Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Basal membrane complex architecture is disrupted during posterior subcapsular cataract formation in Royal College of Surgeons rats

Purpose Previous studies detailing the development of posterior subcapsular cataracts (PSC) in Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rats have shown that aberrant fiber-end migration underlies the structural compromise. This investigation was conducted to examine the distribution of select basal membrane complex (BMC) components and to assess the intravitreal levels of specific cytokines during PSC formation. Methods Lenses from 52 RCS dystrophic rats (RCS/Lav) and 28 genetically matched control animals (RCS-rdy+/Lav) from 2 to 8 weeks old were used. After enucleation, vitreous was collected for eventual cytokine level analyses; lenses were then removed and processed for immunocytochemical localization of actin, cadherin, β integrin, vinculin, and cell nuclei. Results At 2–3 weeks postnatal, dystrophic lenses showed normal BMC distribution of actin, cadherin, and vinculin; however β integrin distribution was altered as compared to controls. By 4–6 weeks of age, F-actin was visible as bright foci arranged in a “rosette” pattern around fiber-end profiles. Concurrently, vinculin was rearranged into a diffuse pattern within the BMC. Cadherin delineated the fiber ends in dystrophic lenses until 5 weeks postnatal, after which it displayed diffuse cytoplasmic staining with more definitive labeling at the BMC periphery. β integrin was initially distributed as punctuate spots at 2–3 weeks postnatal; however, by 4–6 weeks it was co-localized with F-actin around the periphery of fiber ends. The distribution of F-actin, cadherin, and β integrin components did not undergo further changes after 6 weeks of age; however, vinculin was present predominantly at the periphery of the BMC in 7–8-week-old dystrophic lenses. Intravitreal cytokine levels were assessed for interleukin (IL)-1α, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and interferon (IFN)-γ. Levels of IL-1α, IL-4, TNF, and IFN-γ demonstrated a similar pattern, with concentrations increasing from 2 to 6 weeks postnatal and then decreasing slightly up to 8 weeks of age. IL-4 and TNF had the highest average concentrations, with peaks of 148.00 pg/ml and 34.20 pg/ml, respectively. Conclusions The data indicate that defined rearrangements of normal BMC architecture precede and characterize the structural changes that culminate in the PSC. These are consistent with modifications of adhesion mechanics involving cell–cell attachment, cell–matrix adhesion, and timely fiber-end detachment. Further, the results suggest that pro-inflammatory cytokines are potential initiating factors in aberrant fiber-end migration and subsequent PSC formation.
Effects of Exercise and Milk Fat Globule Membrane (MFGM) Supplementation on Body Composition, Physical Function, and Hematological Parameters in Community-Dwelling Frail Japanese Women: A Randomized Double Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Follow-Up Trial

Objective To investigate the combined and separate effects of exercise and milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) supplementation on frailty, physical function, physical activity level, and hematological parameters in community-dwelling elderly Japanese women. Methods A total of 131 frail, elderly women over 75 years were randomly assigned to one of four groups: exercise and MFGM supplementation (Ex+MFGM), exercise and placebo (Ex+Plac), MFGM supplementation, or the placebo group. The exercise group attended a 60-minute training program twice a week for three months, and the MFGM group ingested 1g of the MFGM supplement in pill form, daily for 3 months. The primary outcome measure was change in frailty status based on Fried’s frailty phenotype. Secondary outcome measures included body composition, physical function and hematological parameters, and interview survey components assessing lifestyle factors. Participants were followed for 4 months post-intervention. Results Significant group×time interactions were observed for usual walking speed (P = 0.005), timed up & go (P<0.001), and insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 3 / insulin-like growth factor 1 ratio (P = 0.013). The frailty components revealed that weight loss, exhaustion, low physical activity, and slow walking speed were reversed, but low muscle strength did not significantly changed. Frailty reversal rate was significantly higher in the Ex+MFGM (57.6%) than in the MFGM (28.1%) or placebo (30.3%) groups at post-intervention (χ2 = 8.827, P = 0.032), and at the follow-up was also significantly greater in the Ex+MFGM (45.5%) and Ex+Plac (39.4%) groups compared with the placebo (15.2%) group (χ2 = 8.607, P = 0.035). The exercise+MFGM group had the highest odds ratio (OR) for frailty reversal at post-intervention and follow-up (OR = 3.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.13–8.60; and OR = 4.67, 95% CI = 1.45–15.08, respectively). Conclusion This study suggests that interventions including exercise and nutrition can improve frailty status. Statistically significant additive effects of MFGM with exercise could not be confirmed in this population, and further investigation in larger samples is necessary. Trial Registration The Japan Medical Association Clinical Trial Registry (JMACCT)JMA-IIA00069
Evaluating the Effects of Interface Feedback in MT-embedded Interactive Translation

