Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maternal HLA homozygosity and mother-child HLA concordance increase the risk of vertical transmission of HIV-1.

BACKGROUND Mother-child human leukocyte antigen (HLA) concordance and maternal HLA homozygosity may increase the risk of vertical transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) risk by reducing infant immune responses. METHODS We analyzed mother-child HLA concordance and maternal HLA homozygosity in a Kenyan perinatal cohort receiving antenatal zidovudine. HLA concordance was scored as the number of shared class I alleles, and relative risk estimates were adjusted for maternal HIV-1 load. RESULTS Among 277 mother-infant pairs, HIV-1 transmission occurred in 58 infants (21%), with in utero transmission in 21 (36%), peripartum transmission in 26 (45%), and transmission via breast-feeding in 11 (19%). With increased concordance, we observed a significant increase in the risk of transmission overall (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.3 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.0-1.7]; P = .04 in utero (adjusted odds ratio, 1.72 [95% CI, 1.0-1.7]; P = .04), and via breast-feeding (aHR, 1.6 [95% CI, 1.0-2.5]; P = .04). Women with homozygosity had higher plasma HIV-1 RNA levels at 32 weeks of gestation (5.1 vs. 4.8 log(10) copies/mL; P = . 03) and an increased risk of transmission overall (aHR, 1.7 [95% CI, 1.1-2.7]; P = .03) and via breast-feeding (aHR, 5.8 [95% CI, 1.9-17.7]; P = .002). CONCLUSION The risks of overall, in utero, and breast milk HIV-1 transmission increased with HLA concordance and homozygosity. The increased risk may be due to reduced alloimmunity or less diverse protective immune responses.
Handbook on Family and Community Engagement.

Thirty-six of the best thinkers on family and community engagement were assembled to produce this Handbook, and they come to the task with varied backgrounds and lines of endeavour. Each could write volumes on the topics they address in the Handbook, and quite a few have. The authors tell us what they know in plain language, succinctly presented in short chapters with practical suggestions for states, districts, and schools. The vignettes in the Handbook give us vivid pictures of the real life of parents, teachers, and kids. In all, their portrayal is one of optimism and celebration of the goodness that encompasses the diversity of families, schools, and communities across our nation.
Learning an Accurate Neural Model of the Dynamics of a Typical Industrial Robot

To maintain their current signi cance neural networks must compete with other technical methods in realistic applications Control and modelling of nonlinear systems particularly of robots has been established as one of the main elds of application for neural networks Meanwhile little work has been done to introduce neural networks into control of real available machines and to evaluate their advantages over other control methods One should notice that in the eld of robotics there is a broad gap be tween the theoretical description of the systems dynamics e g the well known Newton Euler dynamics equation for rigid body motion and the real robot s behaviour Real e ects include static and coulomb friction with di cult depen dencies on joint positions and velocities nonlinear viscose friction nonlinear gear exibilities backlash and drive motor dynamics On the other hand accurate robot dynamics models are required e g to increase operation security by automatic fault detection Schneider et al or to improve tracking control accuracy by model based control Analytic model based robot control e g Freund has not yet found widespread application This is partly due to the fact that it is not very robust against unmodelled e ects particularly in the presence of controller delay Additional sensors for link positions would be required to deal with gear exibilities Furthermore it is very laborious to derive the complete dynamics equations and identify its parameters for a typical multi joint industrial robot Our goal is to contribute to the feasibility of model based control with a more accurate and more easily obtainable model which is generated by training a set of neural networks This model is capable of representing at least a part of the above mentioned non ideal force components Our previous work Jansen et al a b described a control scheme and a stability guarantee based on model mismatch estimates for the neural controller In the present paper we focus on experimental results of training a model of an industrial robot
Experts agents in PEM fuel cell control

In the control of the PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell, the existence of both deliberative and reactive processes that facilitate the tasks of control resulting from a wide range of operating scenarios and range of conditions it is required. The latter is essential to adjust its parameters to the multiplicity of circumstances that may occur in the operation of the PEM stack. In this context, the design and development of an expert-agents based architecture for autonomous control of the PEM stack in top working conditions is presented. The architecture integrates perception and control algorithms using sensory and context information. It is structured in a hierarchy of levels with different time window and level of abstraction. The monitoring model and autonomic control of PEM stack has been validated with different types of PEM stacks and operating conditions demonstrating high reliability in achieving the objective of the proposed energy efficiency. Dynamic control of the wetting of the membrane is a clear example.
Sex-related differences in lipid peroxidation and photoprotection in Pistacia lentiscus

