Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Increased Dietary Supply of Medium-Chain Fatty Acids during Early Weaning in Rodents Prevents Excessive Fat Accumulation in Adulthood

Medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) are a directly and readily absorbed source of energy. Exposure early-in-life to increased MCFA levels might affect development and impact (lipid) metabolism later in life. We tested whether an increased MCFA intake early-in-life positively affects adult body composition and metabolic status when challenged by a western-style diet (WSD). Male offspring of C57Bl/6j mice and Wistar rats were fed a control diet (CTRL; 10 w% fat, 14% MCFA) or a medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) diet with 20% MCFA until postnatal (PN) day 42, whereupon animals were fed a WSD (10 w% fat) until PN day 98. Body composition was monitored by Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA). In rats, glucose homeostasis was assessed by glucose tolerance test (GTT) and insulin tolerance test (ITT); in mice, the HOmeostasis Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) was calculated. At autopsy on PN day 98, plasma lipid profiles, glucose, insulin, and adipokines were measured; organs and fat pads were collected and the adipocyte size distribution was analysed. Milk analysis in mice showed that the maternal MCT diet was not translated into milk, and pups were thus only exposed to high MCT levels from early weaning onward: PN day 16 until 42. Mice exposed to MCT showed 28% less fat accumulation vs. CTRL during WSD. The average adipocyte cell size, fasting plasma triglycerides (TG), and leptin levels were reduced in MCT mice. In rats, no effects were found on the adult body composition, but the adipocyte cell size distribution shifted towards smaller adipocytes. Particularly mice showed positive effects on glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity. Increased MCFA intake early-in-life protected against the detrimental effects of an obesogenic diet in adulthood.
Break Down in Order To Build Up: Decomposing Small Molecules for Fragment-Based Drug Design with eMolFrag

Constructing high-quality libraries of molecular building blocks is essential for successful fragment-based drug discovery. In this communication, we describe eMolFrag, a new open-source software to decompose organic compounds into nonredundant fragments retaining molecular connectivity information. Given a collection of molecules, eMolFrag generates a set of unique fragments comprising larger moieties, bricks, and smaller linkers connecting bricks. These building blocks can subsequently be used to construct virtual screening libraries for targeted drug discovery. The robustness and computational performance of eMolFrag is assessed against the Directory of Useful Decoys, Enhanced database conducted in serial and parallel modes with up to 16 computing cores. Further, the application of eMolFrag in de novo drug design is illustrated using the adenosine receptor. eMolFrag is implemented in Python, and it is available as stand-alone software and a web server at www.brylinski. org/emolfrag and https://github.com/liutairan/eMolFrag.
Experimental investigation on the progressive failure mechanism of solder balls during ball shear test

The present study is aimed at establishing the mechanics foundation of solder ball shear tests for evaluating the solder ball attachment strength of BGA packages. In particular, the emphasis is placed on understanding the progressive failure mechanism during the ball shear test. In this paper, an experimental investigation is presented. Specimens with BGA solder balls are fabricated and a series of ball shear tests is conducted. The shear ram is stopped at various stages during the ball shear test. The specimens are cross-sectioned for SEM inspection. The observed failure modes are characterized and correlated to the corresponding shear loading curves. The current experimental results can lead to a profound understanding in the failure mechanism of solder balls under mechanical shear loading. Furthermore, the outcome of the present study may provide a valuable database for the validation of computational modeling.
Performance and Implications of RAN Caching in LTE Mobile Networks: A Real Traffic Analysis

Deploying caches in mobile networks, especially in the radio access network (RAN) is regarded as a promising way to improve mobile user experiences and alleviate the increasing pressure of traffic growth. However, the characteristics of mobile traffic and the performance of RAN caching still remains unclear. In this paper, we extensively analyze the traffic characteristics, the content popularity and the cache performance using a unique dataset collected from a commercial LTE network of China Mobile, from the perspective of mobile access network. The dataset spans nearly a week and consists of a collection of approximately 62.1 millions HTTP sessions, generated by more than 3200 users distributed across three base stations. Based on this realistic dataset, we observe that HTTP traffic can be reduced by 24.4% on average and the hit ratio can reach up to 42.2%, using 100GB cache size. The implications on some fundamental design issues of practical RAN caching systems, including reasonable size of RAN cache, suitable locations of cache deployment and potential benefits of collaborative RAN caching, are further presented. We believe our findings will shed light on practical RAN caching system design.
Exposure to Sodium Valproate during Pregnancy: Facial Features and Signs of Autism.

