Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activation of adenosine receptors improves renal antioxidant status in diabetic Wistar but not SHR rats

Abstract Background. Diabetes and hypertension independently contribute to renal injury, and the major mechanisms involved are increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) bioavailability and renin-angiotensin system (RAS) activation. We investigated the role of adenosine in controlling ROS production and RAS activation associated with renal dysfunction in hypertension and diabetes. Methods. Fourteen days after induction of diabetes with streptozotocin in 12-week-old male Wistar and spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rats, animals were treated during 7 days with 2-chloroadenosine (CADO group, 5 mg/kg/d), a stable analogue of adenosine, or underwent a sham operation procedure. At the end of the study (day 21), intra-arterial systolic blood pressure (SBP) was measured, and 24-h urine and plasma samples and renal tissue were collected. Results. CADO treatment decreased the plasma glucose concentration and glucose and protein excretion by more than 30% in both strains. CADO treatment decreased SBP in diabetic SHR rats (143 ± 8 versus 114 ± 4 mmHg, p < 0.05), but not in diabetic Wistar rats. The hypotensive effect of CADO was associated to a ∼70% increase in plasma angiotensinogen (AGT) concentration and a ∼50% decrease in urinary AGT excretion. CADO also caused a decrease in medullary and cortical hydrogen peroxide production of about 40%, which was associated with a proportional increase in glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity in diabetic Wistar but not in diabetic SHR animals. Conclusions. These results suggest that activation of adenosine receptors improves renal antioxidant capacity in diabetic Wistar but not SHR rats, although it improves glucose metabolism in both strains. Furthermore, activation of adenosine receptors does not seem to be directly influencing AGT production.
Determining the Stability and Control Characteristics of High- Performance Maneuvering Aircraft Using High-Resolution CFD Simulation with and without Moving Control Surfaces

This paper discusses the development of a computational approach for accurately determining static and dynamic stability and control characteristics of USAF high-performance fighter aircraft. A graduated approach is used to incrementally add Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation capability using DoD HPC resources. Static simulations, prescribed motion flight test maneuvers, and System Identification (SID) of CFD have been accomplished and show good predictive capabilities when tested against wind tunnel data and Lockheed Martin's performance data. The focus of this paper is the modeling and simulation of moving control surfaces in CFD and calculating aircraft/store increment data for use in flight test preparation and analysis. Flight test maneuvers were performed in CFD using both flight test data and maneuver response data from Lockheed Martin's 6-DOF and flying qualities simulation, ATLAS. Non-flyable, computational training maneuvers designed to capture both static and dynamic aerodynamics as well as aiding discovery of envelope-limiting, nonlinear aerodynamic phenomena are simulated as forced rotational and/or translational oscillations about one or more axes. Nonlinear, reduced-order aerodynamic models of USAF fighter aircraft with and without stores have been generated through SID of the aforementioned computational training maneuvers. A full-scale F-16C aircraft with movable control surfaces is modeled using unstructured viscous over-set grids and the Cobalt solver. The necessity of DoD HPC resources to support the USAF T&E community in gathering critical data in a timely manner to rapidly deliver capability to the warfighter is reaffirmed.
When Game Theory Meets VANET's Security and Privacy

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are one of many fields that faces numerous challenges in terms of security and privacy. Risk and security assessments approaches in this kind of networks may not be able to operate correctly in all the vehicular systems, because theses analyzes aspects are based generally on theoretical ideas, which may not reflect any realistic conditions. The important motivations of VANTET applications deployment is the reduction of the accident traffic and the numbers of human deaths and injuries, hence this applications have a stiff security requirements. In order to cover all possible security requirements many research approaches were presented, such as approaches based on attack tree process, where we find also the attack-defense tree approach. This paper focus on the existed trade-off between the attacker and the defender in a vehicular system, also we tries to find an equilibrium point that reflect this relationship through the application of a mathematical analysis, which is the game theory analysis. Game theory approach where firstly deployed in the ad hoc networks by many researches, which is not the case for the vehicular systems where we find a few number of researches dedicated to the use of the game theoretic approach for the security or the privacy preserving in this kind of networks. For a better understanding, we start the paper by presenting some works that highlight the application of game theory in order to address the different forms of security and privacy issues in ad the ad hoc networks and more precisely the vehicular ad hoc networks. Where we show how different interactions between attackers and defender in the vehicular networks can be modeled as a game.
MyCloud: On-Demand Virtual Cluster Provisioning on HPC Resources

