate through the large list of channels and programs now available. In this paper, we address the problem of television content classification by exploiting text information extracted from program transcriptions. We present an analysis which adapts a model for sentiment that has been widely and successfully applied in other fields such as music or blog posts. We use a real-world dataset obtained from the Boxfish API to compare the performance of classifiers trained on a number of different feature sets. Our experiments show that, over a large collection of television content, program genres can be represented in a three-dimensional space of valence, arousal and dominance, and that promising classification results can be achieved using features based on this representation. This finding supports the use of the proposed representation of television content as a feature space for similarity computation and recommendation generation.
Search Space Generation and Pruning System for Autotuners

This work tackles two simultaneous challenges faced by autotuners: the ease of describing a complex, multidimensional search space, and the speed of evaluating that space, while applying a multitude of pruning constraints. This article presents a declarative notation for describing a search space and a translation system for conversion to a standard C code for fast and multithreaded, as necessary, evaluation. The notation is Python-based and thus simple in syntax and easy to assimilate by the user interested in tuning rather than learning a new programming language. A large number of dimensions and a large number of pruning constraints may be expressed with little effort. The system is discussed in the context of autotuning the canonical matrix multiplication kernel for NVIDIA GPUs, where the search space has 15 dimensions and involves application of 10 complex pruning constrains. The speed of evaluation is compared against generators created using imperative programming style in various scripting and compiled languages.
Alcohol assessment: the practice, knowledge, and attitudes of staff working in the general medical wards of a large metropolitan hospital.

AIMS To measure the prevalence of routine alcohol assessment; to assess its clinical utility in the general medical wards of a large urban hospital; and to assess medical and nursing staff knowledge with regard to standard drink measures and recommended drinking limits as well as their attitudes towards alcohol assessment. METHODS The prevalence of alcohol assessment and the clinical utility of the resulting information was determined via a retrospective file review (n=109). The knowledge and attitudes of medical and nursing staff were measured via questionnaire (n=106). RESULTS The file review data indicated 78% (+/-7.25) of patients admitted to the general medical wards were queried with regard to their alcohol consumption. However, the clinical utility of the recorded information was generally poor and the accuracy questionable. Only 12% of questionnaire respondents were able to accurately identify the standard drink equivalents for beer, wine, and spirits and only 8% were able to accurately identify the recommended drinking limits (per drinking occasion and per week) for both males and females. Attitudes towards alcohol assessment were positive. CONCLUSIONS Patient alcohol consumption is frequently assessed, but the clinical utility of the resulting information is limited. The use of a structured alcohol screen and the provision of appropriate staff training are recommended.
Dioxin-induced Immortalization of Normal Human Keratinocytes and Silencing of p53 and p16INK4a*

Dioxin, a potent tumor promoter, activates the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a ligand-activated transcription factor belonging to the basic helix-loop-helix-PAS family, to enhance tumorigenesis via unknown mechanisms. We undertook this study to determine the mechanisms underlying the impact of dioxin on cell fate, in particular senescence that occurs in normal human cells and is considered to play important tumor suppressive function. We have previously shown that in primary human keratinocytes, dioxin attenuates senescence while retaining the proliferative capacity and represses expression of the tumor suppressors, p16INK4a and p53. Here, we show that repression of p16INK4a and p53 transcriptional activity by dioxin absolutely requires the AHR and is accompanied by promoter methylation. Furthermore, dioxin alone is sufficient to immortalize normal human keratinocytes. Our data introduce a previously unrecognized regulatory pathway, that of the AHR, that impacts senescence. More importantly, this is the first report of a tumor promoter capable of inhibiting senescence in a receptor mediated manner and introduces a novel mechanism by which this carcinogen may contribute to human malignancies.
Can the Müller maneuver detect multilevel obstruction of the upper airway in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome?

