Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serum Heat Shock Protein 70 Levels Predict the Development of Atherosclerosis in Subjects With Established Hypertension

Abstract—Although heat shock proteins (Hsp’s) are present in the sera of healthy individuals and at elevated levels in subjects with early cardiovascular disease, their physiologic role in and value for predicting the development and/or progression of atherosclerosis have not been evaluated. Serum was obtained from 218 subjects with established hypertension (diastolic pressure >95 mm Hg) before their enrollment in the European Lacidipine Study on Atherosclerosis. Hsp60 and Hsp70, and anti-human Hsp60, anti-human Hsp70, and anti-mycobacterial Hsp65 antibody levels were measured by enzyme immunoassay. As an indicator of the presence/progression of atherosclerosis, the means of the maximum intima-media (I-M) thicknesses in the far walls of common carotid arteries and bifurcations (CBMmax) were determined by ultrasonography at the time of enrollment and 4 years afterward. Increases in I-M thicknesses at follow-up were less prevalent in subjects having high serum Hsp70 levels (75th percentile) at the time of enrollment (odds ratio, 0.42; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.22 to 0.8, P =0.008). Although a similar trend was observed for serum Hsp60 levels, this was not statistically significant (odds ratio, 0.6; 95% CI, 0.32 to 1.11, P =0.10). There was no relation between anti-Hsp antibody levels and changes in I-M thicknesses. The relation between Hsp70 levels and changes in I-M thickness was independent of age, atenolol or lacidipine treatment, smoking habits, and blood lipid levels. These findings indicate that circulating Hsp70 levels predict the development of atherosclerosis in subjects with established hypertension, and an intriguing possibility is that Hsp70 protects against or modifies the progression of atherosclerosis in this subject group.
Si Nanocrystal Memory Devices Self-Assembled by In Situ Rapid Thermal Annealing of Ultrathin a -Si on SiO2

Si-nanocrystal memories have been fabricated using the thermal agglomeration of an ultrathin (0.9-3.5 nm) amorphous Si (a-Si) film. The a-Si was deposited by electron beam evaporation followed by in situ annealing at 850°C for 5 min. Hemispherical nanocrystals were obtained with a dot density up to 3.9 X 10 11 cm -2 , and a stored charge density of 4.1 × 10 12 cm -2 (electron + hole) was achieved. The data retention characteristics of nanocrystal-embedded devices have shown a 1 V memory window after 100 h. Well-separated Si nanocrystals with a 23-32% surface-coverage ratio have been successfully demonstrated. The process compatibility of the proposed technique was also discussed.
Information technology outsourcing (ITO) governance: an examination of the outsourcing management maturity model

Given a lack of experience in outsourcing contractual management, firms involved in IT outsourcing (ITO) can encounter unexpectedly poor service quality improvement. As a guidance for better ITO activities, Raffoul (2002) introduced the outsourcing management maturity (OMM) model, a framework established to create effective vendor management structure, create measurable and enforceable service-level agreements (SLAs), implement formal processes, and drive vendors to improve service quality. This model was developed to enable outsourcing to be managed as an investment portfolio whereby cost is reduced, risks are mitigated, IT organization credibility is established, and outsourcing benefits are materialized in a timely manner. This paper questions if one or more aspects of this OMM model may be considered necessary success factors when applied in practice, particularly in the financial sector. This research, as part of a study on drivers for IT cost optimization and outsourcing, examines the elements of the OMM model in the context of several recent IT outsourcing contracts in the banking sector to see which of its elements are actively employed in successful contracts.
Molecular Detection of Avian Mycoplasmas in Poultry Affected with Respiratory Infections in Haryana (India)

Haryana is a small state of India but it is the 5 th largest in poultry population (Livestock census, 2012). There are many poultry pathogens which are responsible for huge economic losses to poultry industry through respiratory infections such as Mycoplasma, E. coli, Newcastle disease virus, Infectious bronchitis virus. The mycoplasmas do not have cell wall and are smallest self-replicating prokaryotes. There are mainly two Mycoplasma species which are pathogenic in nature viz. M. gallisepticum (MG) and M. synoviae (MS). In chickens M. gallisepticum causes Chronic Respiratory Disease and usually show loss of appetite, dullness, depression, tendency to huddle together, poor growth, emaciation, respiratory rales, tracheitis, air sacculitis, coughing, sneezing, International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 6 (2017) pp. 2155-2162 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Binding in working memory and frontal lobe in normal aging: is there any similarity with autism?

