Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Polymorphic Circuits and Their Design Using Evolutionary Algorithms

This paper introduces the concept of polymorphic electronics (polytronics) - referring to electronics with superimposed built-in functionality. A function change does not require switches/reconfiguration as in traditional approaches. Instead the change comes from modifications in the characteristics of devices involved in the circuit, in response to controls such as temperature, power supply voltage (VDD), control signals, light, etc. The paper illustrates polytronic circuits in which the control is done by temperature, morphing signals, and VDD respectively. Polytronic circuits are obtained by evolutionary design/evolvable hardware techniques. These techniques are ideal for the polytronics design, a new area that lacks design guidelines, know-how,- yet the requirements/objectives are easy to specify and test. The circuits are evolved/synthesized in two different modes. The first mode explores an unstructured space, in which transistors can be interconnected freely in any arrangement (in simulations only). The second mode uses a Field Programmable Transistor Array (FPTA) model, and the circuit topology is sought as a mapping onto a programmable architecture (these experiments are performed both in simulations and on FPTA chips). The experiments demonstrated the synthesis. of polytronic circuits by evolution. The capacity of storing/hiding "extra" functions provides for watermark/invisible functionality, thus polytronics may find uses in intelligence/security applications.
Severe hepatic sinusoidal obstruction associated with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND In advanced metastatic colorectal adenocarcinoma, the addition of a neo-adjuvant systemic treatment to surgery might translate into a survival advantage, although this is yet to be confirmed by ongoing randomized trials. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of preoperative systemic chemotherapy on the morphology of non-tumoral liver. PATIENTS AND METHODS A large series of surgically resected liver metastases (n=153) was selected. Light microscopy, electron microscopy, and immunohistochemistry using antibodies against endothelial cells (CD31) and hepatic stellate cells (alpha-SM actin, CRBP-1) were performed to identify sinusoidal wall integrity. RESULTS We found that 44 (51%) of the 87 post-chemotherapic liver resection specimens had sinusoidal dilatation and hemorrhage, related to rupture of the sinusoidal barrier. In contrast, the 66 livers treated by surgery alone remained normal. In 21 out of the 44 post-chemotherapy patients (48%), perisinusoidal and veno-occlusive fibrosis also developed. Sinusoidal injury persisted several months after end of chemotherapy, and fibrosis may progress. Development of lesions was strongly correlated to the use of oxaliplatin; 34 out of 43 patients (78%) treated with this drug showed striking sinusoidal alterations. CONCLUSIONS Systemic neo-adjuvant chemotherapy in metastatic colorectal cancer frequently causes morphological lesions involving hepatic microvasculature. Sinusoidal obstruction, complicated by perisinusoidal fibrosis and veno-occlusive lesion of the non-tumoral liver revealed by this study, should be included in the list of the adverse side-effects of colorectal systemic chemotherapy, in particular related to the use of oxaliplatin.
CHRNA5 rs16969968 Polymorphism Association with Risk of Lung Cancer--Evidence from 17,962 Lung Cancer Cases and 77,216 Control Subjects.

BACKGROUND Genetic studies have shown a possible relationship between the rs16969968 polymorphism in CHRNA5 and the risk of lung cancer. However, the results have been conflicting. Thus we rigorously conducted a meta-analysis to clarify any association. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 10 case-control studies involving 17,962 lung cancer cases and 77,216 control subjects were analysed. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to measure the strength of the association. RESULTS We found the CHRNA5 rs16969968 polymorphism to be associated with the risk of lung cancer (AA vs GG: OR=1.60, 95%CI=1.51-1.71). On stratified analysis by smoking status, a statistically significant increased risk was observed in the smoking group (AA vs GG: OR=1.80, 95%CI=1.61-2.01). However, this polymorphism was not associated with lung cancer risk in Asians (AA vs GG: OR=0.95, 95%CI=0.35-2.59), whereas it was linked to increased risk of lung cancer among Caucasians (AA vs GG: OR=1.65, 95%CI=1.55-1.76). CONCLUSIONS Our meta-analysis provided statistical evidence for a strong association between rs16969968 polymorphism and the risk of lung cancer, especially in smokers and Caucasians. Application of this relationship may contribute to identification of individuals at high risk of lung cancer and indicate a chemoprevention target.
The Pleckstrin Homology and Phosphotyrosine Binding Domains of Insulin Receptor Substrate 1 Mediate Inhibition of Apoptosis by Insulin

