Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Telomere Length and the Risk of Atrial Fibrillation: Insights Into the Role of Biological Versus Chronological Aging

Background—Advanced age is the most important risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF); however, the mechanism remains unknown. Telomeres, regions of DNA that shorten with cell division, are considered reliable markers of biological aging. We sought to examine the association between leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and incident AF in a large population-based cohort using direct LTL measurements and genetic data. To further explore our findings, we compared atrial cell telomere length and LTL in cardiac surgery patients. Methods and Results—Mean LTL and the TERT rs2736100 single nucleotide polymorphism were assessed as predictors of incident AF in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS). Among the surgical patients, within subject comparison of atrial cell telomere length versus LTL was assessed. Among 1639 CHS participants, we observed no relationship between mean LTL and incident AF before and after adjustment for potential confounders (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.09; 95% confidence interval: 0.92–1.29; P=0.299); chronologic age remained strongly associated with AF in the same model. No association was observed between the TERT rs2736100 single nucleotide polymorphism and incident AF (adjusted hazard ratio: 0.95; 95% confidence interval: 0.88–1.04; P=0.265). In 35 cardiac surgery patients (26 with AF), atrial cell telomere length was longer than LTL (1.19±0.20 versus 1.02±0.25 [T/S ratio], P<0.001), a finding that remained consistent within the AF subgroup. Conclusions—Our study revealed no evidence of an association between LTL and incident AF and no evidence of relative atrial cell telomere shortening in AF. Chronological aging independent of biological markers of aging is the primary risk factor for AF.
QUARTERLY OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS

Solutions for the viscous incompressible flow along a right-angle corner have been found by a method of successive iteration. The algebraic nature of the asymptotic flow field has been utilized to provide boundary conditions for the numerical analysis. One arbitrary constant appearing in the asymptotic series has been determined by the elimination of interior mass sources that appear as a result of any inaccuracy in the value of this constant, allowing additional mass to cross the outer boundary. The numerical solution shows a swirling flow in the corner but a closed vortical pattern is not established.
Re-scaling, ‘scale fragmentation’ and the regulation of antagonistic relationships

Recent years have seen the emergence of what might be called a ‘re-scaling’ literature. This paper tries to combine this literature with insights from regulation theory in order to identify some of the ways in which antagonistic relationships are regulated in the after-Fordist period. It is argued that re-scaling not only affects (anti-)regulatory forces by manipulating the power distribution among different agents but also manipulates the ways in which agents perceive their own positionality. The propositions are illustrated with evidence from The Netherlands.
Building Vocabulary for Big Data Analytics

The explosion in Big Data Analytics research provides a massive amount of software capabilities, publications, and conference proceedings making it difficult to sift through and inter-relate it all. A vast amount of new terminology and professional jargon has been created and adopted for use in the recent years. It is not only important to comprehend the meaning of terms, but also understand how they contrast and synergize amongst each another. This paper serves to address the need of building a consistent vocabulary for the newly growing domain of Big Data Analytics. Understanding and adoption of common consistent vocabulary promotes interdisciplinary communication and collaboration and removes entrance barriers for anyone entering the growing world of Big Data Analytics. Using a stepby-step algorithm based on the bibliometric and content analyses of existing peer-reviewed literature, a sample Big Data Analytics vocabulary is built. The approach includes storing terms in the relational database and being able to retrieve and visualize corelated terms thus establishing connections between them. The step-by-step procedure described in the paper involves: 1) collection of data; 2) data manipulation such as elimination of duplicates, identification of synonyms, grammar forms of the same root words and variations in spelling; 3) calculation of frequency of use of the same term; and finally 4) generation of various reports including most frequently used terms per paper or per narrower category, or in future release – identification of most likely category based on the combination of co-located terms. For this current proof of concept effort, due to complexities and exceptions when dealing with natural language (English), some steps of this process cannot be fully automated, and hence require manual verification or adjustment, although considerable effort was made to minimize the amount of human intervention. The procedure can be repeated periodically with relative ease to observe and report possible changes in the dynamic field of Big Data Analytics and discover newly created vocabulary. Big Data Analytics was chosen for this project because of its characteristics of a not yet thoroughly documented but fast growing field with critical mass of published works already accumulated. This paper hopes to help with creation of educational materials and demarcation of the domain, while encouraging full research coverage in Big Data Analytics, by promoting discovery and articulation of common principles and solutions. Keywords—Big data analytics; domain; controlled vocabulary; keyword; content analysis
1 Watershed-scale surface runoff and water quality 2 response to climate change , urbanization , and 3 implementation of LIDs 4

The Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was used to evaluate the impact of 15 urbanization, climate change, and implementation of Low Impact Developments (LIDs) at the 16 Mahabad Dam watershed, Iran. Several scenarios of urbanization, with and without climate change 17 impacts, in different locations were defined, including near outlet, middle, far end, and whole 18 watershed. Climate change was considered to change the intensity of rainfall and increase 19 evaporation. Vegetative swales were implemented as LIDs to evaluate their applicability to reduce 20 pollutant loads. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the area was input into ArcGIS, and the 21 watershed was delineated using the ArcSWAT extension to identify topographic features. Water 22 quality properties were defined in the software, and each scenario was run for a twelve-hour 23 simulation. The results indicated that urbanization affects the imperviousness of sub-catchments, 24 and location of urbanization affects the amount and timing of runoff and pollutant yields. Fifty25 percent urbanization near the watershed outlet resulted in 23.1% and 27.4% increases in runoff and 26 pollutant loads, respectively. Fifty-percent urbanization in the middle resulted in 28.8% and 35.4% 27 increases in runoff and pollutant loads; and, at the far end, 23.1% and 3.9% increases in runoff and 28 pollutant loads were the result; Fifty-percent urbanizing the whole watershed gave 58.6% and 66.3% 29 increases in runoff and pollutant loads, respectively; Under climate change scenarios (higher 30 intensity, shorter duration rainfall) peaks occurred earlier. Moreover, results showed LIDs 31 decreased pollution loads up to 25%. 32
The Energy Efficiency of Database Replication Protocols

Replication is a widely used technique to provide high-availability to online services. While being an effective way to mask failures, replication comes at a price: at least twice as much hardware and energy are required to mask a single failure. In a context where the electricity drawn by data centers worldwide is increasing each year, there is a need to maximize the amount of useful work done per Joule, a metric denoted as energy efficiency. In this paper, we review commonly-used database replication protocols and experimentally measure their energy efficiency. We observe that the most efficient replication protocol achieves less than 60% of the energy efficiency of a stand-alone server on the TPC-C benchmark. We identify algorithmic techniques that can be used by any protocol to improve its efficiency. Some approaches improve performance, others lower power consumption. Of particular interest is a technique derived from primary-backup replication that implements a transaction log on low-power backups. We demonstrate how this approach can lead to an energy efficiency that is 79% of the one of a stand-alone server. This constitutes an important step towards reconciling replication with energy efficiency.
Utilizing Category Relevancy Factor for text categorization

One of the main preprocessing steps for having a high performance text classifier is feature weighting. Commonly used feature weighting methods such as TF and IDF-based methods only consider the distribution of a feature in the document(s) and do not consider class information for feature weighting. In this paper, we present TFCRF (Term Frequency and Category Relevancy Factor) method in which the weight of features depends on their power to discriminate the classes from each other by using class information. The results show significant improvement in the performance of SVM algorithm by using TFCRF feature weighting method in comparison to the other implemented standard feature weighting methods.
Parent knowledge of disease management in cystic fibrosis: Assessing behavioral treatment management

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life‐shortening, burdensome disease requiring complex knowledge to manage the disease. Significant gaps in knowledge have been documented for parents, which may lead to unintentionally poor adherence and insufficient transfer of treatment responsibility from parents to adolescents. There are no current, validated measures of parent knowledge for this population and there are no measures that assess the knowledge required for day‐to‐day behavioral management of CF. We assessed the psychometric properties of the parent version of the Knowledge of Disease Management‐Cystic Fibrosis measure (KDM‐CF‐P) using data from iCARE (I Change Adherence and Raise Expectations), a randomized control adherence intervention trial.
Preconditioning C 1 Lagrange polynomial spline collocation method of elliptic equations by finite element method q

This paper studies a preconditioning polynomial spline collocation method for an elliptic differential equation by a finite element stiffness matrix. For which, we first show that the decay rate of the C Lagrange polynomial spline increases with increasing degree and second show that the distribution of eigenvalues for the established preconditioning system is well bounded in terms of the number of unknowns for a fixed degree of polynomial spline. 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Cellular Biology of Prion Diseases

SUMMARY Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders of humans and animals that are important because of their impact on public health and because they exemplify a novel mechanism of infectivity and biological information transfer. These diseases are caused by conformational conversion of a normal host glycoprotein (PrPC) into an infectious isoform (PrPSc) that is devoid of nucleic acid. This review focuses on the current understanding of prion diseases at the cell biological level. The characteristics of the diseases are introduced, and a brief history and description of the prion hypothesis are given. Information is then presented about the structure, expression, biosynthesis, and possible function of PrPC, as well as its posttranslational processing, cellular localization, and trafficking. The latest findings concerning PrPSc are then discussed, including cell culture systems used to generate this pathogenic isoform, the subcellular distribution of the protein, its membrane attachment, proteolytic processing, and its kinetics and sites of synthesis. Information is also provided on molecular models of the PrPC→PrPSc conversion reaction and the possible role of cellular chaperones. The review concludes with suggestions of several important avenues for future investigation.
Streaming PCA: Matching Matrix Bernstein and Near-Optimal Finite Sample Guarantees for Oja's Algorithm