BACKGROUND Valproic acid (VPA) is the most teratogenic anticonvulsant drug in clinical use today. Children exposed prenatally to VPA have previously been shown to have dysmorphic craniofacial features, identified subjectively but not by anthropometric methods. Exposure to VPA has also been associated with an increased frequency of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An increased cephalic index (the ratio of the cranial lateral width to the cranial anterior-posterior length) has been observed in children with ASD. METHODS Forty-seven children exposed to VPA during the first trimester of pregnancy were evaluated for dysmorphic facial features, identified subjectively and by measurements. Each VPA-exposed child was evaluated for ASD using the Social Communication Questionnaire, Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised, and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. The same physical examination was carried out on an unexposed comparison group of 126 children. The unexposed children also had testing for cognitive performance by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. RESULTS Several dysmorphic craniofacial features, including telecanthus, wide philtrum, and increased length of the upper lip were identified subjectively. Anthropometric measurements confirmed the increased intercanthal distance and documented additional findings, including an increased cephalic index and decreased head circumference/height index. There were no differences between the craniofacial features of VPA-exposed children with and without ASD. CONCLUSION An increased frequency of dysmorphic craniofacial features was identified in children exposed to VPA during the first trimester of pregnancy. The most consistent finding was a larger cephalic index, which indicates a disproportion of increased width of the skull relative to the shortened anterior-posterior length. Birth Defects Research 109:1134-1143, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Inter-rater reliability of DartfishTM movement analysis software for measuring maximum flexion and extension at the hip and knee in older adults with osteoporosis and osteopenia

ABSTRACT Various methods are used to measure hip and knee joint motion angles; however, their use is often limited by cost or inability to measure dynamic movements. The assessment of movement patterns is clinically useful in individuals with osteoporosis (OP) and osteopenia (OPe) through its potential to optimize fracture risk assessment. This study evaluates the inter-rater reliability of using DartfishTM 2-D Motion Analysis Software to measure maximum flexion and extension angles at the hip and knee in individuals with OP or OPe while performing five tasks of the Safe Functional Motion test. Twelve participants were videotaped performing the pour, footwear, newspaper, sweep, and sit-to-floor tasks. Five raters used DartfishTM to analyze maximum flexion and extension angles at the hip and knee, and an intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) and SEM were calculated for each measurement. In all five tasks, ICC and SEM values ranged from 0.23 to 0.95, and 1.75 to 11.54 degrees, respectively, with maximum knee flexion angles generally having higher ICC, and lower SEM point estimates. The results indicate that DartfishTM measurements of maximum knee flexion angles in uniplanar tasks demonstrate a moderate to excellent degree of inter-rater reliability, while measurements at the hip joint should be used with caution. Given that the results of this study display moderate to excellent reliability, they lay the groundwork for future research aimed at determining the validity of these measurements. Such research would help to further develop the base of evidence surrounding the usefulness of DartfishTM Motion Analysis in fracture risk analysis among individuals with OP.
Associations of Physical Activity and Obesity With the Risk of Developing the Metabolic Syndrome in Law Enforcement Officers

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the associations of physical activity and body mass index (BMI) with the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in police officers. Methods: Self-reported physical activity, MetS, and a modified MetS (MMetS, excluding obesity) were assessed in 448 officers. Results: Of the officers, 27.5% had MetS, 48.7% were overweight, and 31.7% were obese. Being overweight and obese increased the MetS risk by 6.8- and 10.9-fold, respectively, independent of physical activity level. Moderate and low levels of physical activity were associated with a 1.9- and 2.5-fold increased risk for MetS, but not after adjusting for BMI. However, within BMI categories, the risk for MMetS was lower as physical activity increased. Conclusion: In police, a higher BMI is more critical than reduced physical activity for MetS risk; however, physical activity can attenuate some of the risk associated with a higher BMI.
The Mapping Distance - a Generalization of the Edit Distance - and its Application to Trees

Abstract: The edit distances has been widely used as an effective method to analyze similarity of compound data, which consist of multiple components, such as strings, trees and graphs. For example, the Levenshtein distance for strings is known to be effective to analyze DNA and proteins, and the Taı̈ distance and its variations are attracting wide attention of researchers who study tree-type data such as glycan, HTML-DOM-trees, parse trees of natural language processing and so on. The problem that we recognize here is that the way of engineering new edit distances was ad-hoc and lacked a unified view. To solve the problem, we introduce the concept of the mapping distance. The mapping distance framework can provide a unified view over various distance measures for compound data focusing on partial one-to-one mappings between data. These partial one-to-one mappings are a generalization of what are known as traces in the legacy study of edit distances. This is a clear contrast to the legacy edit distance framework, which define distances between compound data through edit operations and edit paths. Our framework enables us to design new distance measures consistently, and also, various distance measures can be described using a small number of parameters. In fact, in this paper, we take rooted trees as an example and introduce three independent dimensions to parameterize mapping distance measures. As a result, we define 16 mapping distance measures, 13 of which are novel. In experiments, we discover that some novel measures outperform the others including the legacy edit distances in accuracy when used with the k-NN classifier.
Initial biomechanical properties of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction autografts.