Advances in the industry are gaining attentions from the scientific computing community. Programming models and frameworks such as MapReduce and Hadoop are attracting scientists due to their easy-to-use interfaces and autonomic parallel processing abilities. Compared with the conventional HPC execution environments, clouds possess desirable features such as administrative privilege, customizable software environments, and are more capable of supporting new frameworks and boosting inter-organization collaborations. Isolated private clouds and public clouds are used by scientists. However, extra administrative and monetary costs are inevitable in both cases. In this paper, we propose My Cloud, a resource management framework integrating cloud-based techniques into HPC systems. My Cloud supports both conventional HPC jobs and cloud-like on-demand virtual cluster provisioning on the same HPC cluster simultaneously. Dynamic resource sharing between the two environments is beneficial for cluster utilization and burst usages handling. The design of My Cloud is friendly to the state-of-the-art Software Defined Networking technologies and opens opportunities for fine-grained application-aware network engineering.
Systemic lupus erythematosus and the extended major histocompatibility complex--evidence for several predisposing loci.

OBJECTIVE Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease reported to be associated with several alleles in the HLA complex. The purpose of this study was to systematically examine the extended HLA complex (xMHC) in order to get an overview of the primary predisposing genetic factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred and sixty-four SLE patients and 254 healthy, unrelated controls were genotyped for HLA-DRB1, -B and -A alleles, as well as 13 microsatellites markers covering the xMHC. Moreover, we selected 335 additional controls matched with the patients for the HLA haplotypes showing the strongest associations, in order to look for additional predisposing loci. RESULTS Two regions of the xMHC showed associations: the region covering DRB1 to B, and the extended class I region. Explicitly, DRB1*03 and B*08 displayed strong associations with SLE, which seem to be independent of each other. Furthermore, associations were seen with alleles at microsatellites D6S2225 and D6S2223, located about 3.6 Mb telomeric of HLA-B, and these were not secondary to the associations found with DRB1*03 and B*08. CONCLUSION Both the DRB1*03 and the B*08 alleles display disease association, either implicating involvement of both alleles or caused by another yet unidentified gene(s) in linkage disequilibrium. The associations found in the extended class I region could be markers for a 'novel' predisposing locus (loci) in SLE, adding to the risk conferred by DRB1*03 and B*08. Interestingly, this region has been shown to also be associated with other autoimmune diseases, hence the gene(s) might confer a general propensity for autoimmunity.
Factors associated with early response to olanzapine and clinical and functional outcomes of early responders treated for schizophrenia in the People’s Republic of China