This work provides improved guarantees for streaming principle component analysis (PCA). Given $A_1, \ldots, A_n\in \mathbb{R}^{d\times d}$ sampled independently from distributions satisfying $\mathbb{E}[A_i] = \Sigma$ for $\Sigma \succeq \mathbf{0}$, this work provides an $O(d)$-space linear-time single-pass streaming algorithm for estimating the top eigenvector of $\Sigma$. The algorithm nearly matches (and in certain cases improves upon) the accuracy obtained by the standard batch method that computes top eigenvector of the empirical covariance $\frac{1}{n} \sum_{i \in [n]} A_i$ as analyzed by the matrix Bernstein inequality. Moreover, to achieve constant accuracy, our algorithm improves upon the best previous known sample complexities of streaming algorithms by either a multiplicative factor of $O(d)$ or $1/\mathrm{gap}$ where $\mathrm{gap}$ is the relative distance between the top two eigenvalues of $\Sigma$. These results are achieved through a novel analysis of the classic Oja's algorithm, one of the oldest and most popular algorithms for streaming PCA. In particular, this work shows that simply picking a random initial point $w_0$ and applying the update rule $w_{i + 1} = w_i + \eta_i A_i w_i$ suffices to accurately estimate the top eigenvector, with a suitable choice of $\eta_i$. We believe our result sheds light on how to efficiently perform streaming PCA both in theory and in practice and we hope that our analysis may serve as the basis for analyzing many variants and extensions of streaming PCA.
Corruption and Development: A Test for Non-Linearities

Using different combinations of culture, development and openness to international trade, we test the variability in the incidences of corruption at different stages of development or in other words the non-linearities in the relationship between corruption and development. We employ formal threshold model developed by Hansen (2000), and unlike the existing literature, we find that: (1) non-linear models that search for the break points in the relationship between corruption and development are statistically preferable than linear regressions; (2) the effect of development at any stage is much lower than that has been suggested by studies using linear regressions approach; (3) both culture and openness do not affect corruption directly; rather they have an effect on the location of break points in the relationship between corruption and development.
The Role of Principal Leadership to Improve Teacher Performance in Islamic Elementary School

The purposes of this study were for 1) the role of principal in an effort to improve school achievement; 2) teacher performance; 3) principal effort to improve school performance. This study used a qualitative approach with a case study design. The results show that 1) the leadership role of the principal has met the EMASLIM standard which has been proven from interviews, observations and documentation, 2) the performance of teachers already meet the existing law and teachers prefer the process to get quality results, and 3) the principal has sought all activities that support the effort to improve the performance of teachers, either by attending seminars, workshops, teacher training and evaluation.
Production of 3‐hydroxypropionic acid from glycerol by recombinant Klebsiella pneumoniae ΔdhaTΔyqhD which can produce vitamin B12 naturally

3‐Hydroxypropionic acid (3‐HP) is an important platform chemical that can be used to synthesize a range of chemical compounds. A previous study demonstrated that recombinant Escherichia coli stains can produce 3‐HP from glycerol in the presence of vitamin B12 (coenzyme B12), when overexpressed with a coenzyme B12‐dependent glycerol dehydratase (DhaB) and an aldehyde dehydrogenase. The present study examined the production of 3‐HP in recombinant Klebsiella pneumoniae strains, which naturally synthesizes vitamin B12 and does not require supplementation of the expensive vitamin. The NAD+‐dependent gamma‐glutamyl‐gamma‐aminobutyraldehyde dehydrogenase (PuuC) of K. pneumoniae alone or with its DhaB was overexpressed homologously, and two major oxidoreductases, DhaT and YqhD, were disrupted. Without vitamin B12 addition, the recombinant K. pneumoniae ΔdhaTΔyqhD overexpressing PuuC could produce ∼3.8 g/L 3‐HP in 12 h of flask culture. However, this was possible only under the appropriate aeration conditions; 1,3‐propanediol (1,3‐PDO) (instead of 3‐HP) was mainly produced when aeration was insufficient, whereas a very small amount of both 3‐HP and 1,3‐PDO were produced when aeration was too high. The production of a small amount of 3‐HP under improper aeration conditions was attributed to either slow NAD+ regeneration (under low aeration) or reduced vitamin B12 synthesis (under high aeration). In a glycerol fed‐batch bioreactor experiment under a constant DO of 5%, the strain, K. pneumoniae ΔdhaTΔyqhD, overexpressing both PuuC and DhaB could produce >28 g/L 3‐HP in 48 h with a yield of >40% on glycerol. Only small amount of 3‐HP was produced when cultivation was carried out at a constant aeration of 1 vvm or constant 10% DO. These results show that K. pneumoniae is potentially useful for the production of 3‐HP in an economical culture medium that does not require vitamin B12. The results also suggest that the aeration conditions should be optimized carefully for the efficient production of 3‐HP while using this strain. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2013; 110: 511–524. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Complete Genome Sequence of Acinetobacter baumannii Strain B8342, a Motility-Positive Clinical Isolate

