Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
One year of caloric restriction in humans: feasibility and effects on body composition and abdominal adipose tissue.

BACKGROUND Caloric restriction (CR) increases maximal life span in short-lived organisms, and its effects are being explored in nonhuman primates. The objectives of this study were to determine the feasibility of prolonged CR in nonobese adults and to compare the effects of CR- and exercise-induced weight loss on body composition and abdominal adiposity. METHODS A randomized, controlled trial was conducted with 48 healthy, nonobese women and men, aged 57 +/- 1 (mean +/- standard error [SE]) years, with body mass index 27.3 +/- 0.3 kg/m2. Participants were randomly assigned to a 20% calorically-restricted diet (CR, n = 19), exercise designed to produce a similar energy deficit (EX, n = 19), or a healthy lifestyle control group (HL, n = 10) for 1 year. Assessments included weight, body composition by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, abdominal adipose tissue by magnetic resonance imaging, and energy intake by doubly labeled water. RESULTS The average level of CR achieved by the CR group was 11.5 +/- 2.1%, and the EX group completed 59 +/- 6.7% of their prescribed exercise. Weight changes were greater (p <or=.0005) in the CR (-8.0 +/- 0.9 kg) and EX (-6.4 +/- 0.9) groups as compared to the HL group (-1.3 +/- 0.9 kg), corresponding to reductions of 10.7%, 8.4%, and 1.7% of baseline weights, respectively. Whole-body fat mass and visceral and subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue decreased significantly (p <.005) and comparably in the CR and EX groups, but did not change in the HL group. CONCLUSIONS CR for 1 year was feasible, but the level of CR achieved was less than prescribed. CR and exercise were equally effective in reducing weight and adiposity.
A Web – Based Query System for Disclosure – Limited Statistical Analysis of Confidential Data

ions of the query space Q will be constructed that enable definition of a “frontier” of (as-yet) unanswered queries, in the sense that answering them would increase the amount of released data. The approach will be to combine previous research on partial orderings of queries (Cox, 1980, 1981, 1987) with corresponding data structures (Moore & Lee, 1998). The same abstraction also leads to methods to select risk reduction strategies, to define user classes (§3.2), and to visualize risk (§7.3). 5.2 Query History Data Base Because of the multiplicity of functions it must support, the QHDB is the most complex part of the system. The research issues are how to build it at all, and then how to build it well. 13Because this would compromise the confidentiality of information associated with the individuals in Q.
Structural Test for Graceful Degradation of NoC Switches

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) are implicitly fault tolerant due to their inherent redundancy. They can overcome defective cores, links and switches. As a side effect, yield is increased at the cost of reduced performability. In this paper, a new diagnosis method based on the standard flow of industrial volume testing is presented, which is able to identify the intact functions rather than providing only a pass/fail result for the complete switch. The new method combines for the first time the precision of structural testing with information on the functional behavior in the presence of defects to determine the unaffected switch functions and use partially defective NoC switches. According to the experimental results, this improves the performability of NoCs as more than 61\% of defects only impair one switch port. Unlike previous methods for implementing fault tolerant switches, the developed technique does not impose any additional area overhead and is compatible with any switch design.
Changes in the McGurk Effect Across Phonetic Contexts

To investigate the processes underlying audiovisual speech perception, the McGurk illusion was examined across a range of phonetic contexts. Two major changes were found. First, the frequency of illusory /g/ fusion percepts increased relative to the frequency of illusory /d/ fusion percepts as vowel context was shifted from /i/ to / / to /u/. This trend could not be explained by biases present in perception of the unimodal visual stimuli. However, the change found in the McGurk fusion effect across vowel environments did correspond systematically with changes in second formant frequency patterns across contexts. Second, the order of consonants in illusory combination percepts was found to depend on syllable type. This may be due to differences occurring across syllable contexts in the timecourses of inputs from the two modalities as delaying the auditory track of a vowel-consonant stimulus resulted in a change in the order of consonants perceived. Taken together, these results suggest that the speech perception system either fuses audiovisual inputs into a visually compatible percept with a similar second formant pattern to that of the acoustic stimulus or interleaves the information from different modalities, at a phonemic or subphonemic level, based on their relative arrival times.
Generation Under Uncertainty