ABSTRACT Insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) evoke diverse biological effects through receptor-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate (IRS) proteins. We investigated the elements of IRS-1 signaling that inhibit apoptosis of interleukin 3 (IL-3)-deprived 32D myeloid progenitor cells. 32D cells have few insulin receptors and no IRS proteins; therefore, insulin failed to inhibit apoptosis during IL-3 withdrawal. Insulin stimulated mitogen-activated protein kinase in 32D cells expressing insulin receptors (32DIR) but failed to activate the phosphatidylinositol 3 (PI 3)-kinase cascade or to inhibit apoptosis. By contrast, insulin stimulated the PI 3-kinase cascade, inhibited apoptosis, and promoted replication of 32DIR cells expressing IRS-1. As expected, insulin did not stimulate PI 3-kinase in 32DIR cells, which expressed a truncated IRS-1 protein lacking the tail of tyrosine phosphorylation sites. However, this truncated IRS-1 protein, which retained the NH2-terminal pleckstrin homology (PH) and phosphotyrosine binding (PTB) domains, mediated phosphorylation of PKB/akt, inhibition of apoptosis, and replication of 32DIR cells during insulin stimulation. These results suggest that a phosphotyrosine-independent mechanism mediated by the PH and PTB domains promoted antiapoptotic and growth actions of insulin. Although PI 3-kinase was not activated, its phospholipid products were required, since LY294002 inhibited these responses. Without IRS-1, a chimeric insulin receptor containing a tail of tyrosine phosphorylation sites derived from IRS-1 activated the PI 3-kinase cascade but failed to inhibit apoptosis. Thus, phosphotyrosine-independent IRS-1-linked pathways may be critical for survival and growth of IL-3-deprived 32D cells during insulin stimulation.
XmdvTool: integrating multiple methods for visualizing multivariate data

Much of the attention in visualization research has focussed on data rooted in physical phenomena, which is generally limited to three or four dimensions. However, many sources of data do not share this dimensional restriction. A critical problem in the analysis of such data is providing researchers with tools to gain insights into characteristics of the data, such as anomalies and patterns. Several visualization methods have been developed to address this problem, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. This paper describes a system named XmdvTool which integrates several of the most common methods for projecting multivariate data onto a two-dimensional screen. This integration allows users to explore their data in a variety of formats with ease. A view enhancement mechanism called an N-dimensional brush is also described. The brush allows users to gain insights into spatial relationships over N dimensions by highlighting data which falls within a user-specified subspace. <<ETX>>
Overview of Alzheimer's Disease and Some Therapeutic Approaches Targeting Aβ by Using Several Synthetic and Herbal Compounds

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex age-related neurodegenerative disease. In this review, we carefully detail amyloid-β metabolism and its role in AD. We also consider the various genetic animal models used to evaluate therapeutics. Finally, we consider the role of synthetic and plant-based compounds in therapeutics.
Two-phase virtual machine placement algorithms for cloud computing: An experimental evaluation under uncertainty

Cloud computing providers must support requests for resources in dynamic environments, considering service elasticity and overbooking of physical resources. Due to the randomness of requests, Virtual Machine Placement (VMP) problems should be formulated under uncertainty. In this context, a renewed formulation of the VMP problem is presented, considering the optimization of four objective functions: (i) power consumption, (ii) economical revenue, (iii) resource utilization and (iv) reconfiguration time. To solve the presented formulation, a two-phase optimization scheme is considered, composed by an online incremental VMP phase (iVMP) and an offline VMP reconfiguration (VMPr) phase. An experimental evaluation of five algorithms taking into account 400 different scenarios was performed, considering three VMPr Triggering and two VMPr Recovering methods as well as three VMPr resolution alternatives. Experimental results indicate which algorithm outperformed the other evaluated algorithms, improving the quality of solutions in a scenario-based uncertainty model considering the following evaluation criteria: (i) average, (ii) maximum and (iii) minimum objective function costs.
Reduction of Mitochondrial Function by FCCP During Mouse Cleavage Stage Embryo Culture Reduces Birth Weight and Impairs the Metabolic Health of Offspring1