Sex-related differences in the response of dioecious plants to abiotic stress have been poorly studied to date. This work explored to what extent sex may affect plant stress responses in Pistacia lentiscus L. (Anacardiaceae), a tree well adapted to Mediterranean climatic conditions. It was hypothesized that a greater reproductive effort in females may increase oxidative stress in leaves, particularly when plants are exposed to abiotic stress. Measurements of oxidative stress markers throughout the year revealed increased lipid peroxidation in females, but only during the winter. Enhanced lipid peroxidation in females was associated with reduced photoprotection, as indicated by reduced tocopherol levels and nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) of chlorophyll fluorescence. Enhanced lipid peroxidation in females was also observed at predawn, which was associated with increased lipoxygenase activity and reduced cytokinin levels. An analysis of the differences between reproductive (R) and nonreproductive (NR) shoots showed an enhanced photoprotective capacity in R shoots compared to NR shoots in females. This capacity was characterized by an increased NPQ and a better antioxidant protection (increased carotenoid and tocopherol levels per unit of chlorophyll) in R compared to NR shoots. It is concluded that (i) females exhibit higher lipid peroxidation in leaves than males, but only during the winter (when sex-related differences in reproductive effort are the highest), (ii) this is associated with a lower photoprotective capacity at midday, as well as enhanced lipoxygenase activity and reduced cytokinin levels at predawn, and (iii) photoprotection capacity is higher in R relative to NR shoots in females.
Performance Evaluation and Comparison of AODV and DSR Under Adversarial Environment

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) can be described as a mobile wireless network, consisting of a collection of communication nodes, which have to interact among themselves without the use of any centralized authority or fixed infrastructure. There are several technical challenges regarding deployment of a MANET, such as network scalability, communication stability, energy consumption, security and quality of services (QoS). Due to vulnerability of wireless links, nodes unstable infrastructure support and highly dynamic network states, MANET security becomes an essential design dimension. initially while designing MANET routing protocols security aspects were not considered, so routing protocols are vulnerable to various types of security attacks such as rushing attack, black hole attack, replay attack, jellyfish attack, wormhole attack, spoofing attack etc. In this paper we have discussed wormhole attack. In this paper, through simulation the effects of wormhole attack on Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocols have been analyzed and compared.
Model Checking Probabilistic Real Time Systems

In this paper we present a formal model of probabilistic real time systems as an extension of traditional nite labelled transition graphs with dense time and probabilities. Furthermore, we present a speciication formalism in terms of a real timed probabilistic logic and also a model checking method for veriication with respect to the logic is presented.
Presidential Appointments to the Supreme Court

One of the proud and just boasts of the constitutional system of government that we have in the United States is that even the President is not above the law. The justness of the boast is illustrated by decisions such as the Steel Seizure Case, in which the Court rebuffed the claims of President Truman, and the Nixon Tapes Case, in which the Court rebuffed the claims of President Nixon. But though the President, the head of the executive branch, may be subject under our system to checks and balances administered by the judicial branch of government, the courts themselves are subject to a different form of check and balance administered by the President. Vacancies in the federal judiciary are filled by the President with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. Just as the courts may have their innings with the President, the President comes to have his innings with the courts. It seems fitting, particularly in the year of a presidential election, to inquire what history shows as to the propensity of Presidents to "pack" the Court, and the extent to which they have succeeded in any such effort. I use the word "pack" as the best verb available, realizing full well that it has a highly pejorative connotation. But it ought not to have such a connotation when used in this context; the second edition of Webster's unabridged dictionary, which happens to be the one I have in my study, defines the verb "pack" as "to choose or arrange (a jury, committee, etc.) in such a way as to secure some advantage, or to favor some particular side or interest. " Thus a President who sets out to "pack" the Court seeks to appoint people to the Court who are sympathetic to his political or philosophical principles.
Heart failure, end-systolic pressure-volume relation

The problem of heart failure with normal or preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) has been the subject of numerous studies. Mathematical relations between ejection fraction (EF) and the parameters describing linear and non-linear end-systolic pressure-volume relation (ESPVR) have been derived in previous publications. Consequently one can expect a link between observed percentage of heart failure and EF on the one hand, and indexes derived from the ESPVR on the other hand, which is the subject of this study. It is shown that important information can be derived from the ESPVR that can give better insight into the mechanics of ventricular contraction. Applications to clinical data published in the literature show the consistency of the mathematical formalism used.
Understanding the Spatio-Temporal Response of Coral Reef Fish Communities to Natural Disturbances: Insights from Beta-Diversity Decomposition