We invite the research community to consider challenges for NLG which arise from uncertainty. NLG systems should be able to adapt to their audience and the generation environment in general, but often the important features for adaptation are not known precisely. We explore generation challenges which could employ simulated environments to study NLG which is adaptive under uncertainty, and suggest possible metrics for such tasks. It would be particularly interesting to explore how different planning approaches to NLG perform in challenges involving uncertainty in the generation environment.
Parameter tuning versus adaptation : proof of principle study on differential evolution

The efficacy of an optimization method often depends on the choosing of a number of control parameters. Practitioners have traditionally chosen these control parameters manually, often according to elaborate guidelines or in a trial-and-error manner, which is laborious and susceptible to human misconceptions of what causes an optimizer to perform well. In recent years many variants to original optimization methods have appeared, which seek to adapt the control parameters during optimization, so as to remedy the need for a practitioner to determine good control parameters for a problem at hand. Ironically however, these variants typically just introduce new and additional parameters that must be chosen by the practitioner. Despite this obvious paradox these optimizer variants are still considered state-of-the-art, because they do show performance improvement empirically. In this paper, such variants of the general purpose optimization method known as Differential Evolution (DE) are studied with the intent of determining if their schemes for adapting control parameters yield an actual performance advantage over the basic form of DE which keeps the control parameters fixed during optimization. To fairly compare the performance of these optimizer variants against each other, their control parameters are all tuned by an automated approach. This unveils their true performance capabilities, and the results show that the DE variants generally have comparable performance, and hence that adaptive parameter schemes do not appear to yield a general and consistent performance improvement, as previously believed.
A strong correlation between fusogenicity and membrane insertion depth of the HIV fusion peptide

Fusion between the membrane of HIV and the membrane of a host cell is a crucial step in HIV infection and is catalyzed by the binding of the fusion peptide domain (HFP) of the HIV gp41 protein to the host cell membrane. The HFP by itself induces vesicle fusion and is a useful model system to understand the fusion peptide/host cell membrane interaction. This article reports an experimental correlation between the membrane locations of different HFP constructs and their fusogenicities. The constructs were the HFP monomer with Val-2 to Glu-2 mutation (HFPmn_mut), wild type HFP monomer (HFPmn), and wild type HFP trimer (HFPtr). All constructs have predominant β sheet structure in membranes with physiologically relevant cholesterol content. HFPmn_mut does not fuse vesicles, HFPmn has moderate fusion rate, and HFPtr has the putative oligomerization state of HIV gp41 and a very rapid fusion rate. The HFP membrane locations were probed with solid-state NMR measurements of distances between labeled carbonyl (13CO) nuclei in the HFP backbone and lipid nuclei in the surface or interior regions of the membrane bilayer. HFPmn_mut is located at the membrane surface, HFPmn is inserted into a single membrane leaflet, and HFPtr is the most deeply inserted construct with contact with the center of the membrane. These results show a clear positive correlation between the insertion depths and the fusion activities of the HFP constructs. Other disease-causing enveloped viruses contain fusion peptides and this correlation may be a general structure-function model for these peptides.
The microphthalmia transcription factor (MITF) contains two N‐terminal domains required for transactivation of osteoclast target promoters and rescue of mi mutant osteoclasts

