Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of reservoir permeability on the choice of subsurface geothermal heat exchange fluid: CO2 versus water and native brine

Geothermal systems utilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) as the subsurface heat exchange fluid in naturally porous, permeable geologic formations have been shown to provide improved geothermal heat energy extraction, even at low resource temperatures. Such systems, termed CO2 Plume Geothermal (CPG) systems, have the potential to permit expansion of geothermal energy utilization while supporting rapid implementation through the use of existing technologies. Here, we explore CPG heat extraction as a function of reservoir permeability and in comparison to water and brine geothermal heat extraction. We show that for reservoir permeabilities below 2 x 10 -14 m 2 , CO2-based geothermal provides better electric power production efficiency than both waterand brine-based systems.
Change in Metabolic Profile after 1-Year Nutritional-Behavioral Intervention in Obese Children

Research findings are inconsistent about improvement of specific cardio-metabolic variables after lifestyle intervention in obese children. The aim of this trial was to evaluate the effect of a 1-year intervention, based on normocaloric diet and physical activity, on body mass index (BMI), blood lipid profile, glucose metabolism and metabolic syndrome. Eighty-five obese children aged ≥6 years were analyzed. The BMI z-score was calculated. Fasting blood samples were analyzed for lipids, insulin and glucose. The homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) was calculated and insulin resistance was defined as HOMA-IR >3.16. HOMA-β%, quantitative insulin sensitivity check index and triglyceride glucose index were calculated. The metabolic syndrome was defined in accordance with the International Diabetes Federation criteria. At the end of intervention children showed a reduction (mean (95% CI)) in BMI z-score (−0.58 (−0.66; −0.50)), triglycerides (−0.35 (−0.45; −0.25) mmol/L) and triglyceride glucose index (−0.29 (−0.37; −0.21)), and an increase in HDL cholesterol (0.06 (0.01; 0.11) mmol/L). Prevalence of insulin resistance declined from 51.8% to 36.5% and prevalence of metabolic syndrome from 17.1% to 4.9%. Nutritional-behavioral interventions can improve the blood lipid profile and insulin sensitivity in obese children, and possibly provide benefits in terms of metabolic syndrome.
A trace-level value predictor for Contrail processors

Contrail processors utilize multithreading for improving energy efficiency. In Contrail, an execution of an application is divided into two streams. One is called the speculation stream. It consists of the main part of the execution and is dispatched into the fast functional units. However, several regions of the execution are skipped by utilizing trace-level value prediction. The other stream is called the verification stream. It supports the speculation stream by verifying each data prediction, and is dispatched into the slow units. The key idea is that the trace-level value prediction translates each critical path into non-critical one and moves it from the speculation stream into the verification stream, and then the non-critical instructions are executed on the slow units. In this paper, we investigate a trace-level value predictor for Contrail processors.
Cognitive Support: Extending Human Knowledge and Processing Capacities

The idea of aiding as cognitive support is to offer the user the knowledge he or she is missing. Recently, we developed a design method for aiding that is based on explicit requirements of the human problem solver. This proved to be able to supplement a lack of human knowledge in a statistical analysis task. In this article we extend the aiding concept to time-pressured tasks and we investigate whether aiding can supplement lack of knowledge and capacity under tasks with high mental loading, such as dealing with irregularities in process control. We developed a simulator of the workplace of a railway traffic controller with an aiding function for dealing with irregularities (e.g., a switch getting out of order). Application of the design method proved to be possible for this task. We then conducted an experiment to study effects of the aiding on task performance, mental effort, and learning under low and high task load conditions. Users of the simulator dealt better and faster with irregularities when the computer provided aiding. The higher the task load was, the larger this beneficial effect was. For theory about human-computer interaction, this research points to possible positive effects of aiding on performance and learning as a consequence of reducing cognitive demands.
Muscular strength, aerobic capacity, and adipocytokines in obese youth after resistance training: A pilot study.