Individuals in global collaboration face the challenge to exchange messages across language boundaries. To bridge different languages, interactive translation that involves non-experts to iterate the inputs of machine translation (MT) for better translations can be useful. However, there is a design issue on how to provide feedback of estimated translation quality to support workers' iterative editing actions. In a lab study, we evaluated the effects of different types of interface feedback (back translation, numeric score of estimated translation quality, and anthropomorphic social messages). The results confirmed the utility of using numeric score and social messages as feedback, and shed light on the design of MT interface and cross-lingual communication support.
Neural Networks as a Tool for ProductManufacturing Innovation in Africa

-This paper highlights the numerous advantages of process simulation using neural networks. Apart from reviewing some successful industrial applications of neural networks (specifically in the field of electrical engineering), results of the authors' research in the areas of food security and health will also be presented. The research results will show that successful neural simulation results using Neurosolutions software also translated to successful realtime implementation of cost-effective products with reliable overall performance of up to 90%.
Timing of neuronal and glial ultrastructure disruption during brain slice preparation and recovery in vitro

Hippocampal slices often have more synapses than perfusion‐fixed hippocampus, but the cause of this synaptogenesis is unclear. Ultrastructural evidence for synaptogenic triggers during slice preparation was investigated in 21‐day‐old rats. Slices chopped under warm or chilled conditions and fixed after 0, 5, 25, 60, or 180 minutes of incubation in an interface chamber were compared with hippocampi fixed by perfusion or by immersion of the whole hippocampus. There was no significant synaptogenesis in these slices compared with perfusion‐fixed hippocampus, but there were other structural changes during slice preparation and recovery in vitro. Whole hippocampus and slices prepared under warm conditions exhibited an increase in axonal coated vesicles, suggesting widespread neurotransmitter release. Glycogen granules were depleted from astrocytes and neurons in 0‐min slices, began to reappear by 1 hour, and had fully recovered by 3 hours. Dendritic microtubules were initially disassembled in slices, but reassembled into normal axial arrays after 5 minutes. Microtubules were short at 5 minutes (12.3 ± 1.1 μm) but had recovered normal lengths by 3 hours (84.6 ± 20.0 μm) compared with perfusion‐fixed hippocampus (91 ± 22 μm). Microtubules appeared transiently in 15 ± 3% and 9 ± 4% of dendritic spines 5 and 25 minutes after incubation, respectively. Spine microtubules were absent from perfusion‐fixed hippocampus and 3‐hour slices. Ice‐cold dissection and vibratomy in media that blocked activity initially produced less glycogen loss, coated vesicles, and microtubule disassembly. Submersing these slices in normal oxygenated media at 34°C led to glycogen depletion, as well as increased coated vesicles and microtubule disassembly within 1 minute. J. Comp. Neurol. 465:90–103, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Neurotic Dog’s Life: Experimental Psychiatry and the Conditional Reflex Method in the Work of W. Horsley Gantt

From the 1920s, inspired by the work of Ivan Pavlov, many American psychiatrists, physiologists, and psychologists turned to the animal laboratory. Focusing on the work of W. Horsley Gantt, this essay will explore the use of the conditional reflex method in the study of “experimental neurosis. ” Concentrating on the interaction between thought and material operations in Gantt’s Pavlovian Laboratory, the essay will show how idiosyncratic emotional reactions and behaviors among experimental animals were used to address the issue of individuality in science, medicine, and society. It was through working with the dog that individuality was identified as an incessant problem that could be utilized in laboratory practice, as a necessary focus of psychiatric medicine, and as a means of defending science from excessive determinism and stereotyped thinking.
Practical concurrent binary search trees via logical ordering

We present practical, concurrent binary search tree (BST) algorithms that explicitly maintain logical ordering information in the data structure, permitting clean separation from its physical tree layout. We capture logical ordering using intervals, with the property that an item belongs to the tree if and only if the item is an endpoint of some interval. We are thus able to construct efficient, synchronization-free and intuitive lookup operations. We present (i) a concurrent non-balanced BST with a lock-free lookup, and (ii) a concurrent AVL tree with a lock-free lookup that requires no synchronization with any mutating operations, including balancing operations. Our algorithms apply on-time deletion; that is, every request for removal of a node, results in its immediate removal from the tree. This new feature did not exist in previous concurrent internal tree algorithms. We implemented our concurrent BST algorithms and evaluated them against several state-of-the-art concurrent tree algorithms. Our experimental results show that our algorithms with lock-free contains and on-time deletion are practical and often comparable to the state-of-the-art.
A New Phrase-based System Combination Framework for MT