Some studies highlight similarities between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and healthy aging. Indeed, the decline in older individuals’ ability to create a unified representation of the individual features of an event is thought to arise from a disruption of binding within the episodic buffer of working memory (WM) as the same way as observed in ASD. In both cases, this deficit may result from an abnormal engagement of a frontohippocampal network. The objective of the present study is to identify both cognitive processes and neural substrates associated with the deficit of binding in WM in healthy aging. We studied the capacity of binding and the cognitive processes that might subtend its decline in 72 healthy participants aged 18–84 years. We examined the behavioral data in relation to the changes in brain metabolism associated with the age-related decline in a subgroup of 34 healthy participants aged 20–77 years using the resting-state [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET). Forward stepwise regression analyses showed that the age-related decline in binding was partially explained by a decline in inhibition and processing speed. PET correlation analyses indicated that metabolism of the frontal regions, anterior and middle cingulate cortices is implicated in this phenomenon. These data suggest that executive functions and processing speed may play a crucial role in the capacity to integrate unified representations in memory in aging. Possible implications are discussed in ASD.
On the Decay of Tropical Cyclone Winds Crossing Narrow Landmasses

A method is developed to adjust the Kaplan and DeMaria tropical cyclone inland wind decay model for storms that move over narrow landmasses. The basic assumption that the wind speed decay rate after landfall is proportional to the wind speed is modified to include a factor equal to the fraction of the storm circulation that is over land. The storm circulation is defined as a circular area with a fixed radius. Application of the modified model to Atlantic Ocean cases from 1967 to 2003 showed that a circulation radius of 110 km minimizes the bias in the total sample of landfalling cases and reduces the mean absolute error of the predicted maximum winds by about 12%. This radius is about 2 times the radius of maximum wind of a typical Atlantic tropical cyclone. The modified decay model was applied to the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS), which uses the Kaplan and DeMaria decay model to adjust the intensity for the portion of the predicted track that is over land. The modified decay model reduced the intensity forecast errors by up to 8% relative to the original decay model for cases from 2001 to 2004 in which the storm was within 500 km from land.
An affordable contactless security system access for restricted area

We present in this paper a security system based on identity verification process and a low-cost smart camera , intended to avoid unauthorized access to restricted area. The Le2i laboratory has a longstanding experience in smart cameras implementation and design [1], for example in the case of real-time classical face detection [2] or human fall detection [3]. The principle of the system, fully thought and designed in our laboratory, is as follows: the allowed user presents a RFID card to the reader based on Odalid system [4]. The card ID, time and date of authorized access are checked using connection to an online server. In the same time, multi-modality identity verification is performed using the camera. There are many ways to perform face recognition and face verification. As a first approach, we implemented a standard face localization using Haar cascade [5] and verification process based on Eigenfaces (feature extraction), with the ORL face data base (or AT&T) [6], and SVM (verification) [7]. On the one hand, the training step has been performed with 10-folds cross validation using the 3000 first faces from LFW face database [8] as unauthorized class and 20 known faces were used for the authorized class. On the other hand, the testing step has been performed using the rest of the LFW data base and 40 other faces from the same known person. The false positive and false negative rates are respectively 0,004% and 1,39% with a standard deviation of respectively 0,006% and 2,08%, considering a precision of 98,9% and a recall of 98,6%. The current PC based implementation has been designed to be easily deployed on a Raspberry Pi3 or similar based target. A combination of Eigenfaces [9], Fish-erfaces [9] , Local Binary Patterns [9] and Generalized Fourier Descriptors [10] will be also studied. However, it is known that the use of single modality such as standard face luminosity for identity control leads often to ergonomics problems due to the high intra-variability of human faces [11]. Recent work published in the literature and developed in our laboratory showed that it is possible to extract precise multispectral body information from standard camera. The next step and originality of our system will resides in the fact that we will consider Near Infrared or multi-spectral approach in order to improve the security level (decrease false positive rate) as well as ergonomics (decrease false negative rate). The proposed platform enables security access to be improved and original solutions based on specific illumination to be investigated.
Pointing and beyond: an operationalization and preliminary evaluation of multi-scale searching

A number of experimental studies based on domain-specific tasks have evaluated the efficiency of navigation techniques for searching multi-scale worlds. The discrepancies among their results call for a more generic framework similar in spirit to Fitts' reciprocal pointing task, but adapted to a task that significantly differs from pure pointing. We introduce such a framework based on an abstract task and evaluate how four multi-scale navigation techniques perform in one particular multi-scale world configuration. Experimental findings indicate that, in this context, pan & zoom combined with an overview is the most efficient technique of all four, and that focus + context techniques perform better than classical pan & zoom. We relate these findings to more realistic situations, discuss their applicability, and how the framework can be used to cover a broad range of situations.
The Theory of Critical Distances Applied to the Prediction of Brittle Fracture in Metallic Materials