The microphthalmia transcription factor (MITF) regulates gene expression during differentiation of several distinct cell types, including osteoclasts. A structure/function analysis was performed to determine whether transcription activation domains were important for MITF action in osteoclasts. In addition to a previously characterized acidic activation necessary for melanocyte differentiation, the analysis defined a second potential activation domain located between amino acids 140 and 185. This second domain is required for MITF transactivation of two probable targets, the E‐cadherin promoter and the tartrate‐resistant acid phosphatase promoter, in transient transfection assays. An intact MITF gene rescued differentiation when introduced into osteoclasts derived from mi/mi mice using a retrovirus vector. In parallel experiments, an MITF gene lacking the acidic‐activation domain rescued differentiation twofold less efficiently than wild type, and a gene lacking the region between amino acid residues 140 and 185 rescued differentiation tenfold less efficiently than wild type. The results indicate that the N‐terminal region of MITF is necessary for activation of gene expression in osteoclasts and provides one mechanism by which this factor regulates distinct target genes in different cell types.
Localization of the Ethylene Receptor ETR1 to the Endoplasmic Reticulum of Arabidopsis *

The ethylene receptor ETR1 ofArabidopsis contains transmembrane domains responsible for ethylene binding and membrane localization. Sequence analysis does not provide information as to which membrane system of the plant cell ETR1 is localized. Examination by aqueous two-phase partitioning, sucrose density-gradient centrifugation, and immunoelectron microscopy indicates that ETR1 is predominantly localized to the endoplasmic reticulum. Localization of ETR1 showed no change following a cycloheximide chase. Ethylene binding by ETR1 did not affect localization to the endoplasmic reticulum, based upon analysis of plants treated with the ethylene precursor 1-aminocyclopropane- 1-carboxylic acid and by examination of a mutant receptor that does not bind ethylene. Determinants within the amino-terminal half of ETR1 are sufficient for targeting to and retention at the endoplasmic reticulum. These data support a central role of the plant endoplasmic reticulum in hormone perception and signal transduction.
On Minimizing Data Delivery Delay in Duty Cycling Wireless Sensor Networks

For maximum conservation of energy in sensor networks, one of the most effective approaches is duty cycling. M inimum latency data delivery in wireless sensor networks employing duty cycling is a challenging issue. To deliver data in a timely manner for such duty-cycling sensor networks, communication needs to be carefully managed among sensor nodes. Forwarding data along a longer but faster path can be a better option to obtain faster delivery while preserving the benefit of duty cycling. In this paper, first the issue of end to end delay minimization in data forwarding through WSNs is addressed. Then the use of an energy efficient threshold based routing protocol that effectively minimizes the end to end packet delivery delay in wireless sensor networks with duty cycling is demonstrated. This protocol can be adjusted to operate with an optimum threshold value so that the delay incurred in delivering the packet to the sink node will be significantly reduced.
Simple solvation potential for coarse‐grained models of proteins

We formulate a simple solvation potential based on a coarsed‐grained representation of amino acids with two spheres modeling the Cα atom and an effective side‐chain centroid. The potential relies on a new method for estimating the buried area of residues, based on counting the effective number of burying neighbors in a suitable way. This latter quantity shows a good correlation with the buried area of residues computed from all atom crystallographic structures. We check the discriminatory power of the solvation potential alone to identify the native fold of a protein from a set of decoys and show the potential to be considerably selective. Proteins 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Design of a novel chipless RFID tag using a simple bandstop resonator

In this paper, a novel chipless RFID tag is proposed as an alternative of a barcode. The proposed tag consists of receiving/transmitting antennas and a bandstop resonator. The transmitting and receiving antennas of the tag are wideband tapered monopoles. The bandstop resonator is used to generate identification (ID) for a tag. The bandstop frequency can be adjusted by changing the cutting position of a resonator. It uses spectral signatures to encode data and has a data capacity of 3-bits within 2 ∼ 2.7 GHz frequency range. Even though the proposed tag has low data capacity, it is suitable for low-cost item tracking system.
Memory system behavior of Java-based middleware