ABSTRACT Acinetobacter baumannii is an emerging Gram-negative pathogen responsible for health care–associated infections. In this study, we determined the genome of a motility-positive clinical strain, B8342, isolated from a hospital in southern India. The B8342 genome, which is 3.94 Mbp, was generated by de novo assembly of PacBio long-read sequencing data.
A Multi-Agent Simulation Framework for Spiders Traversing the Semantic Web

Although search engines traditionally use spiders for traversing and indexing the Web, there has not yet been any methodological attempt to model, deploy and test learning spiders. The flourishing of the semantic Web provides understandable information that may improve the accuracy of search engines. In this paper, we introduce BioSpider, an agent-based simulation framework for developing and testing autonomous, intelligent, semantically-focused Web spiders. BioSpider assumes a direct analogy of the problem at hand with a multi-variate ecosystem, where each member is self-maintaining. The population of the ecosystem comprises cooperative spiders incorporating communication, mobility and learning skills, striving to improve efficiency. Genetic algorithms and classifier rules have been employed for spider adaptation and learning. A set of experiments has been performed in order to qualitatively test the efficacy and applicability of the proposed approach
Verifying the Precision of Diagnostic Algorithms

Diagnosis of discrete event systems requires to decide whether the system model allows for certain types of executions to take place. Because this problem is hard, incomplete yet faster algorithms may be needed. This however can lead to a loss of precision. This paper presents a method to decide whether precision is maintained by such incomplete algorithms. To this end we define the Simulation, which is a modification of the model that simulates how the algorithm works. We then use the twin plant method to decide whether diagnosability is maintained despite the imprecision of the diagnostic algorithm. We illustrate the benefits of this approach on two diagnostic algorithms, namely Independent-Windows Algorithms and Chronicle-based Diagnosis.
Research on MIL Search Method for P2P Borrowing Loss Clients Based on Social Network Perspective

This paper proposes a multi-indicator search study based on the social network perspective for borrowing and lending customers. When studying P2P lending and losing customers, according to the division of interpersonal relationship in sociology and the extent to which the client can be debited in reality, it is divided into three kinds of relationship networks: blood relationship network, geo-relationship network and business relationship network, assisting to combine the two-mode subordinate network of the lost customers, and focusing on analyzing its scale, density and other indicators, and hope to find the target lost customers. Key figures in the social network of interpersonal relationships, message communicators, behavioral influencers, etc., to achieve the search for lending customers after their sudden loss. For the first time, this paper applies the social network theory to the search for borrowed and lost customers and proposes the MIL algorithm. It proposes a new idea for the hiddenness of the loan client’s loss of connection, and accelerates the governance of the ill-fated phenomenon of loan and loan loss effectiveness. This paper also analyzes the case and proposes relevant suggestions in connection with a loss event in Guangzhou.
Speciation in birds: Genes, geography, and sexual selection

Molecular studies of speciation in birds over the last three decades have been dominated by a focus on the geography, ecology, and timing of speciation, a tradition traceable to Mayr's Systematics and the Origin of Species. However, in the recent years, interest in the behavioral and molecular mechanisms of speciation in birds has increased, building in part on the older traditions and observations from domesticated species. The result is that many of the same mechanisms proffered for model lineages such as Drosophila—mechanisms such as genetic incompatibilities, reinforcement, and sexual selection—are now being seriously entertained for birds, albeit with much lower resolution. The recent completion of a draft sequence of the chicken genome, and an abundance of single-nucleotide polymorphisms on the autosomes and sex chromosomes, will dramatically accelerate research on the molecular mechanisms of avian speciation over the next few years. The challenge for ornithologists is now to inform well studied examples of speciation in nature with increased molecular resolution—to clone speciation genes if they exist—and thereby evaluate the relative roles of extrinsic, intrinsic, deterministic, and stochastic causes for avian diversification.
A New Network Synchronizer Using Phase Adjustment and Feedforward Filtering Based on Low-Cost Crystal Oscillators

A new network synchronizer using a two-way message exchange is proposed and implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). This synchronizer aligns its clock signal and time of day to that of the master node. For high-precision frequency control, a new phase adjustment method is employed, which efficiently provides high-frequency resolution and deterministic frequency control gain. In addition, a feedforward filter is used to reduce dithering of the time offset due to quantization errors in time-stamping. Even with a low-cost crystal oscillator, successful synchronization with root-mean-square (RMS) jitters of 0.1856 unit interval is achieved.