OBJECTIVES Our aim is to figure out the role of Müller maneuver (MM) to detect the level of upper airway obstruction and the severity of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). PATIENTS AND METHODS In this study, polysomnographies were made after the routine otorhinolaryngological examination including MM in patients admitted with OSAS suspicion in Ankara Oncology Training and Research Hospital's Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Sleep Medicine Policlinic. Two-hundred and twenty-one OSAS patients (142 males, 179 females; mean age 47.63 years; range 18 to 82 years) were included to the study. RESULTS There weren't any significant correlation among apnea hypopnea index (AHI) results and body mass index (BMI), tonsil size and obstruction severity due to MM (p>0.05). Müller maneuver scores are positively correlated to the Epworth sleepiness scale (EPSS) scores (r=0.213 and p<0.001). Epworth sleepiness scale scores are found to be correlated to BMI and neck circumference (p<0.05). Level of the airway obstruction doesn't affects the EPSS scores (p=0.235). Also EPSS scores are not affected from uni or multilevel obstruction (p=0.088). CONCLUSION The severity of the MM score is not correlated to the severity of OSAS according to AHI results, but it is found to be correlated to EPSS. Vibrating tissues caused local and systemic inflammation in OSAS patients. The correlation between EPSS and MM scores can be explained by this inflammatory process. Further prospective studies have to be done in this field. Müller maneuver in an awake patient might reflect the levels of the obstruction in sleep conditions even though insufficient for figuring out the severity of OSAS.
A kent chaos artificial bee colony algorithm based wavelet thresholding method for signal denoising

The selection of wavelet threshold and the determination of thresholding function would directly affect the quality of the signal denoising using wavelet thresholding method. In the conventional thresholding denoising approaches, some aspects require improvement, such as the fixed threshold and the inflexible thresholding rules. To address these problems, a Kent chaos artificial bee colony (KCABC) based wavelet thresholding denoising approach is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a sine function based parametric wavelet thresholding function is put forward to devise the flexibility of the classical thresholding methods. Then, three strategies are employed to improve the performance of the basic ABC algorithm. The threshold and shape tuning parameter are initialized as the position of the individual, and the mean square error between the original and the thresholded signals is taken as the fitness function. Finally, the performances of the proposed algorithm and the existing methods are tested by denoising four benchmark signals with different noise cases. The simulation results indicate the proposed approach outperforms the existing methods in the capability of noise reduction.
Why Talk?

For Latin Americans the events in Iraq have an eerie familiarity. In matters of military and foreign policy the United States cut its teeth on Latin America and the Caribbean. Since the nineteenth century it has been engaged in “regime change” and neocolonialism throughout the region. In 1898 it intervened in Cuba, raising its flag over the island national and establishing a military government. This ushered in the U.S. century of empire. After Cuba, the United States continued its imperial policy by ousting leaders or inciting revolts in Panama, Venezuela, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Grenada, and El Salvador, to name only a few. The term “weapons of mass destruction” now joins the other terms, such as “bandits,” “rebels,” “guerrillas,” “subversives,” and “narco-traffickers,” that it employs to justify its interventionist policies. The continuation of this imperial policy now looms over Iraq and the Middle East, threatening to engulf the entire region in internecine warfare. Latin Americans worry that, if the United States consolidates its position in the Middle East, they will once again confront an emboldened U.S. imperialist aggressor with new designs on the region. At the recent Dallas meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, the historian John French gave the moving speech on the subject that appears below. —The LAP Collective
Similarity Measures of Research Papers and Patents using Adaptive and Parameter Free Threshold

Patents and Research papers are published in various fields. These are stored in various conferences and journals database. If a user (researcher or any general user) want to search for any patent or research paper in any particular field, then there is lack of search criteria available for this. In this paper, we have used nearest neighbor algorithm with cosine similarity to categorize patents and research papers. In this paper, experimental results show that if a user want to search for the patent or research paper in any particular field or category, then user would get better results. The advantage of the approach presented in this paper is that the search area becomes very small and so waiting time of user to get answer of query reduces to a large extent. To take decision about category of particular research paper or patent, there have been a lot of research work but categorizing was not that much accurate. In this paper, we have calculated threshold based on the similarity of terms between query and research paper or patent. This proposed calculation of threshold value is not based on numerical values. So, this novel approach of threshold calculation categorize more accurately than previous research work. General Terms Data Mining, Search Engine, Patent and Research Papers ranking and classification and Information Retrieval.
The evolution of orbit orientation and encephalization in the Carnivora (Mammalia)