Background The aims of this analysis were to identify factors associated with early response (at 4 weeks) to olanzapine treatment and to assess whether early response is associated with better longer-term outcomes for patients with schizophrenia in the People’s Republic of China. Methods A post hoc analysis of a multi-country, 6-month, prospective, observational study of outpatients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania who initiated or switched to treatment with oral olanzapine was conducted using data from the Chinese schizophrenia subgroup (n=330). Factors associated with early response were identified using a stepwise logistic regression with baseline clinical characteristics, baseline participation in a weight control program, and adherence with antipsychotics during the first 4 weeks of treatment. Mixed models for repeated measures with baseline covariates were used to compare outcomes over time between early responders and early nonresponders to olanzapine. Results One hundred and thirty patients (40%) achieved an early response. Early response was independently predicted by higher baseline Clinical Global Impressions-Severity score (odds ratio [OR] 1.51, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.15–1.97), fewer years since first diagnosis (OR 0.94, CI 0.90–0.98), a greater number of social activities (OR 1.22, CI 1.05–1.40), participation in a weight control program (OR 1.81, CI 1.04–3.15), and high adherence with antipsychotics during the first 4 weeks of treatment (OR 2.98, CI 1.59–5.58). Relative to early nonresponders, early responders were significantly more likely to meet treatment response criteria at endpoint, had significantly greater symptom improvement (Clinical Global Impressions-Severity), and had significantly greater improvement in functional outcomes (all P<0.05). Conclusion High levels of adherence to prescribed antipsychotics and participation in a weight control program were associated with early response to olanzapine in Chinese patients with schizophrenia. Early response was associated with greater improvement in symptomatic, functional, and quality of life outcomes at 6 months compared with early nonresponse. Current findings are consistent with previous research outside of the People’s Republic of China.
Do maximal aerobic power and blood lactate concentration affect Specific Judo Fitness Test performance in female judo athletes?

The Special Judo Fitness Test (SJFT) has become the test most widely used by coaches and physical trainers for assessment of competitors’ judo-specific physical aptitude and training programme prescription. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the SJFT performance indices and both maximal aerobic power and the level of blood lactate concentrations in female judo athletes. Seventeen female judokas (age: 21.9±1.6 years, body mass: 74.6±27.4 kg, height: 164.5±8.6 cm; BMI: 27.1±8.0 kg · m-2) took part in this study. All participants performed the SJFT, 20 m multi-stage shuttle run test (MSRT), and 30 m straight sprint test (SST), from which we calculated both acceleration (10 m) and the maximal anaerobic speed (MAnS: flying 20 m sprint). A blood sample was taken 3 min after the SJFT. The number of throws was significantly correlated with estimated VO2max (r=0.795, p=0.0001) and both acceleration (r=0.63, p =0.006) and MAnS (r=0.76, p=0.0004). Peak blood lactate recorded after the SJFT was 13.90±1.39 mmol · l-1. No significant correlation was found between blood lactate concentration and the SJFT performance indices. The lack of significant correlation between blood lactate and SJFT performance suggests that lactic anaerobic metabolism has no effect on this type of judo-specific supra-maximal exercise. The observed results can provide coaches and strength and conditioning professionals with relevant information for the interpretation of SJFT performance and the prescription of specific training programmes for female judo athletes.
Macroeconomic issues and policies: The case of Bangladesh

Introduction PART ONE: GROWTH AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE Structural Change in Output and the Labour Force Economic Growth and Social Development PART TWO: MACROECONOMIC ISSUES AND POLICIES An Overview of Macroeconomic Issues and Policies Green Revolution, Income Distribution, and Rural Poverty Financial Development and Economic Growth Land Prices and Private Saving The Stability of the Money Demand Function and Monetary Policy Money Supply Growth and Inflation Fiscal Policy and Domestic Resource Mobilisation for Growth The Political Economy of Land Taxation Foreign Trade and the Balance of Payments An Evaluation of External Debt Situation The IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Institutions, Macroeconomic Stability, and Economic Development
Mining Parsing Results for Lexical Corrections

Successful parsing depends on the quality of the underlying grammar but also on the correctness of the lexicon that feeds the parser. The development of a lexicon both complete and accurate is an intricate and demanding task. A first step towards the improvement of a lexicon consists in identifying potentially erroneous lexical entries, for instance by using error mining techniques on large corpora (Sagot and de La Clergerie, ACL/COLING 2006) This paper explores the next logical step, namely the suggestion of corrections for those entries. This is achieved by running new analysis on the sentences rejected at the previous step, after having modified the information carried by the identified lexical entries. Afterwards, a statistical computation on the parsing results exhibits the most relevant corrections.
A Fuzzy Multicriteria Method for E-learning Quality Evaluation *

