Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hands of light : a guide to healing through the human energy field : a new paradigm for the human being in health, relationship, and disease

With the clarity of a physicist and the compassion of a gifted healer with more than twenty years of professional experience observing 5,000 clients and students, Barbara Ann Brennan presents the first in-depth study of the human energy field for people who seek happiness and health, and who wish to achieve their full potential. Our physical bodies exist within a larger 'body' , a human energy field or aura, which is the vehicle through which we create our experience or reality, including health and illness. It is through this energy field that we have the power to heal ourselves.This energy body - only recently verified by scientists, but long known to healers and mystics - is the starting point of an illness. Here, our most powerful and profound human interactions take place, the precursor and healer of all physiological and emotional disturbances. Hands of Light offers: * a new paradigm for the human in health, relationships and disease * an understanding of how the human energy field looks and functions * training in the ability to see and intpret auras * medically verified case studies of healing people from all walks of life with a variety of illnesses * guidelines for healing the self and others
Jns Journal of Nutritional Science

A hot water extract of turmeric (Curcuma longa) suppresses acute ethanol-induced liver injury in mice by inhibiting hepatic oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokine production Abstract Turmeric (Curcuma longa) is a widely used spice that has various biological effects, and aqueous extracts of turmeric exhibit potent antioxidant activity and anti-inflammatory activity. Bisacurone, a component of turmeric extract, is known to have similar effects. Oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokines play an important role in ethanol-induced liver injury. This study was performed to evaluate the influence of a hot water extract of C. longa (WEC) or bisacurone on acute ethanol-induced liver injury. C57BL/6 mice were orally administered WEC (20 mg/kg body weight; BW) or bisacurone (60 µg/kg BW) at 30 min before a single dose of ethanol was given by oral administration (3·0 g/kg BW). Plasma levels of aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase were markedly increased in ethanol-treated mice, while the increase of these enzymes was significantly suppressed by prior administration of WEC. The increase of alanine aminotransferase was also significantly suppressed by pretreatment with bisacurone. Compared with control mice, animals given WEC had higher hepatic tissue levels of superoxide dismutase and glutathione, as well as lower hepatic tissue levels of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances, TNF-α protein and IL-6 mRNA. These results suggest that oral administration of WEC may have a protective effect against ethanol-induced liver injury by suppressing hepatic oxidation and inflammation, at least partly through the effects of bisacurone. Alcohol is a popular beverage in most parts of the world and it has long been identified as a major risk factor for liver disease (1) , with excessive alcohol consumption causing impairment of both physical and mental health. The liver is the main site of ethanol metabolism and is also the principal target organ for ethanol-induced damage. Excessive ethanol consumption can trigger the progression of alcoholic liver disease, which covers a wide spectrum from steatosis to steatohepatitis, fibrosis and/or cirrhosis in severe cases (2,3). Oxidative stress is well known to play a key role in the patho-genesis of acute ethanol-induced liver injury (3,4). Ethanol consumption induces excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which decrease hepatic tissue levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione (GSH), leading to overload of the antioxidant system and failure to efficiently remove ROS. As a result, hepatocyte necrosis and/or apoptosis are induced by oxidation of lipids, proteins and DNA (5–7). Therefore, maintenance of hepatic antioxidant capacity is …
Interaction of service providers in task delegation under simple payment rules

We consider a scenario where an application service provider (ASP) hires a network service provider (NSP) to deliver its service and pays for the employment of the NSP. We study the interaction between these two providers under simple payment rules as a Stackelberg game. We first show, under the assumption that the ASP knows the true utility function of the NSP, the existence of a unique equilibrium of the game and investigate its properties when the NSP is risk averse. Then, we relax the assumption that the ASP is aware of the NSP's true utility function and point out a potential source of difficulty in designing a pricing mechanism that encourages truth-telling by the NSP.
Compressed Support Vector Machines

Support vector machines (SVM) can classify data sets along highly non-linear decision boundaries because of the kernel-trick. This expressiveness comes at a price: During test-time, the SVM classifier needs to compute the kernel inner-product between a test sample and all support vectors. With large training data sets, the time required for this computation can be substantial. In this paper, we introduce a post-processing algorithm, which compresses the learned SVM model by reducing and optimizing support vectors. We evaluate our algorithm on several medium-scaled real-world data sets, demonstrating that it maintains high test accuracy while reducing the test-time evaluation cost by several orders of magnitude---in some cases from hours to seconds. It is fair to say that most of the work in this paper was previously been invented by Burges and Sch\"olkopf almost 20 years ago. For most of the time during which we conducted this research, we were unaware of this prior work. However, in the past two decades, computing power has increased drastically, and we can therefore provide empirical insights that were not possible in their original paper.
Judgments about the intensity of the illumination are influenced by the association between colour and luminance in the scene