In this paper, we present a detailed characterization of the memory system, behavior of ECperf and SPECjbb using both commercial server hardware and Simics full-system simulation. We find that the memory footprint and primary working sets of these workloads are small compared to other commercial workloads (e.g. on-line transaction processing), and that a large fraction of the working sets are shared between processors. We observed two key differences between ECperf and SPECjbb that highlight the importance of isolating the behavior of the middle tier. First, ECperf has a larger instruction footprint, resulting in much higher miss rates for intermediate-size instruction caches. Second, SPECjbb's data set size increases linearly as the benchmark scales up, while ECperf's remains roughly constant. This difference can lead to opposite conclusions on the design of multiprocessor memory systems, such as the utility of moderate sized (i.e. 1 MB) shared caches in a chip multiprocessor.
Risk Factors and Outcomes for Patients With Follicular Lymphoma Who Had Histologic Transformation After Response to First-Line Immunochemotherapy in the PRIMA Trial.

PURPOSE To study the outcome of histologic transformation (HT) in a large prospective cohort of patients with follicular lymphoma (FL) who previously responded to immunochemotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS After a median 6-year follow-up of 1,018 randomly assigned patients from the PRIMA trial, disease progression was observed in 463 patients, 194 of whom had histologic documentation. RESULTS Forty patients had histology consistent with HT, and 154 had untransformed FL (median time to recurrence, 9.6 v 22.8 months, respectively; P = .018). Thirty-seven percent of biopsies performed during the first year of follow-up showed HT corresponding to 58% of all HTs. Altered performance status, anemia, high lactate dehydrogenase level, "B" symptoms, histologic grade 3a, and high Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index scores at diagnosis were identified as HT risk factors. Response (complete v partial) to immunochemotherapy or rituximab maintenance had no impact on the risk of HT. After salvage treatment, patients with HT had less frequent complete response (50.3% v 67.4%; P = .03) and more disease progression (28.2% v 9.6%; P < .001) than patients without HT. Estimated overall survival for the patients with HT was poorer (median, 3.8 v 6.4 years; hazard ratio, 3.9; 95% CI, 2.2 to 6.9). Autologous stem cell transplantation improved the outcomes of patients with HT (median overall survival, not reached v 1.7 years) but not of patients with persistent FL histology. CONCLUSION HT in patients with FL who previously responded to immunochemotherapy is an early event associated with a poor outcome that may deserve intensive salvage with autologous stem cell transplantation. These data emphasize the necessity for biopsy at the first recurrence of FL.
Multi-contact bipedal robotic locomotion

SUMMARY This paper presents a formal framework for achieving multi-contact bipedal robotic walking, and realizes this methodology experimentally on two robotic platforms: AMBER2 and Assume The Robot Is A Sphere (ATRIAS). Inspired by the key feature encoded in human walking—multi-contact behavior—this approach begins with the analysis of human locomotion and uses it to motivate the construction of a hybrid system model representing a multi-contact robotic walking gait. Human-inspired outputs are extracted from reference locomotion data to characterize the human model or the spring-loaded invert pendulum (SLIP) model, and then employed to develop the human-inspired control and an optimization problem that yields stable multi-domain walking. Through a trajectory reconstruction strategy motivated by the process that generates the walking gait, the mathematical constructions are successfully translated to the two physical robots experimentally.
Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking, and Deliberation