ABSTRACT The periconceptual environment represents a critical window for programming fetal growth trajectories and susceptibility to disease; however, the underlying mechanism responsible for programming remains elusive. This study demonstrates a causal link between reduction of precompaction embryonic mitochondrial function and perturbed offspring growth trajectories and subsequent metabolic dysfunction. Incubation of embryos with carbonyl cyanide 4-(trifluoromethoxy) phenylhydrazone (FCCP), which uncouples mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, significantly reduced mitochondrial membrane potential and ATP production in 8-cell embryos and the number of inner cell mass cells within blastocysts; however, blastocyst development was unchanged. This perturbed embryonic mitochondrial function was concomitant with reduced birth weight in female offspring following embryo transfer, which persisted until weaning. FCCP-treated females also exhibited increased adiposity at 4 wk, increased adiposity gain between 4 and 14 wk, glucose intolerance at 8 wk, and insulin resistance at 14 wk. Although FCCP-treated males also exhibited reduced glucose tolerance, but their insulin sensitivity and adiposity gain between 4 and 14 wk was unchanged. To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to demonstrate that reducing mitochondrial function and, thus, decreasing ATP output in the precompacting embryo can influence offspring phenotype. This is of great significance as a large proportion of patients requiring assisted reproductive technologies are of advanced maternal age or have a high body mass index, both of which have been independently linked with perturbed early embryonic mitochondrial function.
Proapoptotic Fas ligand is expressed by normal kidney tubular epithelium and injured glomeruli.

Fas ligand (FasL) is a cell membrane cytokine that can promote apoptosis through activation of Fas receptors. Fas receptor activation induces glomerular cell apoptosis in vivo and participates in tubular cell death during acute renal failure. However, there is little information on the expression of FasL in the kidney. This study reports that FasL mRNA and protein are present in normal mouse and rat kidney. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry showed that proximal tubular epithelium is the main site of FasL expression in the normal kidney. In addition, increased total kidney FasL mRNA and de novo FasL protein expression by glomerular cells were observed in two different models of glomerular injury : rat immune-complex proliferative glumerulonephritis and murine lupus nephritis. Both full-length and soluble FasL were increased in the kidneys of the mice with nephritis. Cultured murine proximal tubular epithelial MCT cells and primary cultures of murine tubular epithelial cells expressed FasL mRNA and protein. Tubular epithelium-derived FasL induced apoptosis in Fassensitive lymphoid cell lines but not in Fas-resistant lymphoid cell lines. By contrast, MCT cells grown in the presence of the survival factors of serum were resistant to FasL, and only became partially sensitive to apoptosis induced by high concentrations (100 ng/ml) of FasL upon serum deprivation. However, MCT cells stimulated with inflammatory mediators (tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interferon-gamma, and lipopolysaccharide) increased cell surface Fas expression and were sensitized to apoptosis induced by FasL (FasL 55 +/- 5% versus control 8.3 +/- 4.1% apoptotic cells at 24 h, P < 0.05). Cytokine-primed primary cultures of tubular epithelial cells also acquired sensitivity to FasL-induced apoptosis. These results suggest that FasL expression by intrinsic renal cells may play a role in cell homeostasis in the normal kidney and during renal injury.
Implementation of Doorlock System Using Face Recognition