The Theory of Critical Distances (TCD) is a general term for any of those methods of analysis which use continuum mechanics in conjunction with a characteristic material length constant, L. This paper discusses the use of two simple versions of the TCD: a pointstress approach which we call the Point Method (PM) and a line-average approach: the Line Method (LM). It is shown that they are able to predict the onset of unstable, brittle fracture in specimens of metallic materials containing notches of varying root radii. The approach was successful whatever the micromechanism of crack growth (cleavage or ductile tearing); values of L determined from experimental data were found to be broadly similar to microstructural quantities (e.g. grain size) but an understanding of the micromechanism of failure is not necessary since the TCD is a continuum-mechanics approach. The TCD, in this form, can be thought of as an extension of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM). Whereas LEFM requires one characteristic parameter (Kc), the TCD requires two parameters: Kc and L. The TCD is subject to many of the same limitations as LEFM: in particular it is shown here that the value of L varies with the level of constraint at the notch. However the use of the TCD greatly extends the applications of LEFM, allowing predictions to be made for notches and stress concentration features of any geometry for which an elastic stress analysis can be obtained. keyword: Theory of critical distances, brittle fracture, metals, constraint.
Computing discrete logarithms in the Jacobian of high-genus hyperelliptic curves over even characteristic finite fields

We describe improved versions of index-calculus algorithms for solving discrete logarithm problems in Jacobians of high-genus hyperelliptic curves de ned over even characteristic elds. Our rst improvement is to incorporate several ideas for the low-genus case by Gaudry and Theriault, including the large prime variant and using a smaller factor base, into the large-genus algorithm of Enge and Gaudry. We extend the analysis in [24] to our new algorithm, allowing us to predict accurately the number of random walk steps required to nd all relations, and to select optimal degree bounds for the factor base. Our second improvement is the adaptation of sieving techniques from Flassenberg and Paulus, and Jacobson to our setting. The new algorithms are applied to concrete problem instances arising from the Weil descent attack methodology for solving the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, demonstrating signi cant improvements in practice.
Nuclear Export and Import of Human Hepatitis B Virus Capsid Protein and Particles

It remains unclear what determines the subcellular localization of hepatitis B virus (HBV) core protein (HBc) and particles. To address this fundamental issue, we have identified four distinct HBc localization signals in the arginine rich domain (ARD) of HBc, using immunofluorescence confocal microscopy and fractionation/Western blot analysis. ARD consists of four tight clustering arginine-rich subdomains. ARD-I and ARD-III are associated with two co-dependent nuclear localization signals (NLS), while ARD-II and ARD-IV behave like two independent nuclear export signals (NES). This conclusion is based on five independent lines of experimental evidence: i) Using an HBV replication system in hepatoma cells, we demonstrated in a double-blind manner that only the HBc of mutant ARD-II+IV, among a total of 15 ARD mutants, can predominantly localize to the nucleus. ii) These results were confirmed using a chimera reporter system by placing mutant or wild type HBc trafficking signals in the heterologous context of SV40 large T antigen (LT). iii) By a heterokaryon or homokaryon analysis, the fusion protein of SV40 LT-HBc ARD appeared to transport from nuclei of transfected donor cells to nuclei of recipient cells, suggesting the existence of an NES in HBc ARD. This putative NES is leptomycin B resistant. iv) We demonstrated by co-immunoprecipitation that HBc ARD can physically interact with a cellular factor TAP/NXF1 (Tip-associated protein/nuclear export factor-1), which is known to be important for nuclear export of mRNA and proteins. Treatment with a TAP-specific siRNA strikingly shifted cytoplasmic HBc to nucleus, and led to a near 7-fold reduction of viral replication, and a near 10-fold reduction in HBsAg secretion. v) HBc of mutant ARD-II+IV was accumulated predominantly in the nucleus in a mouse model by hydrodynamic delivery. In addition to the revised map of NLS, our results suggest that HBc could shuttle rapidly between nucleus and cytoplasm via a novel TAP-dependent NES.
Assessing the scientific quality of review articles.