Democracy can be a nasty and ugly political form for those who are not included in its warm embrace. Various minorities can still be persecuted while equal rights are proclaimed for all. How can democracy’s promise of equality for all be more fully realized? How can democratic citizens become more attentive to others? These are only some of the questions that Michael E. Morrell poses in his fascinating book Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking, and Deliberation, a complex text worthy of close reading that intervenes to correct an oversight in deliberative theory and offers a ‘new theoretical statement’ (17). The answer to these difficult questions is simple for Morrell. Empathy can help us become better democrats. Drawing on a vast range of research from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology and political theory, Morrell takes the affective turn to a new level. We need to try to see the world from someone else’s perspective and empathy makes this possible. For Morrell, empathy leads to openness toward others (125), reciprocity (115), tolerance (115), mutual respect (115), inclusion, attentiveness, cooperation (116) and fairness. Empathy helps us to understand the ‘impacts a decision will have on others’ (173). Empathy also leads to ‘legitimate, justified democratic decision-making that truly takes all into consideration’ (194). Without empathy, democracy will be a broken promise. What is empathy? The author admits that we lack precise terms to capture this slippery phenomenon. Nonetheless, for Morrell, ‘empathy is not a feeling, but rather a process through which others’ emotional states or situations affect us’ (41). Morrell does a good job tracing the twists and turns of this complicated emotion as it has evolved historically and from a variety of academic disciplines. At its best, empathy slows you down and allows you to feel the other’s pain and unique experience so that you can justify to yourself that your decision took into consideration everyone’s viewpoint. Empathy also helps you to understand and sense the other. For Morrell, ‘the process of
A Workflow-based RBAC Model for Web Services in Multiple Autonomous Domains

A workflow-based RBAC model for web services (WFRBAC4WS) has been proposed in this paper. The model organizes web services in different autonomous domains through workflow mechanism, and maps RBAC model to tasks of workflow model. The paper details the authorization procedure of WFRBAC4WS model, the lifetime management, the extension of authorization constraint and the formal descriptions of the proposed model. Compared with other RBAC models for web services, this model not only combines RBAC model to workflow, but also describes the interactions between workflow mechanism and RABC model in web services environment, the authorization work of this model is dynamically and comprehensively.
Meta-level Constraints for Complex Event Processing in Logical Agents

“Brittleness” can be intended as the propensity of an agent to perform poorly or fail in the face of circumstances not explicitly considered by the agent’s designer. In opposition to brittleness, ”Versatility” and ”Perturbation-tolerance” express the ability of being able to cope with previously unanticipated situations. These properties are particularly important in many practical applications which have the need to actively monitor vast quantities of event data to make automated decisions and take time-critical actions, i.e., perform ”Complex Event-Processing”. In this paper, we propose temporal meta-level constraints to be dynamically checked, that allow an agent to timely self-check and adapt its behavior, and in particular its reactive modalities.
Acute High Intensity Anaerobic Training and Rhabdomyolysis Risk

International Journal of Exercise Science 8(1) : 65-74, 2015. The current popularity of high intensity anaerobic training has caused concerns over the safety and prevalence of conditions such as rhabdomyolysis; thus it is important to understand the possible risks of participating in this type of activity. The purpose of this study was to determine the magnitude of muscle damage associated with a single high intensity anaerobic training session, and the relationship of this response to markers of fitness. Fifteen recreationally trained male participants (age 22.9 ± 4.3 y, mass 87.3 ± 15.6 kg, body fat 16.8 ± 6.4%, VO2 peak 50.1 ± 7.2 ml · kg-1 · min -1 ) completed a single anaerobic training session consisting of high intensity plyometrics and calisthenics. Prior to the exercise session, participants completed a maximal aerobic capacity test, body composition analysis, and a military physical fitness test (1 min push-ups, 54 ± 14; 1 min sit-ups, 45 ± 11; 1.5 mile run, 12:17 ± 0.067 min). Serum creatine kinase (CK) was measured prior to and 48 h following the exercise session. CK at 48 h (126.3 ± 68.9 U· L -1 ) did not reach the limits indicating rhabdomyolysis (~881-1479 U/L) but was elevated above resting (CK resting 90.5 ± 53.4). VO2 peak (L · m -1 ) had a positive correlation with CK levels (r = .51; p < 0.05) but body mass or any other indicator of fitness did not correlate. An increase in serum CK levels occurred, but did not reach levels of rhabdomyolysis, suggesting that a single high intensity exercise session is safe for healthy individuals who exercise regularly.