Evolutionary change in encephalization within and across mammalian clades is well‐studied, yet relatively few comparative analyses attempt to quantify the impact of evolutionary change in relative brain size on cranial morphology. Because of the proximity of the braincase to the orbits, and the inter‐relationships among ecology, sensory systems and neuroanatomy, a relationship has been hypothesized between orbit orientation and encephalization for mammals. Here, we tested this hypothesis in 68 fossil and living species of the mammalian order Carnivora, comparing orbit orientation angles (convergence and frontation) to skull length and encephalization. No significant correlations were observed between skull length and orbit orientation when all taxa were analysed. Significant correlations were observed between encephalization and orbit orientation; however, these were restricted to the families Felidae and Canidae. Encephalization is positively correlated with frontation in both families and negatively correlated with convergence in canids. These results indicate that no universal relationship exists between encephalization and orbit orientation for Carnivora. Braincase expansion impacts orbit orientation in specific carnivoran clades, the nature of which is idiosyncratic to the clade itself.
Gastric and Esophageal pH in Patients With Barrett's Esophagus Treated With Three Esomeprazole Dosages: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Crossover Trial

BACKGROUND:It has been suggested that patients with Barrett's esophagus (BE) are unusually resistant to the antisecretory effects of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). OBJECTIVES:To compare intragastric and intraesophageal acidity in patients with BE receiving esomeprazole 40 mg three times daily (t.i.d.), esomeprazole 40 mg twice daily (b.i.d.), and esomeprazole 20 mg t.i. d.METHODS:In this randomized, double-blind, three-way crossover study, patients with long-segment BE received each of the three esomeprazole dosages for 5 days separated by 10–14-day washout periods. Intragastric and intraesophageal pHs were measured for 24 h on day 5.RESULTS:Among 31 patients with evaluable pH data, intragastric pH was >4.0 for 88.4%, 81.4%, and 80.4% of day 5 after treatment with esomeprazole 40 mg t.i. d. , 40 mg b.i. d. , and 20 mg t.i. d. , respectively. Esomeprazole 40 mg t.i. d. was significantly more effective than the other dosages (p < 0.01). Intraesophageal pH was <4.0 for mean values of <5% of the monitoring period with all the three dosing regimens, but esophageal pH remained <4.0 for >5% of the time in 16%, 23%, and 19% of patients receiving esomeprazole 40 mg t.i. d. , 40 mg b.i. d. , and 20 mg t.i. d. , respectively. All dosages were well tolerated.CONCLUSIONS:All the three esomeprazole dosages significantly decreased intragastric acidity and reduced esophageal acid exposure to mean normal values in the total group of patients with BE. However, abnormal esophageal acid exposure continued in 16–23% of patients despite the significant decrease in gastric acidity. These results suggest that the apparent “PPI resistance” described in patients with BE may be caused by their profound reflux diathesis rather than by gastric resistance to the antisecretory effects of PPIs.
Evaluation of CPD programmes: challenges and implications for leader and leadership development

Continuous Professional Development (CDP) programmes and especially coherent leader and leadership development programmes and policies have been at the centre of educational planning worldwide. The benefits for schools, staff, and pupils arising from professional development activities have been well researched into and elaborated on extensively. However, this is not the case in all educational settings. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of leadership development programmes and at the same time to address the challenges for leader and leadership development in connection to the design and delivery of relevant CPD programmes. The study adopted a coherent methodological framework for evaluating professional development programmes that builds on Guskey's (2000) and Stake's (1967) models for evaluating CPD programmes and a sound methodology for analysing evaluation data (Rasch methodology). We discuss the implications of our findings (a) for the local contextual practices in Cyprus, (b) for designing leader and leadership development programmes, and (c) for evaluation studies of relevant CPD programmes.