This paper proposes a system that implements a computerized doorlock system using face recognition on photographic images captured by digital cameras. The doorlock is equipped with a simple raspberry pi board whose functions are capturing the image of a user who claims to be a valid user, and the image is then transferred to a server, where a face recognition is carried out to decide the claimed user is enrolled or not. Unlike other doorlock systems that are based on password numbers, the proposed system deprives the need for inputting passcodes. The proposed system can be used with many doorlock systems.
Transmission Performance of Millimeter Wave Multiband OFDM UWB Wireless Signal over Fiber System

Performance of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) ultrawideband (UWB) signal generation using frequency quadrupling technique and transmission over fiber is experimentally investigated. The frequency quadrupling is achived by using only one MachZehnder modulator (MZM) that is biased at maximum transmission (MATB) point. At the output, a frequency quadrupling signal is obtained then sent to a second MZM. This MZM is used for MBOFDM UWB signal modulation. In this work, we demonstrate 30GHz mm-wave wireless that carries three-bands OFDM UWB signals, and error vector magnitude (EVM) is used to analyze the transmission quality. It is found that our proposed technique leads to an improvement of 3.5 dB in EVM at 40% of local oscillator (LO) modulation with comparison to the technique using two cascaded MZMs biased at minimum transmission (MITB) point. Keywords—Optical communication, Frequency up-conversion, Mach-Zehnder modulator, millimeter wave generation, radio over fiber
Effects of Introgression and Recombination on Haplotype Structure and Linkage Disequilibrium Surrounding a Locus Encoding Bymovirus Resistance in Barley

We present a detailed analysis of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the physical and genetic context of the barley gene Hv-eIF4E, which confers resistance to the barley yellow mosaic virus (BYMV) complex. Eighty-three SNPs distributed over 132 kb of Hv-eIF4E and six additional fragments genetically mapped to its flanking region were used to derive haplotypes from 131 accessions. Three haplogroups were recognized, discriminating between the alleles rym4 and rym5, which each encode for a spectrum of resistance to BYMV. With increasing map distance, haplotypes of susceptible genotypes displayed diverse patterns driven mainly by recombination, whereas haplotype diversity within the subgroups of resistant genotypes was limited. We conclude that the breakdown of LD within 1 cM of the resistance gene was generated mainly by susceptible genotypes. Despite the LD decay, a significant association between haplotype and resistance to BYMV was detected up to a distance of 5.5 cM from the resistance gene. The LD pattern and the haplotype structure of the target chromosomal region are the result of interplay between low recombination and recent breeding history.
Novel Frank-Wolfe Methods for SVM Learning

SVM classifiers are very effective mining tools, but scalability for massive datasets is still an open issue. The Frank-Wolfe (FW) method deals with large-scale instances of the general problem of maximizing a concave function on the unit simplex, and can be specialized to SVM training to obtain algorithms with remarkable theoretical properties and competitive performance in practice. We present and analyze a variant of the FW method designed to obtain improved performance on large-scale SVM problems. The algorithm is based on a new way to perform away steps, a well-known strategy employed to accelerate the convergence of the basic FW method. We demonstrate that the method matches the guarantees in terms of convergence rate and number of iterations obtained by using classic away steps. In particular, the method enjoys a linear rate of convergence. On the practical side, we provide experiments on several classification datasets, and evaluate the results using statistical tests. Experiments show that our method is faster than the FW method and works well even in the cases in which classic away steps slow down the algorithm. Furthermore, these improvements are obtained without sacrificing the predictive accuracy of the obtained SVM model.
Mechanoelectrical transduction by hair cells in the acousticolateralis sensory system.