Understanding how communities respond to natural disturbances is fundamental to assess the mechanisms of ecosystem resistance and resilience. However, ecosystem responses to natural disturbances are rarely monitored both through space and time, while the factors promoting ecosystem stability act at various temporal and spatial scales. Hence, assessing both the spatial and temporal variations in species composition is important to comprehensively explore the effects of natural disturbances. Here, we suggest a framework to better scrutinize the mechanisms underlying community responses to disturbances through both time and space. Our analytical approach is based on beta diversity decomposition into two components, replacement and biomass difference. We illustrate this approach using a 9-year monitoring of coral reef fish communities off Moorea Island (French Polynesia), which encompassed two severe natural disturbances: a crown-of-thorns starfish outbreak and a hurricane. These disturbances triggered a fast logistic decline in coral cover, which suffered a 90% decrease on all reefs. However, we found that the coral reef fish composition remained largely stable through time and space whereas compensatory changes in biomass among species were responsible for most of the temporal fluctuations, as outlined by the overall high contribution of the replacement component to total beta diversity. This suggests that, despite the severity of the two disturbances, fish communities exhibited high resistance and the ability to reorganize their compositions to maintain the same level of total community biomass as before the disturbances. We further investigated the spatial congruence of this pattern and showed that temporal dynamics involved different species across sites; yet, herbivores controlling the proliferation of algae that compete with coral communities were consistently favored. These results suggest that compensatory changes in biomass among species and spatial heterogeneity in species responses can provide further insurance against natural disturbances in coral reef ecosystems by promoting high levels of key species (herbivores). They can also allow the ecosystem to recover more quickly.
A Super-resolution Algorithm Based on SURF and POCS for 3 D Bionics PTZ

Image super-resolution algorithm improves image resolution in software. Before image tracking, it needs to enhance image resolution to improve the image tracking accuracy of the bionic eye. The traditional super-resolution reconstruction method can’t satisfy the accuracy and real-time system, so this paper proposes super-resolution image reconstruction algorithm based on SURF (Speeded up Robust Features) and POCS (Projections Onto Convex Sets). The algorithm applies SURF algorithm on image registration and uses RANSAC (RANdom SAmple Consensus) algorithm to kick out fault feature to improve the accuracy of image registration. After motion estimation, this paper applies POCS algorithm to reconstruct a super-resolution image. Finally, some experiments are performed on the platform of a bionic eye, which show that the algorithm can better improve the image resolution and reach real-time requirements to some extent, and providing basis for the subsequent image tracking. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
Automatic recognition of vowel length in Japanese for a CALL system motivated by perceptual experiments

Acquisition of the Japanese vowel length contrast can be problematic for non-native speakers. For these speakers, a CALL system which can automatically recognize vowel length could be of great benefit for pointing out their errors and issuing corrective feedback. However, a method that can adequately do this has not been proposed yet. Vowel length recognition is made difficult because the vowel length distinction is dependent on the surrounding vowel durations which vary due to speaking rate and other factors. Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), the standard way of recognizing this distinction, do not make use of this information. Methods have been proposed to recognize this in the past, but they do not appear viable unless knowledge about the durations of other vowels is present. Thus, we carry out perceptual experiments to gain more knowledge about the vowel length contrast. From this analysis, we develop an automatic recognition algorithm for vowel length that uses support vector machines (SVMs). We tested this method on a speaking rate corpus, native speech, and non-native speech. The method produced recognition results that are overall superior to HMMs and also more robust against speaking rate differences with an average of a 0.83 correct recognition rate for the 3 datasets. The error and non-error classification rates on non-native speech for this are 0.86 and 0.84 respectively. Index Terms: Japanese, vowel length, recognition, speaking rate, perception, CALL
Porting multithreading libraries to an exokernel system

In this paper, we present an extension to allow multithreaded applications to run on an Intel-based exokernel system. For this purpose, we have ported a user-level threads package to such environment. Our goal is to evaluate the suitability of running multithreaded parallel applications on top of a multiprocessor system managed by an exokernel. We present the design of a prototype library, the lessons learned during its implementation and our proposals for this kind of systems.
Providing QoS support through schedulling in WiMAX systems

The WiMAX system outlines support for quality of service (QoS) through several service classes differentiation. However, no specific scheduling has been defined to carry the task. In this paper, we propose a simple and standard-compliant scheduling algorithm for downlink and uplink connections. The proposed algorithm calculates and grants the needed resources in terms of slots based on the QoS requirements and the priority of the service classes. The simulation results show that the scheduling algorithm has fulfilled the QoS provisions of all service classes of WiMAX system in terms of delay and throughput requirements.
A Control Strategy of Autonomous Vehicles Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

