Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decreasing prevalence of oral cleft live births in the Netherlands, 1997–2006

Objectives The number of new oral cleft patients has fallen in the Netherlands. This may be explained by two hypotheses: (1) greater prenatal detection of congenital anomalies has led to more pregnancy terminations and (2) increased folic acid use has reduced the oral cleft risk. Both hypotheses would mainly apply to the category cleft lip/alveolus ± cleft palate (CL±P), since, unlike cleft palate only (CP), CL±P can be detected prenatally by two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound and develops during the period recommended for folic acid use. The authors aimed to determine trends in prevalence over 1997–2006 and to evaluate the hypotheses by stratifying trends by cleft category. Methods This study was a time–trend analysis of infants born alive with oral clefts in the Netherlands during 1997–2006 and registered in the national oral cleft registry. The authors calculated prevalence rates and the estimated annual percentage change (EAPC) for all oral clefts and the two categories. Results In 1997–2006, 3308 infants out of 1 970 872 live births had oral clefts, an overall prevalence per 10 000 live births of 16.8 (CL±P: 11.3; CP: 5.5). Time–trend analysis showed that the prevalence of all oral clefts decreased (EAPC −1.8%; 95% CI: –3.0% to −0.6%), as did the CL±P prevalence (EAPC −2.3%; 95% CI: −3.8% to −0.9%). No significant trends were found for the CP prevalence. Conclusions Because the live-birth prevalence of CL±P decreased, that of all oral clefts decreased. These findings are in line with both hypotheses and may therefore have implications for prenatal counselling and folic acid policy.
THE SPITZER EXTRAGALACTIC REPRESENTATIVE VOLUME SURVEY: THE ENVIRONMENTS OF HIGH-z SDSS QUASI-STELLAR OBJECTS

This paper presents a study of the environments of SDSS quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) in the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS). We concentrate on the high-redshift QSOs as these have not been studied in large numbers with data of this depth before. We use the IRAC 3.6–4.5 μm color of objects and ancillary r-band data to filter out as much foreground contamination as possible. This technique allows us to find a significant (>4σ) overdensity of galaxies around QSOs in a redshift bin centered on z ∼ 2.0 and an (>2σ) overdensity of galaxies around QSOs in a redshift bin centered on z ∼ 3.3. We compare our findings to the predictions of a semi-analytic galaxy formation model, based on the ΛCDM millennium simulation, and find for both redshift bins that the model predictions match well the source density we have measured from the SERVS data.
Developmental and Activity-Dependent miRNA Expression Profiling in Primary Hippocampal Neuron Cultures

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved non-coding RNAs of ∼22 nucleotides that regulate gene expression at the level of translation and play vital roles in hippocampal neuron development, function and plasticity. Here, we performed a systematic and in-depth analysis of miRNA expression profiles in cultured hippocampal neurons during development and after induction of neuronal activity. MiRNA profiling of primary hippocampal cultures was carried out using locked nucleic-acid-based miRNA arrays. The expression of 264 different miRNAs was tested in young neurons, at various developmental stages (stage 2–4) and in mature fully differentiated neurons (stage 5) following the induction of neuronal activity using chemical stimulation protocols. We identified 210 miRNAs in mature hippocampal neurons; the expression of most neuronal miRNAs is low at early stages of development and steadily increases during neuronal differentiation. We found a specific subset of 14 miRNAs with reduced expression at stage 3 and showed that sustained expression of these miRNAs stimulates axonal outgrowth. Expression profiling following induction of neuronal activity demonstrates that 51 miRNAs, including miR-134, miR-146, miR-181, miR-185, miR-191 and miR-200a show altered patterns of expression after NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity, and 31 miRNAs, including miR-107, miR-134, miR-470 and miR-546 were upregulated by homeostatic plasticity protocols. Our results indicate that specific miRNA expression profiles correlate with changes in neuronal development and neuronal activity. Identification and characterization of miRNA targets may further elucidate translational control mechanisms involved in hippocampal development, differentiation and activity-depended processes.
Nuclear Localization of Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling-1 Regulates Local Immunity in the Lung

Suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1) is a negative feedback inhibitor of cytoplasmic Janus kinase and signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) signaling. SOCS1 also contains a nuclear localization sequence (NLS), yet, the in vivo importance of nuclear translocation is unknown. We generated transgenic mice containing mutated Socs1ΔNLS that fails to translocate in the cell nucleus (MGLtg mice). Whereas mice fully deficient for SOCS1 die within the first 3 weeks due to excessive interferon signaling and multiorgan inflammation, mice expressing only non-nuclear Socs1ΔNLS (Socs1−/−MGLtg mice) were rescued from early lethality. Canonical interferon gamma signaling was still functional in Socs1−/−MGLtg mice as shown by unaltered tyrosine phosphorylation of STAT1 and whole genome expression analysis. However, a subset of NFκB inducible genes was dysregulated. Socs1−/−MGLtg mice spontaneously developed low-grade inflammation in the lung and had elevated Th2-type cytokines. Upon ovalbumin sensitization and challenge, airway eosinophilia was increased in Socs1−/−MGLtg mice. Decreased transepithelial electrical resistance in trachea epithelial cells from Socs1−/−MGLtg mice suggests disrupted epithelial cell barrier. The results indicate that nuclear SOCS1 is a regulator of local immunity in the lung and unravel a so far unrecognized function for SOCS1 in the cell nucleus.
Morpheme-based product features categorization in Chinese reviews mining

Pursuing on the analysis of product reviews, an unsupervised product features categorization method is proposed. Morphemes as smallest linguistic meaningful unit are induced in measuring the intra relationship among product features instead of words. Opinion words around product features are chosen to represent the inter relationship among product features instead of full context information. The information gotten from active product features are utilized as constraints to enhance the whole categorization quality. Experimental results show that morpheme has greater linguistic significance than word in Chinese reviews. The opinion words are very important features in measuring the semantic similarity of their associated product features. The proposed method achieves better performance.
Magnetic Enhancement of Cell Retention, Engraftment, and Functional Benefit after Intracoronary Delivery of Cardiac-Derived Stem Cells in a Rat Model of Ischemia/Reperfusion

The efficiency of stem cell transplantation is limited by low cell retention. Intracoronary (IC) delivery is convenient and widely used but exhibits particularly low cell retention rates. We sought to improve IC cell retention by magnetic targeting. Rat cardiosphere-derived cells labeled with iron microspheres were injected into the left ventricular cavity of syngeneic rats during brief aortic clamping. Placement of a 1.3 Tesla magnet ~1 cm above the heart during and after cell injection enhanced cell retention at 24 h by 5.2–6.4-fold when 1, 3, or 5 × 105 cells were infused, without elevation of serum troponin I (sTnI) levels. Higher cell doses (1 or 2 × 106 cells) did raise sTnI levels, due to microvascular obstruction; in this range, magnetic enhancement did not improve cell retention. To assess efficacy, 5 × 105 iron-labeled, GFP-expressing cells were infused into rat hearts after 45 min ischemia/20 min reperfusion of the left anterior coronary artery, with and without a superimposed magnet. By quantitative PCR and optical imaging, magnetic targeting increased cardiac retention of transplanted cells at 24 h, and decreased migration into the lungs. The enhanced cell engraftment persisted for at least 3 weeks, at which time left ventricular remodeling was attenuated, and therapeutic benefit (ejection fraction) was higher, in the magnetic targeting group. Histology revealed more GFP+ cardiomyocytes, Ki67+ cardiomyocytes and GFP-/ckit+ cells, and fewer TUNEL+ cells, in hearts from the magnetic targeting group. In a rat model of ischemia/reperfusion injury, magnetically enhanced intracoronary cell delivery is safe and improves cell therapy outcomes.
High performance SHA-2 core using the Round Pipelined Technique