BACKGROUND Exercise has shown positive training effects on obesity-related inflammation, however, resistance training has shown mixed results concerning adipocytokine levels. AIMS The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the effects of resistance training on blood adipocytokine concentrations in obese youth, with specific examination of the relationship between these biomarkers and improved fitness (i.e., aerobic capacity, muscular strength). METHODS Fourteen obese adolescents (16.1 ±1.6 y; BMI: 32.3 ±3.9 kg/m(2)) participated in a 16-week resistance training intervention. Body composition, fasting blood concentrations of interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-ɑ), adiponectin, and leptin were measured pre- and post-training. Aerobic capacity was assessed via a maximal discontinuous exercise test. The rate of gain in muscular strength was calculated as the slope of progression in 1-repetition maximum throughout the intervention. RESULTS Resistance training increased lean mass (total, trunk) and decreased per cent body fat (total, trunk). The training also caused moderate clear decreases in IL-6 and TNF-ɑ concentrations. A small increase in adiponectin was also observed before and after intervention. When the group was stratified by changes in aerobic capacity, there were substantially larger decreases in leptin levels for those with improved capacity. Correlation analyses also revealed a negative relationship between log-transformed leptin and aerobic capacity at rest. Improvement in quadriceps strength was positively correlated with IL-6 and TNF-ɑ, while improvement in shoulder adductor strength was positively correlated with IL-6 only. CONCLUSION Resistance training improved adipocytokine markers, which were partially associated with improved physical fitness. Specifically, the relationship between strength improvements and IL-6 and TNF-ɑ suggests an exercise-induced signalling pathway that results in overall adaptive decreases in systemic inflammation in obese youth.
Intracoronary Compared to Intravenous Abciximab in Patients with ST Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction Treated with Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Reduces Mortality, Target Vessel Revascularization and Reinfarction after 1 Year

Objectives: Administration of the glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor abciximab to patients with ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) improves outcome. Data have suggested that an intracoronary (IC) bolus might be superior to the standard intravenous (IV) administration. We have previously reported reduced short-term mortality and need for target vessel revascularization (TVR) with the IC route. We now present long-term data from our randomized trial on IC versus IV abciximab in pPCI-treated STEMI patients. Methods: A total of 355 pPCI-treated STEMI patients were randomized to either IC or IV bolus abciximab followed by a 12-hour IV infusion. Patients were followed for 1 year to observe mortality, TVR or myocardial infarction (MI) and the combination of these. Results: The two treatment arms (IV, n = 170; IC, n = 185) were similar with regard to baseline characteristics. Mortality was reduced from 10% in the IV group to 2.7% in the IC group (p = 0.004). TVR and MI were also reduced with IC administration (TVR: 14.1 vs. 7.6%, p = 0.04; MI: 11.8 vs. 5.4%, p = 0.03). Consequently, patients in the IC treatment arm had a relative risk reduction of 55% for the combined endpoint after 1 year (p = 0.002) compared to the IV treatment arm. Conclusions: In pPCI-treated STEMI patients treated with abciximab, IC bolus administration resulted in a significant reduction in mortality, TVR and MI compared to IV bolus administration.
A plug-in architecture for generating collaborative agent responses

We describe an implemented architecture for programming the responses of collaborative interface agents out of easily composable and reusable plug-in components, and discuss the underlying theoretical and practical issues. The power of the architecture comes primarily from a rich representation of collaborative discourse state, which includes a focus stack and plan tree. The architecture also provides a useful separation between the principles and preferences underlying an agent's behavior. We illustrate the use of plug-ins in a complex tutoring agent, which includes plug-ins that diagnose incorrect actions and explain why a step needs to be done. Plug-ins are part of the COLLAGEN agent-building middleware, which has been used by a number of researchers in addition to its developers.
Human resource strategic management in NPOs

Purpose – This explorative research aims at examining the social representation of psychosocial training in NPOs managers.Design/methodology/approach – An adopted multiple research approach was adopted to analyse a corpus of qualitative data. A detailed semi‐structured interview was administered to 122 senior managers of as many Italian NPOs. Interviews were analyzed using different techniques of content analysis and, run through the software T‐Lab (analysis of word occurrence and co‐word mapping, analysis of Markovian sequences). Findings – Italian NPOs' organizational culture seem to be action‐oriented and self‐referral, rather than knowledge‐oriented. Training is not considered as a tool for strategic management of HR. Senior managers are mainly self‐taught, trained on‐the‐job and, lack of a proper competence on HR management.Research limitations/implications – The group reached is a convenience sample and not a statistical representative sample.Practical implications – The paper suggests that intellect.
Differential effects of mu and kappa opioid antagonists on Fos-like immunoreactivity in extended amygdala.