In order to judge whether a surface that one is looking at is white or grey, one needs to consider the intensity of the illumination. We here show that people do not simply use the maximal luminance in the light from the scene as a measure for the intensity of the illumination but also consider how luminance and chromaticity are associated. We suggest that they take into account that there are physical limitations to the luminance that reflecting surfaces can achieve at high chromatic saturation. These limitations arise because chromaticity is the result of surfaces selectively reflecting light of different wavelengths, so that the luminance of the illumination must be higher than that of the brightest patch in the scene if that patch is not white.
Feedback-driven interactive exploration of large multidimensional data supported by visual classifier

The extraction of relevant and meaningful information from multivariate or high-dimensional data is a challenging problem. One reason for this is that the number of possible representations, which might contain relevant information, grows exponentially with the amount of data dimensions. Also, not all views from a possibly large view space, are potentially relevant to a given analysis task or user. Focus+Context or Semantic Zoom Interfaces can help to some extent to efficiently search for interesting views or data segments, yet they show scalability problems for very large data sets. Accordingly, users are confronted with the problem of identifying interesting views, yet the manual exploration of the entire view space becomes ineffective or even infeasible. While certain quality metrics have been proposed recently to identify potentially interesting views, these often are defined in a heuristic way and do not take into account the application or user context. We introduce a framework for a feedback-driven view exploration, inspired by relevance feedback approaches used in Information Retrieval. Our basic idea is that users iteratively express their notion of interestingness when presented with candidate views. From that expression, a model representing the user's preferences, is trained and used to recommend further interesting view candidates. A decision support system monitors the exploration process and assesses the relevance-driven search process for convergence and stability. We present an instantiation of our framework for exploration of Scatter Plot Spaces based on visual features. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this implementation by a case study on two real-world datasets. We also discuss our framework in light of design alternatives and point out its usefulness for development of user- and context-dependent visual exploration systems.
Effects of Absorptive Capacity on Organizational Predisposition Toward Information Systems

This paper draws on the theory of absorptive capacity and related work to identify its dimensions and examine its impact on organizational propensity to adopt novel, complex interorganizational technologies. Specifically, it seeks to examine the causal pathway through which absorptive capacity affects organizational adoption intention. Survey-based research was carried out to test this theory. Data was collected from the CEO, the CFO, and the CIO to measure the level of absorptive capacity and its dimensions, and their intentions to adopt financial electronic data interchange (FEDI). A firm-level structural model was developed. LISREL and PLS were used for testing the measurement and structural models respectively. The results indicate that absorptive capacity’s relationship with adoption intention is mediated by decision-makers’ attitudes toward using FEDI. Preexisting related knowledge and aggressiveness of technology policy contribute significantly to absorptive capacity’s impact on adoption intention. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Design of a Bovine Low-Density SNP Array Optimized for Imputation

The Illumina BovineLD BeadChip was designed to support imputation to higher density genotypes in dairy and beef breeds by including single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that had a high minor allele frequency as well as uniform spacing across the genome except at the ends of the chromosome where densities were increased. The chip also includes SNPs on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA loci that are useful for determining subspecies classification and certain paternal and maternal breed lineages. The total number of SNPs was 6,909. Accuracy of imputation to Illumina BovineSNP50 genotypes using the BovineLD chip was over 97% for most dairy and beef populations. The BovineLD imputations were about 3 percentage points more accurate than those from the Illumina GoldenGate Bovine3K BeadChip across multiple populations. The improvement was greatest when neither parent was genotyped. The minor allele frequencies were similar across taurine beef and dairy breeds as was the proportion of SNPs that were polymorphic. The new BovineLD chip should facilitate low-cost genomic selection in taurine beef and dairy cattle.
Comparison Between Percutaneous Transhepatic Rigid Cholangioscopic Lithotripsy and Conventional Percutaneous Transhepatic Cholangioscopic Surgery for Hepatolithiasis Treatment