Secured Hashing Algorithms are used to ensure the integrity and authenticity of data and data origin in order to achieve higher level of security. A proposed design for SHA-2 hashing functions (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512) are implemented with fully iterative and pipelined architecture using Verilog HDL. For every hashing operation, throughput per slice plays a major role in optimized hardware design. In order to improve throughput per slice, the proposed design uses a Round Pipelined Technique (RPT) in hash functions. The SHA-2 algorithm outputs a message digest / hash of size 224, 256, 384 and 512-bits. Proposed research investigates optimization techniques in terms of area and frequency for SHA-2 hash functions on the FPGA and achieves higher throughput per slice. The proposed architecture is implemented on Xilinx Virtex-6 xc6vlx550t-2ff1759 FPGA device. Further, the fully iterative and Round Pipelined Technique based architectures are compared in terms of frequency and throughput per slice with other known published results. The proposed design for SHA-256 and SHA-512 with Round Pipelined Technique exhibits throughput per slice improvement of 57% and 17% respectively than other implementations.
Positive correlation between variants of lipid metabolism-related genes and coronary heart disease

Four gene variants related to lipid metabolism (including the rs562338 and rs503662 variants of the APOB gene, the rs7767084 variant of the LPA gene and the rs2246942 variant of the LIPA gene) have been shown to be associated with coronary heart disease (CHD). The aim of the present study was to assess their association with CHD in the Han Chinese population and to assess the contribution of these gene variants to CHD. Using the standardized coronary angiography method, we enrolled 290 CHD patients and 193 non-CHD patients as non-CHD controls from Lihuili Hospital (Ningbo, China). In addition, we recruited 330 unrelated healthy volunteers as healthy controls from the Xi Men Community (Ningbo, China). Our results demonstrated that the rs503662 and rs562338 variants of the APOB gene were extremely rare in the Han Chinese population (minor allele frequency <1%). Genotype rs2246942-GG of the LIPA gene was associated with an increased risk of CHD [CHD cases versus healthy controls: P=0.04; odds ratio (OR)=1.63; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.02–2.60). Genotype rs7767084-CC of the LPA gene was identified as a protective factor against CHD in females (CHD cases versus non-CHD controls: P=0.04, OR=0.21; CHD cases versus healthy controls: P=0.02, OR=0.21). The results of our meta-analysis indicated that rs7767084 was not associated with a high risk of CHD (P=0.83; combined OR=0.93; 95% CI=0.47–1.85). In the present study, two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of genes involved in lipid metabolism (rs2246942 and rs7767084) were identified to be significantly associated with CHD in the Han Chinese population. Specifically, rs2246942-GG of the LIPA gene was a risk factor for CHD, while rs7767084-CC of the LPA gene was a protective factor against CHD in females. However, our meta-analysis indicated that rs7767084 is not associated with a higher risk of CHD.
Lapped solid textures: filling a model with anisotropic textures

We present a method for representing solid objects with spatially-varying oriented textures by repeatedly pasting solid texture exemplars. The underlying concept is to extend the 2D texture patch-pasting approach of lapped textures to 3D solids using a tetrahedral mesh and 3D texture patches. The system places texture patches according to the user-defined volumetric tensor fields over the mesh to represent oriented textures. We have also extended the original technique to handle nonhomogeneous textures for creating solid models whose textural patterns change gradually along the depth fields. We identify several texture types considering the amount of anisotropy and spatial variation and provide a tailored user interface for each. With our simple framework, large-scale realistic solid models can be created easily with little memory and computational cost. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with several examples including trees, fruits, and vegetables.
Energy value of medium-chain triglycerides in muffins fed to rats

This study was designed to determine the energy values of three commercially available medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), using young rats as the test model. These MCTs, with slightly different C-8 to C610 fatty acid ratios, replaced shortening in a muffin formula and represented, through muffins added to the diet, 40% of total dietary energy. The increase observed in rats' carcass energy due to MCTs fed over a three-week period formed the basis of calculating energy values. Rats fed MCTs deposited significantly (P<0.05) less fat in their carcass than did those fed a conventional fat (baker's shortening). Primarily because of this, calculations showed that the MCTs tested had an average energy value of 6,9 t 0.4 cal/g, a value about one-fourth lower than that of conventional fats. All MCTs were slightly better digested than the baker's shortening
Is Vegetarianism a Diet? Implicit Associations of Vegetarians and Omnivores on a Vegetarian Campus