Why review articles? Review articles are useful to those involved in health care, whether they are providers, purchasers, or researchers, for two reasons. Firstly, they are one way of coping with huge volumes of published reports (the number of biomedical journals worldwide is increasing exponentially, with a doubling time of about 19 years'). Secondly, impressive examples now exist of the power of systematic reviews to provide reliable answers to important questions where previously the answers were lacking or wrong:2 for example, the effects ofsystemic treatment on early breast cancer,3 or of corticosteroids given to
Enhancing Topic Modeling for Short Texts with Auxiliary Word Embeddings

Many applications require semantic understanding of short texts, and inferring discriminative and coherent latent topics is a critical and fundamental task in these applications. Conventional topic models largely rely on word co-occurrences to derive topics from a collection of documents. However, due to the length of each document, short texts are much more sparse in terms of word co-occurrences. Recent studies show that the Dirichlet Multinomial Mixture (DMM) model is effective for topic inference over short texts by assuming that each piece of short text is generated by a single topic. However, DMM has two main limitations. First, even though it seems reasonable to assume that each short text has only one topic because of its shortness, the definition of “shortness” is subjective and the length of the short texts is dataset dependent. That is, the single-topic assumption may be too strong for some datasets. To address this limitation, we propose to model the topic number as a Poisson distribution, allowing each short text to be associated with a small number of topics (e.g., one to three topics). This model is named PDMM. Second, DMM (and also PDMM) does not have access to background knowledge (e.g., semantic relations between words) when modeling short texts. When a human being interprets a piece of short text, the understanding is not solely based on its content words, but also their semantic relations. Recent advances in word embeddings offer effective learning of word semantic relations from a large corpus. Such auxiliary word embeddings enable us to address the second limitation. To this end, we propose to promote the semantically related words under the same topic during the sampling process, by using the generalized Pólya urn (GPU) model. Through the GPU model, background knowledge about word semantic relations learned from millions of external documents can be easily exploited to improve topic modeling for short texts. By directly extending the PDMM model with the GPU model, we propose two more effective topic models for short texts, named GPU-DMM and GPU-PDMM. Through extensive experiments on two real-world short text collections in two languages, we demonstrate that PDMM achieves better topic representations than state-of-the-art models, measured by topic coherence. The learned topic representation leads to better accuracy in a text classification task, as an indirect evaluation. Both GPU-DMM and GPU-PDMM further improve topic coherence and text classification accuracy. GPU-PDMM outperforms GPU-DMM at the price of higher computational costs.
Active Joint Synchronization Control for a 2-DOF Redundantly Actuated Parallel Manipulator

This brief applies the synchronization to solve control problem of redundantly actuated parallel manipulators. With the synchronization method, a new controller termed active joint-synchronization (AJ-S) controller is developed for a 2-degree-of-freedom (DOF) redundantly actuated parallel manipulator. The dynamic model of the parallel manipulator is formulated in the active joint space, in which the internal force is calculated by the projection method and the friction is depicted with the Coulomb + viscous friction model. By defining the tracking error, synchronization error, coupled error, and the referenced trajectory vector of the active joints, the AJ-S controller based on the dynamic model is designed. And the AJ-S controller is proven to guarantee asymptotic convergence to zero of both tracking and synchronization errors by the Barbalat's lemma. The AJ-S controller is implemented in the trajectory tracking experiments of an actual 2-DOF redundantly actuated parallel manipulator, and the superiority of the AJ-S controller over the well-known tracking controller is studied.
Neural systems engineering

The quest to build an electronic computer based on the operational principles of biological brains has attracted attention over many years. The hope is that, by emulating the brain, it will be possible to capture some of its capabilities and thereby bridge the very large gulf that separates mankind from machines. At present, however, knowledge about the operational principles of the brain is far from complete, so attempts at emulation must employ a great deal of assumption and guesswork to fill the gaps in the experimental evidence. The sheer scale and complexity of the human brain still defies attempts to model it in its entirety at the neuronal level, but Moore's Law is closing this gap and machines with the potential to emulate the brain (so far as we can estimate the computing power required) are no more than a decade or so away. Do computer engineers have something to contribute, alongside neuroscientists, psychologists, mathematicians and others, to the understanding of brain and mind, which remains as one of the great frontiers of science?
Combined Distributional and Logical Semantics

We introduce a new approach to semantics which combines the benefits of distributional and formal logical semantics. Distributional models have been successful in modelling the meanings of content words, but logical semantics is necessary to adequately represent many function words. We follow formal semantics in mapping language to logical representations, but differ in that the relational constants used are induced by offline distributional clustering at the level of predicate-argument structure. Our clustering algorithm is highly scalable, allowing us to run on corpora the size of Gigaword. Different senses of a word are disambiguated based on their induced types. We outperform a variety of existing approaches on a wide-coverage question answering task, and demonstrate the ability to make complex multi-sentence inferences involving quantifiers on the FraCaS suite.