: To provide more information to consider when selecting a reconstruction technique, we did a side-by-side comparison of some of the initial biomechanical properties of currently accepted reconstruction methods. Our research hypotheses were that a quadrupled, woven semitendinosus and gracilis graft is as strong as any of the other commonly used graft materials and that quadrupling and weaving the hamstring graft may increase the stiffness of the overall construct Using lower extremity cadaveric specimens harvested from young donors, we fashioned seven each of seven types of graft: 9-mm, 10-mm, and 11-mm-wide patellar tendon graft (PTG); 10-mm-wide central quadriceps tendon graft; doubled semitendinosus graft; tripled semitendinosus graft; and quadrupled, woven semitendinosus and gracilis graft. Specimens were stripped of remaining soft tissue, and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) constructs were created for biomechanical testing. The tibia was translated anteriorly on the femur, mimicking a pivot shift maneuver, andfailure strength, failure mechanism, and construct stiffness were recorded. No differences in mean strength were detected. The quadrupled, woven graft was significantly stiffer than the doubled semitendinosus graft and no less stiff than any of the PTG constructs. All grafts showed similar and adequate initial absolute strength to reconstruct the ACL. Quadrupling and weaving the semitendinosus and gracilis graft increases the stiffness of the reconstructed specimen to a level statistically similar to that of specimens reconstructed with a PTG.
Matching Image with Multiple Local Features

In this paper, we present the fusional feature composed of Affine-SIFT, MSER and color moment invariants. The fusional feature is more robust and distinctive than a single local feature. Instead of adding three local features together simply, an efficient two-level matching strategy is devised with the fusional feature, which speeds up the establishment of the local correspondences. To remove partial false positives, an affine transformation is estimated with the weighted RANSAC which decreases iteration times. The experimental results show that our approach can achieve more accurate correspondence. We prospect to apply the fusional feature and match strategy to image retrieval in the end.
Advanced solid elements for sheet metal forming simulation

The solid-shells are an attractive kind of element for the simulation of forming processes, due to the fact that any kind of generic 3D constitutive law can be employed without any additional hypothesis. The present work consists in the improvement of a triangular prism solid-shell originally developed by Flores[2, 3]. The solid-shell can be used in the analysis of thin/thick shell, undergoing large deformations. The element is formulated in total Lagrangian formulation, and employs the neighbour (adjacent) elements to perform a local patch to enrich the displacement field. In the original formulation a modified right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor (C) is obtained; in the present work a modified deformation gradient (F) is obtained, which allows to generalise the methodology and allows to employ the Pull-Back and Push-Forwards operations. The element is based in three modifications: (a) a classical assumed strain approach for transverse shear strains (b) an assumed strain approach for the in-plane components using information from neighbour elements and (c) an averaging of the volumetric strain over the element. The objective is to use this type of elements for the simulation of shells avoiding transverse shear locking, improving the membrane behaviour of the in-plane triangle and to handle quasi-incompressible materials or materials with isochoric plastic flow.
Customer Acceptance of Pro-Active Services - a Scenario-based Empirical Study

Advances in Information Technology (IT) have changed the nature of services, letting it become increasingly digitized. Pro-active services represent a new kind of digital service delivery model promising added value for the receiver of the service who can consume a service without being concerned about its initiation. However, research has provided neither adequate conceptualizations for these novel digital services nor insights into customers’ attitudes and readiness to accept them. To our knowledge, the present study is first in filling this research gap. We provide three metaphors, simplification, enhancement and outsourcing, for different classes of pro-active services. Moreover, we develop a causal model for explaining customer acceptance of pro-active services that is evaluated quantitatively adopting a scenario-based approach for an enhancement service. As an example we choose the readiness of students to accept a pro-active digital service from their education provider. Our findings reveal outcome evaluation as the strongest predictor of attitude. Additionally, attitude is determined by control beliefs and trust. Attitude towards pro-active service affects the customer’s willingness to accept the pro-active service. The presented findings help service organizations in designing pro-actives services that are presumably accepted by customers.
Recovery of aquatic insect‐mediated methylmercury flux from ponds following drying disturbance