This study examines the differences in implicit attitudes toward meat and vegetables in religious vegetarians and omnivores on a religious, vegetarian campus. Response times and error rates from the Implicit Association Task (IAT) were used to examine whether external diet commitments consistently affect internal attitudes. We found a significant main effect of diet on IAT responses, but no significant interaction of diet with a self-control depleting task. Thus, participants' explicit responses were by far the strongest predictor of their implicit attitudes, demonstrating that, unlike short-term dietary choices, long-term dietary choices are robust in the face of self-control depletion.
Multigroup classification of audio signals using time-frequency parameters

The ongoing advancements in the multimedia technologies drive the need for efficient classification of the audio signals to make the content-based retrieval process more accurate and much easier from huge databases. The challenge of this task lies in an accurate extraction of signal characteristics so as to derive a strong discriminatory feature suitable for classification. In this paper, a time-frequency (TF) approach for audio classification is proposed. Audio signals are nonstationary in nature and TF approach is the best way to analyze them. The audio signals were decomposed using an adaptive TF decomposition algorithm, and the signal decomposition parameter based on octave (scaling) was used to generate a set of 42 features over three frequency bands within the auditory range. These features were analyzed using linear discriminant functions and classified into six music groups (rock, classical, country, jazz, folk and pop). Overall classification accuracies as high as 97.6 % was achieved by linear discriminant analysis of 170 audio signals.
Stream data gathering in wireless sensor networks within expected lifetime

Sensor networks aim at collecting important sensor data for environment monitoring, e-health or hazardous conditions. Some applications do not need sensor networks with a long lifetime, such as monitoring an erupting volcano or monitoring hazardous conditions. These applications generally expect that sensor networks have reliable performance and provide continuous data streams during a short expected lifetime. In this work, we investigate the stream data gathering problem in sensor networks within an expected lifetime. Two important problems for stream data gathering are: 1) maximizing stream data gathering in wireless sensor networks within an expected lifetime; 2) minimizing transmission delay for stream data gathering in wireless sensor networks within an expected lifetime. The Maximum Stream Data Gathering (MSDG) algorithm and the Minimum Transmission Delay (MTD) algorithm are proposed to solve these two problems. Simulation results show that our algorithms can essentially solve the identified problems.
Analyzing and relating bug report data for feature tracking

Gaining higher level evolutionary information aboutlarge software systems is a key in validating past and adjustingfuture development processes. In this paper, we analyzethe proximity of software features based on modificationand problem report data that capture the system's evolutionhistory. Features are instrumented and tracked, therelationships of modification and problem reports to thesefeatures are established, and the tracked features are visualizedto illustrate their otherwise hidden dependencies.Our approach uncovers these hidden relationships betweenfeatures via problem report analysis and presents them ineasy-to-evaluate visual form. Particular feature dependenciesthen can be selected to assess the feature evolution byzooming in into an arbitrary level of detail. Such visualizationof interwoven features, therefore, can indicate locationsof design erosion in the architectural evolution of asoftware system. Our approach has been validated usingthe large open source software project of Mozilla and itsbug reporting system Bugzilla.
Dividing Transactional Memories by Zero