This paper presents a new phrase-based combination framework for combining outputs of different machine translation (MT) systems. We build a sentencespecific translation option table by collecting source-to-target phrases over the input translations and assigning a confidence score to each phrase by exploiting their similarity to all the other phrases. Using this translation option table inside a stateof-the-art phrase-based decoder, we generate a combined translation for each sentence. The proposed combination method yields 1.6% absolute BLEU score improvement over the best input system on Arabic-English.
International Conference on Computational Modeling and Security ( CMS 2016 ) Cloud Computing Security Using IDS-AM-Clust , Honeyd , Honeywall and Honeycomb

The cloud computing security has become a basic necessity. It acquires knowledge about vulnerabilities, attacks, activities of attackers and tools to secure it. This work proposes new cloud infrastructure architecture, which combines IDS based on mobile agent sand using three types of honeypots in order to detect attacks, to study the behavior of attackers, increase the added value of Honeypot and IDS based mobile agents, solve systems limitations intrusion detection, improve knowledge bases IDS thus increase the detection rate in our cloud environment. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of the 2016 International Conference on Computational Modeling and Security (CMS 2016).
A Study of MAC Address Randomization in Mobile Devices and When it Fails

Abstract Media Access Control (MAC) address randomization is a privacy technique whereby mobile devices rotate through random hardware addresses in order to prevent observers from singling out their traffic or physical location from other nearby devices. Adoption of this technology, however, has been sporadic and varied across device manufacturers. In this paper, we present the first wide-scale study of MAC address randomization in the wild, including a detailed breakdown of different randomization techniques by operating system, manufacturer, and model of device. We then identify multiple flaws in these implementations which can be exploited to defeat randomization as performed by existing devices. First, we show that devices commonly make improper use of randomization by sending wireless frames with the true, global address when they should be using a randomized address. We move on to extend the passive identification techniques of Vanhoef et al. to effectively defeat randomization in ~96% of Android phones. Finally, we identify a previously unknown flaw in the way wireless chipsets handle low-level control frames which applies to 100% of devices we tested. This flaw permits an active attack that can be used under certain circumstances to track any existing wireless device.
The Truth About Tattoos

Despite their ubiquity, tattoos continue to be associated with dishonesty. Yet, scarce behavioral evidence exists. We test whether the tattooed and non-tattooed differ in their dishonest reporting in two consecutive incentivized experiments. First, subjects toss a coin privately five times and receive payment for each heads reported. After, subjects perform five additional coin tosses with the payment for each heads reported increased tenfold. We find few differences in the reporting behavior between the tattooed and non-tattooed in the number of heads reported in either reporting task or the difference between the two. Strategic dishonesty is limited to a small minority of subjects and to only one additional reported heads in the high-stakes tosses.
Modeling and Analysis of a DC Electrical System and Controllers for Implementation of a Grid-Interactive Building

As the penetration of photovoltaic (PV) systems on building rooftops increases, the accumulated effect of the rooftop PV power outputs on electric network operation is no longer negligible. Energy storage resources (ESRs) have been used to smooth PV power outputs, particularly when building load becomes low. In commercial buildings, the batteries of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) can be regarded as distributed ESRs. This paper proposes a DC electrical system in a commercial building that enables PEVs to compensate for rooftop PV power fluctuation and participate in tracking signals for grid frequency regulation (GFR). The proposed building system and associated controllers are modeled considering steady-state and dynamic operations of the PV system and PEV batteries. Simulation case studies are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed building system under various conditions, determined by such factors as the maximum voltage, minimum state-of-charge, and desired charging end-time of PEVs batteries.
A Study on the Improved Collaborative Filtering Algorithm for Recommender System

The purpose of this study is to suggest an algorithm of a recommender system to increase the customer's desire of purchasing, by automatically recommending goods transacted on e-commerce to customers. The recommender system has various filtering techniques according to the methods of recommendation. In this study, researchers study collaborative filtering among recommender systems. The accuracy of customer's preference prediction is compared with the accuracy of customer's preference prediction of the existing collaborative filtering algorithm, and the suggested new algorithm. At first, the accuracy of a customer's preference prediction of neighborhood based algorithm as automated collaborative filtering algorithm firstly & correspondence mean algorithm, is compared. It is analyzed by using MovieLens1 100K dataset and I Million dataset in order to experiment with the prediction accuracy of the each algorithm. For similarity weight used in both algorithms it is discovered Pearson's correlation coefficient and vector similarity which are generally used were utilized, and as a result of analysis, we show that the accuracy of the customer's preference prediction of correspondence mean algorithm is superior. Pearson's correlation coefficient and vector similarity used in two algorithms are calculated by using the preference rating of two customers' co-rated movies, and it shows that similarity weight is overestimated, where the number of co-rated movies is small. Therefore, it is intended to increase the accuracy of customer's preference prediction through expanding the effect of the number of the existing co-rated movies.
The Impact of Elective Application of Science Lessons on Sciences Courses: A Qualitative Study of 6th Grade Students