Quality is a phenomenon which is in the core of any type of e-learning development. There is a demand for e-training systems evaluation in order to benchmark them and improve factors that will lead to an effective high quality e-training system. This paper introduces a multi-criteria method for e-learning quality evaluation. To evaluate an e-learning system, we decomposed the e-learning process into sub-processes and activities. The quality of each activity was evaluated both numerically and using linguistic expressions. Following this methodology a number of issues were addressed, such as trainee satisfaction, relative importance of decision criteria, measurement and analysis of trainee on-the-job performances, improvement of the relationships with management and other stakeholders. Quantitative presentations of the e-training process quality enable comparison of different e-training processes and their ranking according to the level of quality.
Intrusion Detection System for Mobile Ad hoc Networks Based on the Behavior of Nodes

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) can be defined as a network of mobile nodes that communicate over the wireless radio communication channel. It is also defined as a network without any underlying infrastructure and offers unrestricted mobility. Due to their open nature and lack of infrastructure, security for MANETs has become an intricate problem. To transmit data over such a network, generally any routing protocol that enables dynamic, selfstarting multi hop routing between mobile nodes is used. However these routing protocols are vulnerable to various kinds of attacks. The conventional security mechanisms of protecting a network are not sufficient for these networks. Hence a second level of defense to detect and respond to the security problem called an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is required. An IDS based on anomaly based intrusion detection that works by checking the behavior of the nodes was proposed to overcome some of the attacks like blackhole, grayhole and flooding attacks. Generally the malicious nodes demonstrate a different behavioral pattern of all the other normal nodes. So the specified approach where a Data Transmission Quality (DTQ) function is used to determine the behavior of the nodes as malicious or legitimate is used. The DTQ function is defined in such a way that it will be close to a constant or keep changing smoothly for genuine nodes and will keep on diminishing for malicious nodes. The proposed method was implemented using AODV as the routing protocol for transmitting data. The evaluation results show that the performance of the AODV protocol under attacks has improved significantly by using the proposed approach.
Forecasting Models for Economic and Environmental Applications

The object of the present study is to introduce three analytical time series models for the purpose of developing more effective economic and environmental forecasting models, among others. Given a stochastic realization, stationary or nonstationary in nature, one can utilize exciting methodology to develop an autoregressive, moving average or a combination of both for short and long term forecasting. In the present study we analytically modify the stochastic realization utilizing (a) a k-th moving average, (b) a k-th weighted moving average and (c) a k-th exponential weighted moving average processes. Thus, we proceed in developing the appropriate forecasting models with the new (modified) time series using the more recent methodologies in the subject matter. Once the proposed statistical forecasting models have been developed, we proceed to modify the analytical process back into the original stochastic realization. The proposed methods have been successfully applied to real stock data from a Fortune 500 company. A similar forecasting model was developed and evaluated for the daily closing price of S&P Price Index of the New York Stock Exchange. The proposed forecasting model was developed along with the statistical model using classical and most recent methods. The effectiveness of the two models was compared
SPOT: Locating Social Media Users Based on Social Network Context

A tremendous amount of information is being shared everyday on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+. But only a small portion of users provide their location information, which can be helpful in targeted advertisement and many other services. In this demo we present our large scale user location estimation system, SPOT, which showcase different location estimating models on real world data sets. The demo shows three different location estimation algorithms: a friend-based, a social closeness-based, and an energy and local social coefficient based. The first algorithm is a baseline and the other two new algorithms utilize social closeness information which was traditionally treated as a binary friendship. The two algorithms are based on the premise that friends are different and close friends can help to estimate location better. The demo will also show that all three algorithms benefit from a confidence-based iteration method. The demo is web-based. A user can specify different settings, explore the estimation results on a map, and observe the statistical information, e.g. accuracy and average friends used in the estimation, dynamically. The demo provides two datasets: Twitter (148,860 located users) and Gowalla (99,563 located users). Furthermore, a user can filter users with certain features, e.g. with more than 100 friends, to see how the estimating models work on a particular case. The estimated and real locations of those users as well as their friends will be displayed on the map.
Paraoxonase 1 (PON1) Polymorphisms, Haplotypes and Activity in Predicting CAD Risk in North-West Indian Punjabis