Software transactional memory (STM) is a promising technique for writing concurrent programs. So far, most STM approaches have been experimentally evaluated with small-scale microbenchmarks. In this paper, we present several surprising results from implementing and experimenting with STMBench7 – a large scale benchmark for STMs. First, all STMs we used crashed, at some point or another, when running STMBench7. This was mainly due to memory management limitations. This means that, in practice, none of the tested STMs was truly unbounded and dynamic, which are the actual motivations for moving away from hardware transactional memories (HTM). Performance results we gathered also differ from previously published results. We found, for instance, that conflict detection and contention management have the biggest performance impact, way more than other aspects, like the choice of lock-based or obstruction-free implementation, as typically highlighted. Implementation of STMBench7 with various STMs also revealed several programming related issues such as the lack of support for external libraries and only partial support for object oriented features. These issues prove to be a major limitation when adapting STMs for production use. Our work is by no means a bashing of prior work on STMs. All STMs we considered are very well designed and implemented. What we highlight here is that providing genuinely unbounded transactions is a hard and complicated task, but full of interesting technical and research problems. Solutions to these problems should be evaluated against large scale benchmarks, like STMBench7.
Framework of outcomes for young people

Young people access a range of services, from schools to social work, homelessness support to hospitals, youth work to youth justice. An important feature of many of these services is their support for the process of personal and social development, through which young people develop social and emotional capabilities, including determination, self-control, persistence and self-motivation. Social and emotional capabilities are sometimes also referred to as ‘soft skills’, or non-cognitive skills, because they refer to the skills and abilities that are not measured by standard cognitive tests. These capabilities are important for their own merit and for their significance in achieving other outcomes. In other words, these services work with young people to achieve personal change in their lives, which itself can lead to positional change in their circumstances.
Benchmarking a MapReduce Environment on a Full Virtualisation Platform

This work analyses the performance of Hadoop, an implementation of the MapReduce programming model for distributed parallel computing, executing on a virtualisation environment comprised of 1+16 nodes running the VMWare workstation software. A set of experiments using the standard Hadoop benchmarks has been designed in order to determine whether or not significant reductions in the execution time of computations are experienced using Hadoop on this virtualisation platform on a local area network. Our findings indicate that a significant decrease in computing times is observed under these conditions. They also highlight how overheads and virtualisation in a distributed environment hinder the possibility of achieving the maximum (peak) performance.
Information acquisition of a micro/nano displacement for piezoelectric actuator sensor based on DSP2812

A novel micro/nano displacement based on multi-stage expansion mechanism is presented. It combines the accuracy mechanism technology and real-time fine electronic technology. The paper focuses on from the working principle electronic information acquisition, hardware design to signal processing as well as the characteristic experiment and so on. Micro/nano displacement was detected using four strain resistances pasted on elastomer which links to flexible hinges. It can obtain the displacement after mechanical expansion. After that, the signal needs electronic amplification, low-pass filter to get amplified useful signal from polluted weak signal, then send to AD977A for conversion from analog to digital. Then the data were sent to DSP2812 which handles the signal processing using FIR filer, besides, data can display and communicate with the upper PC. In the end, some correlative experiments have been made, the experiment data show that the sensor can perceive the displacement of the PZT actuator in micro/nano scale, also the circuit hardware system can enhance the signal's static output real-time, higher linearity and resolution.
Plasmid-amplified comS enhances genetic competence and suppresses sinR in Bacillus subtilis

The establishment of genetic competence in Bacillus subtilis is controlled by a vast signal transduction network involving the products of genes that function in several postexponential-phase processes. Two of these proteins, SinR and DegU, serve as molecular switches that influence a cell's decision to undergo either sporulation or genetic competence development. In order to determine the roles of SinR and DegU in competence control, multicopy suppression experiments with plasmid-amplified comS, SinR, and degU genes were undertaken. Multicopy comS was found to elevate competence gene transcription and transformation efficiency in both wild-type and sinR mutant cells but not in degU mutant cells. Multicopy degU failed to suppress comS or sinR mutations. No suppression of comS or degU by multicopy sinR was observed. The expression of a comS'::'lacZ translational fusion and srf-lacZ operon fusion was examined in sinR cells and cells bearing plasmid-amplified sinR. The expression of comS'::'lacZ gene fusion was reduced by the sinR mutation, but both comS'::'lacZ and srf-lacZ were repressed by multicopy sinR. Cells bearing plasmid-amplified sinR were poorly competent. These results suggest that sinR is required for optimal comS expression but not transcription from the srf promoter and that SinR at high concentrations represses srf transcription initiation.