Background: Percutaneous transhepatic cholangioscopy (PTCS) is one option for treating hepatolithiasis without surgical resection. This approach can use conventional biliary drainage methods over a long period, but a shorter procedure needs to be evolved. Objective: To evaluate the short-term and the long-term therapeutic outcomes of percutaneous transhepatic cholangioscopic lithotripsy (PTCSL) in comparison with conventional PTCS. Methods: In this retrospective study, 118 patients with hepatolithiasis were enrolled who underwent treatment in our hospital between March 2007 and July 2014. About 67 of them received PTCSL and the remaining 51 patients received conventional PTCS. Preoperative data, surgical operation-related records, the postoperative therapeutic effect, and the long-term hepatolithiasis recurrence rate were collected for comparison between the 2 groups. Results: The age, sex, and surgical history were similar between the 2 groups, but there was a significant difference in the Child-Pugh score, with more grade 3 patients in the PTCS group (P=0.002). However, the operation time, intraoperative blood infusion, and the blood loss were similar between the 2 groups. The final clearance ratio of calculus in the PTCSL group was significantly better than in the PTCS group after multivariate analysis (P=0.021; OR=0.201; 95% CI, 0.051-0.785). Calculus recurrence was 9% (PTCSL) and 22% (PTCS). The postoperative hospital stay was significantly shorter in the PTCSL group (P=0.001; OR=1.337; 95% CI, 1.132-1.58). Conclusions: PTCSL was a satisfactory therapeutic option for hepatolithiasis treatment, with less operation time and a superior long-term therapeutic effect compared with conventional PTCS.
Growth, Congo Red agar colony morphotypes and antibiotic susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis.

OBJECTIVE Mycobacterium avium subspecies (subsp.) paratuberculosis (MAP) is the causative agent of Johne's disease in ruminants and has been associated with Crohn's disease in humans. We sought to test growth rates and susceptibilities of various strains of MAP in two available growth media. DESIGN Paired comparison design. METHODS Using the BACTEC macrobroth radiometric growth system and Congo Red-staining agar media, we determined inherent differences in growth characteristics of three bovine and two human strains of MAP and compared susceptibility results obtained in each growth system. RESULTS Significant differences were observed in growth rate as well as mycobactin J dependence between strains and between a laboratory-adapted isolate of the same strain in the macrobroth system. Similarly, colonial morphology and Congo Red staining on agar media were observed. Two strains, one human and one bovine, demonstrated a 100% rough transparent colony with white coloration on Congo Red agar, while one bovine isolate exclusively grew as a smooth opaque colony with red coloration on Congo Red agar. The remaining strains exhibited mixtures of these two colonial morphotypes on agar media. Comparative susceptibility results between the BACTEC radiometric macrobroth method and the agar proportionality method showed good correlation for most antibiotics/inhibitors tested. However, erratic or poor growth in the macrobroth system prevented minimal inhibitory concentration determinations for two bovine strains by this method. CONCLUSION This study demonstrates the variability in the colonial morphology of MAP on Congo Red agar as well as the correlation of antibiotic susceptibility results between the BACTEC macro broth method and the agar proportionality method. This study also emphasizes the need for the development of improved, standardized culture and susceptibility test methods for MAP.
Hardware performance estimation by dynamic scheduling

Hardware/software partition is an essential step in current complex digital design. During the last decades, several partition methodologies have been proposed, most of them based on software and hardware performance estimations. A common limitation of these methodologies is that the source code of the hardware part has to be modified and/or adapted in order to obtain accurate hardware estimations. This paper presents a new hardware performance estimation tool that works with high-level system specifications. An important advantage of the proposal is that the same source code can be used for hardware and software estimations. In order to obtain the execution time of the hardware partition during system simulation, every element of the algorithm is decomposed into primitive operations that are dynamically queued in a sliding-window of limited size. Several hardware-related restrictions are applied to this queue and two dynamic scheduling methodologies are used. The first scheduling methodology enables the estimation of a low bound of the hardware execution time. This estimation should be faster than any implementation of the hardware part. The second methodology provides an upper limit of the execution time that represents a hardware implementation with a low synthesis effort. These limits help designers to decide if it worthwhile to adapt part of the code to be implemented in hardware.
Restricted Boltzmann Machine-Based Voice Conversion for Nonparallel Corpus

A large amount of parallel training corpus is necessary for robust, high-quality voice conversion. However, such parallel data may not always be available. This letter presents a new voice conversion method that needs no parallel speech corpus, and adopts a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) to represent the distribution of the spectral features derived from a target speaker. A linear transformation was employed to convert the spectral and delta features. A conversion function was obtained by maximizing the conditional probability density function with respect to the target RBM. A feasibility test was carried out on the OGI VOICES corpus. Results from the subjective listening tests and the objective results both showed that the proposed method outperforms the conventional GMM-based method.
Synergizing spatial and temporal texture