It was previously reported that systemic administration of the nonselective opioid antagonist, naltrexone, induces Fos-like immunoreactivity (FLI) within the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (lateral-dorsal division; BSTLD), nucleus accumbens shell (NACshell) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) of free-feeding rats. These findings suggest that cellular activity in these brain regions is subject to opioid-mediated inhibitory control under basal conditions. Considering the involvement of mesoaccumbens dopamine neurons and components of the 'extended amygdala' in motivated behavior and reward, it was hypothesized that the induction of c-Fos by naltrexone accounts for the motivational-affective consequences of opioid antagonism. In Experiment 1, naltrexone was administered intracerebroventricularly (i.c.v.; 100 microg) to determine whether results obtained in the prior immunohistochemical studies could be attributed to blockade of opioid receptors in brain as opposed to peripheral tissues that convey visceral sensory inputs to the CeA and BSTLD. Naltrexone produced a marked increase in FLI within the CeA and BSTLD, and a moderate increase in NACshell. In Experiment 2, the kappa opioid antagonist, nor-binaltorphimine (Nor-BNI; 20.0 microg, i.c.v.) reproduced the effect of naltrexone in BSTLD and CeA, suggesting that the induction of c-Fos in these two structures is a consequence of kappa receptor blockade. The selective mu antagonist, CTAP (2.0 microg, i.c.v.), reproduced the effect of naltrexone in NACshell, suggesting that the induction of c-Fos in this structure is a consequence of mu receptor blockade. The functional implications of these results are discussed in terms of the known functions of these brain regions and opioid receptor types, and the prior observation that chronic food restriction eliminates the FLI induced by naltrexone in CeA and BSTLD. It is suggested that tonic mu opioid-mediated inhibition in NACshell has a predisposing effect on goal-approach behavior in general while kappa opioid-mediated inhibition in CeA and BSTLD has a predisposing effect on palatability-driven feeding in particular. Finally, a possible relationship between food restriction-induced suppression of the kappa opioid mechanism in CeA/BSTLD, local CRH function, and sensitization of the neural substrate for incentive-motivating effects of abused drugs is discussed.
Redundancy Does Not Imply Fault Tolerance: Analysis of Distributed Storage Reactions to Single Errors and Corruptions

We analyze how modern distributed storage systems behave in the presence of file-system faults such as data corruption and read and write errors. We characterize eight popular distributed storage systems and uncover numerous bugs related to file-system fault tolerance. We find that modern distributed systems do not consistently use redundancy to recover from file-system faults: a single file-system fault can cause catastrophic outcomes such as data loss, corruption, and unavailability. Our results have implications for the design of next generation fault-tolerant distributed and cloud storage systems.
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is an independent adverse prognostic factor in esophageal adenocarcinoma patients treated with cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Neoadjuvant platin-based therapy is accepted as a standard therapy for advanced esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). Patients who respond have a better survival prognosis, but still a significant number of responder patients die from tumor recurrence. Molecular markers for prognosis in neoadjuvantly treated EAC patients have not been identified yet. We investigated the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in prognosis and chemotherapy resistance in these patients. Two EAC patient cohorts, either treated by neoadjuvant cisplatin-based chemotherapy followed by surgery (n=86) or by surgical resection (n=46) were analyzed for EGFR protein expression and gene copy number. Data were correlated with clinical and histopathological response, disease-free and overall survival. In case of EGFR overexpression, the prognosis for neoadjuvant chemotherapy responders was poor as in non-responders. Responders had a significantly better disease-free survival than non-responders only if EGFR expression level (p=0.0152) or copy number (p=0.0050) was low. Comparing neoadjuvantly treated patients and primary resection patients, tumors of non-responder patients more frequently exhibited EGFR overexpression, providing evidence that EGFR is a factor for indicating chemotherapy resistance. EGFR overexpression and gene copy number are independent adverse prognostic factors for neoadjuvant chemotherapy-treated EAC patients, particularly for responders. Furthermore, EGFR overexpression is involved in resistance to cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Transcriptome Analyses Reveal the Involvement of Both C and N Termini of Cryptochrome 1 in Its Regulation of Phytohormone-Responsive Gene Expression in Arabidopsis

Cryptochromes (CRY) are blue-light photoreceptors that mediate various light responses in plants and animals. It has long been demonstrated that Arabidopsis CRY (CRY1 and CRY2) C termini (CCT1 and CCT2) mediate light signaling through direct interaction with COP1. Most recently, CRY1 N terminus (CNT1) has been found to be involved in CRY1 signaling independent of CCT1, and implicated in the inhibition of gibberellin acids (GA)/brassinosteroids (BR)/auxin-responsive gene expression. Here, we performed RNA-Seq assay using transgenic plants expressing CCT1 fused to β-glucuronidase (GUS-CCT1, abbreviated as CCT1), which exhibit a constitutively photomorphogenic phenotype, and compared the results with those obtained previously from cry1cry2 mutant and the transgenic plants expressing CNT1 fused to nuclear localization signal sequence (NLS)-tagged YFP (CNT1-NLS-YFP, abbreviated as CNT1), which display enhanced responsiveness to blue light. We found that 2903 (67.85%) of the CRY-regulated genes are regulated by CCT1 and that 1095 of these CCT1-regulated genes are also regulated by CNT1. After annotating the gene functions, we found that CCT1 is involved in mediating CRY1 regulation of phytohormone-responsive genes, like CNT1, and that about half of the up-regulated genes by GA/BR/auxin are down-regulated by CCT1 and CNT1, consistent with the antagonistic role for CRY1 and these phytohormones in regulating hypocotyl elongation. Physiological studies showed that both CCT1 and CNT1 are likely involved in mediating CRY1 reduction of seedlings sensitivity to GA under blue light. Furthermore, protein expression studies demonstrate that the inhibition of GA promotion of HY5 degradation by CRY1 is likely mediated by CCT1, but not by CNT1. These results give genome-wide transcriptome information concerning the signaling mechanism of CRY1, unraveling possible involvement of its C and N termini in its regulation of response of GA and likely other phytohormones.
Completion of a SCUBA Survey of Lynds Dark Clouds and Implications for Low-mass Star Formation