Hair cells are sensory receptors that occur ubiquitously in the vertebrate sensory organs, collectively constituting the acousticolateralis system, re­ sponsible for the detection of sound, linear and angular accelerations, water motion, and substrate vibration. In subserving these various sensitivities, hair cells occur in organs of widely di1fering structures and of frequency sensitivities covering the range 0-100 kHz. Despite this variability of envi­ ronment and function, however, all hair cells share a sensory apparatus of similar structure and all seem to operate in fundamentally the same manner. This paper describes the structure of the sensory apparatus of hair cells and what is known of their transduction process. In the context of the acousticolateralis system, the term "transduction" is employed with both a broad and a narrow meaning. In the general sense, transduction is taken to include the whole complex of events-acoustical, mechanical, hydrodynamic, and physiological-that occur between the ap­ plication of stimuli and genesis of a neural response. The present review focuses on transduction in its more restricted, cellular sense, as the transfor­ mation of a mechanical stimulus into a conductance change and an elec­ trical response of the hair cell's membrane. Because the number of publications addressing this point is fairly restricted, and since there have
Addressing the Challenge of Assessing Physician-Level Screening Performance: Mammography as an Example

Background Motivated by the challenges in assessing physician-level cancer screening performance and the negative impact of misclassification, we propose a method (using mammography as an example) that enables confident assertion of adequate or inadequate performance or alternatively recognizes when more data is required. Methods Using established metrics for mammography screening performance–cancer detection rate (CDR) and recall rate (RR)–and observed benchmarks from the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC), we calculate the minimum volume required to be 95% confident that a physician is performing at or above benchmark thresholds. We graphically display the minimum observed CDR and RR values required to confidently assert adequate performance over a range of interpretive volumes. We use a prospectively collected database of consecutive mammograms from a clinical screening program outside the BCSC to illustrate how this method classifies individual physician performance as volume accrues. Results Our analysis reveals that an annual interpretive volume of 2770 screening mammograms, above the United States’ (US) mandatory (480) and average (1777) annual volumes but below England’s mandatory (5000) annual volume is necessary to confidently assert that a physician performed adequately. In our analyzed US practice, a single year of data uniformly allowed confident assertion of adequate performance in terms of RR but not CDR, which required aggregation of data across more than one year. Conclusion For individual physician quality assessment in cancer screening programs that target low incidence populations, considering imprecision in observed performance metrics due to small numbers of patients with cancer is important.
Determining [3H]Thymidine Incorporation into Bacterioplankton DNA: Improvement of the Method by DNase Treatment

Determination of [3H] thymidine incorporation into bacterial DNA versus other macromolecules is usually achieved by NaOH and hot trichloroacetic acid hydrolysis. This procedure was found not to be specific enough. An alternative method founded on DNase treatment is proposed. Under the new method, the fraction of thymidine incorporated into DNA ranged from 10 to 83%.
Generating phonetic cognates to handle named entities in English-Chinese cross-language spoken document retrieval

We have developed a technique for automatic transliteration of named entities for English-Chinese cross-language spoken document retrieval (CL-SDR). Our retrieval system integrates machine translation, speech recognition and information retrieval technologies. An English news story forms a textual query that is automatically translated into Chinese words, which are mapped into Mandarin syllables by pronunciation dictionary lookup. Mandarin radio news broadcasts form spoken documents that are indexed by word and syllable recognition. The information retrieval engine performs matching in both word and syllable scales. The English queries contain many named entities that tend to be out-of-vocabulary words for machine translation and speech recognition, and are omitted in retrieval. Names are often transliterated across languages and are generally important for retrieval. We present a technique that takes in a name spelling and automatically generates a phonetic cognate in terms of Chinese syllables to be used in retrieval. Experiments show consistent retrieval performance improvement by including the use of named entities in this way.
Effective object-based image retrieval using higher-level visual representation

Having effective methods to access the desired images is essential nowadays with the availability of huge amount of digital images. The proposed approach is based on an analogy between image retrieval containing desired objects (object-based image retrieval) and text retrieval. We propose a higher-level visual representation, for object-based image retrieval beyond visual appearances. The proposed visual representation improves the traditional part-based bag-of-words image representation, in two aspects. First, the approach strengthens the discrimination power of visual words by constructing an mid level descriptor, visual phrase, from frequently co-occurring and non noisy visual word-set in the same local context. Second, to bridge the visual appearance difference or to achieve better intra-class invariance power, the approach clusters visual words and phrases into visual sentence, based on their class probability distribution.