Background Human serum paraoxonase-1 (PON1) prevents oxidation of low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and hydrolyzes the oxidized form, therefore preventing the development of atherosclerosis. The polymorphisms of PON1 gene are known to affect the PON1 activity and thereby coronary artery disease (CAD) risk. As studies are lacking in North-West Indian Punjabi's, a distinct ethnic group with high incidence of CAD, we determined PON1 activity, genotypes and haplotypes in this population and correlated them with the risk of CAD. Methodology/Principal Findings 350 angiographically proven (≥70% stenosis) CAD patients and 300 healthy controls were investigated. PON1 activity was determined towards paraoxon (Paraoxonase; PONase) and phenylacetate (Arylesterase; AREase) substrates. In addition, genotyping was carried out by using multiplex PCR, allele specific oligonucleotide –PCR and PCR-RFLP methods and haplotyping was determined by PHASE software. The serum PONase and AREase activities were significantly lower in CAD patients as compared to the controls. All studied polymorphisms except L55M had significant effect on PONase activity. However AREase activity was not affected by them. In a logistic regression model, after adjustment for the conventional risk factors for CAD, QR (OR: 2.73 (1.57–4.72)) and RR (OR, 16.24 (6.41–41.14)) genotypes of Q192R polymorphism and GG (OR: 2.07 (1.02–4.21)) genotype of −162A/G polymorphism had significantly higher CAD risk. Haplotypes L-T-G-Q-C (OR: 3.25 (1.72–6.16)) and L-T-G-R-G (OR: 2.82 (1.01–7.80)) were also significantly associated with CAD. Conclusions In conclusion this study shows that CAD patients had lower PONase and AREase activities as compared to the controls. The coding Q192R polymorphism, promoter −162A/G polymorphism and L-T-G-Q-C and L-T-G-R-G haplotypes are all independently associated with CAD.
Stability and robustness analysis of the position control systems with disturbance observer

The aim of this paper is to provide a new analysis and design tool for the acceleration based position control systems. Disturbance observer (DOB), which is the key point of the acceleration based motion control systems, guarantees the robustness of a system by nominalizing real plant and suppressing external disturbances. Although the DOB has been widely used, specifically in motion control area, in the last two decades, it has no a systematic design tool, and its design methodology highly depends on the designer's own experiences. The Bode-Integral theorem and root-locus are implemented into the DOB based position control system so as for clarifying its stability and robustness. New design criteria are provided to improve the robustness and stability of the acceleration based position control systems. Furthermore, the acceleration based position control systems are compared with the conventional one, and its superiorities are shown.
BIOMETRICAL VERIFICATION SYSTEM BY MEASURING GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS ON HAND IMAGES

Biometric as a method for recognizing individual identity based on physical or behavioural traits has been one of interested research areas. Since biometrical verification based on hand geometry shows some advantages, it has been more implemented than other biometrics. The advantages include easy to use, easy to collect data, high public acceptance, and efficient for data storage. Biometrics based on hand geometry also has limitation on uniqueness so it is ideally suited for verification (authentication) rather than identification. In this paper we designed a system which grabbed hand images and extracted some features including width of fingers, length of fingers, and width of palm. Feature extraction was obtained from estimating parameter of likelihood equalization. The metrics used for calculating distance value were absolute and Euclidean metric. This system was applied to 130 hand images that acquired in first session and 180 hand images that acquired in second session. Experimental results indicated overall acuracy, FAR, and FRR, respectively were 98,179%, 0,216%, 1,605%.