Temporal texture accounts for a large proportion of motion commonly experienced in the visual world. Current temporal texture techniques extract primarily motion-based features for recognition. We propose a representation where both the spatial and the temporal aspects of texture are coupled together. Such a representation has the advantages of improving efficiency as well as retaining both spatial and temporal semantics. Flow measurements form the basis of our representation. The magnitudes and directions of the normal flow are mapped as spatiotemporal textures. These textures are then aggregated over time and are subsequently analyzed by classical texture analysis tools. Such aggregation traces the history of a motion which can be useful in the understanding of motion types. By providing a spatiotemporal analysis, our approach gains several advantages over previous implementations. The strength of our approach was demonstrated in a series of experiments, including classification and comparisons with other algorithms.
1 Two-Prover One-Round Games and the Label Cover problem

Many statements in the study of computational complexity can be cast as statements about Boolean functions f : {−1, 1} → {−1, 1}. However, it was only very late in the last century that the analytic properties of such functions, often expressed via the Fourier transform on the Boolean hypercube, became the key ingredient in proofs of hardness of approximation. In this short survey, we give a brief overview of the history of this relationship between harmonic analysis and inapproximability for CSPs by zooming in on the particularly illustrative example of MAX-CUT. We summarize Hastad’s seminal ideas from [4], proving unconditional NP-hardness of ( + )-approximating MAX-CUT. 17 Then we take a detailed look at how Khot, Kindler, Mossel and O’Donnell [7] pushed these Fourier-analytic methods further to prove UGC-hardness of approximating MAXCUT to within any constant factor larger than αGW ≈ 0.878, the factor achieved by the famous Goemans-Williamson approximation algorithm. In particular, we’ll discuss the Majority is Stablest Theorem and the role it plays in their analysis, with the hope of making this connection between a purely analytic invariance principle and the surprising UGC-optimality of Goemans and Williamson’s algorithm – as well as the need for analytic methods in proving computational hardness – appear a little less mysterious than it might at first sight.
CTL Recognition of a Bulged Viral Peptide Involves Biased TCR Selection1

MHC class I molecules generally present peptides of 8–10 aa long, forming an extended coil in the HLA cleft. Although longer peptides can also bind to class I molecules, they tend to bulge from the cleft and it is not known whether the TCR repertoire has sufficient plasticity to recognize these determinants during the antiviral CTL response. In this study, we show that unrelated individuals infected with EBV generate a significant CTL response directed toward an HLA-B*3501-restricted, 11-mer epitope from the BZLF1 Ag. The 11-mer determinant adopts a highly bulged conformation with seven of the peptide side chains being solvent-exposed and available for TCR interaction. Such a complex potentially creates a structural challenge for TCR corecognition of both HLA-B*3501 and the peptide Ag. Surprisingly, unrelated B*3501 donors recognizing the 11-mer use identical or closely related αβ TCR sequences that share particular CDR3 motifs. Within the small number of dominant CTL clonotypes observed, each has discrete fine specificity for the exposed side chain residues of the peptide. The data show that bulged viral peptides are indeed immunogenic but suggest that the highly constrained TCR repertoire reflects a limit to TCR diversity when responding to some unusual MHC peptide ligands.
Antitumor actions of keoxifene and tamoxifen in the N-nitrosomethylurea-induced rat mammary carcinoma model.

We have compared the antitumor activities of the antiestrogens, keoxifene (LY 156758) and tamoxifen (TAM), using the N-nitrosomethylurea (NMU) rat mammary carcinoma model. To establish an effective antitumor dose of TAM in this model, rats were treated 2 wk after initiation with NMU for 8 wk with s.c. daily injections of 6.25 micrograms, 25 micrograms, or 100 micrograms of TAM in peanut oil. At the 25-micrograms and 100-micrograms daily doses, TAM completely inhibited tumor appearance during the therapy period. An effective antitumor dose of TAM (100 micrograms daily) was compared to 20-, 100-, or 500-micrograms daily doses of keoxifene 7 wk after NMU initiation. None of the keoxifene-treated groups prevented the appearance of tumors as effectively as TAM during 13 wk of therapy. When keoxifene was compared to TAM at equivalent daily doses of 100 and 500 micrograms daily starting 2 wk after NMU injection, the keoxifene groups again failed to prevent the appearance of all tumors during 10 wk of therapy. TAM, however, completely suppressed any tumor formation. In the same experiment, animals treated with 500 micrograms of TAM had therapy stopped after 10 wk, and tumors started to appear 6 wk later. No tumors appeared when animals (n = 25) were treated continuously for 23 wk with 100 micrograms of TAM. In separate experiments, keoxifene (500 micrograms daily) and TAM (500 micrograms and 100 micrograms daily) administered for 1 wk blocked the binding of [3H]-estradiol in NMU tumors and in uteri. The effect lasted for up to 5 wk after antiestrogen therapy was stopped. These experiments demonstrate that keoxifene is not as effective in its antitumor action as TAM in the NMU model.