Deep reinforcement learning has received considerable attention after the outstanding performance of AlphaGo. In this paper, we propose a new control strategy of self-driving vehicles using the deep reinforcement learning model, in which learning with an experience of professional driver and a Q-learning algorithm with filtered experience replay are proposed. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can reduce the time consumption of learning by 71.2%, and the stability increases by about 32%, compared with the existing neural fitted Q-iteration algorithm.
Do Wages Compensate for Workplace Disamenities

Adam Smith's idea that the wage structure reflects differences in work conditions is a central pillar of the competitive theory of the labor market. However, the empirical relevance of this theory of equalizing differences remains unclear. This paper suggests a novel test for compensating wage differentials based on job satisfaction and wages. If wages differentials solely reflect compensation for work conditions, workers will not prefer jobs with high wages to jobs with low wages. Moreover, this new test allows discussing whether industry and firm size wage differentials reflect rents or compensate for work conditions. Results indicate that wage differentials do not exclusively reflect compensation for work conditions.
Performance Optimization for Short MapReduce Job Execution in Hadoop

Hadoop MapReduce is a widely used parallel computing framework for solving data-intensive problems. To be able to process large-scale datasets, the fundamental design of the standard Hadoop places more emphasis on high-throughput of data than on job execution performance. This causes performance limitation when we use Hadoop MapReduce to execute short jobs that requires quick responses. In order to speed up the execution of short jobs, this paper proposes optimization methods to improve the execution performance of MapReduce jobs. We made three major optimizations: first, we reduce the time cost during the initialization and termination stages of a job by optimizing its setup and cleanup tasks, second, we replace the pull-model task assignment mechanism with a push-model, third, we replace the heartbeat-based communication mechanism with an instant message communication mechanism for event notifications between the Job Tracker and Task Trackers. Experimental results show that the job execution performance of our improved version of Hadoop is about 23% faster on average than the standard Hadoop for our test application.
SD3: An Efficient Dynamic Data-Dependence Profiling Mechanism

As multicore processors are deployed in mainstream computing, the need for software tools to help parallelize programs is increasing dramatically. Data-dependence profiling is an important program analysis technique to exploit parallelism in serial programs. More specifically, manual, semiautomatic, or automatic parallelization can use the outcomes of data-dependence profiling to guide where and how to parallelize in a program. However, state-of-the-art data-dependence profiling techniques consume extremely huge resources as they suffer from two major issues when profiling large and long-running applications: 1) runtime overhead and 2) memory overhead. Existing data-dependence profilers are either unable to profile large-scale applications with a typical resource budget or only report very limited information. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach to data-dependence profiling that can address both runtime and memory overhead in a single framework. Our technique, called SD3, reduces the runtime overhead by parallelizing the dependence profiling step itself. To reduce the memory overhead, we compress memory accesses that exhibit stride patterns and compute data dependences directly in a compressed format. We demonstrate that SD3 reduces the runtime overhead when profiling SPEC 2006 by a factor of 4.1× and 9.7× on eight cores and 32 cores, respectively. For the memory overhead, we successfully profile 22 SPEC 2006 benchmarks with the reference input, while the previous approaches fail even with the train input. In some cases, we observe more than a 20× improvement in memory consumption and a 16× speedup in profiling time when 32 cores are used. We also demonstrate the usefulness of SD3 by showing manual parallelization followed by data dependence profiling results.
Human Health Risk of Ingested Nanoparticles That Are Added as Multifunctional Agents to Paints: an In Vitro Study

Microorganisms growing on painted surfaces are not only an aesthetic problem, but also actively contribute to the weathering and deterioration of materials. A widely used strategy to combat microbial colonization is the addition of biocides to the paint. However, ecotoxic, non-degradable biocides with a broad protection range are now prohibited in Europe, so the paint industry is considering engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) as an alternative biocide. There is concern that ENPs in paint might be released in run-off water and subsequently consumed by animals and/or humans, potentially coming into contact with cells of the gastrointestinal tract and affecting the immune system. Therefore, in the present study we evaluated the cytotoxic effects of three ENPs (nanosilver, nanotitanium dioxide and nanosilicon dioxide) that have a realistic potential for use in paints in the near future. When exposed to nanotitanium dioxide and nanosilicon dioxide in concentrations up to 243 µg/mL for 48 h, neither the gastrointestinal cells (CaCo-2) nor immune system cells (Jurkat) were significantly affected. However, when exposed to nanosilver, several cell parameters were affected, but far less than by silver ions used as a control. No differences in cytotoxicity were observed when cells were exposed to ENP-containing paint particles, compared with the same paint particles without ENPs. Paint particles containing ENPs did not affect cell morphology, the release of reactive oxygen species or cytokines, cell activity or cell death in a different manner to the same paint particles without ENPs. The results suggest that paints doped with ENPs do not pose an additional acute health hazard for humans.