We have carried out a survey of optically selected dark clouds using the bolometer array SCUBA on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope at λ = 850 μm. The survey covers a total of 0.5 deg2 and is unbiased with reference to cloud size, star formation activity, and the presence of infrared emission. Several new protostars and starless cores have been discovered; the protostars are confirmed through the detection of their accompanying outflows in CO (2–1) emission. The survey is believed to be complete for Class 0 and Class I protostars, and yields two important results regarding the lifetimes of these phases. First, the ratio of Class 0 to Class I protostars in the sample is roughly unity, very different from the 1 : 10 ratio that has previously been observed for the ρ Ophiuchi star-forming region. Assuming star formation to be a homogeneous process in the dark clouds, this implies that the Class 0 lifetime is similar to the Class I phase, which from infrared surveys has been established to be ∼2 × 105 yr. It also suggests there is no rapid initial accretion phase in Class 0 objects. A burst of triggered star formation some ∼105 yr ago can explain the earlier results for ρ Ophiuchus. Second, the number of starless cores is approximately twice that of the total number of protostars, indicating a starless core lifetime of ∼8 × 105 yr. These starless cores are therefore very short lived, surviving only two or three free-fall times. This result suggests that, on size scales of ∼104 AU at least, the dynamical evolution of starless cores is probably not controlled by magnetic processes.
Quantifying TV white space capacity: quantifying tv white space capacity:

The so-called TV white spaces (TVWS) are locally underutilized portions of the terrestrial TV bands and occur as a by-product of the digital switchover taking place in most countries across the globe. Thanks to the very good characteristics of the TV bands in terrestrial radio communications, the exploitation of TVWS for local- or regional-area wireless license-exempt networking, under a carefully established regulatory framework, is a very attractive prospect. This article presents a generic methodology for determining the actual capacity of white spaces using a geolocation-based approach, that is, dynamic assignment of radio resources to TVWS networks according to their geographical location. This methodology is applied in a case study investigating a sample area in southeastern Europe and unveils a significant amount of access capacity that can be unleashed via TVWS exploitation.
Load-balanced clock tree synthesis with adjustable delay buffer insertion for clock skew reduction in multiple dynamic supply voltage designs

Power consumption is known to be a crucial issue in current IC designs. To tackle this problem, Multiple Dynamic Supply Voltage (MDSV) designs are proposed as an efficient solution for power savings. However, the increasing variability of clock skew during the switching of power modes leads to an increase in the complication of clock skew reduction in MDSV designs. In this article, we propose a load-balanced clock tree synthesizer with Adjustable Delay Buffer (ADB) insertion for clock skew reduction in MDSV designs. The clock tree synthesizer adopts the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) metric to estimate the interconnect capacitance and execute the graph-theoretic clustering. The power-mode-guided optimization is also embedded into the clock tree synthesizer for improving additional area overhead in the step of ADB insertion. After constructing the initial buffered clock tree, we insert the ADBs with delay value assignments to reduce clock skew in MDSV designs. The ADBs can be used to produce additional delays, hence the clock latencies and skew become tunable in a clock tree. An efficient algorithm of ADB insertion for the minimization of clock skew, area, and runtime in MDSV designs has been presented. Comparing with the state-of-the-art algorithm of ADB insertion, experimental results show maximum 42.40% area overhead improvement. With the power-mode-guided optimization, the maximum improvement of area overhead can increase to 47.87%.
Evaluating Experiential Teaching Methods in a Policy Practice Course

This study compares the effects of experiential learning on policy-related values, competency, and activity levels of two groups of recent MSW graduates from one university. The study group received experiential service learning in the MSW program, primarily in an advanced policy course, while the comparison group did not. The author explains experiential teaching and service learning methods, as well the activities included in the policy course. Results indicate that both groups placed a high value on political skills. However, the experiential group was significantly more likely to perceive themselves as competent policy practitioners and to perform policy-related activities after graduation.