This study was conducted with the aim of identifying the impact of elective Application of Science lessons on science courses, based on the opinions of students. The study sample comprised fifteen volunteer 6th Grade students at secondary education level from a school in the Turkish province of Ağrı, who were given elective Application of Science lessons during the spring semester of the 2014/15 academic year. The data of this qualitative study was collected using the semi-structured interview technique, in accordance with the case study method. The data collected by the interviews were subjected to descriptive and content analysis. Results of the study showed that students enjoyed the elective Application of Science lessons and that they would like to take the subject again in the next grade level as it made it easier for them to learn topics related to science and contributed to their successful performance in science. The study also found that the elective Application of Science lessons were utilized to solve experiments or to teach topics in other science activities. Among other recommendations, it is emphasized that the teacher’s guidebook for elective Application of Science lessons, for all grade levels (5, 6, 7, 8), should be published as soon as possible.
Bug Diagnosis by String Matching: Application to ILTS for Translation.

We have developed an entirely new template-automaton-based knowledge database system for an interactive intelligent language tutoring system (ILTS) for Japanese-English translation whereby model translations as well as a taxonomy of bugs extracted from ill formed translations typical of nonnative learners are collected. Unlike conventional rule-based systems whose complicated solution search procedure and labor-intensive processing have led to so-called knowledge engineer bottlenecks of the expert systems, the new dynamic programming-based heaviest common sequence (HCS) matching algorithm is both efficient and robust in which error diagnosis is implemented by selecting, from among many candidates' paths in the system template, a path having an HCS of a highest similarity with a student's free-format translation input. This best matched path to the given ill formed sentence is used to provide contingent feedback messages. We have laid down a theoretical framework for the global HCS matching algorithm which is applied to the dual form of acyclic weighted digraphs by topologically sorting the template automaton structured according to augmented transition networks. An extensive evaluation test of the diagnostic engine has ensured the validity, efficiency, and robustness of the algorithm in providing error-contingent feedback to a wide spectrum of learners even with different educational backgrounds.
Stokes Parameters as a Minkowskian Four-vector

It is noted that the Jones-matrix formalism for polarization optics is a six-parameter two-by-two representation of the Lorentz group. It is shown that the four independent Stokes parameters form a Minkowskian four-vector, just like the energy-momentum four-vector in special relativity. The optical filters are represented by four-by-four Lorentz-transformation matrices. This four-by-four formalism can deal with partial coherence described by the Stokes parameters. A four-by-four matrix formulation is given for decoherence effects on the Stokes parameters, and a possible experiment is proposed. It is shown also that this Lorentz-group formalism leads to optical filters with a symmetry property corresponding to that of two-dimensional Euclidean transformations.
Folate Intake and the Risk of Breast Cancer: A Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies

Background Previous observational studies regarding the existence of an association between folate intake and the risk of breast cancer have been inconsistent. This study aimed to summarize the evidence regarding this relationship using a dose-response meta-analytic approach. Methodology and Principal Findings We performed electronic searches of the PubMed, EmBase, and Cochrane Library databases to identify studies published through June 2013. Only prospective observational studies that reported breast cancer effect estimates with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for more than 2 folate intake categories were included. We excluded traditional case-control studies because of possible bias from various confounding factors. Overall, we included 14 prospective studies that reported data on 677,858 individuals. Folate intake had little effect on the breast cancer risk (relative risk (RR) for highest versus lowest category = 0.97; 95% CI, 0.90–1.05; P = 0.451). Dose-response meta-analysis also suggested that a 100 µg/day increase in folate intake had no significant effect on the risk of breast cancer (RR = 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98–1.01; P = 0.361). Furthermore, we used restricted cubic splines to evaluate the nonlinear relationship between folate intake and the risk of breast cancer, and discovered a potential J-shaped correlation between folate intake and breast cancer risk (P = 0.007) and revealed that a daily folate intake of 200–320 µg was associated with a lower breast cancer risk; however, the breast cancer risk increased significantly with a daily folate intake >400 µg. Conclusion/Significance Our study revealed that folate intake had little or no effect on the risk of breast cancer; moreover, a dose-response meta-analysis suggested a J-shaped association between folate intake and breast cancer.