Small ponds exist across a permanence gradient, and pond permanence is hypothesized to be a primary determinant of insect community structure and insect‐mediated methylmercury (MeHg) flux from ponds to the surrounding terrestrial landscape. The present study describes the first experiment examining the recovery of insect‐mediated MeHg flux following a drying disturbance that converted permanent ponds with insectivorous fish to semipermanent ponds without fish. Floating emergence traps were used to collect emergent insects for 10 wk in the spring and summer from 5 ponds with fish (permanent) and 5 ponds that were drained to remove fish, dried, and refilled with water (semipermanent). During the 73‐d period after semipermanent ponds were refilled, total MeHg flux from semipermanent ponds was not significantly different than total MeHg flux from permanent ponds, indicating that insect‐mediated MeHg flux had rapidly recovered in semipermanent ponds following the drying disturbance. Methylmercury fluxes from dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera) and phantom midges (Diptera: Chaoboridae) were significantly greater from newly refilled semipermanent ponds than permanent ponds, but the MeHg fluxes from the other 8 emergent insect taxa did not differ between treatments. The present study demonstrates the impact of drying disturbance and the effect of community structure on the cross‐system transport of contaminants from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:1986–1990. © 2017 SETAC
Accelerating Learning in Constructive Predictive Frameworks with the Successor Representation

We propose using the Successor Representation (SR) to accelerate learning in a constructive knowledge system based on General Value Functions (GVFs). In real-world settings, like robotics for unstructured and dynamic environments, it is impossible to model all meaningful aspects of a system and its environment by hand. Instead, robots must learn and adapt to changes in their environment and task, incrementally constructing models from their own experience. GVFs, taken from the field of reinforcement learning (RL), are a way of modeling the world as predictive questions. One approach to such models proposes a massive network of interconnected and interdependent GVFs, which are incrementally added over time. It is reasonable to expect that new, incrementally added predictions can be learned more swiftly if the learning process leverages knowledge gained from past experience. The SR provides a means of capturing regularities that can be reused across multiple GVFs by separating the dynamics of the world from the prediction targets. As a primary contribution of this work, we show that using the SR can improve sample efficiency and learning speed of GVFs in a continual learning setting where new predictions are incrementally added and learned over time. We analyze our approach in a grid-world and then demonstrate its potential on data from a physical robot arm.
General Introduction to Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)

Transmission electron microscopy is used to reveal sub-micrometre, internal fine structure in solids. Materials scientists tend to call this microstructure while bioscientists usually prefer the term ultrastructure. The amount and scale of the information which can be extracted by TEM depends critically on four parameters; the resolving power of the microscope (usually smaller than 0.3nm); the energy spread of the electron beam (often several eV); the thickness of the specimen (almost always significantly less than 1 μm), and; the composition and stability of the specimen. The first and second of these depend largely on the depth of your pocket ‐ the more you spend, the better the microscope parameters. The third is usually determined by your experimental skill while the last depends on luck or your choice of experimental system. The slim book by Goodhew et al. (Goodhew, Humphreys and Beanland,
A novel high performance 3×VDD-tolerant ESD detection circuit in advanced CMOS process

A novel high performance 3×VDD-tolerant electrostatic discharging (ESD) detection circuit using only 1×VDD devices was presented in a 28 nm 1.8V high-k metal-gate (HKMG) CMOS technology. A sub-path and an enhanced path were adopted in this novel design to increase its trigger current. Two small-sized PMOS transistors were employed to protect this circuit out of gate-oxide reliability issues under normal operating conditions. And there is only one capacitor in our novel circuit to maintain a small layout area. Under the ESD stress events, spectre-simulation results show that the trigger current of our proposed circuit can reach 36.4mA. And its leakage current is only 2.8 nA at 27°C, 243 nA at 120°C under normal operating conditions.
The Impact of Tobacco Consumption on Rural Household Expenditure and Self-rated Health Among Rural Household Members in China

ABSTRACT Objectives: To estimate how tobacco consumption affects household expenditure on other goods and services in rural China and to assess the tobacco consumption affects self-rated health among rural household members in China. Methods: A Seemingly Unrelated Regression was used to assess the impact of tobacco consumption on rural household expenditure. To detect tobacco consumption causing heterogeneity in self-rated health among adults in rural China, this study employed a random effects generalized ordered probit model. 2010–2014 China Family Panel Studies was used for the analysis. The data set included 3,611 households and 10,610 adults in each wave. Results: Tobacco consumption households assign significantly lower budget shares to food, health care, dress, and education in rural China. Moreover, self-rated health factor has a significantly positive coefficient with respect to non-smokers and ex-smokers, that is, when the individuals is a non-smoker or ex-smoker, he/ she will be more likely to report his/her health status as positive. Conclusions: The first analysis showed that tobacco consumption crowds out expenditures on food, dress, health care, and education for rural households in China, and the second analysis indicated that non-smokers and ex-smokers are more likely to report their health status as better compared with last year. The results of the present study revealed that Chinese policymakers might consider controlling tobacco consumption since tobacco control can improve not only rural household welfare but also rural household members' health status. Therefore, the tobacco tax policy and brief clinical interventions by the doctor should be implemented in rural China.